Single For Life

I know I’m supposed to be writing about sex this week. And BDSM. I was supposed to have gotten myself into some epic kinky fantasy adventure so I could come back and report on it. That didn’t happen. Unfortunately, I find myself presently more celibate than I have been in quite some time. I’m not sure why. Probably because my focus of late is on other things besides cock, which I know is shocking and appalling to all of you. I even recently tried to get back into Tinder and the one guy I started chatting with turns out is good friends with the roommate of High School Lover, so I kind of had to put the kibosh on that one.

I’ve also been in a bit of a strange state because my dear friend Heidi is moving away to North Carolina with her husband and the baby boy I watched come out of her body nine months ago. On Sunday we had a little impromptu going away party for them at their house in the valley, and looking around the backyard, a melancholy rendition of Baby It’s Cold Outside playing out of my ex-boyfriend’s iPhone, I realized I was the only single person at this party. I found myself surrounded by five couples, one of which was my ex and his girlfriend. And I didn’t feel bad for myself or that I particularly wished to be part of a couple, but I did suddenly feel like an outsider. Like I didn’t belong. This was no longer my tribe. And that was an odd feeling.

Earlier in the day, we had all gone out to Barney’s Beanery for some goodbye nachos and beer. As we headed for the car, I was planning on riding with Heidi, her husband, and the baby. As I got to the car, I realized our friend Adrienne and her boyfriend had the same idea. Without missing a beat, I headed for Heidi’s brother’s car instead, asking if I could ride with him and his wife. I thought no one had noticed this small moment of single person awkwardness, but Heidi, being an ultra-sensitive observer, spoke up when we got to the restaurant.

“You just had one of those single moments. When we were back at the car. One of those moments of, I have nowhere to go,” she laughed compassionately, clearly feeling for me.

“It’s okay. I’m the leftovers,” I joked back.

Something strange is happening now that I’m in my late 20s. People are pairing off in a more serious way and it suddenly feels like the party is ending and everyone is trying to find someone to go home with so they don’t end up alone or paired off with the only other person that remains: everyone’s last choice. I found out today even Gaffer Guy is engaged. Fucking Gaffer Guy?! Truly the last man standing. Even Mr. Sociopathic alcoholic womanizing misogynist doesn’t want to go home alone.

Heidi and her husband moving away to build a cob house from scratch and start their real life as two adults with a child, that feels like a new chapter for all of us—a chapter that for me feels a million miles away. And I wonder what that means for these friendships. All of these people are going to start getting married and having children probably years before me—it’s already starting to happen. Where does that leave me in this group? Am I forever to be that single friend that is perpetually called out when a group of hot firemen walk by? Am I really going to be that cliché?

Sometimes I feel like the gals in Sex and the City when they go to their friend’s baby shower and they remember her as this wild single lady and find she’s now a stay-at-home mom living in a no-shoes-allowed house in the Hamptons with her husband and two kids. When Carrie arrives at the shower, the woman asks her to take off her Manolo Blahniks and Carrie’s like, “but this is an outfit.”  Sometimes being the kind of woman with screaming babies and toys lying around the house feels so foreign and far away, I wonder if that’ll ever be me.

Last year, one of my girlfriends had a birthday party for which her boyfriend organized a scavenger hunt and assigned each of her friends an hour to take her on a surprise adventure. I didn’t know about this. I was invited to the “after party” later that evening. I arrived at the apartment where a group of their friends sat around reminiscing about the fun they had had that day taking my friend through her various birthday activities. As I tried to laugh along with the general merriment of the group, I found myself instead feeling like a tourist and asking myself, why as one of her best friends, was I left out of the scavenger hunt component of the day? And then I realized that every single other guest at the party was part of a couple. I probably hadn't been left out on purpose as a punishment for being single, but it didn't matter--at that moment, I felt like the last girl in middle school to be picked for kickball teams. I sat there watching the couples ooh and aah as my friend unwrapped the giant set of luxury pots and pans her boyfriend had bought her for her birthday, and thought: this isn’t my world.

Less than a year ago, the six core members of our particular group were having a dinner party in the very dining room now filled with packing boxes. My ex and I were still in a rather undefined post-relationship stage in our friendship. His girlfriend was still a pretty new presence in his life, and he was resistant to even calling her that. Now they live together and I swear I can see marriage and kids on the not-so-distant horizon. Seeing how much has changed just this past year, I can’t imagine what this group will look like a year from now.

It’s interesting how defined we are by singlehood or coupledom. Lately I feel my identity is so entrenched in being single that I literally can’t picture myself in a relationship. And when I’m with other single people, I feel more connected, less alone. I can’t help it, surrounded by couples, I usually feel like the odd one out, no matter how close we all are. One of my girlfriends recently told me that if she’s invited to something, she just assumes her boyfriend is invited too. This drives me insane. The couple of times it's happened that I’ve had plans with a girlfriend and she’s showed up with her boyfriend, I become so irrationally angry. To me the time between friends, particularly girlfriends, is sacred and to assume you can invite your boyfriend is like admitting that you’re so codependent he’s essentially just another appendage and therefore barely counts as a separate person. It’s like when people become part of a couple, they have amnesia about what it was like when they were single. I guess I do too. I can remember back to a time when most of my decisions were made as part of a unit, but that time feels ever so long ago. I can’t imagine that for myself now.

There are so many seemingly inescapable qualities of coupled people that make me want to never be part of one again. Certain subtle freedoms that simply don’t exist, and as a single person I completely take for granted. Like the fact that if I want to leave a social gathering, I don’t have to quietly negotiate with my partner and decide in hushed tones when we want to leave and if we want to have another drink and who’s driving. I can just say goodbye and walk myself out of the house and drive my ass home. There are none of those awkward public disputes where you have to go off to the side to quietly fix whatever the issue is, or passive-aggressively pretend that everything’s fine when everyone in the room can tell by the shift in energy that something is up between you two. The fact that if there’s a hot single guy at the party, I can flirt with him openly and unabashedly without keeping an eye on where my partner is or feel his eyes watching me across the room, monitoring my behavior. The list goes on.

Things like this I remember about being in a relationship, and I see with my coupled friends, make me want to stay single forever. But the truth is that, obviously, I don’t want to be single forever. Who does? But I know myself, and my track record. I don’t date people casually. I fuck people casually, and then I meet someone I actually really like and I end up seriously dating them for four years. Although I would like to meet someone I like, I’m not in a big hurry to give up my hard-earned identity as an independent single woman. Being on my own has become so a part of who I am, and I’m proud of it. I think it’s made me a stronger, better person. I like that I can show up at a party by myself and find someone to talk to and I don’t need a familiar crutch to lean on. I like who I am when I’m single. I like not having to compromise or check in with anybody. I like that I can do what I want 100% of the time.

That said, I do get tired of making all of my decisions alone, and generating all of my own energy, and never having anyone to lean on. It does get tiresome, and lonely. I’ve been thinking a lot about this as I watch Heidi and her husband take this next step in their life and relationship.

When Heidi met Alex a couple years ago, she was already entrenched in a relationship with her first boyfriend and they lived together and seemed to be in it for the long haul. Then she met Alex and her world got turned upside down. Within a short time, she broke up with her longtime boyfriend, he moved out, and Alex moved in. Not long after that, they got pregnant and decided to have the baby. And then within a year they were making plans to leave LA and start a new sustainable lifestyle in North Carolina where they found they could fully commit to the living off the land model they had been trying to create in the backyard of their home in the valley. I think about if Heidi hadn’t met Alex, how her life would be different now. Meeting him changed her world and her priorities, allowed her to fully commit right now to a dream that felt very far in the future.

I feel like it is often the woman in a relationship who will adjust what she wants to compromise with what her partner wants in their life together. I guess one thing I love about Heidi’s relationship is that the opposite happened. She had this dream of building a cob house out of the ground and living a sustainable lifestyle, and Alex totally got on board with that dream, and it became their shared purpose. Now Alex is going to be the one doing the internship and learning how to build their house from scratch, as Heidi takes care of their baby.

“I had this idea, and I thought I would be the one doing it, and now he’s doing it instead,” she marveled. I could tell she had mixed feelings about this, part of her wanting to be the one to execute their dream. But I suppose that is constantly the balance and dilemma of motherhood: wanting to be with your baby all the time while they’re in those first precious couple years you’ll never get back, but also wanting to live your full life and continue feeding the passions you had before the baby came along. Mostly, Heidi seems in awe that she has found a man who shares her vision and wants to put his whole self into living it with her. She knows how rare that is.

I realize, watching them head off on this journey, that this is the kind of relationship I want. The kind of relationship that will inspire me into the next chapter of my life. Someone I can truly co-create with. Someone who supports my dreams and whose dreams I want to support. Or better yet, someone who has the same dream as me. I know now that at this moment in my life, I won’t settle for anything less. Until I find that, I’d rather be alone. 

Women Are Crazy Because Men Are Dicks

So, I haven’t written in quite awhile because I’ve been living like a monk in my studio apartment for several months now – going from writing at home to rehearsal to work and back again – and it’s been great.  I’ve been very happy not dealing with the daily hopes and heartbreaks of meeting someone new, getting excited, and then gradually disappointed as I realize they’re not what I thought they were.

The good news is that Gaffer Guy is firmly out of the picture.  Last I heard he was on a drug and alcohol bender, and I was frankly glad to hear he was alive, because I have not seen or heard from him in quite some time.  So, that’s totally over, which is awesome.  And I feel like I’m ready to attract a different kind of guy into my life, perhaps one who wants to actually take me out on a date before we have sex.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.  

And then this happened…

It’s Opening Night of this show I’m doing, and it goes great.  There’s a lot of nervous excited energy in the air, and the audience really seems to love the show.  Especially this one particular guy who is friends with one of my male cast members. 

I instantly feel the connection.  At the after party, he keeps glancing my way with these lovely smiling blue eyes.  He introduces himself and just gushes about the show – he LOVES it.  I point him out to Paula, my friend and fellow cast member, and she directs me to “Go flirt with him.”  She helps out by dragging me by the arm and depositing me in his general vicinity.

And then we flirt.  A lot.  I don’t think we’ve met before, but he thinks we have.  We banter and laugh and he asks me questions and seems to really listen to my answers.  The more we talk the more I find him attractive, and our eyes keep catching for these prolonged, meaningful glances.  And I’m thinking, Wow I really like this guy!  Not just, I want to fuck this guy.  I actually like him.  I’d like him to take me out on a date.

At some point we drift apart and I say goodbye to some of my cast members.  I can feel his eyes on me, and I like it.  I’m charged with that exciting fresh feeling of having just met someone you’re interested in, a feeling I haven’t had in quite some time.  I head back to use the bathroom, and weirdly, I half expect him to follow me and grab me in the backstage corridor and start kissing me.  Not sure why, but I suddenly feel that this is a real possibility.

I pee and walk out of the bathroom and in fact my ex-boyfriend is waiting out there.  He asks if it’s awkward for me that he brought his new girlfriend, who I just met for the first time tonight.  I don’t even realize what he’s talking about, I’m so enthralled with this new guy.  I share what’s on my mind.  He tells me to go for it.  We laugh and hug and kiss goodbye, and I head back out to the party.  Only to find my new crush is GONE.

That night, I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about this guy.  Something about him crawled under my skin and made a home.  I give up on sleep and grab my phone.  I Facebook stalk him and then I Internet stalk him.  Using today’s advanced technology, I find out way more about him than I should know at this point in our non-relationship.  I decide to wait to Friend him.

I wake up at 9am and I can’t wait any longer.  I press Add Friend and then nervously stare at the screen.  Several hours later, GREAT SHOW LAST NIGHT appears on my Wall.  I write back “Thanks so much!  It was great to meet you!”  Should I wait for him to reach out to me via Direct Message?  What are the unspoken rules about this?  I ask my ex. 

He says, “I know you’re not going to stop obsessing about this until you do it.  So just wait a day and then give him your number.”

I wait like a half hour, then direct message him: “You’re fun.  I like you.  Here’s my number if you ever want to get together.”

Within an hour, he’s texting me.  BINGO.

Him: “Where are you from again?”

Me: “NorCal.  You?”

Him: “Nice.  People from NorCal are so down to earth.  Boston.”

Me: “People from Boston are direct and intense.”

Him: “Yes.  We should def have sex.  I agree.”

Huh?  I figure he’s playing the role of “direct and intense” for my benefit – he did used to be an actor after all.  Also, not gonna lie, I’m a little turned on.

I play along. “Wow, I’m impressed.”

But then he says, “Prob best after Sunday because your throat is gonna hurt after what I do to it.”  And then there’s a smiley face.

I still think this is a joke – I mean, this guy was SO COOL when I met him last night, it just doesn’t make sense that he would seriously be talking to me like this.

Then he starts calling me “woman” and sort of bossing me around, which I guess might be a Boston thing and is probably still a joke.  I continue giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Then he says, “You should know I pee in a cup at night because I’m too lazy to get up to pee.” 

I ask if that’s really something I should know.  I wonder if he’d be saying all this shit if we were speaking in person.  Somehow I doubt it, or maybe he would say it with an ironic smile on his face so I’d know we were bantering.  Maybe this is all just lost in translation.

I try to get us back on track.

“So, you sell cars for a living?”

I tell him I’m interested in that, I know nothing about that world and I’d love to know more. 

He says, “We can def chat all about it after we have both cum and are relaxing in my bed.” 

You may be wondering, and rightly so, why I haven’t just shut him down at this point.  The truth is, I feel very conflicted about this conversation.  On one hand, I’m kind of turned on because I am very attracted to this guy and the notion of sleeping with him is still exciting to me.  On the other hand, I feel a little weirded out, like this is not the same person that I met the other night.  What happened to that fun, witty guy?  Who is this new text personality?  I half expect him to tell me his friend stole his phone and is fucking around at his expense.

It’s also confusing because mixed in with the crudeness are statements like “You were so great in the show last night.  What a wonderful showcase for you…” blah blah blah.  So that sounds like the same guy I met, but who is this other person who’s implying he’s going to choke me with his dick after meeting me for the first time last night??

I arrive at the theatre and consult Paula.  I give her my phone to look through the text chain.  She points out that I was kind of egging him on.  Definitely didn’t shut him down.  I try to explain that I thought he was joking and now I feel it’s gone too far to get serious.  I show her my half-hearted attempts to steer the conversation elsewhere.

Her conclusion: “Forget this guy, he’s a dick.”

But I’m not ready to give up on him just yet.  I still can’t believe that the guy I met is maybe not as cool as I thought.  I really liked him, and that is not something I feel often.  There must be some mistake.  He’s not Gaffer Guy.  I knew Gaffer Guy was trouble from the moment I met him.  Paula herself referred to this new guy as “a good boy” just last night!

“Just be honest with him then.”

She feeds me the line “All joking aside, I would love to get coffee sometime and chat.”

I’m hoping he’ll suddenly change back into the man from last night.  That he’ll say “I’d love to take you out for dinner.”

Wishful thinking aside, I’m not at all surprised when he responds: “Joking?”

Oh no, I can feel the heat rising in my chest.  “Yeah,” I say.

He writes: “So confused right now!”  Except he spells right, “rt”.

I decide to let this lie for a moment.  I feel upset and emotional, and I don’t want to carry this energy onstage with me tonight.

After the show, at 9:42pm, I decide to lay it on the table.  I write: “Not trying to booty call.  Actually would like to get to know you.” 

I don’t hear anything back until 11:05am the next morning.

Him: “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

Me: “That’s a sad story.  I enjoyed talking to you the other night.”

Him: “Likewise.”

Me: “You come off very different on text.”

Him: “More of a gentleman on text?”

Me: “Uhhh not so much.”

Him: “I don’t intend to come across as an asshole.”

Me: “I like you better in person.”

Him: “If I wasn’t trying to have sex with you there would be a problem.  Don’t you agree.”

Me: “True story, but whatever happened to the nice build up?”

Him: “I’m not so much into buildup.  But I get that’s how a large % of woman [sic] work.”

(He can’t spell women… bad sign?)

Me: “It’s a compliment. I actually like you as a person.  I don’t want to JUST fuck you… But if that’s all you want, I get it.  I felt we had more connection than that, but I may be wrong.”

Him: “If we had sex we would also be friends just so u know.”

Me: “All I’m saying is, let’s have dinner first.”

Him: “I’ll settle on coffee.”

(Later, in the dressing room, Paula dropped my phone at this point in reading the text conversation and said she couldn’t read anymore.  Her advice: “He should hire a prostitute.”)

I think about this and realize what he’s proposing is exactly what I was looking for just a month or so ago.  I was looking for a booty call, a fuck buddy, who was hot and fun and who didn’t expect anything more than sex.  I suddenly realize I don’t want this anymore.  I decide to share this with him, to get real, maybe have a human interaction, a moment of understanding.  Let him see how I’m changing and growing as a person. 

Me: “It’s funny, you’re exactly what I was looking for like a month ago.”

Him: “That’s a pretty quick change.”

Me: “Changing daily.”

Him: “That’s called PMS.”

Now, this hits me hard.  Not because I relate to it.  But because this is exactly the kind of shit Gaffer Guy used to say to me.  And I can’t believe guys think it’s okay to talk to women this way.  What I should have said was “Actually, it’s called evolution.”  But I don’t have my smart hat on.  I suddenly feel very angry and disappointed.  My worst fears confirmed.

Me: “Wow you really are a dick!”

Him: “Woman [sic] are impossible.  Can’t reason with crazy.”

If the PMS line stung, this line knocks me in the solar plexus.  I feel nauseous, a familiar feeling from the days of Gaffer Guy.  I can’t believe that at my most reasonable moment, at the precise moment when I’m trying to level with him as a human being and connect in a real way, he’s able to undermine everything I say with one absurd statement.  Not just “you are crazy,” but that all women are crazy. 

And suddenly I start to think about evolution.  About the ways in which the world is changing.  More women in government, more women’s voices in art and film, more women deciding what they want and going for it.  Maybe these changes unnerve him.  Maybe he feels the need to assert his sexual dominance because I reached out to him, I made the first move.  I took the traditionally male role of expressing interest first.  I put my sexuality on the table. 

I have not written him back and I don’t intend to.  I don’t want to go down this path again.  My reaction time of turning away from this kind of behavior has gotten better, but the next step is to stop attracting it.  If I’m honest, there’s something in me that is still attracted to this guy, even after all this.  I’m not sure why and I don’t necessarily want to examine it.  I’d rather just move on.  I know what I want now – I want a nice, smart, funny, sexy man to ask me out on a date.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

I had a dream last night that Gaffer Guy was stalking me in an expansive field, armed with a shotgun.  Like in a horror movie, he walked slowly and deliberately, as though he knew he would catch me even as I ran away.  I was trying to find my way back to the safe house where my friends and family were, but he knew I was going in a circle and would end up where I started.  He waited for me there and I ran right back into him.