“It will happen when you least expect it.”
I heard this one so often, I wanted to put a sign in my business: $10.00 FEE FOR SAYING IT WILL HAPPEN WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT.
It’s been months since I dated, over a year since I was intimate with anyone. I’ve kind of forgotten about it at this point, I’ve been so busy working at being a rockstar goddess author mogul and any other superlatives I can come up with.
I’m proud of myself.
Even the woman in Eat, Pray, Love who made a 365 day commitment to celibacy couldn’t make it an entire year without jumping into the sack with an exotic dude she wound up divorcing anyway, and this after penning a follow up 285 pages about commitment. And she was paid 200,000 smackers to write her book while chomping her way through Italy, contemplating her navel in an India monastery, and basking in the Balinese sun. If my story ever made it to Hollywood, the location would be largely the not-so-exotic Midwest, but at least I made it well over a damn year, albeit amongst cows and the corn rather than ancient ruins, fancy temples and tropical islands.
Heck, I’ve gotten so good at this that I’ve lost track of how long it’s been.
Losing everything actually helped. Enduring terrifying financial pressure and having to sink or swim helped me gain the self-sufficiency I needed to finally fly solo. And the beauty of flying solo is that you go wherever you damn well please, no permission required.
I fought hard for this life. I earned it. No one handed this to me.
I’ve always thought the Eat, Pray, Love protagonist came off as a bit of a spoiled brat. Poor me, my heart is broken, waa, waa, I’ll just hop on this here plane and tour the world! All expenses paid, drowning my sorrows in Sicilian meatballs, Indian naan, and Balinese satay and whoopsie! I’m in bed again. In that book as she rationalizes away the breaking of her promise to herself to make it One Whole Year without sex, I’m thinking, this is why it’s sometimes better to just start the work on yourself rather than obsessing on a certain time milestone. She made it through her chaste almost-year like an alcoholic clinging by their nails to sobriety, tell-tale scratches on the frustratingly locked door of the liquor cabinet. A cabinet which wound up with the front glass smashed and the bottles empty, remnants of an eleventh-hour binge that launched a second book.
Or, I’m just jealous about the 200K advance, and subsequent free trip.
Back in my ordinary world, I’ve been living out my crazy, awesome single life. I’m having a better time than Madonna at a Botox convention, but there’s a funny little thing happening. And that funny little thing is the surprising amount of people who can’t wrap their mind around me being happy alone. I think to some of my paired-up pals, I must look like a single shoe, completely worthless without its mate to complete the pair. My God, how will she ever walk?
The questions by people mystified at one choosing to journey through life alone are plentiful:
“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
Honey, I left the dock a while back.
“Well, surely you don’t want to be alone…”
I’m not. I have awesome friends, and am in a great relationship with myself. And don’t call me Shirley.
“Your time will come.”
My time is now, and I don’t need a chaperone for this ride.
“How hasn’t anyone snatched you up?”
Okay, that just sounds like kidnapping.
“You’ll find the right guy.”
This implies a nonexistent search.
“I think you’re single because..”
Now you’re a mind reader? Miss Cleo, is that you??
“I can’t imagine having to date again.”
Yeah, fucking, neither can I.
“Maybe you’re being too picky.”
I can tell you what happens when you’re not…
“You need to meet my nephew/son/friend/UPS guy”
This one ended up with me having a well-wishing aunt foist her nephew upon me AS A CLIENT, and made for a once-a-month awkward meeting in which he insisted on standing wayyy too close to me when he was in. “He needs a girl just like you.” Maybe I’ll just sell brunette inflatable dolls with a recording: pull string “Ooohh, your muscles are soooo big…” pull “Tell me more about the Packers…” pull “Sure, bend me in half. That’s not uncomfortable at all.”
“Are you putting yourself out there?”
Are you kidding me right now? I am “out there” more than anyone who has ever asked me this question. Being a musician/hairdresser/semi-professional instigator requires that I’m easily accessible on social media, and my messenger inbox of hey! Hi there! Good morning and random rose emojis from strange men, as well as the post-gig wobbling drunks who threaten to fall on the equipment I’m packing up at the end of the night proves that I’m absolutely “Out There”. For these people, it would seem it doesn’t count if I’m out constantly but not actively radaring every guy in the place. Maybe I should ask where this mysterious other “out there” is exactly, because whatever they are calling that, it’s clearly wherever I’m not.
“I don’t know how you do it.”
Yes, I used to be there, too. It can be pretty hard for someone who’s never faced themselves to understand how one can enjoy being single.
The little naggy statements go on in perpetuity. Let me be your wingman. Let me make a dating profile for you. You don’t really want to be single, do you?
They just won’t leave me alone!
The funny part is that some of these partner-pushers aren’t even happy in their own relationships! So, I should listen to you why, exactly??
So I was more than a bit shocked when Proud Single Me went to the gynecologist and lay there, really not concealed at all under that little joke of a see-through one-ply dinner napkin they give you that doesn’t cover anything, feet in stirrups as she asked me about my nonexistent sex life. I was proud of myself. Behold, my clean, untouched, pristine cooch.
She… is not impressed. “How old are you?”
Rude!
I betray to her that I’m 50.
“Well, at your age…there’s a risk this will all atrophy if you aren’t having any sex…”
WHAT??? She continues…”Yeah, you need to get something in there to make sure everything stays operational.”
Did my OB/Gyn just tell me to get a sex toy?
Yes, she did.
Come on, man, can’t you just be proud of me?
So, not having received any expected accolades or Oscars for Best Newly Minted 50 Year Old Born-Again Virgin, I leave clutching a paper prescription note to get myself some silicone assisted action. This is uncharted territory, am I gonna have to visit the Lion’s Den, a seedy looking building I’ve been driving past for years, billboards announcing ADULT SUPERSTORE directly next to billboards preaching THE EYES OF THE LORD ARE IN EVERY PLACE. Are these places even safe? Are the toys at Spencer’s any good, or are they just bachelorette party favors that will give me a cheap China product rash? Doesn’t anyone do those Passion parties anymore? Do you bring your own batteries?
Visions of butterflies, dolphins and rabbits vibrate through my head, and I consider the fact that the only action I get these days is flirting, something the single are free to do with abandon. At least I thought it was just flirting. Good, clean fun, until…
One night I’m out at a place with a somewhat younger crowd, and the music is hiphoppy enough that this 80’s relic feels a little out of place amongst the twerking and whatnot. I dance anyway, because I always will, and another guy who is a bit older than this nubile crowd starts to dance with me. We twirl, spin, enjoy, but after a while, he whispers in my ear that he’d like me to leave with him. But I was just dancing, you know, just having fun, but what I thought was fun, he saw as foreplay. I am attempting to clarify this while he puts on the hard sell and my God he REALLY wants me to go out to his car. Oh, I’ve been down this road before, and I know the shitty place it ends for the woman. And then he utters the words that gave me a great chapter title: “Not even a handy??”
Not even a handy. Seriously? Is that the price of a few dances these days? Inflation is worse than I thought.
I coud not believe he actually asked me for this, but I looked straight at him and he was dead serious. “Uhh, no, I will not be giving you a handy.”
He looks like I shot his dog.
He wasted his why-don’t-you-do-it-because-you-feel-bad-for-me-and-you’re-obligated-because-I-danced-with-you card on a girl who has already fallen for that little guilt trip and now knows better, and is leaving the table tonight with clean hands. He has two resources to provide his own “handy”. And I did NOT lead him on, this was fun wholesome Lionel Richie dancing, not Nikki Minaj ass grinding.
So, I dug in my high heels, and he went away disappointed. I wonder if he approached any other lucky ladies with his messy offer that evening. I’m not sure why he thought that the supreme sacrifice of dancing a few dances earned him the right to jizz all over some poor girl’s hand, but there you have it.
I don’t buy the lies anymore. I don’t have to acquiesce to his social contract. But he’s not the only guy out there with weird ideas about how this works. One night, I go out with a work acquaintance and he introduces me to his friends as his girlfriend. Huh. That was interesting, did he just create a delusion in his head and hope I would play along? Nope, not doing it, and not going to feel bad about it. I can’t feel guilty about someone else’s assumptions, what someone else wanted is what got me stuck in the first place, wayyy back when I was 18. Guilt. Obligation. Sympathy. NO MORE. Their perceived suffering is NOT my problem, and I finally get it and nope the heck outta there.
I go home alone and happy. Night after night, month after month as what some call a “dry spell” but I call “kicking ass and living my own best life”.
I am happy, without Mr. Happy.
…and as others get interested in how I did it, a part of me resurrects from the dead…
Worship Leader Gone Wild 