How to Be Single (3 page)

But that's not really the point right now. The point here is that Ruby refuses to step out for a cup of coffee, go shopping, or even take a walk with me, because Ruby is a disaster at handling disappointment. Particularly of the romantic variety. Whatever good times she has with some fellow, it will never be worth the amount of pain and torture she puts herself through when it doesn't work out. The math of it simply doesn't add up. If she dates someone for three weeks, and then they break up, she'll spend the next two months driving herself and everyone around her crazy.

Because I'm an expert on the emotional MRI of Ruby, I can tell you exactly what happens during her descent. She will meet someone, a man, say, as opposed to a feline. She will like him. She will go out with him. Her heart will be full of the possibility and excitement that comes with finally finding someone you actually like who is available, kind, decent, and who seems to like you back.

As I said before, Ruby is attractive; very soft, very feminine. She can be inquisitive and attentive, and a great conversationalist. And when she meets men, they like her for all these reasons. Ruby is actually really good at the dating part of dating, and when she is in a relationship, she is clearly in her element.

However, this is New York, this is life, and this is dating. Things often don't work out. And when they don't, when Ruby gets rejected, for whatever reason it may be, and however the bad news is delivered, a process begins. She is usually fine at the Moment of Disappointment. Like when this guy Nile broke up with her because he wanted to get back together with his ex-girlfriend. At the moment of impact, she is philosophical about it. A burst of sanity and self-esteem washes over her, and she tells me that she knows that it just means he wasn't the one, and she can't take it personally and it's his loss. And then a few hours go by and time will push her further away from that moment of clarity and she will start to slip into the Crazy Pit. Her beloved, whom she once saw at normal size, starts growing larger and larger and larger, and in a matter of hours he becomes the Mount Everest of desirability and she is inconsolable. He was the best thing ever to happen to her. There will never be anyone as good as him ever again. Nile did the most powerful thing he could do to Ruby—he rejected her and now he is EVERYTHING and she is nothing.

I've gotten so used to watching Ruby go through this, that I make a point of being around her during those critical few hours after a rejection, to see if I can stop her at the top of the stairs down to Crazy. Because, let me tell you, once she goes down, there's no telling when she's going to come back up. And she doesn't like to sit there alone. Ruby likes to call up her friends and describe in vivid detail, for hours, what it's like in the basement of broken dreams. The wallpaper, the upholstery, the floor tiles. And there is nothing we can do. We just have to wait it out.

So you can imagine that after a few years of these ups and downs, whenever I get the call from Ruby that she has “met this great guy” or the second date went “really, really well,” I'm not necessarily jumping for joy. Because, again, the math is simply not promising. If three weeks can add up to two months of tears, imagine how terrified I am when Ruby celebrates her four-month anniversary with someone. If she ends up breaking up with someone after a few years of living together, well, I don't think at this point there are enough years left in her life to get over him.

Which is why she decided to get Ralph. Ruby was tired of being disappointed. And as long as she kept her windows closed and doors not ajar, Ralph would never leave her. And Ruby would never have to be disappointed again. But Ruby didn't know about feline chronic renal failure. And now, well, now Ralph was the best cat there ever was. Ralph made her happier than any animal or human could have ever possibly made her and she has no idea how she will ever live without him. She still manages to work. She's got her own business as an executive recruiter, and she has clients who rely on her to get their asses jobs. And thank God for them, because she will always get out of bed to help someone in need of a good nonlateral job placement. But a Saturday afternoon is much different. Ruby isn't budging.

Until I told her about Georgia. How her husband left her for a samba instructor and she's devastated and wants to go out and feel good about life. Then, Ruby understood completely. Ruby understood that there are moments when no matter how badly you feel, it's your duty to get out of the house and help deceive a newly single person into believing that everything is going to be okay. Ruby knew, intuitively, that this was just such a night.

How I'm Single

Let's be honest. I'm not doing it any better. I date, I meet men at parties and at work, or through friends, but things never seem to “work out.” I'm not crazy, I don't date crazy men. Things just don't “work out.” I look at couples walking down the street and I want to shake them, to beg them to answer my question, “How did you guys figure
that
out?” It has become the Sphinx for me, the eternal mystery. How do two people ever find each other in this city and “work out”?

And what do I do about it? I get upset. I cry. I stop. And then I cheer up and go out and be absolutely charming and have a great time as often as I can. I try to be a good person, a good friend, and a good member of my family. I try to make sure there isn't some unconscious reason why I'm still single. I keep going.

“You're single now because you're too snobby.” That's Alice's answer every time the subject comes up. Meanwhile, I don't see her married to the handsome gentleman working at the fruit stand on the corner of Twelfth and Seventh who seems to have taken quite a shine to her. She is basing this judgment on the fact that I refuse to date online. In the good old days, online dating was considered a hideous embarrassment, something that no one would be caught dead admitting to. I loved that time. Now the reaction you will get from people when they hear that you're single and
not
doing some form of online dating is that you
must not really want it that bad.
It has become the bottom line, the litmus test for
how much you're willing to do for love.
As if your Mr. Right is definitely, absolutely guaranteed to be online. He's waiting for you and if you're not willing to spend the 1,500 hours, 39 coffees, 47 dinners, and 432 drinks to meet him, then you
just don't want to meet him badly enough and you deserve to grow old and die alone.

“I don't think you're really open to love yet. You're not ready.” That's Ruby's answer. I'm not even going to dignify it with a response—except to say, I didn't know that finding love had become something equivalent to becoming a Jedi Knight. I didn't know there were years of psychic training, metaphysical trials to endure, and rings of fire to jump through before I could get a date for my cousin's wedding in May. And yet, I know women who are so out of their minds they might as well be barking like dogs, who still find men who adore them, men whom they, in their madness, feel they are in love with. But no matter.

My mother thinks I'm single because I like having my independence. But she rarely weighs in on the subject. She comes from the generation of women who didn't think they had any other option but to get married and have children. There were no other choices for her. So she thinks it's just dandy that I'm single and that I don't have to rely on a man. I don't think my mother and father had a particularly happy marriage and after my father died, she was one of those widows who finally got to come into her own—the classes, the vacations, the bridge and book clubs. When I was still just a girl, she thought she was doing me a great service, giving me this wonderful gift of reminding me that I don't need a man to be happy. I can do anything I want, be anyone I want to be, without a man.

And now…I don't have the heart to tell her that I'm not really happy being single, and if you want to be someone's girlfriend or wife, and you happen to be straight, you kind of
do
need a man,
sorry, Mom,
because then I know she'd worry. Mothers do not like to see their children sad. So I steer the conversation away from my love life and she doesn't ask, both of us not wanting to reveal or know about any pesky unhappiness.

“Oh please,” Serena—who, among my friends has known me the longest—said. “It's no mystery. You dated bad boys till your mid-thirties, and now that you've finally come to your senses, the good ones are all taken.”

Bingo.

My last boyfriend six years ago was the worst one of all. There are some guys you date who are so bad that when you tell the story about them, it reflects just as badly on you as it does on them. His name was Jeremy and we had been dating for two tumultuous years. He decided to break up with me by not showing up to my father's funeral. I never heard from him after that.

Since then, no bad boys. But no great love, either.

Georgia weighed in on this subject of why I'm single on one particularly dark, lonely, regretful night.

“Oh for God's sake, there's no reason. It's just totally fucked. You're kind, you're beautiful, you have the best hair in New York City.” (It's really long and curly but never ever frizzy, and when I want to straighten it, it looks just as great. I have to admit, it's my best feature.)

“You're hot, you're smart, you're funny, and you are one of the finest people I know. You are perfect. Stop asking yourself that awful question because there is not one goddamn reason why the sexiest, nicest, most charming man in New York City isn't madly in love with you right now.”

And that was why I loved Georgia. And that's how this weekend I ended up spearheading an outing with my mismatched set of friends to make her feel like life was worth living. Because at the end of the day, it's night. And in New York, if it's night there's nightlife, and when there's life, as most optimists will be happy to tell you, there's always hope. And I guess that's a big part of how to be single. Hope. Friends. And making sure you get out of your damn apartment.

W
hen you're going out for a night on the town with the main goal being to make a friend stop threatening, however unconvincingly, to commit suicide, you must pick your locations carefully. Alice and I discussed this with the deliberation of generals planning a midnight air assault. The truth is, any night you go out, you must do your research thoroughly. Because a bad night out can be demoralizing even for the fit-test of us single women. So you must ask a lot of questions. How many men will there be to how many women? How expensive are the drinks? Is the music good? Is this the right night to be there? You have to take all these factors into consideration, and if need be, use graphs, diagrams, and a couple of well-placed phone calls to come up with the right plan of attack. In this case, the strategy was quite simple: places with tons of men. Because the one idea you don't want anywhere near your newly single friend is the one concept that is so all-pervasive, so oppressive, that it will be the first thought any sensible woman will have when she realizes she is now officially single, and that is of course,
There are no good men left.
And then the next thought would be
I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life.

Now, the big question of whether there really are no good guys left in New York City is something we could probably debate forever, but for now we will leave the reality of that up to the Census Bureau and the matchmaking services. What I'm concerned about, for this particular night, is the
perception
that there are tons and tons of handsome single men out there, literally falling out of the skies, out of trees, bumping into you on the street, wanting to have sex with you. So therefore, in Alice's mind, where to have dinner was an easy choice. It had to be a steakhouse, and the biggest one there is. And that would be Peter Luger in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Now you may wonder what we are doing taking our newly single friend out to Brooklyn. Well, wake up, sleepy—where have you been? Brooklyn is the new Manhattan and Williamsburg is the new Lower East Side and Peter Luger serves so much red meat that you are guaranteed to find heaps of straight men there (or women beefing up for their next weight-lifting competition). Either way, that makes the odds pretty good for us, and that's all I'm asking for. At a time like this, the perception of abundance is everything, not just with the thirty-eight-ounce steaks, but with the tons of straight men all sitting around large wooden tables in groups of eight and ten, devouring their meat like cavemen.

I don't know if you have ever been responsible for getting people together and deciding where they go for an evening. But if you haven't, let me tell you that it is a surprisingly nerve-racking experience. I say “surprisingly,” because if you've never been the one in charge, you'll just be wondering why your normally relaxed friend asked you three times if you liked your tortellini. But if you've ever done it, you understand that even the most confident person turns into a jittery, insecure hostess, obsessed with every joke, eye roll, and aside made by her companions. And if it doesn't go well, it will be seared into people's minds as the night you took them out and they didn't have fun.

Now, the key to having fun is, of course, a great mix of people. So let me remind you of what we're dealing with here: Georgia, a newly single woman toying with the idea of a nervous breakdown; Ruby, who is still mourning the death of her cat; Serena, the girl in the nondairy wheat-free bubble; and Alice, who God bless her, though she may be working on a gastric ulcer from her dating schedule, is my only hope of getting through this in one piece.

You see, none of them know one another very well. They know each other from my various birthday parties throughout the years, but we are definitely not a gang. I met Alice at a spin class five years ago. I worked with Georgia until she left to raise her kids. Serena's my best friend from college and Ruby and I bonded fifteen years ago at a horrific temp job, then we shared an apartment for three years after that. They are basically strangers to one another. In fact, I could safely say that Alice, Georgia, Serena, and Ruby don't really care for each other that much, for no real reason except that none of them is really any of the others' “types.” I always wanted a gaggle of girlfriends, always longed for a posse, my little family of friends, but it just didn't work out that way. It would have been nice if at one job I was able to grab a whole bunch of them, like lobsters in a trap. But meeting a group of women who end up living in the same city, remaining friends, and sharing the most intimate moments of their lives is rare and wonderful and definitely something to pine for, or at least watch on television.

“Oh my God, it's so cold, I should have worn a heavier coat. I hate October. October is the most annoying month because you never know how to dress,” said “no-body-fat” Serena.

We had decided to meet on Twenty-third and Eighth, and take a cab to Williamsburg together. Everyone seemed to be fairly upbeat, but I could already tell that Serena, who was so out of her element, was going to be the problem. Not that I wasn't worried about Georgia, too, who was wearing a low-cut shirt and a miniskirt. Georgia is a gorgeous woman who can certainly pull this off. She's a slim five seven, with long, light brown hair and bangs that are just a little too long in that way they're supposed to be so they fall perfectly in front of her eyes. She has naturally bee-stung lips that many women would happily inject themselves for, and before the separation, used to always look effortlessly, carelessly hip. Now, however, it was October. And cold. And I could actually see her ass. We all piled into a cab and were on our way.

As Serena wondered aloud if there was going to be anything vegetarian to eat at this place, and Alice was barking orders at the cabdriver, I had an epiphany as to how this entire night might actually turn out okay. I realized there is a divine spirit looking out for us in this world. Because there's this thing called alcohol. And at that moment, alcohol seemed like such a good idea that I knew there must be a God who loved us enough to invent it.

When we entered Peter Luger Steak House it was just as my alcohol-creating God would have intended it: handsome, clearly employed men as far as the eye could see. The knot in my stomach relaxed. I knew that the first leg of the treasure hunt that is called “Running Around New York City Looking for Fun” was going to be a win for our team.

“Oh my God, I'm a genius,” Alice said proudly.

“Yay!” said Georgia.

“I love it here,” said Ruby.

“I know there's not going to be one thing here that I can eat,” said Serena, as we walked past the multitudes of tables heaped with cooked animal flesh.

It's a funny thing about peer pressure: it works at any age. While we were looking at the menus, Serena ordered a vodka tonic. Now that might not seem like much to you, but it was a momentous occasion in my book. And it came to be simply because my three friends, who didn't know Serena at all, told her she should lighten up. And she got embarrassed. After the past three years of my begging her to try a mojito, it was as simple as that. She still ordered a plate of broccoli rabe for dinner, but you couldn't deny that there was magic in the girl posse and it had already begun.

It's always better when you have a purpose, whether in life or simply for a night out, and for this evening the goal was clear: Georgia needed to flirt with someone recklessly. And here we were, in the land of big steaks and bold moves. So as the red meat and alcohol began to flow, it was time to get into wacky-scheme mode.

Alice decided to approach the table adjacent to us, which, coincidentally, had five men at it.

“Hey guys, we're trying to show our newly single friend a good time and thought it'd be fun to crash your table.”

Alice is fearless. Once you've had a few murderers lunge at you from across a table and try to choke you to death, walking up to a group of guys is a piece of cake. And because of Alice, there we were, moving our plates and silverware over to the table next to us and squeezing ourselves in very closely with a bunch of cute men. And Georgia, happily, was getting the lion's share of the attention, like a bride-to-be at her bachelorette party. Nothing like putting your romantic stakes right out on the table to get people hopping, and this time she didn't need to wear the plastic condom veil with matching penis earrings. I looked around the table and this is what I saw:

Georgia giggling like a schoolgirl.

Ruby giggling like a schoolgirl.

Serena giggling like a schoolgirl.

Alice giggling like a schoolgirl.

And, when I gave myself a moment to stop worrying if everyone was having a good time, I was giggling like a schoolgirl, too. And I thought,
My God, we are pathetic creatures. We are lawyers and publicists and businesswomen and mothers with blow-dried hair and lipstick, all just waiting for the sun of male attention to shine down upon us and make us feel alive again.

They taught us drinking games, we made jokes about their ties. Ruby was talking to a man who seemed particularly enraptured with her and every one of the guys told Georgia that she was hot and she doesn't have a thing to worry about. There was gold in that thar steakhouse.

“Oh my God, that was so much fun!” Georgia said, laughing, as we left the restaurant.

“I can't believe I drank vodka!” Serena said, beaming.

“That guy I was talking to wants to come with us wherever we go next!” Ruby said, giggling. “Where are we going next?!”

Now, the thing about being responsible for people's good time is that the stakes just keep getting higher and higher throughout the night, no matter what has happened the moment before. If dinner was a dud, then boy, you have to make up for it with a kick-ass bar or club to go to next. If dinner was really fun, which in this case it was, then you better not blow it by picking a place that brings the mood down. So I conferred again with my own personal Zagat, Alice. We were sticking with the theme “It's raining men” so Alice made her decision quickly. We headed to “Sports,” a fancy sports bar with a clearly unimaginative name on the Upper West Side. Ruby and her new guy, Gary, took one cab and we piled into another. Not the cheapest taxi ride but what's money when there's five drunky girls trying to keep their buzz alive?

When we arrived, I knew immediately that this was a misstep. The problem with sports bars hits you immediately when you walk in: men really are there to watch sports. Because if they really had their sights set on going out to meet women—they wouldn't go to a sports bar. Alice was thinking the same thing.

“We should go to the Flatiron instead.”

But Serena had already ordered another vodka and Georgia had walked up to the cutest guy in the place and was trying to talk to him. Unfortunately, there was a big Knicks basketball game on—which I don't understand since it was preseason and the Knicks aren't involved in “big” basketball games anymore. Anyway, Georgia was able to grab his attention during a commercial break and she was using those four minutes to get in as much flirting as possible.

Ruby was talking to Gary, who had clearly fallen in love with her and wanted to be with her forever. But unfortunately for Serena, Alice, and me, we were soon sitting at the bar with our drinks, looking at about twenty screens of various sports that we couldn't give a crap about.

But Alice knew something we didn't.

“Oh my God, there's a foosball table over there!” Alice said, way too excitedly.

“I don't play foosball,” Serena said, already grumpy.

“Do you think we should go somewhere else?” I said, ignoring the whole foosball idea.

“No, you don't understand. It is an absolute fact that a group of women cannot play foosball for more than ten minutes without guys coming over to play with them.”

“You've spent a lot of time proving this fact?” I said, a little reproachfully. Did I happen to tell you that Alice used to be a lawyer who defended the rights of the poor and disenfranchised, making them feel respected and heard, often at the darkest times of their lives?

“Yes. And I'll prove it to you now.”

So we took our drinks and moved over to the foosball table. Alice and I played foosball, while Serena watched the clock. It was exactly three and a half minutes before two guys walked up to us. At four and a half minutes, they challenged us to a game.

Alice scares me, sometimes.

She is, of course, brilliant at foosball, so we kept winning and getting challenged, the foosball suitors lining up to get a piece of our foosball magic. We kept drinking and the giggles started again and the next thing I knew, Serena was eating chicken wings off one of our challengers' plates. A game later, she was licking her hot-sauce-covered fingers and ordering a plate of wings for herself. She was a vegan gone wild. I quickly scanned the room and saw Ruby still chatting with Gary, and Georgia still trying to talk to the cute guy between sports highlights. I had never seen Georgia flirt before; she was already married when I met her. But I could tell from just one look that she was trying too hard. She was talking a little too animatedly, listening a little too earnestly, laughing a little too excitedly. She was trying to compete with the Knicks and, even though they suck, she didn't stand a chance. But instead of cutting her losses, she continued to touch his arm, laugh loudly, and order another drink.