Why Am I Still Single?

Once, at my parents’ annual New Year’s Day party, a friend of the family asked why I was still single. Though the first thing I wanted to say was “Why are you still such a nosy bitch?” but instead I smiled politely and said I hadn’t met the right person. As I turned to get more eggnog she grabbed my arm, “You wait, once you get a steady job, and stop going to bars, then you’ll meet someone.” And then she stuffed another nacho in her mouth and grinned around it. Now, thanks to that harridan, two thoughts run through my head when I snuggle into my bed: that it’s fucking awesome to have the a big old bed to myself, and that the reason it’s all to myself is because I’m looking in all the wrong places.

But no! I won’t kowtow to her damned armchair psychology! This philosophy is wrong on so many levels. It’s down on bars, drinking, and finally anyone who’s ever set foot in a bar. In the past bars were just places to get drunk and pick up, but now it’s different. Where else am I going to go see bands? Sure there are gigs in places that you don’t serve alcohol (Wavves in Stokey Fire Station was pretty amazing actually) but they are the minority. Anyway what’s wrong with bars? They play music, serve drinks that taste like liquidized lovehearts, and hold more people than my front room. Also, I am not going to meet someone in my front room, and if I do he’s probably going to kill me or rape me because how the fuck did he get in there?

This isn’t to say I spend all my time in bars, or even a lot of time in them, it’s just that they have so far been an effective way of meeting people. Two drinks, some music, stare at each other across a room and things just happen, things happen that don’t at a bowling lane or a gallery. In fact attempting to pick someone up in a supermarket would make me feel like I was in Choke, you know? Having said that I have always been sort of impressed at sex addicts’ epic ways of hooking up, it seems so hard until you have an addiction, and then there is sex everywhere like a supermarket of perversion. (Fuck how great would a supermarket of perversion be? Anyone want to help me make that happen?)

Some of you will probably say that I can meet people at work. Nope sorry. I work in fashion (did I really did say that? Did I just become a fashion person? Argh!!) and the stereotype that most men are gay holds true. That or they’re hetero and being pursued by 30 women who spend all day talking about cock with a bunch of girls and gays. Poor, poor, men. I used to think I might meet men at my writers’ group but they are all mental and write stories about rape fantasies or Ted Hughes’ ghost haunting them. And of course I could meet men through my friends, but if you watched my video, then you’ll know that I only really know gay men and they seem to only know gay men, and short of becoming a gay man myself, it’s a dead end.

So bugger off my mother’s friend. I’m going to keep going to bars and meeting men and I’m going to keep being single until one of them turns out to be a keeper and you can keep on being a nosey bitch, but next time you ask that question, you might not like the answer.

Photo of Studio 54 by Bob Collacello, photo of Lara Stone from The Fashion Spot.