Single

Another wild weekend that started on Thursday and ended Sunday morning with me so exhausted that I had to take two naps and go to bed at 9:00. But not before I spoke with my Seattle BFF Molly Jean.

She got me current on the plans for her upcoming nuptials and while I hung up feeling warm and fuzzy from our talk, I also was feeling queasy and disorientated about the realization that Molly is my last long-time good friend to throw in the single life for marriage and a mortgage.

I guess that it is time to admit that somewhere in the back of my head, I have always thought I would evenutally marry. Somewhere in the far, far, far, far, far future. When I was grown up. When I had exhausted my supply of gorgeous foreign men with great accents and free lodging with whom to have three month flings. When I was bored with girls night out. When I could no longer afford the gym. When I decided to use my oven again. When I met the right guy. When I sorted out all my character defects. When I was fixed inside. When I was ready.

But the truth is that I don’t see myself any closer to marriage today than I did when I was seventeen. In fact, I see myself further from marriage than I did when I was seventeen. At seventeen, marriage was still a romantic notion that I projected onto every guy I made-out with. But now, I know within the first exchange of bodily fluid if this man has what it takes to make it past three months or if they are just going to become a sex object amongst my varied and growing collection of boys I play with until I'm bored.

As I get older but remain single, I've noticed a remarkable trend in my women friends. The are consistently getting younger and younger than me. The age difference grows exponentially with each friend that I lose to domestic bliss. You see, said friend meets their soul mates, get hitched and starts popping out brats. All along the way, I subject myself to lengthy and creative renditions of the following:

"Oh gosh. I’m so busy. Joe’s dad is visiting Sunday, I have kick boxing class on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s, Joe and I watch TV together on Wednesday, Friday we are going out with our couple friends, and Saturday we try to conceive our first child. Perhaps you can come to the same brunch spot that Joe and I frequent on Sunday morning and I can wave to you across the room. Can’t you see how important I am and how very unimportant you are to my life?"

With my older friends always busy and rarely able to rally for anything past 9:00 pm, I find myself having to cash them in for newer, younger, shinier, single models of themselves. Indeed, once a friend is harvested in matrimony, I have to plant a fresh crop for the next spring.

Consequently, my friends are consistently getting younger and younger than I. This can often be a little awkward. So maybe it’s a little strange to go to bars where they have quarter pong. Perhaps It’s a little annoying that my girlfriends can still pig out on Ho Ho’s and not affect their waistline, that they don’t need eye cream or that their nipples still point up sans bra. Maybe eventually it will get old to walk around the party with a Keg cup full of diet coke. But for now, I am a young single woman wanting to experience life with a similarly minded group of other women. Can I complain that my mental matches are all under 30?

I am comforted by the fact that this is New York, and in New York it is okay to be single.

But take one New York woman on assignment out of the city that never sleeps and plop her down in 'conservativille' and suddenly she elicits the same response as the college graduate still hanging out at the Frat House. Creepy. Pathetic.

Perhaps I need to start doing some things differently. Dating grown ups. Settling for maturity and good communication instead of mutual orgasms and good cunninlingus. Maybe I should try and date someone that I could really be proud to call my boyfriend, or even engage in a long-term relationship with, or visualize as my ‘h’. Dear God, I can’t even say the word.

Yes, maybe it is time to start dating with purpose.

Would that mean I have to relax my belief that a serious relationship equals boredom? Will I have to compromise my three hour dinners with the girls and nights out dancing on tables until four in the morning for, “let’s just stay in tonight, do Netflix and eat a pint of Ben’n’Jerry’s while we half-heartedly engage in predictable sex.”

I will do my best. I will try.

And in the meanwhile… Congratulations Molly Jean and all the other fiancéd women in the world! Happy fights over the toilet seat up or down! Happy nappy changes! Happy Sunday dinners at home! I promise to think of you when I am next nearly naked but for a pair of Chloé sandals and ruffled panties on a rooftop in Paris in July with my legs wrapped around some young stud Phillipe who promises to buy me a croissant when we are finished.