All My Friends Are Engaged
Gosh, my palms are getting sweaty just thinking about this. Maybe that’s the reason I’m not engaged; I sweat too much, or I talk about sweating too much, or I fear that when I go on a date and the poor lad goes in for a “hello” hug, I’ll soak through his fine-pressed button-down shirt with a puddle of “I hope there’s not lipstick on my teeth” sweat that accumulated on my dash over here from the F train.
I whimsically believed, I did, that when I graduated from college I knew exactly the in’s and out’s of how life was going to smack me in the face. I thought I could grasp the semi-precious reality of moving back in with my parents after living underneath a pile of my stench in a never-cleaned, do-what-I-want, dorm room for four years. Or the vulgar process of trying to get a job, a real job, where people wear suits and demand three sugars in their espresso, that would pay enough bucks to afford my basic needs: electricity, jello, and toilet paper–for crying out loud!
But never, not once, in my four years of pre-requisite classes did anyone sit me down and give me the birds and the bees kind of lecture that just a few minutes after my mommy framed my diploma, all my compadres would jump ship and get engaged.
No one told me that while I was off, lugging around a thin briefcase of strangled career dreams, hitchhiking across state lines, and getting my mug shot taken for overdue library fines, they’d be off doing the Argentine Tango with the person they dared to spend the rest of their lives with. The one that would still have the gory guts to make eye contact with them through morning breath, afternoon milk mustaches, and evening burps.
People who never even went on a date in college are suddenly stomping on a glass, smooching L’Chaims, and saying, “I do.”
Really?
In college, I hazily remember the only thing most of you would ever remotely commit to saying “I do” to was Jager bomb, after Jager Bomb, after, ah what’s the point, I’ll save the rest for your bachelorette party toast.
I’m only jealous of your life, your conjugal state of mind, 76% of the time. Frankly, the only time it gives me the heebiejeebies is when Facebook decides to flash food your new engagement all over my newsfeed, but I’ve learned to deal with my feelings, mostly through interpretive dancing.
I’d mostly like it if people just stopped talking about me being single as they talk about damaged goods, or animals that are about to get neutered or something silly like gingivitis. After I’m done kvetching over my latest mind-boggling date where a guy made me shell out $50 for his meal, and mine, instead of putting your draped-with-diamonds finger over the small of my back and saying something brilliantly pathetic like “there will be more fish in that cesspool of a sea”, offer to go to town with me on a pie of pizza, or split one of those black and white cookies with me. That’s all I need, someone to consume half of my “in the name of misery” calories.
So listen up, all you engaged folk:
I don’t want to be set up with the boy who sits across from you in your work cubicle that you watch picking his nose or the one who is “in the process” of breaking up with his long-term, long-distance, long-standing pain-in-the-neck girlfriend of eight years. I’m going to say a wild NO WAY to the one who “Isn’t your type” and you wouldn’t date, but maybe, just oh maybe, I’d like him. I’ll pass.
Don’t tell me it’s time to explore maybe setting up an online profile unless you’re talking about one on Myspace and if so, then I already have those Internet waves covered, thank you.
And don’t treat me like I’m a hurricane victim. I’m OK. I don’t need to come over for a home-cooked meal, or to watch X Factor, or for a slumber party where we can braid each other’s hair and read Teen Vogue. I do my thing, my own thing. I get Chinese food delivered on the reg, go out to bars in the Village and get grouped by “bros” smelling like Jose Cuervo in their cut-off T’s. (Stop me when you’re too jealous of my single life, please).
I’m single, but there’s nothing wrong with me. [Okay, well maybe, a couple of things. Like I eat with my hands, cover up awkward silences by talking in hamster-spinning circles, engage in political debates on the first date, and wear knee socks…in the Summer]. But that’s it, I’ve told you all my flaws. Now I hope we can proceed with that calm feeling you possess after you rip off a band-aid off the hairiest part of your arm.
They say you meet people where you spend the most of your time and, in that case, I think I’ll be okay. I spend 1/3 of my time on Twitter, 1/3 in my bed, and the other 1/3 is distributed between gym, tan, and laundry.
Engage in my happiness for you, and spare me the pity, OK?
I’m euphoric for all the people I know, or Facebook reminds me I know, who are getting married. It’s such an exquisite gem to meet your soul mate in this world. The person who will forever spend the rest of your days with you as your heart rises and falls likes your expanding waistline, and you start to get the three c’s: cavities, cellulite and crust (and I’m not talking about pizza crust). As a single girl living in NYC, having guys spill drinks on my toes at bars or turn out to be circus freaks five minutes into a date, if you find a person who makes your heart beat like an Avicii song and who can whisk you away like the Chicago winds, I’m happy for you, I really am, from the bottom of my triathlon-running heart.
I just hope, I do, all of you will remember me, and hopefully will still be physically able to do the Electric Slide with me, at my wedding, someday.
On a serious note, if you know anyone who knows anyone or has a boyfriend with a cousin whose dog walker met some guy on the missed connection part of Craigslist and wanted to set them up, feel free to submit their information to my eager and persistent dating coach, my mother. She’ll weed through them for me, okay?
