Being Single -  Seeing Couples

There are worse things than being single. Much worse things.

You could be in a wheelchair; you could be living in desperate poverty.

You could be dead.

But ask any 25-year-old single woman if she thinks there are worse things then being single and I’m positive her answer will be “not many”.

Even the queen of quotable quotes, Mae West, said there were only two things that love could not heal - poverty and toothache.

I must stress here that I’m not talking about being single when you want to be single. For those of you who are in this frame of mind, I truly wish I were you.

I’m talking about the haven’t-had-sex-in-10-months-because-you-can’t-stand-casual-sex-anymore-eat-chocolates-and-shwarmas-on-a-Saturday-night-watching-Footloose- and-Hairspray (Fluffy’s favourite) kinda single and that’s 24 hyphens I used in case you were wondering.

So that’s my roommate Elle and I. We are single. The only difference is, she still does the casual sex once in a while. She’s an ethical slut. My other roommate is in a relationship, so we’ll ignore her in this column.
We’re not sad or pathetic (most of the time). We go out when we’re supposed to. We dress as gorgeously as we possibly can to go clubbing, thinking “tonight’s the night we’ll meet that person”, then come home drunk telling stories about how we didn’t or couldn’t.

She considers becoming a lesbian. I consider going straight. She tells me men are assholes, I advise her that women are evil and then we discuss what movie we’ll watch on Sunday.

I dare say there’s always someone else whose misery is worse than the next person’s but I must admit that gay singledom is ever so slightly easier than straight singledom. Don’t shoot me. I’ll explain:

See, it’s not like our parents are rushing us to the altar and begging us to hurry up and find a butch groom.

It’s likely they’re still wishing you’d find a groom with a real penis and not a silicone one. Or they’ve disowned you so it doesn’t matter what they think anyway. Or if your folks were liberal enough to embrace your homosexuality and become PFLAG members, chances are they’re probably progressive enough to believe that marriage ain’t that sacred anyway.

But for single straight women in their mid-20s onwards, it’s fucking hard. It’s even harder for single women in ethnic diasporic minorities like Greeks and Jews, where the pressure is not only to hurry up and get married, but also to keep your dating and mating within your tribe. Well, I can only speak for the Jews on this one because I happen to be one (I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with you. I’m really starting to trust you, it seems).

Do I have to explain what Jewish moms are like or have you watched enough Hollywood films to get the picture? Just take Kissing Jessica Stein, Meet The Fockers and Suzie Gold, mix them together like you’re making kneidles and Voila! you’ve got Mrs Goldbergsteinawits. And meet Elle’s mom. 

Before Elle stopped speaking to her mother three weeks ago, I’d listen to her explain to her mom every day over the phone that she wasn’t the last girl in her year that wasn’t married or engaged and that she was happy and there wasn’t anything she could do to rush the process of meeting Mr. Rightlipshitz. 

Elle’s gorgeous, she’s smoking hot with a great body and a quick mind. She’s got a career which she cares about and blah blah blah, you know the rest. But it all means nothing to her mother. Her mom thinks it’s all just a waste of time and thinks her daughter’s time would be better spent getting her nails done and proactively going on dates every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday night (Friday nights are for the Sabbath remember).

When Elle went home for her brother’s engagement party recently, her mother overheard her answering someone who had asked Elle why she was still single (sigh). She told her she was focused on her career right now.

Mamma Elle - who will now be referred to as mamma Helle – threw a fit and screamed at Elle from a across the room. Then pulled Elle aside and told her she was talking bullshit.

And I’m just exposing the tip of the iceberg here. She said hurtful things and mocked Elle’s career, all because she was single and didn’t have a boyfriend. And that’s why Elle isn’t speaking to her.

Elle has therefore been somewhat down and stressed. So on this particular Sunday, after an inevitable Saturday night of convincing each other that each of us should stick to our chosen sexualities, I suggested we go out for the day and skip our habitual Sunday movie.

So we went to Camden to stuff our faces with cheap food and pretend we were part of niche subcultures, acting like we knew all about goth wear at one stall and emo at the next. We Banged our heads to nukleuz compilations in Cyberdog, and pretended to know what all the crystals were for in the “healing centre” (it’s not so healing when you walk out of there after spending 50 quid on your tarot reading and 200 quid on your gem wand and Onyx necklace).

It wasn’t particularly healing for us either because, while we were waiting outside the “healing centre” for J (who does believe the 250 quid is healing), there were two couples sitting on the steps and snogging like they were in their bedrooms.

It didn’t stop there. It seemed couples surrounded us the whole day. Everywhere we looked they were there – kissing on the stairs, waiting for our table, jumping the queue for crepes, buying tie-dye throws for their bed, choosing a fake Banksy print for their art-deco bathroom.

Those mother fuckers! They’re like those stupid confused.com advertisements where you have that retarded yuppie couple trying to pick the right car insurance - we just couldn’t escape them.

We ended up going home and watching Footloose again (it’s not our fault that Sky repeats its movies more than a grandparent repeats a story). 

But we did have a good, hearty laugh about our couple-haunted day during the ad breaks while I muted the fucking retarded yuppie couple exclaiming:“I’m confused.com!” I hope they never find any car insurance.

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Read more about Astrid and Fluffy.