How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  When Ruby shot back, “My building doesn’t allow dogs,” Felicia rolled her eyes, smirked, waved her hands in exasperation, and walked out the door.

  Ruby stared at Kimya. For one moment, Kimya got quiet. She looked at Ruby, her black pink eyes pleading for help.

  Ruby walked quickly out of the room and down the flight of stairs. She walked up to the girl at the counter.

  “I’m sorry I can’t adopt Kimya. I’m really sorry. But I really would get kicked out of my building. You have no idea how strict my co-op board is.”

  The girl at the counter looked at her blankly.

  “But I can adopt Vanilla,” Ruby said proudly. “And I’d like to volunteer here once a week.”

  The woman looked surprised. She handed Ruby another form. “Great. Orientation is this Wednesday at seven.”

  Ruby smiled brightly. “Terrific. Thanks.” As she waited for them to get Vanilla, she breathed a sigh of relief. She knew she would be great at convincing people to take unwanted strays. She would save the lives of dozens of dogs and cats. They needed her here.

  Georgia went home that night, put on a pair of two-hundred-dollar jeans, a tight-fitting cashmere t-shirt top, and a pair of trendy little motorcycle boots, and off she went to Whole Foods Market to do some grocery shopping.

  In the car that day, her new dating guru, Alice, told her that the Whole Foods in Union Square is a great place to meet really cute guys on a Saturday evening. You can sit and watch a cooking demonstration or stop at an organic-wine tasting or just go searching for homemade hummus and the love of your life.

  As Georgia wheeled her cart around this high-end supermarket, she noticed that she felt great. It might have had something to do with watching Serena’s funeral, because she felt centered. Optimistic. Dale had the kids all weekend, so she was free to just be a single person in the world; a single person who was attractive, fun, smart, and truly excited to be alive. How hot must that be? As she rolled by the organic greens, she realized that she didn’t have to believe a single thing that she had ever heard about finding love in New York. There was no reason she had to buy into the belief system that there are no good men left, that the men in New York are all dogs, that every second that ticks by she gets older and less desirable. She didn’t have to believe any of that. Because that was not her experience. She met Dale in New York, at Columbia. She was in grad school for journalism and he was a business major. They had been together ever since. So until she had personally experienced that there were no good men anywhere in the world, she would assume the opposite. As she pushed her cart past the overflowing mountain of cheeses, the French ones, the Italian ones, the ones that come in wheels, the ones from goats, she realized she can simply choose to drive around the entire landfill of presumptions and fears associated with dating in New York. Until it happened to her, none of those stories mattered. She was a blank slate, filled with optimism, unfettered with bitterness; and because of that she felt that she had an edge over most of the single women out there. Men were going to pick up on her joie de dating vivre, and it was going to be irresistible.

  She made one lap around the whole store, taking her time enjoying the tour of healthy food. She was now standing over a row of organic beets, pondering how desirable she was going to seem to all of mankind, when a tall, slim man came up to her. He asked her if she had ever cooked beet greens. She looked up and smiled. He had curly brown hair, parted in the middle with just enough scruff on his face to look sexy, but not as if he was in a band.

  See? she thought to herself. It doesn’t have to be so hard. She then sweetly explained to this cute gentleman that she had, in fact, cooked beet greens, and that they are delicious fried with just some oil, garlic, and salt.

  “Wow, thanks. I’m trying to cook more, you know? Eat more greens.”

  “Well, that’s great. They’re supposed to be very nutritious.”

  Then this cute man smiled at Georgia, a sort of devilish and sheepish smile combined, and added, “How was that for an opening line? I’ve been following you ever since the organic chocolate section but I couldn’t think of anything smart to say. But then you landed in the beets and I thought, Ah! Beet greens! Now that’s a conversation starter!”

  Georgia laughed, blushing, and quickly said, “It was perfect. Didn’t seem forced at all, very natural, yet charming.”

  The cute man extended his hand and said, “Hi, my name is Max.”

  Georgia shook his hand and said, “Georgia, nice to meet you.” And after they talked for about twenty minutes, next to the beets, they made a plan to go out to dinner soon. Georgia left Whole Foods, with three yellow peppers for eight dollars and her newfound optimism validated. She thought to herself, This dating thing is going to be a breeze.

  That night, Alice, our Special Forces of dating, was on her next “op.” His name was Jim and he was a fix-up, from a friend of a friend who had been forwarded the famous Alice Email. The Alice Email was a mass email, similar to what you’d send out to the public at large when looking for a good cat sitter. The Alice Email, however, was about looking for a good man. She sent it to all her friends, and asked them to send it to all of their friends, a sort of viral marketing manhunt. Because of it, she ended up meeting a lot of men she might never have met. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t have wanted to meet most of them, but that hadn’t bothered Alice one bit. She had been out there and that was the name of the game. Jim was an electrical engineer from New Jersey. He was thirty-seven, and from his emails, seemed to be intelligent and friendly. They were going to meet at a small bar in Noho where Alice took all her first dates. It’s a tiny, dark, Turkish wine bar with beaded velvet lamps and overstuffed couches. If you can’t manage to muster some kind of romantic connection in this place, with its dim lighting, and huge goblets of red wine, then it isn’t going to happen anywhere.

  As Alice walked to the bar, she thought about the countless dates she had been on this year. She thought about all the men she had met, and wondered why none of them had been the guy for her. There had been a few tiny relationships, a couple of affairs, but for the most part none of these men were guys that she wanted to spend time with. She wondered briefly if this numbers game was really working for her. She was certainly meeting a lot of men, but maybe by increasing her odds, all she was doing was increasing the odds of just meeting guys that she wasn’t attracted to. Maybe love is so special, so magical, that it has nothing to do with numbers. Maybe it’s just destiny and luck. And destiny and luck have no need for odds. Up until that moment, Alice always thought she believed in the odds, in math. But looking back on the past year, it gave her pause. All those men…A wave of exhaustion shimmered over her. She shook it off, and put on her prettiest smile, ran her fingers through her hair, and walked into the bar.

  Alice looked around and saw a man sitting on one of the sofas and seeming to be waiting for someone. He was approaching cuteness, but was not actually someone you would say was cute; a little too pasty, a little too soft in the face.

  She walked up to him and asked, “Are you Jim?” He immediately stood up and put out his hand and smiled a warm, open smile.

  “Alice, so nice to meet you.”

  She could tell immediately that he was a good man.

  They began to talk about the things people talk about on first dates: jobs, family, apartments, where they went to school. But as they talked, as is the case with all first dates, only 70 percent of their brains was talking, listening, and responding to what the other was saying. The other 30 percent was wondering, Do I want to kiss this person? Do I want to have sex with this person? What would my friends think of this person? Jim asked Alice a lot of questions about herself, in the way that sweet men do when they really like you. As Alice told her stories and laughed at his almost funny jokes, she could tell from the way he looked at her that he found her adorable.

  “What do you mean, you have a trick that makes you able to hear yourself snoring?” he asked, already laughing at her very persona
l admission.

  “Seriously, if you can remember, right before the moment you actually wake up, to make sure you don’t alter your breathing—like you almost pretend you’re still sleeping, but you’re actually awake—you can catch yourself snoring.”

  Jim just looked at Alice, shook his head, and laughed. He was completely smitten with her. Now this wasn’t a new event for sexy, redheaded Alice. Men found her adorable all the time. But because of her usual take-no-prisoners approach to dating, if Alice didn’t return the sentiment, only 25 percent of her brain was listening to the man, and 75 percent of her brain had paid the check, caught a cab home, and was now watching Seinfeld reruns. If she was interested in the guy as well, then Alice would work as hard as she could to be even more adorable while looking as if she was not trying to be anything but herself. But tonight, she was just allowing herself the enjoyment of being admired by someone. And it felt warm. Relaxing. She started getting tingly and buzzed from her second glass of wine, but she was also tipsy off of this new discovery: sometimes it’s okay not to try so hard.

  Back in France

  The scene was fantastic. As I stepped out of my cab, I saw glamorous, well-dressed men and women getting out of taxis or rushing down the street toward the Palais Garnier. I walked up the stairs of the opera house and turned around to look out at the scene. Paris. How clichéd to be impressed. But I was. It’s an unbelievable gift to be able to travel. It just is. That there are these gigantic steel machines that manage to lift us into the sky—that seems an impossible achievement in itself. But then to have the time and the finances to take advantage of it. How thrilling. How thrilling to be somewhere different—where every sight and smell seems strange and exotic. Paris, where I’d been so many times before, was still a foreign city to me. The cafés, the bread, the cheese, the men with their ruddy faces and gray mustaches—and the smell. It smells old and earthy. European. I love it.

  We were seeing the opera Lohengrin, the story of a princess who dreams about a knight in shining armor coming to her rescue, and when he appears, all she has to do is never ask him who he is or where he’s come from. Of course, eventually she can’t take it, and she asks him, thus losing him forever. Just like a woman.

  As I gazed over the whole mise-en-scène I heard a woman’s voice call out to me loudly. “Allorah, Julie. Hallo! Hallo!” Audrey and Joanne, all dressed up, were walking up the stairs toward me. Steve had gotten us all tickets together.

  Audrey smiled and asked, “How did you enjoy our talk the other night? Was it helpful?”

  “Yes, very helpful,” I said, as we entered the opera house. “I was surprised how well French women handle rejection.”

  “Yes, I was thinking about this,” Joanne said, as we walked through the lobby.

  “I do believe it has something to do with our upbringing. I think in the States, perhaps, it is considered very bad to fail, to be bad at something. Parents never want to tell their child that they aren’t fantastic, they never want to see their child lose. But here,” Joanne pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulders, “if we are bad at something, our parents tell us we’re bad at something; if we fail, we fail. There is no shame about it.”

  We gave our tickets to the ushers and walked in. Could it be true that if our mothers and our teachers hadn’t coddled us so much in our childhood we would be better able to handle rejection?

  I was too busy chatting with Audrey and Joanne to really pay attention to where I was. But then the place hit me full on. We were now in the audience of the Palais Garnier, one of the two theaters that house the Opéra National de Paris. It was opulence to the highest degree. Balcony upon balcony, red velvet seating and gold leaf everywhere you looked. The stage was concealed by a red velvet curtain, and over it all there was a chandelier that, according to the program’s notes, weighed ten tons. We sat in our seats and I looked around.

  As if I hadn’t already seen enough beauty, grandeur, and Parisian charm for one evening, Thomas entered the row behind us with the tiniest, most elegant woman I had ever seen. She had long, blond, straight-as-a-sunbeam hair that fell just below her shoulders. She was wearing a powder blue dress one might describe as a “confection”; it poufed out at her waist and made her look as if she should be on top of a jewelry box. I could swear I smelled a waft of her tasteful perfume from where I sat. Thomas smiled and waved. He pointed me out to his wife; I saw him leaning over to her and whispering in her ear. She smiled and waved graciously to me. I suddenly felt like Andre the Giant and wished I had dressed better.

  The orchestra began to play and Steve stood up out of the orchestra pit. He bowed to the audience and they applauded madly for him. My dear high school friend began waving his arms around and it seemed the orchestra was doing exactly what he told them to do. It was very impressive. The opera began and we settled in for the story of a princess who could have had it all if she had been able to keep her damn mouth shut.

  When the opera was over twenty-seven hours later, or maybe just four, we were ushered to a room behind the backstage area. It was another gold leaf and rococo extravaganza and it was very old-world Parisian and very grand. I watched proudly as Steve was greeted and congratulated by his adoring, well-educated public. Thomas came into my view as I made my way toward a waiter who was passing out champagne. Thomas saw me and walked over. We took our champagne together.

  “Where did your wife go?” I asked, casually.

  “She decided to go home. Opera gives her a headache.” He looked around at the crowded room, and then his eyes landed squarely on me.

  “Would you like to take a walk?” Thomas asked, not breaking his gaze.

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Please. This is so boring. We must get out of here.”

  “I can’t…my friend Steve, I’m his date…I couldn’t.”

  I pointed to Steve, who at that moment was talking very closely to a fresh-faced young man in his mid-twenties.

  “I believe Steve might have another date this evening. But I’ll ask his permission.” And at that, Thomas grabbed my hand and pulled me over to Steve.

  “No, please,” I said, feeling his surprisingly rough hand in mine.

  As we walked up, Steve looked away from his gentleman friend and saw Thomas standing there holding my hand.

  “You must be Thomas,” Steve said, slyly.

  Thomas registered this comment with a smile.

  “Yes, I am, and I was wondering if I could borrow your friend for the evening. It seems she is the only one I want to speak with tonight, and it is such a warm evening for October, I would love to take advantage.”

  “Of her?” said my asshole friend Steve, smiling.

  “No, no, of course not,” Thomas said, laughing. “Of the weather. Of the evening.”

  “Oh. Of course. Of course.”

  Thomas shook Steve’s hand. “You did an extraordinary job tonight. Bravo, Steve, really.” He then put his hand on my back and gently guided me toward the door.

  As we walked along the Avenue de l’Opéra, I couldn’t help but get right to the heart of the matter.

  “Your wife is very beautiful.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  I didn’t really have anything to say after that. I just felt it was important for her to be brought up.

  “What does she do? For a living?”

  “She owns a lingerie shop in the Eleventh Quarter. Very successful. All the models and actresses go there.”

  I thought to myself, Of course she owns a business that celebrates femininity and sexuality. I’m sure she looks perfect in very little clothes.

  Let me get this out of the way as quickly as I can. I’m a woman living in a large city in America who watches television and goes to movies, so, yes, I hate my body. I know how politically incorrect, clichéd, unfeminist, and tired that is. But I can’t help it. I know I’m not fat, I am a respectable size six, but if I dig just a tiny bit, I have to admit to myself that I’m absolutely sure the reason I don’t have a boyfr
iend is because of my cellulite and my huge thighs. Women are crazy, let’s move on.

  “Would you like to sit down and have a coffee?” Thomas asked. We were in front of a café with seats available outside.

  “Yes, that would be nice.”

  A waitress handed us plastic menus, the kind with the little photos of croque-monsieurs and steak frites.

  “So, tell me, Julie. As a single woman, what is your biggest fear?” I looked up at Thomas, startled.

  “Wow, you’re not one for small talk, are you?” I laughed, nervously.

  “Life is too short and you are too interesting.” He slanted his head, giving me his full attention.

  “Well, I guess it’s obvious. That I won’t ever find someone, you know. To love.” I looked down at my menu, staring at the photograph of an omelette.

  The waitress came over again and Thomas ordered us a bottle of chardonnay.

  “But why should you be so worried about finding love? It will happen. It always does, doesn’t it?”

  “Ummm, yeah. Actually no. It doesn’t feel that way to me and my friends. Back home, the statistics are telling us that it’s very hard to find a good man, and that it’s only going to get harder. It seems a little bit like a crisis.” The waiter came with our bottle of wine. Thomas approved it and the waiter poured two glasses.

  “Yes, but with anything in life, you must ask yourself, Am I a statistical person? Or a mystical person? To me, it seems one must choose to be mystical, no? How could you bear it any other way?”

  Mystical versus statistical—I had never thought about it that way. I looked at Thomas and decided I loved him then and there. Not in the real sense of love. More in the “I’m-in-Paris-and-you’re-handsome-and-saying-smart-things-about-life-and-love” love. He was married and I would never sleep with him, but he was definitely my kind of heartthrob. “That’s an interesting theory” is all I said.

  We drank our wine and talked for another three hours. It was four in the morning when we had visited our last café and walked all the way back to Steve’s apartment. I felt rejuvenated and flattered and attractive and smart and funny. As we stopped by Steve’s door to say good night, Thomas kissed me on both my cheeks.