Singled Out!

Foreword: There comes a time in a man’s life when he has to slow down and take stock of his life. That time hasn’t really come in mine, I just thought it would be a neat way of beginning a post. Anyway, I recently realized that in my circle of friends, bachelors are a fast depleting lot. In fact, I am one of the last few on the list. I would have counted myself as being part of the endangered species, but I got this unbridled laughter from my no-longer-bachelor friends when I proposed it. They are of the opinion that all bachelors, save me, are endangered. I must admit, this appeared very unreasonable to me but they gave me some argument about not meeting the minimum standards to be endangered.

Ordinarily, the attitude of us singles is one of sour grapes. We repeat tasteless jokes about 101 reasons why beer is better than a girlfriend or 101 reasons why a dog is better than a boyfriend. I find those demeaning; to both beer and dogs, that is. That doesn’t mean I’m a maladjusted, misogynistic pig that borders on delinquent behaviour. Hell no! I get along famously with women, almost like a house on fire (note to self: find that dick who coined THAT expression and do extremely unpleasant things to him, like feeding him low-cal cheesecake). As I look back, I realize everybody, but I, knew I was going to remain single. They just kind of assumed that I knew about it. It was like sporting a curry stain on the seat of your trousers- everybody can see it, but you remain blissfully unaware. I distinctly remember that fateful night when I was at home during my college vacations and a female friend called. My dad picked it up and said in an incredulous voice, “its for you. It’s a girl!” He didn’t really say it, but had I been attentive, I would have interpreted his tone to mean, “What female in her right mind would want to call you?” or, maybe, “doesn’t she know the script, she’s not supposed to call him”. But drunk on my youth, I refused to heed those signs and proudly sported signs that said, “Single, ready to mingle” on my chest. Of course, over a period of time, those got kind of re-worded to “single, desperate to mingle”, but we are not discussing that now.

While friends plan honeymoons, I remain lost in the hope that someday my time will come and I will be able to successfully own a pair of matching socks, or some such astronomical expectation. Like it is for most of men’s fortunes and misfortunes, I myself am responsible for my current bachelorhood. At least in part.

In college, when most normal people were in various stages of forging, in all senses of the term, a relationship, somehow my group of friends saw things differently. I now believe, that our subconscious went through the following rather lengthy and possibly specious reasoning (although if you have had any experience at growing up, you will realize that young men in the age group 19-22 do NOT possess a subconscious.): We belong to families that have ingrained certain social mores very deeply in our psyche. Like it or not, we are doomed into being the nice guys in life. We will always stand up for women, literally and metaphorically, not scratch our noses and/or crotches in their presence, open doors for them, and in general be extremely un-cool for the rest of our lives. So we will do the cool stuff now. This necessarily entails being extremely crude of speech, lecherous of conduct and extremely generous with our laboriously accumulated insights about the female anatomy.

When you have, or think you have, a subconscious that can reason like that, you pretty much do what it says. Hence we did just that. We rarely left a female bereft of the benefit of our esteemed opinion of her accent, body, clothes, … I distinctly remember being able to completely evacuate the canteen in a matter of minutes. A few of us like minded souls would saunter in and observe, aloud, the goings on. Of course, we would sprinkle a good deal of honest observation, poetic exaggeration and caustic wit to make our observations easy to remember and repeat and lo! The canteen would be absolutely desolate. The ‘couples’, which so far had been giving meaning to Bryan Adams’ “shadows on the wall and hands everywhere”, would sit rigidly upright and then disappear. Basically, within a few weeks, there was not a female in sight that would walk on the same road as us. And, can you believe it, we LOVED it. It felt so good to be on the wrong side of the established social norms.

It is only now that I realize that my current bachelorhood might be a consequence of the karma in the previous years. When I think about what really made us do all that, two of the most influential guys in the group come to mind. Incidentally, both of them were in relationships outside the college! Villains! While they had the best of both worlds, the lesser mortals, like yours truly, were cursed into a life of singlehood.

But wait, don’t interpret this as a lament about my early life. Hell, if I could re-live my college days, I would do exactly the same thing! We had such a lot of fun, it makes the couples look like dorks!

That being said, if I die a bachelor, I want these guys to be held responsible.