Thanks, friends, for your concerned emails and for looking at me with that signature head tilt as if I’m a Haitian orphan. It’s sweet. I get it. I sound lonely and pathetic. Two weeks ago I admitted to trolling the Craigslist Missed Connections and last week I wanted someone to hold my hand while I fell asleep. If I’d read this blog, I would have been barfing all over the place and then weeping for pathetic old me.
Sigh.
It’s true that I want to be in love. I said it last week, and I can’t take it back.
But you know what’s worse than NOT being in love?
Dating.
It’s much, much worse.
Dating has so much potential to be amazing– the excitement of this new person who could possibly end up playing a huge role in your life. But then there are the smiles that melt into pained grins. And the guys who arrive an hour late. And the same conversations about siblings and birthplaces and parents. And the fake offering to pay the check. And the men who let me. And the texting afterward.
It’s all so gross.
And although I do want to be in love, I don’t want to be a dater. In fact, I’d like to announce that I’m done dating. I’m out-dated. I’m a Dater Hater. I hereby declare that I am retiring from the dating scene until 2011. No more no more no more.
This means, of course, that I should probably stop shopping at Whole Foods.
Shopping at the Whole Foods in Venice beach is no ordinary grocery experience. This particular Whole Foods is a meat market. And it also sells meat.
There are more single people in this place than produce. And the cornucopia of promiscuity is obvious with every squeeze of a cantaloupe. There are skinny girls in daisy dukes, tan yogi men in scarves, salty surfer boys, and hipsters in V-necks. They’re all dripping with sexual tension as they measure out the bulk flax seed. Scooping peas from the salad bar is the new porn. You can’t pick out a bok choy without someone complimenting your pink aura or saying, ‘You must be tired because you’ve been doing downward dog in my mind all night.’
It’s just disgusting.
And also really fucking exciting. Because there’s nothing like the hope that fills your whole being when you spot that man with the smoldering eyes in the freezer section.
THAT is the best part of being single– the hope, the anticipation, the numbness, the excitement of walking into the cookie aisle and knowing that any one of the men eyeing the gluten-free chocolate chips could be the man you wake up to for the rest of your life (And the fact that you can eat two PBJs for dinner in complete silence while naked.).
Was someone saying something about love? Maybe I prefer a lifetime of titillation at the salad bar. Now that I’m rethinking it, I can’t give it all up– the hope, the men, or the Kashi cereal. I think it’s about time I come out of retirement.
Who wants to take me out to dinner? I promise to offer to pay and not really mean it.
