perpetual single-ness

In that vein, and in a struggle to prove that I am more substantive than my more successful peers who have gone before me, and used their dating and relationship [lack] of prowess as a foray into the blogging world, I will attempt this list, of the life of a perpetually single girl, sans cat. It was posted on Gawker almost three years ago, and Julia Allison quickly rebuttled. In a display of my perpetual three-years-behind status, and in an attempt to prove that I have the least going on of any hot young bachelorette, here's my take on how you can identify that I am in fact, and probably always will be, single:

• Piles of magazines everywhere, comprised of tons of pretentious ones that are clearly untouched and then severely thumbed-through Vogues and Luckys

Um, yup, I've got those everywhere. Mostly because I'm a slob, and I consider "paper mess" to be the kind of mess that won't lead others to believe that you're dirty. I've never read Lucky though, but I did see that it had Vanessa Hugeons on a cover once, which leads me to believe it could be something my low-brow self would enjoy. I've got Vogue, but I'm generally too lazy to read it. I also get Teen Vogue (more my speed), Elle, Nylon (I AM an embarrassment), and I used to get the New Yorker, but you're right I DON'T ANYMORE.

• Overflowing shoe rack and nothing in the fridge

I have that thing that hangs over your door, but I only keep flipflops in it. I keep my shoes in boxes. There is stuff in my fridge though - it's beer. (Okay and salsa and a Britta Filter that always inexplicably freezes. Why? I'm not about to turn up the temp though, because the freezing temperatures make THE FOOD LAST LONGER. Genius.)

• Scented candles

This is only because it disguises the underlying odor. Also, I don't have any in the bathroom, so can I get some points for that? 

• Slovenly heaps of little-used makeups in the bathroom

I interpret the word "slovenly" as a negative word, and I would also like to note that most of my makeup is so "little-used" that it is not even in the bathroom. It's in my closet. I keep more important things in the bathroom, like baby wipes. And beer (this is actually true?). I will concede that there is a small "pile" in my medicine cabinet, but I don't think this makes me single so much as a girl.

• Stuffed animals in the bed

I actually do have those, which is making me feel weird about trying to negatively answer all these questions. Shit. I have three. One is on the couch. It's a dachshound. It looks real, and visitors get fairly creeped out by it. My mom bought it for me as a joke. Yes, this is an indication of being defiantly single.

• Cat hair on the furniture / cat smell

I don't feel the need to respond to the accusation of cat smells, because I am too poor to have a cat, and if I did, I'd train it to go outside. That shit's nasty.

• Cabinets full of mugs featuring the likeness of lady who looks like those hypertrophically-limbed Daily Candy illustrations, bearing the legend "I Love Shopping" or whatnot

I have a lot of pint glasses that I've stolen from bars. One says "Beer is my life." I guess I will count that.

• Anything pink

Are girls who like pink more likely to be single than girls who don't? My entire existence leads me to assume it's the opposite, since I only like it in neon form, on leggings, and the only thing pink in my apartment is a bottle of nailpolish. 

• Ornamental pillows

Pretty sure those cost money. 

• Unedited bookshelves, esp. if they include He's Just Not That Into You or anything along those lines

Julia provided a fairly pithy response to this, and I can't, because I was an English major. My bookshelf is edited. I have stacks of books that extend past the shelf, too. I'd tend to think this is more of a contributing factor to my single-ness rather than a result of it, however. Who wants to date a smart girl? Psssh. 

• Nair

I hide this in my windowsill, which I guess is kind of weird now that I think about it. This is really only a holdover from being a swimmer for 14 years - hair removal has become a habit to the point that I feel weird without it. It's not really an indication that I'm aspirational about my sex life. It also took me about a half hour to figure out that was the implied indication, so there you go. 

• Lite cottage cheese in the fridge

I've started buying the full-fat because I really only eat one meal a day and it keeps me full. Then I moved this to my work fridge, because I really only eat at work. So no, the answer to this question is no. 

• Anything lite or diet around. Cases of Diet Coke. Weight Watchers 'Just 2 Points' bars

Why would I buy diet coke when I could just buy beer? This question is confusing. 

• Inspirational or thinspirational things on the fridge

So is this one. I was going to put a picture of someone skinny on my fridge, but I don't have any magnets, so the only thing that's on there is a penguin calendar and a bumper sticker from a New Glarus six pack that I bought this summer. If you are noticing a theme, it's not just you.

i don't take good pictures

via gawker, obvi

I have been tardy for the blogging party because I continually remind myself what a slippery slope it is. Although I haven't actually read any of Julia Allison's collegiate columns (they're not, like, above me - please, I'd just rather watch Jersey Shore), I am aware that she did indeed start off as a Love and Relationships columnist at her own college newspaper. Yes, the Georgetown student newspaper is quite a bit more illustrious than the good old Lawrentian, but keeping in mind that I'm in obnoxious company is always wise. Hence my risk to overly self-promote. Or really to self-promote at all.

Interesting note: I have also worn a costume made of condoms. (To a not-exactly-naked party - it was also made of maxi pads - but still, our similarities are alarming). I also fancy myself to have a slightly better sense of humor, and more of a non-lapdog approach toward relationships, but really, potato-potato. If somebody offered me a nonsociety blog, I wouldn't say no.

choosing sides

The most confusing part about becoming an adult, for me, is realizing that all of the things about myself that I thought would just disappear quietly once I was holding a college diploma didn’t actually do that. Confusingly, the inner turmoil caused by having to choose between lining your eyes with cheap black eyeliner and getting into an older boy’s car to smoke cigarettes instead of wearing your khaki skirt to the children’s hospital to volunteer for the National Honor Society does not disappear with puberty, or even with college. The same dilemma – the conflict between becoming the kind of adult you always saw in movies about families with houses that looked clean, and the kind of adult you are just learning exists, the fun kind – is very much alive and real. It was easy for me to assume that adults like Dennis Quaid played in movies were just born that way, with briefcases and matching suits and wives in housedresses who didn’t seem to have to learn to bake pies. Adults like Meg Ryan, with cute apartments and kind of fun jobs that allowed them to have contact with children without being the teacher who had to wipe their snotty noses, were that way because they had chosen to stay single and unloved. And now, even though I have a job and an apartment and three (!) outfits that I bought at Ann Taylor, which my mother says makes me a “real person” who can no longer use plastic silverware, the internal conflict between the adult versions of the people I was in high school has not silently become a non-issue like I anticipated. In fact, it is even more crushing than it felt while I stared down the popular hockey player in a polo shirt who wanted to take me to Homecoming and play mixed doubles with me and the greasy guitar player in tight jeans who may or may not have actually been old enough to buy me a PBR but was able to get me into his show for free. I thought that I would gently float into one of these personas, and my decision to love either money or fun would seem evident and inevitable.

The problem is that both these lifestyles are still slightly appealing. Unfortunately in the adult world, it takes money to have fun, which makes it hard to pick which goal to focus on. I am still equal parts tortured Bohemian who does not brush her hair, sticks metal through her body parts, and enjoys drinking warm beer out of a can while sitting on an amp during a school night and pretending that smoking doesn’t cause cancer, and the aspirational trust fund chaser who swoons at the sight of a jaunty boat shoe and a yacht club membership and dreams of turning in early after putting four brats to sleep in Lily Pulitzer pajamas and looks forward only to the weekend, when it is acceptable to down more than one martini at the club. I seriously cannot decide if I want to make a life out of working at a non-profit in artistically assembled outfits while drinking free trade coffee and dreaming of the day when I will have saved enough of my paltry salary to shop at Whole Foods, or if I would rather pick out color-coordinated linens and volunteer at the children’s hospital and watch as someone else delivers organic wheat germ from Whole Foods to my door.

Eventually I know you have to pick a team. My rants about the ills of consumer society and my desire to distinguish myself through body art and the rejection of hair straightening will shortly stop being endearing, interesting, or excusable. Eventually my parents are going to start looking for the payout that comes after funding my irresponsible young adult years. And I am going to have to decide whether that payout will come in the form of really, really committing myself to the non-profit, or sending in a graduate school application after all, or biting the bullet, straightening my hair, and finding a goddamn husband. I feel like I’m still a child, and I should be able to go on a date at a dive bar and talk about the importance of pretentious artistic expression on Friday, and then clean up to go on a date at the club on Saturday while showing off my ability to sort and categorize cocktail napkins and Christmas card address lists.

I’d like to think that I can make a go of it on the moral high ground, and that I’ll never vote Republican, but it still isn’t that simple. The thing is, even from the moral high ground, a vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard still looks like an awfully fun way to spend the month of August. Even as I renew my bus card, part of me dreams of resting my freshly lipo-ed ass on the soft leather seat of a late model Volvo with state of the art heating and cooling systems as I drive the next generation of WASPs to their various socially acceptable suburban activities. As I consider the logistics of keeping a fish alive in my apartment and decide whether or not it is morally reprehensible to apply for food stamps with my Americorps stipend so I have more money to buy beer, the other half of my brain is envisioning a flock of dogs in various forms of poodle mix romping across my electrically fenced acre as I toss an organic salad for my husband, who is parking his Mercedes in our three car garage.

Part of me knows I can’t be Jack Kerouac forever, that I’ve got to get off the road, that the only reason kids read this book when they’re eighteen is because that’s the only time this book seems reasonable and not like an incredible waste of money and gas. But this part of me almost certainly conflicts with my plans to avoid dating men who can defend a free market society in fifty words or less while whipping out their Daddy’s Platinum cards to pay for our drinks.

i don't want to know what you do all day

So yesterday, I wore a bike helmet while bicycling for the first time in about twelve years. I don’t refrain from wearing a bicycle helmet because I think I’m too cool for head protection, or because I’m an idiot, two reasons which were probably responsible for my carelessness in the past, but simply because I’m (really) lazy and because I think it makes my hair look stupid. Most people would probably classify the last reason as another way to say “I’m an idiot,” but I say tomato/tomato.
So the other day, I bit the bullet and wore the helmet, because I recently made a list of things that responsible adults do that make them look like they are not just masquerading foolishly on the threshold of adulthood. I decided to start practicing these things, because I feel like an imposter, and I need all the legitimacy I can get so I can start buying arugula and wine with two digit prices at Whole Foods without feeling like a shoplifter. One of the things on the list has to do with wearing a bike helmet. Most of the others have to do with not drinking on weeknights, so I decided it was in my best interest to start wearing the stupid helmet. I felt really good about myself in the helmet, like I was taking a ton of vitamins at once or something. Speaking of which, I've been having trouble knocking these items off one at a time:

Things Real Adults Do:
-Understand that cigarettes cause lung cancer, pretty much directly
-Not drink to excess on weeknights (work nights?)
-Wear helmets while bicycling
-Read books because they are on best-seller lists
-Make their beds in the morning and always remember to brush their teeth at night
-Laugh at office-related humor
-Believe that neither tights nor leggings are pants, and dress accordingly.
-Look forward to spending money on "housewares," which include, but are not limited to, scented candles and whicker products. Saving up for these things becomes more exciting than blowing one's paycheck on drugs, pink champagne with cutesy labels, or aspirational clothing.
-Moisturize more than "as needed." Probably because this is proven to prevent wrinkles. Psssh.

I know real adults do way more than that all day, I mean, on an intuitive level, but on a purely superficial level, do they, really? This alone seems like quite enough of a struggle.

Also included: picture of me looking like a cracked-out teenager, if only to demonstrate that we've got an uphill battle ahead of us.

reasons to join a gym:

-I will probably get out of shape if I can't work out after work
-Maybe I will meet friends at the gym?

Reasons that are neither here nor there:
-You need cute work out clothes to work out at a gym, right?
-It is kind of close to the apartment of this guy I know and it could look like I am stalking him? It is something he would assume.

I mean, I am going to join the gym.