How to Be Single (5 page)

“He didn't show up. Why would he say he was going to show up if he didn't mean it?” I sat down on the floor with her, and put my arm around her.

“How do people do this?” she asked. “How do people keep putting themselves out there when they know they're probably just going to get hurt? How can anyone deal with that much disappointment? It's unnatural. We're not supposed to go through life so exposed. That's why people get married. Because no one is supposed to go through life that vulnerable. No one is supposed to be forced to meet so many strangers who end up making you feel bad!”

I had nothing to say to this. I was in complete agreement with her. “I know. It's brutal, isn't it?”

“But what are we supposed to do? I don't want to be the girl who stays home and cries about her cat. I don't want to be the one that's sitting here now! But what can I do? I liked him and I wanted him to come down to the bar like he said he would and he didn't show up and
I'm so disappointed
!”

I scooped Ruby up and walked outside with her. On the way out, I passed David and kind of shoved him. Hard. Made him spill his drink. I was mad at him—he had humiliated my friend Georgia and ended up not being my husband.

When we got outside, I explained to Ruby what had happened with the fighting and the vomiting. Then Georgia told us Alice had already taken Serena to the hospital. We all hopped in a cab and went to Saint Vincent's.

By the time we got there, Serena's stomach was being pumped, which I have heard is not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination. I was thinking that sounded a little severe until the nurse told me Serena had consumed about seventeen drinks during the course of the evening.

Why hadn't I noticed? I was so busy being happy that she was finally letting her hair down, I didn't even see that she was hazing herself. Alice and Georgia came back from getting treated for their wounds and were covered in bandages like a pair of Roller Derby girls.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong. We were beautiful, accomplished, sexy, intelligent single women and we were disasters. If there was a “How To” book to write, it should be called “How Not to Be Us.” We were doing it all wrong, this “being single” business, yet I had no clue as to how to do it better.

As my thoughts were giving way to musings of a better life, I looked over to see two women across from us, very animatedly speaking in French. Both were beautiful, slim, impeccably dressed women in their early forties. One was wearing a brown felt duster with large white stitching on the front side and the other was in a short brown suede coat with fringe. Somehow it worked. I never notice shoes, won't even bother, but a nice thin overcoat that makes you ignore anything else being worn, well, that impresses me. These perfect ladies were obviously disgusted about something. Which is so French. As I tuned in with my two years of college French, I got the gist of it: the health care in the States is
deplorable,
this emergency room is filthy, and America basically sucks. I was now curious as to what brought them here. They looked so elegant, so perfect. What could have possibly gone wrong in their lovely French lives to have them wind up in the emergency room? Did one of their friends OD on contempt?

“Excuse me, is there anything I can do to help?” I tried to appear friendly, but I just felt like being nosy.

The two women stopped talking and stared at me. The one with the fringe coat looked at Ruby and Alice with complete superiority and said, “Our friend sprained her ankle.” The other one, darting her eyes around us, decided to get curious as well.

“What brings
you
here?” she said in her adorable French accent. I was thinking about lying when Alice just blurted it out.

“We got into a fight with some girls.”

“They made me get off the bar I was dancing on,” Georgia said. She stared at them as if to say “and I'm ready for another round.” The French women scrunched up their noses as if they'd smelled some bad Brie.

They looked at each other and spoke in French. It was something like, “American women, have no [
something
]. Where are their mothers? Did they not teach them [
something
]?”

I understood everything but that one word. Damn that I didn't keep up with my French studies. Oh, fuck it.

“Excuse me, what does
orgueil
mean?” I asked, a little confrontationally.

The one in the long coat looked me straight in the eye and said, “Pride. You American women have no pride.”

Alice and Georgia sat up straight, ready to rumble. Ruby looked like she was going to cry. But I was interested. “Really? Do all French women have pride? Do you all walk around proud and dignified all the time?”

The French women looked at each other and nodded. “Yes, for the most part, we do.” And then they moved to another corner of the emergency room. Ouch. Shamed by the cool French ladies.

But I really couldn't argue with them. We were by no means behaving like the strong, independent single women that we were taught we could be. I wondered how we had sunk so low. It's not as if we didn't have role models. We did. We had our Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Mary and Rhoda, and so many more. We have image after image of beautiful single women who lead fun, fulfilling, sexy lives. Yet many of us—I won't say all, I refuse to say all, but many of us—still walk around knowing that we're barely making the best of the untenable situation of not having romantic love in our lives. We have our jobs and our friends and our passions and our churches and our gyms and yet we still can't escape our essential nature of needing to be loved and feel close to another human being. How do we keep going when that's not what life has given to us? How do we date, having to act as if it's not the be-all and end-all in our lives, while knowing that one great date could change the course of our lives? How do we keep going in the face of all the disappointment and uncertainty? How do we be single and not go crazy?

All I knew was that I was sick and tired of it all. I was sick of the parties and the clothes and the schedules and the taxis and the phone calls and the drinks and the lunches. I was tired of my job. I was tired of doing something that I hated, but being too scared to do anything about it. I was frankly tired of America, with all our indulgences and our myopia. I was stuck and tired.

And suddenly I realized what I wanted to do. I wanted to talk to more single women. I wanted to talk to them all over the world. I wanted to know if anyone out there was doing this single thing any better than we were. After reading all the self-help books that I have, it was ironic—I was still looking for advice.

The next morning I logged on to my computer and spent the day doing research about single women all over the world. I learned about marriage and divorce statistics from New Delhi to Greenland. I even stumbled across the sex practices in Papua New Guinea. (Read about their yam festival, it's fascinating.) The rest of Sunday I walked around Manhattan and thought about what it would be like to leave it all. As I walked downtown along Eighth Avenue, through all the different neighborhoods and communities, crossed to the East Village and saw all the NYU students rushing around with great urgency, then walked past the South Street Seaport and saw the tourists taking their photographs, and made my way to the Hudson River, I thought about what it would feel like to remove myself from this ball of activity and intensity that is New York. By the time I got back to Union Square, and watched all the people selling or buying things at the farmers' market, I had to admit it: If I left town for a little while, Manhattan would really do just fine without me. It would manage.

So on Monday, I walked into my boss's office and pitched her an idea for a book. It would be titled “How to Be Single” and I would travel around the world and see if there is any place in the world where women are better at being single than here. I mean, we might not necessarily have all the answers here in America; we could perhaps be taught a thing or two. I knew the first stop would be France. Those women never want to read our self-help books—they don't give a crap about Bridget Jones—and the French version of
The Bachelor
has yet to be made. Why not start there? My boss, Candace, an extremely unpleasant woman, around sixty, very well respected and quite feared, replied that it was the worst idea she had ever heard.

“‘How to Be Single'? Like they need to be good at it because they're going to be single for that long? That's depressing. Nobody wants to be single. That's why you always have to give women the hope that they soon
won't
be single, that the man of their dreams is right around the corner and the horror will soon come to an end. If you want to write a book, write one called ‘How
Not
to Be Single.'” She said this without looking up from her computer.

“And, by the way, who cares what they're doing in France or India or Timbuktu for that matter? This is America, and frankly we do know best and I couldn't give a fuck what they're doing in Tanzania.”

“Oh,” I said. “Then I guess that new statistic that there are officially more single women living in America than married ones means nothing to you?”

She peered at me from over her glasses.

“Continue.”

“And that maybe women need a book that's not about how to get a man or keep a man, but how to cope with a state of being that's inherently filled with confliction, emotion, and mystery?”

“I'm still bored,” Candace said as she took her glasses off. I continued.

“And that maybe women might want to read a book that helps them deal with something that might be long-term, and not sugarcoat it for them? It's a fact that all over the world women are getting married later in life and getting divorced more easily. Maybe women might be interested in a global perspective on something that's so private. Maybe they would find it comforting.”

Candace folded her arms over her chest and thought for a moment.

“Comforting is nice. Comforting sells,” she said, finally looking up at me.

“And I'll pay for all my travel expenses,” I added. After all these years, I knew what to say to really sell something.

“Well, the idea is certainly getting less unbearable,” she said, begrudgingly, as she grabbed a notepad. She wrote down something on the notepad and passed it to me on the desk.

“That would be your advance, if you're interested. Take it or leave it.”

I looked at the figure on the piece of paper. It was incredibly low. Not low enough for me to walk out in a huff, but not high enough for me to appear grateful. I accepted the offer.

That evening, I went back to my small one-bedroom apartment, sat on my couch, and looked around. I still lived like I was twenty-five. I had my books, my CDs, my iPod. My computer, my television, my photos. I have no talent for decorating. No personal flair. It was an extremely depressing place. And it was time to go. I got on the phone and cashed in all my stocks, leaving me with a very meager sum of money. I then went on Craigslist and by the time the week was through I had someone subletting my apartment, had a “round-the-world” plane ticket (basically the airline version of a Eurail Pass for the entire world), and I had explained to my mother what I was doing.

“Well, I think that's fantastic. I always thought you needed a break from the nine-to-five. It's time you do something outside the box,” is all my incredibly supportive mother had to say. But then she added, “Just don't go anywhere too dangerous. I have no need to hear about you getting blown up in some marketplace.”

Then, right before I left, I called up my four dear friends and asked them to please look out for one another. I asked Serena, Ruby, and Georgia to make sure Alice didn't overdose on Tums or dating. I asked Alice, Georgia, and Serena to make sure Ruby got out of the house, and I asked Alice and Ruby to make sure Serena and Georgia didn't leave the house at all. I found out that at least one of those concerns was already taken care of.

“I've decided to become a swami,” Serena said, over the phone.

“I'm sorry, what?” was my witty reply.

“I've quit my job and I'm going to renounce all my worldly desires and take a vow of celibacy at my yoga center. The ceremony is next week—can't you postpone your trip to make it? I've invited Georgia, Alice, and Ruby, too.”

I lied (yes, I lied to a soon-to-be member of the clergy) and told her I couldn't, I had a big meeting in France with someone about my new, exciting book and I just simply couldn't change my plans. And then I hung up the phone and got ready to get my ass out of New York. Was I going crazy? I wasn't sure. It may have seemed like an insane thing to do at the time, but somehow…staying in New York would have been even crazier.

“W
ell, I've lined up four women for tonight. They're excited to talk to you.”

“They are? You really did that for me?”

“You told me that you wanted to talk to single French women, so I got you single French women.”

Steve is my oldest friend in the world. I met him on the first day of my freshman year of high school. He sat behind me in home room. I turned around and told him he looked exactly like Jon Bon Jovi and we have been lifelong friends ever since. We stayed close even when we went to different colleges, and even when Steve moved away to study harpsichord and orchestra conducting in Paris. There were never any romantic notions between us, which never seemed odd to us, and then somewhere during his junior year abroad, Steve realized he was gay. He now lives in Paris, travels the world conducting operas and accompanying singers, and nothing pleases him more than being a wonderful host to his visiting friends and getting junk food—Twinkies, Sno Balls, jelly beans—brought to him from the States.

He took a sip of his coffee and smiled at me. He shaved his head ten years ago when he realized he was going bald, and now he sports a very trendy, I wouldn't say beard, but more like a hair pattern on his face. He has a thin line of hair that follows along his jawline, like an outline of a beard. Somehow the whole effect is quite distinguished—which is crucial when you're a thirty-eight-year-old man who works in opera. I took a bite of the most delicious croissant known to mankind and wondered how I ever thought I wouldn't eat bread while I was in Europe.

“They suggested you meet them at Régine's, which is a great idea.”

“What's Régine's?”

“It's this place where hundreds and hundreds of the most beautiful young women in Paris go on Saturday nights starting at eight. To be together and talk.”

I was confused. “Hundreds of French women all go to a nightclub to get together and talk? That makes no sense.”

“I don't get it, either. But apparently the women have three hours just to be alone, unbothered. They even get a free buffet. After eleven
P.M.
the men are allowed in. They supposedly line up to get in because they know hundreds of beautiful women are inside. It's a genius marketing idea, really.”

“But,” I say, my mind already in research mode, “they go just to be together? That's weird.”

“We don't have that in the States?” he asked.

“No, women don't need a special night where they get to be alone together. We can do that any day of the week.”

After consideration, Steve said, “Well, I don't think French women travel in packs like you girls do in the States. Maybe this is their chance to make new friends.”

This was exciting. I'd only been there for a few hours and already I was onto a big cultural difference:
French women like to go out in droves just to be somewhere without men.
I started to think about the ramifications of this. Are French men so aggressive that the women need a place to be away from them? Are French women so antisocial in their daily lives that they need a place to make friends? I couldn't wait to figure it all out.

“It's sweet of these women to agree to talk to me. But I don't know what I'm going to ask them. This is all new. Maybe I can just get them all drunk and see what happens.”

“French women don't get drunk,” Steve said.

“They don't?” I asked, disappointed.

“They might have a glass of wine or two, but I've never seen a French woman drunk.”

“Well, then, difference number two. No drunky French ladies.” I took a big sip of café au lait.

“Don't worry. Women are women. Get them all together and eventually they all start talking.”

“I sure as hell hope so.” I downed the rest of my drink. “Can I take a nap now? Please? Is that breaking the laws of jet lag?”

“You may take a nap now. But only for a few hours.”

“Thank you,
mon chéri,
thank you.”

And with that, Steve took me to his two-bedroom French flat and put me to bed.

It was a mob scene outside Régine's. What seemed like hundreds of gorgeous young women were all converging on this one nightclub. They were prompt, dressed up, and wanting desperately to get in.

“These women are herding themselves in here just to make new friends? This is insane!” I said to Steve as we got shoved by some six-foot-tall beauty (who I'm sure was
definitely
going to get in).

Just then, we heard a high-pitched voice yell “Steef! Steef!” Charging through the crowd was a short, stocky woman, wearing simple black trousers and a t-shirt. She did not look dressed for a night on the town.

“That's Clara,” Steve explained. “She handles all of the business affairs for the Paris opera house. When you told me what you needed, I called her first—she knows everybody.”

“
Bonsoir,
” said Clara as she walked up to Steve and kissed him on both his cheeks. Steve introduced us, then leaned his face out to me to kiss, and said, “
Au revoir.
”

“Really? I'm on my own?” I said. I was suddenly overcome with shyness.

“You know the rules, no men allowed…” Steve said. And with that we kissed and he was off. Clara then immediately grabbed me and barreled her way to the doorman. She spoke to him forcefully, and got us both into the club.

As we walked down a long set of stairs, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I asked, “But what about the other women? How will we find them?”

“I'll get them later. Let's just sit you down at the table.”

The club itself seemed to be all red velvet banquettes and pink lighting. And there were women as far as the eye could see, as if I had thrown a bomb into a lake of pretty ladies and these were the ones who had floated to the surface. I was so impressed. I had no idea that French women would fight and haggle and risk possible humiliation with a doorman just to have a precious few hours to be alone with one another. This was a triumph of female kinship. Of course, later they got to meet men. But here it was, eight o'clock, and there was a long line for the buffet table and the banquettes were getting filled up. They had a little roped-off area where some French makeup company was giving free makeovers. This was fantastic. My first day in Paris and I'd already hit on a stereotype-debunking cultural trend: French women needing to be French women together. Maybe this wasn't such a crazy idea after all.

A buff, shirtless waiter in tiny little harem pants walked by with champagne,
free
champagne. Nice touch, love it, fabulous—I helped myself to one as Clara came back with three women: Patrice, Audrey, and Joanne. I stood up to say hello, but Clara shooed me back down and they all came and sat in the banquette. Greetings were exchanged. Patrice was a pretty book editor in her thirties with hair pulled up in an elegant do; Audrey was a very sexy brunette opera singer, with long wild hair and a wraparound dress that showed off her big, lovely—lungs; and Joanne, a jewelry designer, seemed to be about forty-five years old with brown hair in long, cute braids dangling messily down each side of her face. Clara, though not as elegant as the others, was pretty in a farm-girl kind of way. I took out a little hardcover journal I had bought in New York that I thought I would make my notes in. I was trying to appear professional. They looked at me expectantly. It was time I explained myself.

“I'm thirty-eight and single and live in New York. I met these French women in a hospital emergency room, not that that's important, and they seemed to, well, know something that we Americans don't know. About how to be single?” It felt so silly coming out of my mouth, but luckily Joanne piped right in.

“Oh please, we don't have any answers. I mean, c'mon.” She dismissed the idea immediately with that superior French accent of hers. The others seemed to agree.

“Really? You don't have anything you can teach me?” I asked. They all shook their heads no again. I decided I should try to dig a little deeper. After all, they were a captive audience.

“For instance, they talked about French women having pride. Does that make sense to you?”

“What do you mean?” Patrice asked.

“Well. Let's say you go out with a guy on a date—”

Patrice stopped me. “We don't go on dates here.”

“You don't?”

All the women shook their heads again. No dates.

“Well, what do you go on, then?” I asked, confused.

“We go out, we have a drink, but we don't call this a date. We are just having a drink.”

“Yes, but if you like the person, if it's a man you're interested in, isn't it a date?”

The women just shook their heads at me, no.

“But let's say a man you work with asks you to go have a drink, and it's a man you really like. Wouldn't you be a little excited and maybe, let's say, get a little dressed up?” I could see from their expressions that I was already losing them. “And then wouldn't that, in fact, be a date?”

They kept shaking their heads. Clearly
date
was not one of the American words the French co-opted. I was getting nowhere so I changed my tack.

“Okay, what if you've slept with a guy. Someone you liked. And then he doesn't call you. You would feel bad, yes?” The women all shrugged some version of yes.

“So would you ever, in a weak moment, call him and say you wanted to see him again?”

They all started shaking their heads no violently.

“No, never,” Audrey said.

“Absolutely not,” Patrice said.

“Not really, no,” said Joanne.

Clara shook her head also. “No.”

“Really?” I said, surprised. “You wouldn't be tempted?”

“No, of course not,” said Audrey. “We have our pride.”

And they all nodded in agreement.

So there it was again. Pride.

“Well, who taught you about this? This idea of pride?”

“My mother,” Clara said.

“Yes, my mother,” said Patrice.

“Our world, our culture. It's in the air,” said Audrey.

“So a man, a boyfriend, starts pulling away from you, starts calling you less and less, tells you that maybe he's not ready to be in a relationship, what would you do?”

“I wouldn't call him again.”

“I would think it's his loss.”

“I would not bother with him.”

“Even if you really like him?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

I was sitting there staring at four women who were good at accepting rejection—these ladies didn't seem like they were from France, they seemed like they were from Mars.

Elegant Patrice tried to explain it to me. “Julie, you have to understand, it's not that we don't feel things; we do. We fall in love, we get our hearts broken, we're disappointed and sad, but we've been taught that you must always have your pride. Above all.”

Again, much nodding in agreement.

“So does that mean you all love yourselves or something?” I blurted out. They all smiled, but this time they differed.

“No,” Patrice said.

“Not necessarily,” said Audrey. “We've just learned how to hide our insecurities.”

“Yes,” said Joanne, the beautiful forty-five-year-old with the braids. “I do love myself. Very much.”

“Don't you worry about getting older and there not being enough men to go around and all that?”

“No,” said Joanne. “There are many men. You just go out, you meet them. All the time.”

The other women agreed. And just when I was about to ask where all these men were, a figure passed our banquette dressed like Lawrence of Arabia. As he walked down toward the dance floor, all the women started turning in his direction. The lights on the dance floor started to swirl and Middle Eastern music began to play. Women started to scurry toward the dance floor. Audrey rolled her eyes.

“Ah. The strippers are here.” The dance floor was now lined with women standing and watching.

“Strippers?” I asked, surprised. “There's strippers?”

“Didn't Steve tell you? That's why all the women come here at eight. To eat free food and see the strippers.”

I was aghast.

“So you mean all this is, is a French Chippendales? Steve made it sound like the women came here to make new friends.”

The women all grimaced. “Please,” elegant Patrice sniffed. “Who needs to do that?”

So maybe we're not so different after all. We went to the dance floor and checked out the action. I might as well have been at the Hunk-o-Rama in Brooklyn. The two men dancing were taking off their flowing robes until they were in nothing but itty-bitty g-strings. Then they pulled two women out of the audience and sat them on chairs on the dance floor and began dancing and rubbing their
Jean-Pierres
in these women's faces. All the women in the club were screaming and cheering. These women were making friends all right. I couldn't wait to tell Steve. Where had all the cool, detached Parisian attitude gone? It was a good lesson. Sometimes even French women need to strip off their pride and go whoop it up for a night.