You don't know me!

(Originally published 3/3/2007)

Recently I received an email from a friend of mine inviting me over to play board games. Being single, I immediately scrolled through the addresses of the other recipients scrounging for either the names of other single people or the names of people that I don’t know (who may very well turn out to be single). However, I was the only person listed without a significant other. I wasn’t sure what I was expected to do if any of the games involved teams. Was I supposed to take them all on like Bruce Lee would a pack of wild ninjas? Perhaps he had only invited me to make sure the salsa stayed fresh or in case someone needed to go out for more ice.

When I asked him about it, why he would invite only a slew of couples and me, pouring You’ll-Never-Get-Married brand salt in my wounds of eternal bachelorhood, he laughed. "You have a different boyfriend every week," he said, "I knew you’d have a date."

What on earth could that have meant? I was dumbfounded. Was he referring to me, the guy who thinks that every lonely country song was written just for him? The guy who wants to take his own life in the cereal aisle at the grocery store when he sees married people bickering over how many boxies of Wheaties to buy? How could such a reputation have been bestowed upon me when no one has bought me anything for Valentine’s Day since Bill Clinton was in office?

"Think about it," he asked of me, "how many guys have you dated just this year?"

Well, this would be easy, I thought. We were barely into the third month of 2007. There was the diabetic, the 22 year old, the flight attendant, the architect, the older guy who lived two blocks over from me… Now even I was confused.

Then my friend Rebecca repeated his sentiment the next day in a phone conversation, telling me that I had dated more people in the past few months than some of her single straight friends had in ten years. Just because you’re going to Tiffany’s everyday, I told her, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re buying anything.

But I wondered how this could’ve happened, how one version of myself could exist so solidly in my own mind but another completely opposite version of myself was bumping around Chicago mixing and mingling with every cute boy in a pair of Diesels. Obviously a case of volume over quality, but at what point had I taken on the gambler’s philosophy, that all I had to do was keep playing, no matter how deep in the hole I had become, and eventually I was bound to strike it rich? Statistically I was bound to meet someone with which I shared a mutual, healthy connection. And this could happen with the very next roll of the dice! Right?

I remembered a pact I had made with myself when I turned 30. I did what most people do when they reach a milestone, I took stock. What exactly, I had asked myself, do I want out of life? I had admitted to myself then and there that one of the things I seriously wanted was to someday be married and the best way to achieve such a goal without too drastically altering my behavior was to be more assertive when it came to finding dates, meaning that if I’m in a bar, which I often am, and someone looks at me long enough to catch my attention, I will talk to them. If we talk long enough, I will call them. If I call them and they call me back, I will go out on a date with them. If they don’t have a collection of severed heads in their refrigerator and they think I’m funny, I will go out with them twice.

And apparently twice is the magic number that defines "dating," and so my friends’ observations of me began to make sense. I honestly never felt as if I was dating anyone. I was just putting myself out there, feeling like a circle that ran from square to square hoping that we’d fit. Keeping your dance card full is no easy task for a guy like me. I am not your typical gay man. I am not graceful or mysterious or exotic. I am not wealthy or charming or well-connected. I wouldn’t know a work of art if it fell out of the sky and landed on my bald head, but I can tell you where in a Wal-Mart store you would find the Drano. So the idea of me being the type of guy that has every cute boy within earshot wanting to date me is both flattering and offensive. Flattering to me, offensive to them.

There’s a feeling of solitude that comes over you when people in your life reveal to you an alternate version of yourself. It’s like having a conversation with a Republican about September 11th in relationship to The War in Iraq. Although both sides have seen the exact same things, two completely different versions of the truth exist. Despite the facts, despite this having been an overactive year for me, despite me having at least a hundred names programmed into my cell phone who I can no longer identify, I don’t feel like what the kids would call a "player." I still feel like the lead in some single female empowering television series along the lines of "Sex and the City" or "Ally McBeal." Aren’t I the smart and quiet and lonely person who goes home to a quiet house and watches old black and white movies in my pajamas? Or am I what my friends all see me as, the wild non-committal sex maniac who has issues being by himself?

Am I Mary Tyler Moore or Susan Lucci?

It could be possible that I’m both. And I suppose that would be OK. A lesson I was fortunate enough to learn at an early age is that it doesn’t really matter how contradictory your opinion of yourself is versus the opinions of others, as long as you like yourself. And either way, whether I’m at home reading a book alone in bed or trying to make the moves on some smoking hot dude in a bar, I’m just fine with myself, whatever version of myself is out there. It’s a win - win situation. Because I like me.

And so does the hairdresser, and the attorney, and the cartoonist, and the guy in Accounting…