when you’re alone
The grocery store is an embarrassing place to be single. I was at Safeway on Thursday at 9 p.m., after realizing I’d missed dinner at work and there was no food at my house. In line behind me was a guy flinging his items onto the conveyor belt — prepackaged smoked ribs, wheat flakes cereal in plastic bags, imitation crab meat, Lean Cuisine, several tubs of Breyers ice cream. I almost caught myself feeling sorry for him when I looked at my own selection of TV dinners, refrigerated pasta, frozen waffles, and a jar of syrup and decided, just like in the airplane oxygen mask safety warnings, that I needed to feel sorry for myself first, before empathizing with others.
I used to cook. In fact, I got a recipe for chocolate crepes in the mail (it came as part of a real estate newsletter from my realtor) that suddenly inspired me to mention crepe making at lunch on Friday with coworkers. I was advised to buy a crepe pan and get a long handled knife to flip them. Coworkers are good for that. They can’t wallow in your sorrows with you (and you probably wouldn’t want them to) but if you bring up some stupid therapeutic idea you have for coping with your loneliness they’ll always be sure to tell you what kind of skillet to avoid and the best brand of pudding for the job.
It’s odd how you can sniff out almost any bachelor(ette) by simply observing a shopping list. Most notably, they’re always picking up frozen food, ice cream, cereal, and if they’re feeling healthy, one banana wrapped in a clear bag with a twist tie on it. In addition, their items nearly always fit in a basket, or if they’re actually pushing a shopping cart you’ll see their food lost at the bottom, with fashion and/or sports magazines propped open in the child seat so they can read while they push.
Is this me? I think. Sometimes, when my house is actually clean, I’ll buy fresh flowers at the grocery store to throw people off. Single people don’t buy flowers for themselves, right? They only buy flowers because there are other people living at or coming to visit their house. I think sometimes if I buy flowers that maybe it will attract company, like bees, except better than bees, and I won’t have to spend Saturday nights alone. I haven’t tested my theory yet. I do enjoy the flowers on my own but there is something sad about their inevitable wilting over the course of the week. It’s as if they died waiting for company that never arrived.
When you’re alone, the world is like this giant Noah’s ark, where everyone comes in pairs except for you. They’re getting into cars together, they’re arriving at parties together, they’re pumping gas together, they’re watching TV together and you can see them at night through their living room window, laughing at old black and white reruns of I Love Lucy. Yesterday I went to hockey, and instead of staying to sub with me for the second game, one of the beginning players I like better left early, and took her really good goalie with her. I watched him skate leisurely behind her small frame as they left the rink. There was something sad and insulting about that, but I guess you’d only understand if you were a single hockey player too.
I received a disturbing handwritten letter in the mail the other day from a distant friend who I was upset with, who admitted he felt differently about me than mere friendship. I have no interest. Then, what Palahniuk writes in Invisible Monsters is true, someone is always chasing after us, and we’re always chasing after someone completely different, and that person in turn is chasing after someone else. It’s like this giant conga line of unrequited desire, instead of an intimate tango of two.
Maybe I’ll go buy some flowers tomorrow.
