The Single Life

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but I'm glad my single days are over.

Sure I hear guys talking about personal freedom. How they don't have to answer to anybody and how they're meeting all sorts of new people. But the grim reality is that scientists estimate that the average American male spends a full four days of his single life hearing the phrase "Pull the car over, asshole, I'm walking."

There's so much paranoia and mistrust between the sexes, it makes the war room in Dr. Strangelove look like the Jacuzzi at Plato's Retreat.

Sure, everybody loves the show Friends, but, come on, that's not singles reality. In the real singles world you live in an apartment the size of Billy Barty's walk-in closet with three roommates who are flakier than a Greek pastry placed on Wally George's shoulder. Roommates who two weeks into the relationship tell you they spent their rent money on a QVC alabaster statuette of Hermann Göring that they are hollowing into a bong. While striving for independence, you begin to realize that you've become a day care center for a bunch of lazy sleep farmers.

So let's just say that Friends, while it's a great show, is not exactly a reconnaissance photo of the day-to-day machinations of the solo life. That being said, it's a lot better than the single people I saw on TV growing up. Eb, Jethro, Tony Nelson, and Major Healy. No wonder my single life seemed to go on forever. I was walking around in an Elmer Fudd hat and a rope belt looking for a genie to blow me.

For me, dating was like a casting call for America's Most Wanted. I once dated a girl who was so twisted, her personalities formed their own softball league.

My life was emptier than Richard Harris's minibar at the Château Marmont.

I was so desperate when I told my friends: "Hey, there are other fish in the sea," I meant other fish. Folks, what I'm saying is, I fucked saltwater seafood. Wasn't proud of it then. Not proud of it now. As a matter of fact, I probably wouldn't have brought it up if this rant wasn't running a little short.

Not that the women who dated me had it easy either. When I eventually did get the date, I got so excited, I looked like Martini when he finally got the boat ride in Cuckoo's Nest.

Toward the end of my single life I was frozen with fear about how to even go about meeting my soul mate. I mean, c'mon, singles bars? Do you know how hard it was for me to keep a straight face while some stoner broad told me what she thought Pink Floyd meant on The Dark Side of the Moon?

Personal ads? I just don't know if I'd be comfortable trying to communicate with my future spouse the same way the cops contacted the Zodiac Killer in Dirty Harry.

And, of course, the newest way for singles to meet each other is through their home computers, on-line. And I don't want to burst your bubble, Spanky-dot-com, but, uh, y'know all those succulent Hawaiian Tropic chicks you think you're trading fantasies with are actually fifty-year-old fat guys who make Abe Vigoda look like Marcus Schenkenberg. Forget computers. Humans need physical contact. I'll take the clap over carpal tunnel syndrome any day.

And, single people, if you still don't get it, I'll translate it for the commitment-impaired. Marriage is a never-ending series of one-night stands.

And I'm on the biggest hot streak of my life. So forget single, wake up and smell the stranger next to you. Marriage is the last step of personal evolution. It is the opposable thumb of human intimacy. So come out of the ape cage and give Darwin your phone number, dammit!

Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.