FRIDAY THE 14th

Sometime last year I broke up from what was a pretty long and serious relationship. I forgot how dreadful and lonely the holidays were as a single person. Christmas went by relatively smoothly, with lots of food and family. But the New Year would not be as easy. To compound my horror, of bringing in the new years in as a single person was the guest list of the party I had chosen to go to. It consisted of the couple that had been married two years, the couple married a month ago and a couple that would be married in a month. YEAY FOR ME!!!

Married people are horrible, they are all happy and blissful setting up their homes, planning their lives, optimistic, and dripping with mushy goodness and love lets not forget the oozing love. YUCK. For their part the couples tried their best not to ooze their super sweet happiness around me, I got lots of consoling hugs and conciliatory and reassuring ‘there is a perfect guy for you out there’ comments. The night passed and I survived only to be alive and kicking for the next holiday extraordinaire.

The holiday most dreaded by all single people is almost here. There is no running, no hiding and no Shiv Sena to help counter what will happen. I thought I was going to ignore it but facebook (that bitch) wont let me. 6 different online valentine day sales, I better hurry! Maybe they mean I should hurry and find my self a man. Best of luck with that I say to myself.

My loathing for holidays and married people is not a common factor in single people. Some single people are far more, well adjusted to being single than me; maybe they’ve had more practice. I haven’t quiet figured out how to be ‘okay’ alone. I don’t mean in isolation, though I find that hard as well. I mean single alone. Hopefully I will survive Friday the 14^th with head held high and heart intact.

FLASH BACKS & RETROSPECTIVES

I am a romantic. Growing up, my mom would wake me up to watch wedding sequences in movies. In fact my mom and I watched all sort of age inappropriate rubbish together “The bold and the beautiful” and “Santa Barbara”.  All the impassioned lovemaking, the fights, the kissing, I wanted it all. So at the tender age of six, hiding under a makeshift tent, I decided I couldn’t wait. I planted a kiss on an unsuspecting neighbor. It would have remained a secret, been forgotten in time, had my brother not caught me in the act and then gone on to tell every single living person.

The point being that I started early and haven’t stopped to take a breath. From the age of 16 I haven’t spent more than 6months single. I jumped, hopped and crashed from one relationship into another, a few of them serious most of them casual. I fall in love faster than it takes most people to get high. And it doesn’t take much for me to fall in love. A few days of long nights of texting or calling and I’ll be gushing about how great this new boy is, how perfect he is.

Anyway this time around I am consciously trying not to make any hasty decisions. I’m trying to play it cool and play the field before I settle down. Though I must admit finding the boy is harder than ever before. The seemingly perfect boys are very quickly turning into deal breakers. And these aren’t “oh I was being picky” deal breakers, these are “what the fuck are these boys doing in the single dating world” kind of deal breakers.

So far there has been..

The boy from my past, the one who is getting a divorce; turns out he still hangs with the not so ex-wife way too much, in fact they moved back in together. So even though he is as beautiful as beautiful men get, I’m bowing out of that race graciously.

Then there was the candy man, this man who was so seemingly perfect it hurt. He was beautiful, liked dogs, liked cooking and plants. He was just the right amount of weird. We got along really well and we talked till the wee hours of the morning. I flirted with him for weeks. It was getting really cute till someone told me had a girl friend. Dreams crash.

Anyway all these disastrous calamities made me think it’s time to widen the net a little. My mom is dying to pitch in and help with the boy hunt, except she wants to find me a man husband. So I can join the rest of the bandwagon that have gotten hitched in the not so recent past. But I’m so not ready for that kind of plunge. Besides the old school romantic in me wants to be swept off my feet. So I did it, I joined a dating web site. More, on the adventures of online dating soon. 

GAME CHANGER

So since I was last out and about in the dating world. A LOT HAS CHANGED.

Game changer no.1- WHATS APP

Video killed the radio star and what’s app killed the phone conversation.

Now, talking on the phone indicates that some new level of intimacy has been reached. If you have graduated from texting to talking then you either found a keeper OR the many hours of laborious texting finally bore fruit.

Game changer no. 2 – FACEBOOK

Now I know your thinking facebook has been around for a while. But it really hasn’t we had Orkut and some other nonsense. But nothing was or shall ever be as all encompassing as fb.

Just to put it into some context, my 13year old cousin is on fb and she said to me weren’t you on fb when you were my age. And I realized that there was no fb when I was her age. In that instant, I felt really old. 

Anyway the point is that these days you can find out everything you need to know about a person on fb. (or so I used to think) I used to live under the lofty assumption that everyone like me is as open about their lives on fb as I am.

This means three things

1>  If I am in a relationship – its on fb -just so that people know

2>  If I am not in a relationship – its on fb - just so that people know

3>  If I went somewhere, did something or ate anything that was even half interesting then – its on fb - just so that people know

So yeah my life is really an open book on facebook and I presumed that everyone else was just like me but so horribly wrong was I. And how terribly my little bubble was about to burst. 

GHOST OF BOYS PAST- THE FART THAT KILLED IT

There I was sitting in his car as he dropped me back home from a perfectly lovely dinner. He had spent the night talking about the woman he left his wife for, who in turn left him (karma is a bitch). Yes!!! I know and trouble was his name-o. And i am the trouble magnet.

As soon as we got into the car all the stories of heart breaks stop and instead we talked about us. We reminisced about the past. He remembered what I was wearing the first time we met. I finished the rest of the story. It was epic. I was in college and I was working late. Some girl (not imp) was giving me her number while she was running off into the distance, her parting note was- “call me if you need anything”. In walks the boy, coolly, a bottle of thumbs up in hand, sipping it he recites his number. He then smiled that smile that could wage wars and melt hearts. And said you should call me too, he winked,  “if you ever need anything, at all”. I was 16 and this was by far the coolest, smoothest line anyone had ever used on me. I was sold. It helped that he was simply beautiful. We shook hands exchanged smiles and  names and that was the beginning of the strangest friendship ever.

WE LAUGH. We are only half way home.

We then move onto the stories of how I played the pretend gf to protect the actual gf, a girl his parents didn’t approve of.  We talk about the film we worked on together. We talk about the time we met, a month before his wedding. We ate a meal. We laughed. He walked me home. We held hands. It was all bordering on wrong. At my door we lingered. We hugged each other tight. It was a kiss that could have happened but shouldn’t have and so it didn’t.

We laugh some more.

He says now he wanted to kiss me back then. I remind him why we didn’t. He reminds me that now we were both single. I assure him I came to that realization hours ago, but he’s in a fragile state and I just want to be his friend, as I say this I know I don’t really mean any of it.

We reach my building he gets out of the car walks me to my gate, much to my distress. I’m not sure how much self-control I can manage. We hug. I turn to leave. He asks me to stay 5 minutes. He calls me a tease.  It almost as if it was 3 years ago, except now this kiss can happen (we are both single- kinda). He holds me. We stand there looking at each other and then he leans in. I give in easily. His lips touch mine. It’s a kiss I’ve waited for, for years. And then right in the middle of it, a man asleep on the street next to us, FARTS really loud. And the kiss that took 10 years to happen, it shatters into fits of laughter. The both of us are convulsed in laughter. We laugh for a bit before we both part ways.

TO BE, or not TO BE , or just TO BE continued another evening years from now. Only time will tell.