How I survived another Singles Awareness Day

ADMIN UPDATE: OK, ya, these last few posts by Jenn are a little late...sorry...I'll get better...:)

It seems every day I am mystified by the behavior of men around me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am definitely “one of the guys” when it comes to my way of thinking, but still.. their inability to really understand and cohabitate the earth peacefully with the females around them astounds me.

Take for example, my roomie Christian, who you guys may affectionately know as “Spot.” He has spent the past few nights streaming live video feed from our house, with no real premise or agenda. He’s just capturing his day to day life, whatever that may be. The other night, he spent his time on “Spotcenter” cleaning the inside of his shower, while 80 some-odd people watched. REALLY?.. Is this what life has come to when we are watching a 28 year old dude clean his showers so as to not disgust his girlfriend during her upcoming visit?.. I felt like I was watching the gorillas at the zoo, in their “natural habitat,” or as natural as one can act when they know they are being watched. (Please, don’t tap on the glass... he tends to get very angry.) Or maybe you caught his Valentine’s Day special where he stole one of my pink bras and stamped a red heart on his cheek just to be “festive?”

Then there is my buddy Mike, who decided as part of he and his live in girlfriend’s “fitness theme” of 2009, decided to buy her a treadmill as a Valentine’s Day gift. REALLLLLLLLLY Mike?.. A Treadmill?... Why don’t you just dangle a box of chocolates from a fishing line in front of her attached to a gift certificate for liposuction?.. Way to go buddy.

Then, there are a number of my other male friends that pride themselves on being “AWESOME.” Everything in their lives revolves around having the best time humanly possible. Think “fraternity” with no dues, no rules, just a good old time. Much of being awesome revolves around getting “faced” (intoxicated) and picking up girls. That’s why the majority of them are still single and celebrate Valentine’s Day every year with their own tradition, “The Lonely Hearts Club.”

Don’t get me twisted, I see nothing wrong with being “awesome” and having a good time. In fact, that statement pretty much sums up my entire college experience. But, at the same time, I know when it’s last call for awesomeness, and time to grow up. After all, is it worth being awesome, if you will always be alone???..

Society has expectations for men to behave a certain way, a dangerous and break-up provoking combination of overly macho and extremely juvenile. We live in a world where doing nice things for girls makes a man a “pussy” or "gay". Newsflash! It’s not gay: I'm a girl. You’re supposed to go out of your way to be sweet, and polite, and a tad chivalrous every now and then. It’s not about opening doors and laying your nice coats in puddles, it’s simply about being a good human being. So while watching Music and Lyrics and Notting Hill may not be your idea of a good time, it shows your ability to sacrifice watching Bruce Willis blow up shit for two and a half hours with Carl Winslow-- all for the sake of making your woman happy.

Instead of spending Valentine’s Day with some random date for the sake of not being alone-- that and the fact I was coming down with a nasty bout of the flu made me a terrible make out partner-- I decided my time was better spent playing matchmaker in my own sick twisted way: picking up a shift at my buddy’s bar. Sure I wasn’t matching people “based on more than 26 points of their long-term compatibility” like Match.com, but I was certainly doing my part by helping hapless saps find romance on a night where being alone, plus drinking equals… the second highest rate of suicides, next to “Holidays.” And THAT, my friends, was reason enough for me.

Valentine’s Day has forever ranked in my mind right up there with getting a tooth pulled, or possibly the girl equivalent of the old “turn your head and cough” routine. It was pure misery. A disaster waiting to happen. It seemed somehow, someway, no matter how perfect life and relationships seemed to be going, something was bound to come along and screw it up. This theory dates way back to my days as a lonely fourth grader. You know, the age where boys stopped having cooties, and suddenly weren’t the disgusting mutants you and your girlfriends used to throw sand at on the playground. Now, kids in my grade were having boyfriends and girlfriends. Unless you were me that is. I was a chubby cheeked, ringlet wearing, Curly Sue stunt double. Though a bit of a nerd, I was always the sweetheart and hopeless romantic.. hoping that if I let my crush, Kyle (as we will call him for all intents and purposes) copy off my spelling test, he may sit next to me at the lunch table, or better yet, leave a Valentine for me in my Valentine’s Day mailboxes we had all fashioned out of our parents crusty, old shoe boxes. Of course, when Valentine’s Day rolled around, and the cards had been handed out and counted, somehow Kyle’s Valentine to me.. was no where to be found. Never mind the fact, all the pretty girls like Megan, and Ashley got cards from Kyle. Somehow.. the mailman must have lost mine, either that. or perhaps Kyle was just too “awesome” and cool to be bothered with someone like me. I guess that’s why they call it a crush. If it didn’t hurt so much, they’d call it something else.

Nearly fifteen years or so later, I am still plagued by the same problem: Always picking the “awesome” boy, the Barney Stinson’s of the world, over people who may really be worth it. Maybe that is because I think I can change, or save them. Or because I think I see something in them that no one else could. Both of these could be entirely accurate, or maybe it’s the fact that I just have spent the past twenty years of my life making the same mistakes in my choosing of Valentines.

So this year, I sacrificed my own single awesomeness for the greater good, and joined my own lonely hearts club aimed at helping other lonely hearts.. not be so lonely. A ‘rum and coke’ and a ‘gin and tonic,’ may not give you the same warm and fuzzy feeling a real life Valentine will, but a couple of Jaegerbombs could certainly heat things up a little. Two by two the patrons seemed to leave in pairs til finally we closed the bar. Everyone it seems… went home happy.

I may not have built lasting marriages and unions, but Jenn Sterger helped find someone’s Mrs. right (now) that night. Sometimes people need a little help from their friends and friendly neighborhood bartenders to get past their “Kyles” and demons, and get back out into the dating pool. And I had seemingly accomplished just that. I left the bar sometime after three AM, and spent the rest of the evening on my bathroom floor, hugging the toilet, and battling my flu. Ugh. It may not be a boy, but hey.. at least it was something to kiss.

That kids, is how I survived another Valentine’s Day in the trenches. After all, love is a battlefield. And while we may not win every battle, we will certainly win the war.