Single and Forced to Mingle

by Melissa Croce

  Your Contribution to the Conversation: It really depends on which series the group is talking about (there are many), but you can say something like how you hope there’s a new movie being made with Chris Pine, although you can’t stand the light flares that J. J. Abrams uses in them (seriously, sometimes I need to put on sunglasses when I watch those movies, although of course I take them off anytime Chris Pine is shirtless). You can turn it back on them and ask what they think of the new series, Star Trek: Discovery and Picard, and that’ll get them going for ages. Oh, and if you really want to rile up the narrow-minded homophobes who might be in your conversation, just keep insisting that Kirk and Spock are gay for each other. It’ll drive them nuts. “They’re in love,” you insist. “Gays in space! Gay rights!”

  WHAT AM I GETTING MYSELF INTO: AN EVENT’S ANATOMY

  So you got an invite to a party. Yay! It’s nice to be thought of, right? Or maybe you don’t care about that kind of thing at all because you don’t suffer from FOMO, in which case, I salute you, because that shit is incurable. But before you say YES, stop and think about what this event might entail. Skimming the five W’s, checking your calendar, and RSVP-ing immediately is a reckless, if not downright foolish, idea. This might sound weird, but conjure up both your ninth-grade English teacher and your inner wilderness scout, because it’s always best to do some critical analysis before you know what you’re getting into, and how you can then prepare for it.

  Perhaps you feel I’m overreacting, but think about your best friend’s/roommate’s/sister’s birthday party and how you thought it’d be a great time, because, hey! you love that person and they’re awesome and so their party must be, too. But planning a party is a delicate business, and instead of looking great and feeling great the whole night, you ended up with running mascara, a broken right shoe, and were $150 in the hole (and that’s not even mentioning the god-awful hangover you woke up with the day after).

  So think before you speak, and if you need help, you can always phone a friend (but don’t phone the friend whose party it is, obviously):

  Yo

  What’s up?

  I need some advice

  Hit me

  Remember my friend, Vicky? I got an invite to her birthday party & am deciding whether or not I should go

  I’m guessing you’re free that night

  Yup. I guess I could lie to get out of it, but I hate doing that

  And it could be fun? Sometimes I have fun at her parties

  True, but aren’t they so elaborate? And time-consuming. And expensive

  Yeah…

  Ok, break down this party for me then

  Ok

  So she wants to start off at that new bar downtown, Foxtrot

  The trendy one that was just reviewed in the Times?

  Yup, that’s the one

  Ok, so you know the drinks are going to be pricey. Is it at least during Happy Hour?

  Nope, 7 pm

  Ouch

  Yeah. Then onto Granite & Oak, the farm-to-table restaurant on the other side of town

  Oh, God. It’s going to take you FOREVER to get there

  Y U P

  You’re not eating until like 10 pm, if you’re lucky

  Also, I hope everyone in the party has Venmo

  Me, too

  Oh, and did I mention I’ll be the only single person there?

  Yeah, unless Vicky tries to set you up again with another one of her boyfriend’s fraternity brothers

  PLEASE DON’T REMIND ME

  How likely is it that she’ll try again?

  Pretty likely!! She’ll want to make sure I’m “having fun” aka have a dance partner for when we go to that dance club, Flit, after

  OH GOD, A DANCE CLUB?! There’s gonna be a cover & everything, I bet

  Yeah, so if Finance Bro #4 could cover it, that would be great

  *sigh* she means well

  Ok, so to summarize: the entire party consists of non-subsidized drinks, a car to dinner, dinner itself, a car to the club, club cover, probably more drinks, then a car home?

  Yeah, I think that’s everything

  And you probably won’t get home until like, 3 am

  … Yeah

  So forget going to the gym or meal prepping or doing laundry the next day. You’re just going to be in bed, recovering

  Ok, rude!

  I’m not being rude, I’m being realistic! Isn’t that why you asked me for advice?

  Which I’m now regretting!

  Lol sounds like the only thing you’ll be regretting is going to this party

  How pissed would Vicky be if you didn’t go? Like, you don’t have to LIE per se, just say vaguely that you can’t come but will make it up to her with a nice dinner just the two of you?

  That could work, but IDK, I feel guilty not just going because I don’t want to…

  Ok, here’s my advice:

  Maybe she would take a dinner with just the two of you better than you trying to weasel your way into only going to part of this all-night extravaganza

  You’re right, she’d be pissed if I didn’t stay for the whole thing

  Or you could suck it up and go to the whole thing

  Because sometimes being a good friend means doing whatever your BFF wants to make them happy, and sometimes it means recognizing your own limits and finding another way to celebrate that will make them happy and not completely wreck your weekend/make you broke, hungover, and miserable. Your call!

  You’re right

  UGH, you’re right and I hate it

  But you still come to me for advice! LOL

  Good luck!

  Thanks, either way I need it

  VII. F*** This, Actually

  Being an adult is hard; playing nice even in the face of mind-numbingly boring events and invasive personal questions is even harder. Sometimes you’re only thirty seconds away from literally running away, packing up your essentials and scurrying off to the woods to be a hermit. I’m not saying that’s a terrible idea, but don’t you think you’d miss running water and electricity? Sometimes a Pity Party is a good enough catharsis to keep those hermit dreams at bay a little longer.

  WORD PROBLEMS

  To quote everyone’s favorite scientist, Bill Nye, consider the following:

  If a typical family gathering lasts three hours and you have four nosy aunts, how many times will you be set up per half hour per relative? (Other factors to solve for: the one aunt who is relentless in her questioning, the one aunt who steamrolls over any answers you give, the one aunt who gets easily distracted, the one aunt who forgets which niece you are.)

  Your best friend and her husband have become those people and thrown a gender reveal party (theme on the banner: “Stud or Starlet?”). If you spend x amount of minutes having the gender binary thrown at you relentlessly, at what y decibel will you finally scream?

  Let’s say your second cousin Natalie shows up late to your great-grandfather’s funeral wearing all white, including a tight tank top, ripped jeans, and brand-new Air Jordans. Her baby daddy and crying, grubby toddler are with her. Taking all factors into account, how many times over the course of the wake, church service, reception, and family only after-dinner will you be asked when you’re going to settle down and have a nice family like Natalie?

  Tonight’s mandatory quarterly office party is also tripling as your boss’s engagement celebration and your coworker’s baby shower. Considering the pitying looks you’re being given for your constant singledom, how many glasses of cheap wine do you need to consume per sixty minutes in order to achieve the optimal loose buzz while still being able to sober up quickly enough to hightail it out of there as soon as the party’s over? (You are not being paid overtime.)

  If your stepbrother Jeremy has been married three times before the age of forty to women named Keely, Kylie, and Kayleigh, what are the odds that you are definitely going to call his current wife the wrong name?

  It’s Holiday/Engagement Season. If your best frien
d gets engaged on Thanksgiving, your ex on Christmas Day, and your nemesis on New Year’s Eve, how likely is it that by Valentine’s Day you’ve deleted all social media apps?

  You’re a little tipsy, at home, on a Friday night, and you know what that means: swiping time on various dating apps. If twenty people message you, what percentage of them are in an open relationship and looking for someone to join their throuple; want someone to “go on adventures with,” aka a lot of outdoor sporting trips; like to fish; or are on the rebound from a long-term relationship?

  FAKE BEAUTY PRODUCTS FOR EVERY TYPE OF CRISIS

  Like a lot of people who’ve become enamored with/suckered into the Self-Care Scene/Scheme (that is to say, self-care is absolutely a healthy habit that people should embrace in whatever form is meaningful for them, but let’s be clear: like many things, Capitalism™ has overtaken it), going to LUSH has become a semiregular staple in my life. Stepping into the fragrance-saturated store, with its black walls, large sinks, and many products, has become a treat in which I indulge during a variety of times: before business trips, after business trips, birthdays (my own and others’), major holidays, stressful weeks, and the list goes on. Whether it’s a product that’s part of my daily routine or one that’s just for Special Occasions/Emergencies only, 80 percent of the time LUSH can cure all woes (and to be clear, this is #not an #ad, I just really like LUSH). Someone get me on the phone with LUSH’s CEO, because I have ideas for products that could get them all the way to 100 percent:

  Memory Dissolve Bath Bomb: Soak in the frothy delights of this eye-catching orange and buttercup-yellow bath bomb when your day has gone so spectacularly wrong that you wish you could forget it—literally! Instead of rehashing it repeatedly in your brain to see what you could have done/said differently or with your therapist, you would really just like to forget that you ever had to endure the period that started with a rude person bumping into you, spilling coffee on your favorite shirt (that you meant to get dry-cleaned for months and finally did, and you were just congratulating yourself on being a Responsible Adult!), continued with absolutely bombing (see what I did there) your presentation at work, followed up with getting ghosted by that Tinder match who you actually were looking forward to meeting. Just dump this li’l baby in the bath and let it dissolve, along with all of your horrified memories of this day.

  Scream Cream: Slather on this calming lotion after enduring people for an excruciating length of time and/or when the mere idea of interacting with another human being makes you want to screech at the top of your lungs. Infused with the soothing extract of Solitude, the healthy dose of the Sense of Peace You Feel After Spending an Entire Weekend in Your Bedroom will do wonders for your sense of patience and tolerance for others. And the best part? It will actually repel people from looking at or speaking to you for a solid twelve hours. You won’t be invisible, per se, but you will definitely be left alone if you go out in public. Oh, and there’s a little bit of chamomile and oat milk in it—for dry skin, obviously.

  Healing Heartbreak Body Scrub: Sometimes when your heart gets broken, it helps to wallow a bit—cry it out, eat some chocolate, go full-on Elle Woods in your breakup misery. And sometimes, you want to get over it as soon as possible. The Healing Heartbreak Body Scrub can help with the latter, at least a little bit! Rub this into your skin after a bad breakup, romantic, platonic, or otherwise, and while it can’t heal your broken heart completely, it will help scrub away the memories and feelings you have about that person. Made with a healthy dose of Closure and Hindsight, this is a surefire way to jump-start the process of Moving On.

  ASMR Hair Mask: Stressed out? Had a long day? Look no further than the relaxing properties of the ASMR Hair Mask. Massage it into your hair and leave it on as long as you like: immediately you’ll start to feeling the “tingling” sensation commonly associated with ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response. All of the tension and tiredness will fade away as the mask works its pseudoscientific ASMR magic. Not to mention, when you eventually wash it out your hair will be extra voluminous, too. Win-win!

  Energize! Shower Gel: Waking up after your third awful date in a row is hard to do, and people have a variety of coping mechanisms that tend to not be the healthiest for them, like lots of coffee, soda, or caffeine pills with alarming names like Jet-Alert. Lather up with this gel while you’re taking your morning shower and feel a rush of energy to jump-start your day! Infused with citrus, Adrenaline, and a smidgen of Insomnia, the effects of this gel linger for ten hours and can get you through any pointless meeting, long commute, or droning coworker! It’s also available in body spray form, perfect to spritz on as an evening boost before a big date or boring dinner party.

  TELL ME HOW YOUR LAST RELATIONSHIP ENDED AND I’LL TELL YOU WHICH CHAIN RESTAURANT YOU SHOULD EAT YOUR FEELINGS AT

  Before you decide to skip this section, hear me out: Chain restaurants are perfect places to go after a relationship has ended. Once you’ve gotten tired of takeout and being cooped up in your room, going to a chain restaurant for sustenance is a great next step. Why? Several reasons:

  It gets you out of your house, where you might have been going a little stir-crazy.

  It’s not fancy, but it is a step up from takeout and the drive-through, and you’ll need to put in some amount of effort, like putting on pants. Baby steps.

  Chain restaurants are the opposite of romantic, so while I’m sure there will be some “date nights,” there won’t be many and they won’t be very gushy, so you can hopefully avoid PDA and romance triggers for a bit.

  Your ex will not be there. Why would your ex be there? They wouldn’t be (unless it’s their favorite restaurant, in which case, if that’s true, then I have more questions).

  If you broke up because they cheated on you, go to Red Robin: First of all, screw your ex, because you’re amazing, and how dare they cheat on you! Second of all, Red Robin is the best place to go when someone you emotionally depended upon lied to you and betrayed you because Red Robin is the exact opposite: Red Robin is dependable. Red Robin is reliable. Red Robin is solid. When you go into a Red Robin, you know exactly what to expect, no matter which location you go to, no matter if it’s been several years since you’ve set foot in one. The menu rarely changes, or if it does, you can always count on your favorites being there: the strawberry lemonade in the swirly glass; the perfectly cooked steak fries with a healthy sprinkling of the special seasoning blend on them; the rich chocolate milkshakes with the metal tin can on the side. In a world of chaos, we can only be certain of these things: life, death, taxes, and Red Robin.

  If you broke up because of long distance, go to Olive Garden: Perhaps this seems counterintuitive, but when a relationship dissolves because of distance, the best thing to do is create even more distance by just leaving for a while and getting out of your space. If you’re unable to actually do this, then the next best thing to do is to go to Olive Garden and pretend you’re in Italy for an hour and a half. Is the fake Tuscan villa decor authentic and convincing? Absolutely not! But they have a pretty solid happy hour, and you won’t feel too guilty about the carbo-loading you’re going to do when you devour four servings of the Never Ending Pasta Bowl special, because it also comes with unlimited salad! It’s the healthiest you’ve eaten in the weeks post-breakup, and as Oprah once told Lindsay Lohan, that’s something to celebrate.

  If you broke up because they were a loser, go to Red Lobster: When you finally kick your scrub of an ex to the curb, you need to treat yourself, and that’s why you’re going to go to the crème de la crème of chain restaurants: Red Lobster. Even if you don’t like seafood, at least go and order a large Lobsterita, a margarita the size of your head, and stuff a dozen or two of their delicious cheddar biscuits in your mouth. If you do like seafood, get yourself whatever you want, even if it’s the lobster itself; since that fool clearly didn’t treat you right, you need to treat yourself way better than they ever did. Plus, using a crab cracker to crush the shell is a satisfying
and cathartic way to relieve tension.

  If you broke up because there was no chemistry, go to TGI Fridays: You wanted to make it work so badly, because they were wonderful and lovely and you always had so much fun when you went out on dates, but unfortunately halfway through one said date you realized that you felt and acted exactly as you did whenever you were with friends, which is to say, completely platonically. That epiphany had you realizing the sex that was perfunctory and fine was never really going to get better, was it, and that it was better to end this thing now rather than drag it out, hoping it would get hotter someday.

  But you know what you’ll always have amazing chemistry with? Their mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce (if you’re lactose intolerant, their chicken strips are bomb, too). Tell me, what’s more sensual than cheesy goodness oozing out of a perfectly crisp exterior? Pull a Liz Lemon and work on that night cheese, consoling yourself with the knowledge that one day you will find someone who will do you right.