How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  Ruby and her new boyfriend, Gary, thought it was a great idea, too. Again, the entertainment director in me was concerned. Our evening had degraded from Steaks and Vodka to Beer and Wings to Hogs & Heifers. New York is a big, hip, glamorous city, and there was no need to be ending our night in a touristy, outdated biker bar. I told them this, but alas, the horses had broken out of the barn and were now planning to gallop all the way downtown to Hogs & Heifers with or without me. Ruby came up, excited.

  “Gary is going to meet us down there; he just had to go pick up one of his friends. Julie—wouldn’t it be an amazing story if Ralph died but I ended up meeting the love of my life right after? Wouldn’t that be great? Gary’s really cute, right?”

  “He is totally cute, Ruby. Totally.” And he was. He seemed really nice and into her, and by God, people meet and fall in love every day of the week, so what the heck?

  Alice, Georgia, and Serena were already outside hailing cabs with Bruce and Todd. Ruby went outside to join them. I decided to go along. My experience with women not used to drinking or staying out late is that by the time they have the cab ride downtown, they’ll be sleepy, slightly nauseous, and ready to go home.

  Unfortunately, that was not the case. In their cab going downtown, Todd told Georgia about how Hogs & Heifers is famous for women getting on the bar and dancing, and then somehow taking off their bras. Demi’s done it, Julia’s done it, Drew’s done it. It’s the thing to do. At least, that’s what Alice told me when I got there, explaining how and why Georgia had managed to already be on top of the bar swinging her bra around. Ruby was screaming and laughing, Serena was hootin’ and hollerin’ and the place was going wild. Hogs & Heifers is famous for its “biker redneck” aesthetic. The walls are covered with hundreds of women’s tossed-off bras for as far as the eye can see. Wherever there might be a tiny bit of wall space left, there’s an American flag or cowboy hat. The bartenders are all women wearing tight denim and even tighter tshirts and the place is packed. Bruce and Todd had disappeared, but I’m sure they were hootin’ and hollerin’ from wherever they were. It’s so odd how all it takes is a few people dancing on a bar to make people feel as if they’re having a hilariously wild night out.

  Now, you have to understand why seeing Georgia on top of a bar was disturbing to me. Remember, I met Georgia when she was already married. And Georgia and Dale were not the couple you’re going to catch groping each other in the kitchen. So I have never actually seen Georgia get her groove on, so to speak, and it wasn’t something I ever really missed seeing. I looked at her on the bar, gyrating and grinding, and I remembered back to a day when I went to the beach with Georgia and her two children, Beth and Gareth. She spent the whole day in the water with them, getting them used to the waves. I helped for a while, playing with them for an hour or two, but she stayed in longer than any adult human being should have to, without a complaint. Then she let them cover her entire body with sand, with only her tired, salty face sticking out. That’s the Georgia I remember—Georgia, the wife and mother of two.

  But now Georgia was allowing herself to unravel. She was single, she was out, and she wanted to have FUN!

  The bar was crowded with lots of guys, many from out of town, some bikers, a couple of cowboys (don’t ask me), all sharing the common trait of having a deep respect for women and their struggles on this planet. Just kidding. Serena then got on the bar as well, beer in hand, drinking and dancing. Okay, I’ll admit it, that was fun to see. Serena, not only in a bar, but on a bar and trying to do a two-step. Alice then got up on the bar, too—my own little White Trash Rockettes. Ruby, however, was now standing by the door, checking her cell phone constantly and looking out onto the street, waiting for Gary. She might as well have been sitting on the windowsill, like her pet cat, Ralph, waiting for her master to arrive. My stomach began to tighten again at the idea that there might be another impending disappointment in store for Ruby.

  The longest country song in the world finally came to an end, and Alice and Serena, as drunk but not completely-out-of-their-minds women do, got off the bar. Georgia, however, stayed, not yet ready to leave the spotlight. A large biker man in his fifties, with a bushy gray beard and long gray hair, helped Serena off the bar. I overheard him ask her if he could buy her a drink.

  She said, “Yes, and some ribs would be nice as well.” I don’t quite understand what happened, but somewhere after her first vodka tonic, Serena’s sleeping carnivore awoke, and she turned into a pretty, little werewolf. The biker man told Serena his name was Frankie and he was an art dealer who had just finished a long round of the galleries of Chelsea and came in for a break.

  “Wow, that just goes to show you. I would never have guessed you were an art dealer. I know nothing about people, Frank.” As she spoke she drunkenly slung her arm over Frank’s shoulder. “I’ve been living a sheltered life. And I know nothing. Nothing.”

  Alice had also gotten the attention of a few men. I guess their spotlight dance was like a thirty-second dating advertisement. So, there I was again, worrying about my friends and not having any fun on my own. I started wondering if it would be okay for me to leave. I was tired of being Judge McJudgey, and frankly, I was beginning a downward spiral of worry and fear. What would become of all of us? Would we end up with husbands and children? Would we all stay in New York? What would become of me? Would I just stay at my hateful job, doing work that doesn’t satisfy me, being single, alone, trying to make the best of it for the rest of my life? Is this as good as it’s going to get? A yuppie biker bar on a Saturday night at 2 A.M.?

  But then a guy came up and started talking to me. And that’s all it took to cheer me up. Because, I believe you recall, we are pathetic creatures. He was cute and he picked me to talk to and I was flattered as if I was at my first school dance. I forgot all morose or possibly deep thoughts and just started flirting my ass off.

  “So what brings you to this place?” he asked. His name was David and he was in town from Houston with his buddy Tom. I pointed to Georgia, who was still dancing up a storm.

  “She just split up with her husband and we’re trying to show her a good time.”

  He looked up at Georgia, and he said, “It looks like you did a good job.” As if the universal symbol for having a good time is dancing on a bar swinging your bra around.

  He then said, “I split up with my girlfriend two months ago. It was really rough, so I understand what she’s going through.” Was he really trying to talk seriously with me while “Achy Breaky Heart” was playing and women were taking off their bras on the bar? That’s kind of sweet. We sat down at a table, and began to have a lovely conversation, the kind you can have anywhere at any time when you’re with someone you really like talking to. I told him about our evening and how worried I was about it, and he immediately began to tease me about being a control freak. I love it when they tease. And he talked about being a little bit bossy since he’s the oldest of four, and how much he worries about all his siblings. Cute.

  I believe we were talking for an hour, though it could have been five hours or ten minutes. I couldn’t tell you. I had stopped worrying, thinking, and judging, and was just trying to have a goddamn nice time.

  I finally looked up to see a girl gesturing to Georgia to get off the bar. Yes, Georgia was still on the bar, and for everyone there, the novelty had worn off and they wanted someone else to take advantage of that valuable bartop real estate. I saw Georgia shaking her head as if to say “No fucking way.” In fact, I think I heard her actually say that. I walked over to Georgia and saw that Alice was now bartending, because randomly, Alice knows how to bartend and decided to help out. I saw Serena nodding out in a corner with the biker art buyer. He was holding her so she wouldn’t fall over and while doing so, had a hand firmly over her right breast. I had no idea where Ruby was. Then a guy from the crowd screamed, “Get your tired old ass off the bar, and give that other girl a chance! She’s hotter and younger and you can’t dance for shit!” And the entire b
ar laughed. I turned around to see what asshole said it—and it was David. David whom I was just talking to, David. The cute teaser, David.

  Georgia heard this, and I could see the words hit her ears, go into her brain, and wash across her face. She was mortified. And at this moment, the Georgia I used to know would have sort of crumpled off the bar and run into the bathroom, in tears. But the new Georgia, however humiliated she might have felt, flipped David her middle finger and refused to give up her spot. The hot girl in question was now pissed and started grabbing at Georgia’s calves to pull her off the bar. A very large bouncer, perhaps a giant, got to the bar quickly and tried to keep things calm. And yet Georgia would not get down. She wanted to stay up there and dance to country music until she goddamn felt like coming down. She would stay up there until all her pain was gone and she truly felt attractive and whole and loved again. And if that took her to next Christmas, by God, I think she planned on being up there until then.

  Now Georgia started dancing even more suggestively than she had been, like a stripper on speed. It was about as painful a thing to watch as anything you could imagine. Except for perhaps ten seconds later, when I looked over to see Serena vomiting on herself. Oh yes. I was about to run over to her when I saw Georgia try to kick the bouncer, who then pulled her off the bar. The hot girl took this opportunity to call Georgia a cunt, and Georgia, now flung over the bouncer’s shoulder, managed to seize the hot girl’s hair and tug as hard as she could. The hot girl then slapped Georgia in the face as the bouncer weaved and turned, trying to get these women away from each other. He put Georgia down and one of the hot girl’s friends punched her in the arm.

  This was when Alice jumped across the bar and started throwing punches at the hot girl, the hot girl’s friends, and anyone else who got in her way. You can take the girl out of the fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the girl, and until that moment, I had no idea how good Alice was at actual hand-to-hand combat. Frankly, I was impressed. Not much of a fighter myself, I ran to Serena.

  “Good, you better deal with her. This bitch is fucked up,” the biker art dealer delicately said to me, as he stood up. As if on cue, Serena vomited on herself again. The only saving grace to all this was that she was out cold, so she was spared the humiliation of seeing her entire self covered in half-digested chicken wings and ribs.

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  “Get her to the emergency room. She might have alcohol poisoning.” He looked at her, disgusted.

  Georgia and Alice were still pulling and scratching and swinging. I made my way through the crowd trying to avoid physical injury and managed to scream out to Georgia and Alice that Serena might have to go to the hospital and we had to go. They didn’t need to agree with me on this, because they were promptly dragged by the scruffs of their necks by two other very large men, and basically thrown out onto the street. Frank had deposited Serena outside as well. “Jesus, I’m fucking covered in her fucking vomit. Fuck.” He shook his head and walked back inside. It was a lovely sight to see: Alice and Georgia scratched and bruised and Serena covered in vomit, all underneath a big neon sign that said “Hogs & Heifers.” I realized that I didn’t know where Ruby was, but I had a hunch. I went back in and walked through the crowd to the ladies’ room. I got there to find, exactly as I suspected, Ruby sitting on the bathroom floor, her pretty heart-shaped face crumpled up in pain, her eye makeup dripping down her face. She was sobbing.

  “He didn’t show up. Why would he say he was going to show up if he didn’t mean it?” I sat down on the floor with her, and put my arm around her.

  “How do people do this?” she asked. “How do people keep putting themselves out there when they know they’re probably just going to get hurt? How can anyone deal with that much disappointment? It’s unnatural. We’re not supposed to go through life so exposed. That’s why people get married. Because no one is supposed to go through life that vulnerable. No one is supposed to be forced to meet so many strangers who end up making you feel bad!”

  I had nothing to say to this. I was in complete agreement with her. “I know. It’s brutal, isn’t it?”

  “But what are we supposed to do? I don’t want to be the girl who stays home and cries about her cat. I don’t want to be the one that’s sitting here now! But what can I do? I liked him and I wanted him to come down to the bar like he said he would and he didn’t show up and I’m so disappointed!”

  I scooped Ruby up and walked outside with her. On the way out, I passed David and kind of shoved him. Hard. Made him spill his drink. I was mad at him—he had humiliated my friend Georgia and ended up not being my husband.

  When we got outside, I explained to Ruby what had happened with the fighting and the vomiting. Then Georgia told us Alice had already taken Serena to the hospital. We all hopped in a cab and went to Saint Vincent’s.

  By the time we got there, Serena’s stomach was being pumped, which I have heard is not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination. I was thinking that sounded a little severe until the nurse told me Serena had consumed about seventeen drinks during the course of the evening.

  Why hadn’t I noticed? I was so busy being happy that she was finally letting her hair down, I didn’t even see that she was hazing herself. Alice and Georgia came back from getting treated for their wounds and were covered in bandages like a pair of Roller Derby girls.

  Something was terribly, terribly wrong. We were beautiful, accomplished, sexy, intelligent single women and we were disasters. If there was a “How To” book to write, it should be called “How Not to Be Us.” We were doing it all wrong, this “being single” business, yet I had no clue as to how to do it better.

  As my thoughts were giving way to musings of a better life, I looked over to see two women across from us, very animatedly speaking in French. Both were beautiful, slim, impeccably dressed women in their early forties. One was wearing a brown felt duster with large white stitching on the front side and the other was in a short brown suede coat with fringe. Somehow it worked. I never notice shoes, won’t even bother, but a nice thin overcoat that makes you ignore anything else being worn, well, that impresses me. These perfect ladies were obviously disgusted about something. Which is so French. As I tuned in with my two years of college French, I got the gist of it: the health care in the States is deplorable, this emergency room is filthy, and America basically sucks. I was now curious as to what brought them here. They looked so elegant, so perfect. What could have possibly gone wrong in their lovely French lives to have them wind up in the emergency room? Did one of their friends OD on contempt?

  “Excuse me, is there anything I can do to help?” I tried to appear friendly, but I just felt like being nosy.

  The two women stopped talking and stared at me. The one with the fringe coat looked at Ruby and Alice with complete superiority and said, “Our friend sprained her ankle.” The other one, darting her eyes around us, decided to get curious as well.

  “What brings you here?” she said in her adorable French accent. I was thinking about lying when Alice just blurted it out.

  “We got into a fight with some girls.”

  “They made me get off the bar I was dancing on,” Georgia said. She stared at them as if to say “and I’m ready for another round.” The French women scrunched up their noses as if they’d smelled some bad Brie.

  They looked at each other and spoke in French. It was something like, “American women, have no [something]. Where are their mothers? Did they not teach them [something]?”

  I understood everything but that one word. Damn that I didn’t keep up with my French studies. Oh, fuck it.

  “Excuse me, what does orgueil mean?” I asked, a little confrontationally.

  The one in the long coat looked me straight in the eye and said, “Pride. You American women have no pride.”

  Alice and Georgia sat up straight, ready to rumble. Ruby looked like she was going to cry. But I was interested. “Really? Do all French women
have pride? Do you all walk around proud and dignified all the time?”

  The French women looked at each other and nodded. “Yes, for the most part, we do.” And then they moved to another corner of the emergency room. Ouch. Shamed by the cool French ladies.

  But I really couldn’t argue with them. We were by no means behaving like the strong, independent single women that we were taught we could be. I wondered how we had sunk so low. It’s not as if we didn’t have role models. We did. We had our Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Mary and Rhoda, and so many more. We have image after image of beautiful single women who lead fun, fulfilling, sexy lives. Yet many of us—I won’t say all, I refuse to say all, but many of us—still walk around knowing that we’re barely making the best of the untenable situation of not having romantic love in our lives. We have our jobs and our friends and our passions and our churches and our gyms and yet we still can’t escape our essential nature of needing to be loved and feel close to another human being. How do we keep going when that’s not what life has given to us? How do we date, having to act as if it’s not the be-all and end-all in our lives, while knowing that one great date could change the course of our lives? How do we keep going in the face of all the disappointment and uncertainty? How do we be single and not go crazy?

  All I knew was that I was sick and tired of it all. I was sick of the parties and the clothes and the schedules and the taxis and the phone calls and the drinks and the lunches. I was tired of my job. I was tired of doing something that I hated, but being too scared to do anything about it. I was frankly tired of America, with all our indulgences and our myopia. I was stuck and tired.

  And suddenly I realized what I wanted to do. I wanted to talk to more single women. I wanted to talk to them all over the world. I wanted to know if anyone out there was doing this single thing any better than we were. After reading all the self-help books that I have, it was ironic—I was still looking for advice.