How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  Alan looked at Georgia like she was from another planet. Or the United States. He laughed and shook his head. I was now completely engaged in this conversation.

  “Really? Why not?” I asked.

  Alan took a drink from his beer and said, “We men, we have to stick together.”

  Georgia raised her eyebrows. “Are you kidding me? Even if it’s your sister?” Alan just shrugged and drank from his beer. Georgia looked at him and then at Caroline. “I don’t understand. If brothers aren’t even looking out for their sisters—then who is?”

  Caroline also shrugged. “I guess no one.”

  Georgia and I stared at each other, depressed. I checked my cell phone and saw that it was 3 A.M. We all agreed it was time to go.

  We were at the exit buying CDs of the music we had just heard when I saw Paulo make his way through the crowd. He seemed to be looking for someone. I walked out the door and onto the street. I looked back to see if I could get a last glimpse at him. Just then, he walked out of the club and landed his sights right on me. He walked up to me and put his hand out.

  “Hello, my name is Paulo. You are very beautiful.” My eyes widened and I started to laugh, looking around to see if Flavia had set this up.

  “Well, thank you…my name is…” and before I had a chance to say another word, Paulo put his velvety lips on mine. Softly, gently, as if he had all the time in the world and had waited his whole life for this moment. When he let me go I blushed and kept my eyes to the ground, not wanting to look up and see who might have seen.

  “Give me your cell phone, please,” he demanded sweetly. As if in a trance, I took it out of my bag and handed it to him. I kept my eyes directly on his shoes, while he programmed his name and his number into my phone, gave it back to me, and walked away. When I got the nerve to look up, Flavia, Alan, Caroline, Frederico, Anna, and Georgia were all looking at me, laughing and clapping. Even Marco began to laugh.

  I walked up, blushing.

  “Well, at least one of us got kissed this evening,” Georgia said, smiling. And at that, we went back under the aqueduct and to our hotel. The party, at least for tonight, was over.

  When I woke up around noon, Georgia was sitting at the little table in our suite, flipping through something, drinking a cup of coffee.

  “What are you doing?” I asked groggily, sitting up in bed.

  “I’m looking through a portfolio of male prostitutes,” Georgia said, calmly.

  I rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. I thought I’d try again. “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I’m looking through a portfolio of male prostitutes I got from an agency. I had to pay a hundred bucks just to look at it.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  Georgia kept flipping pages. “I asked Flavia about it last night, and she gave me the name of an agency. I called them this morning and they sent it over.”

  “Georgia, you’re not really going to have sex with a prostitute.”

  She looked up. “Why not? Wouldn’t it be great to have sex with someone and have absolutely no expectations. You couldn’t feel bad about them not calling, because they’re a prostitute.”

  “But don’t you think it’s kind of…”

  “What, gross?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “Well, maybe that’s something we have to get over. I think it’s a great idea, paying for sex. I know a lot of women who really need to have sex. I think it would be good if we could get past the whole gross thing.”

  “And the whole AIDS thing, and the whole ‘aren’t they all gay’ thing?”

  Georgia put her coffee down. “Listen. I don’t want to be one of those single women who hasn’t had sex in three years. I want the charge of someone on top of me. Kissing me. Holding me. But I don’t want to have sex with assholes who pretend they like me when they really don’t. I think hiring a prostitute is the way to go.”

  “But you’re paying them. Doesn’t that take the fun out of it?”

  Georgia shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe.” She was still formulating her theory. “That’s what I want to find out. Because I think that’s how to be single. To try and stay sexually active, at any cost.”

  “Literally at any cost,” I couldn’t resist adding, still appalled. “It’s different for women. The men are going to be penetrating us. It’s weird.”

  “Julie, come look at these guys. They’re not gross. They’re hot.”

  I sighed and swung my feet out of the bed, traipsing over to the kitchen table in my flannel boxer shorts and t-shirt. Georgia passed the book to me.

  “Well, I thought I’d have bagels for breakfast, but I guess it’s going to be stud muffins instead,” I quipped.

  Georgia wasn’t amused. I looked at the photos. There were shots of men in suits, and then the same men with their shirts off. As I flipped through the pages, I had to admit that while they were cheesy, in a hunky, coiffed, and slightly gay kind of way, they weren’t terribly gross.

  And I could imagine the innocent side to all this. Maybe they were just men who happened to possess an innate talent for pleasuring women, a talent that they’d decided to use for financial gain. Maybe they thought of themselves as sex social workers or extremely personal trainers. Perhaps because it was men, we didn’t have to see this paid exchange as a kind of victimization. These men on page after page in suits and ties and bathing suits looked like the pleasant male strippers we saw in Paris. Overly built, a little corny, and willing to please. Of course, looking at them in another way, they also looked like they could be your average neighborhood serial killer.

  “I guess they don’t look so bad,” I said.

  “I told you. I’m going to do it. If no one kisses me tonight, I’m making the call first thing in the morning. I want to have some kind of physical contact with a man before I leave tomorrow night.”

  I kept my mouth shut, thinking about how I would have to get someone to kiss her tonight or else. Georgia added, “Flavia invited us to a big party tonight, at some samba school. I told her we’d love to go. She’s picking us up at eight.”

  “Does that mean someone’s going to teach us how to samba?” I asked hopefully.

  “Well, if they don’t, you can always ask my husband’s girlfriend, Melea, when you get home. I bet she has quite a following,” Georgia said as she sipped her coffee. “I wonder if it’s going to be a whole room full of husband-stealing samba teachers. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  She raised her right hand and pushed her hair behind her ear. I had never woken up with Georgia before, and without makeup and with the sun hitting her face, she looked young and so beautiful. At that moment, her future seemed to hold so much possibility for happiness and light. I wished she could have felt it. But I knew, as she thought about Dale and Melea, that I was the only one in the room who could see what was possible for my divorcing, grieving, funny, slightly crazy friend.

  Back in the States

  Wearing Jim’s pajama bottoms and a tank top, Alice stood in Jim’s kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, pondering this whole phenomenon of regular sex. As she drank the water, she admitted to herself that there was now a fly in the ointment.

  Having sex with someone all the time only works if you are truly excited about them. Then it’s just the world’s best thing. But if you happen not to be in love with that someone, it might become a problem. The last couple of times Alice and Jim had sex, she realized she was bored. He didn’t do anything wrong, he was perfectly good at it all. But she was simply not passionate about him. As she stood at the counter, she thought about how dreary it would be to have passionless sex for the rest of her life.

  Alice wanted desperately for it to work out. And Alice is a problem solver; there’s not a difficult situation in the world she can’t make right. If she knew more about geophysics, she’d beat this whole global warming thing in a heartbeat. As Alice put the glass in the sink, she was convinced that the problem of having passionate sex with Jim ju
st simply couldn’t be that hard to solve.

  Alice walked down the hallway and into Jim’s bedroom. Jim was in bed, reading. He looked up and smiled.

  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  “Hey,” Alice said. Even in Jim’s pajama bottoms and a tank top, she looked hot and Jim couldn’t help but notice. Alice looked at him for a long moment, wondering what passion actually was; what are its ingredients, what are its component parts? When describing someone, people always say, “They’re a very passionate person.” But what does that mean? Alice walked over to her side of the bed and sat on it, her back to Jim as she thought. It means they are excitable, she thought. They are enthusiastic. They get worked up over things they believe in strongly. Jim put his hand on her back and stroked it. Alice was excited about being in a relationship, excited about not dating, about feeling secure. She was excited about what a nice man Jim was and how much he seemed to love her. Alice closed her eyes and tried to direct all that excitement to her groin area. After all, emotion is just energy. So she could take that energy and make it sexual. She felt Jim’s hand on her back and let her thoughts flow. It’s nice to be touched. It’s nice to have sex. She turned around to Jim and put her hands on each side of his face and kissed him deeply. She climbed on top of him and pressed her body forcefully against his. He put his hands under her shirt to touch her breasts. She sighed with pleasure.

  Alice smiled to herself. She didn’t need to be passionate about Jim to have passionate sex. Because she’s a passionate person. She believes passionately in rights for the underprivileged. She is passionate about being against the death penalty. She is passionate about world peace. She kept kissing Jim deeply as she hugged him tightly. She tilted her body just enough to roll Jim on top of her. She pulled off his t-shirt. She tugged off his boxer shorts. Jim took off her pajama bottoms and put his hand in between her legs. Alice gasped with excitement. She thought about how she was going to have someone do that for the rest of her life. She gasped again, louder. Jim could not have been more excited—he had never seen Alice like this. He was hard, breathing heavily as he entered her. Alice wrapped her legs around his back and tugged at his hair as they kissed—passionately, tongues and teeth and lips, and shallow breaths. Alice was moaning loudly. She loved penises, she loved penises inside her and she was going to love Jim, who grabbed her and lifted her up to him. She was straddling him now, as they sat up and were rocking back and forth. He was kissing her neck and as Alice was moving up and down, a thought flashed across her mind: how will I ever keep this up? They kept moving and Alice was groaning, concentrating on coming when another thought flashed across her mind: this is taking a lot of energy. Jim kept thrusting and kissing while Alice had the best idea she’d ever had in her entire life. An idea that made her understand how it was all possible, how she could keep this up forever and ever and how it wouldn’t have to take so much energy: she could just think about Brad Pitt. It was an obvious choice but she didn’t care. She went through his entire oeuvre. She thought about Brad Pitt’s slim torso in Thelma and Louise, his muscular torso in Fight Club, and his really muscular torso in Troy. She thought about how he threw Angelina Jolie against a wall in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. As she got close to coming, Alice realized she could think about Brad Pitt for the rest of her life. It was a free goddamn country and no one would ever need to know. She could think about Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp and even Tom Cruise—who she knew was weird, but she loved buff torsos, no matter what the torso happened to believe in. When her inner passion wasn’t enough, they would always be waiting in the wings. And as she imagined Brad Pitt in gold metal armor jumping through the air in slow motion, she came.

  “Oh my God!” Alice screamed. Jim only had two more thrusts in him until he came as well—he had been having a hard time containing himself up to that point, what with all the excitement going on.

  “Oh my God,” Alice said, catching her breath as a new thought flashed across her mind: I can do this! I am really going to be able to do this.

  Now, as any dieter knows, the minute you tell yourself that you’re not allowed something, that is precisely when you can’t stop thinking about it. Serena hadn’t had sex in four years and her sex drive, due to lack of attention, had driven far, far away. So the minute she was told she would never be allowed to have sex again, well, that was just the thing to kick-start her lifeless libido.

  Serena was now stationed at a yoga center in the East Village. This particular yoga organization had branches all over the world and Serena managed to get stationed in a beautiful brownstone less than two miles from where she used to live. Walking around the East Village with her shaved head and her orange outfits, she was aflame with the most dirty thoughts imaginable. Each morning, as she sat cross-legged on the floor of the meditation room, the scent of incense wafting through the air, her mind raced with thoughts of naked flesh and men on top of her. She had a recurring dream in which she was walking down a New York City street and just kept grabbing men and making out with them as they walked by. She would wake up sweaty and shocked. Serena had just assumed that for her, taking a vow of celibacy was merely a formality. This deluge of pornographic thoughts took her completely off guard.

  That is why it was so easy for everything to happen the way it did. One of the jobs given to Serena, now known as Swami Durgananda, was to wake up a little earlier than everyone else and prepare the altar plate. This meant getting up at 5:45, cutting up some fruit or arranging some dates and figs on a platter, and then putting it on the altar as an offering to the Hindu gods before group meditation began at 6:00. And every morning, Swami Swaroopananda, otherwise known as the “hot swami,” would be at the kitchen table, reading a book and looking hot. At 5:45 in the morning. Serena wasn’t yet sure what the rules of engagement were for swamis at the center, but as she opened the refrigerator to decide what to offer up to the gods, she decided to say something.

  “Is this when you normally like to read? Early in the morning?” Serena whispered softly.

  He looked up at Serena and smiled. “Yes, it seems like the only time I have to read is at this hour.”

  “Wow. You actually wake up early to read. That’s impressive.” She took out a pineapple and put in on the counter. She got out a long knife and started skinning it. He went back to his book. As she chopped up the pineapple she would steal glances at him. For a man of Vishnu he was really built. Was that really just from doing yoga? Were swamis allowed to go to the gym? She didn’t think so. His face was hard to describe, but it was the face of a real man. His head wasn’t completely shaved—it was more of a very close buzz cut, and it was a look he was made for. He looked like he could maybe have been an army sergeant—tall, with a muscular chest and long, ripped arms. And his orange swami robes, instead of making it all seem silly, made him seem, well, super orange hot.

  They would talk only briefly, but Serena didn’t need much to fan her flames of desire. Each morning she got up a little earlier just to talk to him. And every morning, he’d be sitting on a stool at the counter, quietly reading, little circular glasses on the tip of his nose.

  Tuesday at 5:30 A.M.:

  “Good morning, Swami Swaroopananda.”

  “Good morning, Swami Durgananda.”

  “How’s your book? Are you enjoying it?”

  “Yes, it’s one of the better ones I’ve read about Pranayama.” He put his book down this time. “By the way, how are you adjusting to your new life?”

  Serena made her way to the refrigerator. “It’s been surprising, some of the things that come up, you know, when you’re trying to calm the mind.”

  Swami Swaroopananda crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Serena. “Really? Like what?”

  Serena felt her face get red and she wondered if, without hair, her entire head would blush as well.

  “Oh, just the flotsam and jetsam of a cluttered mind, you know. So, how long have you been a part of this organization?”

  And then they began to really talk. He tol
d her that he was from New Zealand (that’s the accent) and he’d been a swami for eight years. He told her about how his meditation practices had gotten so intense, the experiences he was having were so blissful, that he felt compelled to take the next step and become a renunciate. Serena wanted to know more. While they talked, Serena assembled quite an abundant offering plate.

  Wednesday at 5:15 A.M.:

  “Good morning, Swami Swaroopananda.”

  “Good morning, Swami Durgananda. How are you this morning?”

  “Very well, swami.” Serena started getting out flour and honey and walnuts. She was going to make her famous banana nut bread for the offering this morning. After all, she had to do something with all her time while pretending she wasn’t flirting with a man of the cloth, forgetting entirely that she was now a woman of the cloth herself. Besides, she reasoned to herself, what better way to start the day than with the nice aroma of banana bread floating around them while they meditated? And besides, they could have the rest of it for breakfast. She began mashing the bananas in a bowl.

  “How is your meditation practice going? You mentioned a lot of thoughts coming up, yesterday. Do you have any questions about the practice itself?”

  The only question Serena had now was how she could have sex and still be celibate, but she knew that wasn’t something she should say. So she made something up.

  “Well, yes, I do, swami. When I meditate, I feel my thoughts slow down; I feel calmer, more at peace, more in touch with a higher power, so that’s good. But I don’t have any visions. No white lights, no colors swirling in my mind. I’m just meditating, you know?” Serena was now pouring flour and sugar in another bowl. She cracked an egg and started mixing it up by hand.

  Swami Swaroopananda closed his book. “That’s perfectly normal. There shouldn’t be a goal to your meditation; that’s the antithesis of the practice. The point is merely to be still. Everyone’s experience is going to be different. The last thing you should be hoping for is fireworks when you’re meditating.”