Why My Friend Thought I Was Gay April 30, 2010
Posted by Onely in Dating, Everyday Happenings.Tags: driving with friend, single coworker, suspect friend gay
9 comments
My friend at work told me the other day that he used to wonder if I was gay (I’m not). Why did he start to think that? Because he heard me tell a story where I said, “My friend and I were driving around the other day and happened to find this great Thai restaurant.”
Um. Sounds pretty gay, right? Yeah.
My coworker is a very intelligent, funny, kind person who just happens to get wierd ideas in his head sometimes. In this case, his thought process went like this:
Hm. Christina and ‘her friend’ were ‘driving around’. You don’t usually ‘drive around’ with someone unless you have enough time to spend together to do something totally innocuous and timewasting like ‘driving around’, and that would only happen if you were in a romantic relationship with them. And if she were in a romantic relationship with a man, she would have said ‘my boyfriend’, but because she just said ‘my friend’, her partner must be a woman.
I was interested in his assumption that someone wouldn’t just “drive around” with a platonic friend. Since when did driving around become an exclusive habit for couples?
I don’t actually remember where or with whom I was driving on the fateful day of the Thai restaurant. My mystery friend and I might have not actually been driving around aimlessly at all–I may have just misspoken when telling the story to my colleague. Or perhaps we were driving aimlessly. All carbon footprint discussion aside, I do have some friends with whom I could imagine myself ending up “driving around”. Probably it would have to be a pretty good friend, to be with in such a spontaneous and undirected environment.
Do people tend to think that friendships are not strong enough for such “driving around”, but romantic relationships are? My coworker seemed to feel that way. What other activities do people think are fine for couples, but unusual for friends to do together?
I’ll answer my own question: getting tickets together. Apparently this same coworker became further convinced I might be gay because I sent out an email to some friends inviting them to the D.C. Improv, and I told everyone to get their own tickets, because “Susan and I already have our tickets”. This was because Susan and I regularly go to the Improv–it’s Our Thing. We get our tickets, and then ask other people if they want to come. But somehow the way I worded the email made my coworker–who really is a lovely person and I feel bad blogging about him behind his back–think that Susan and I were a couple.
My theory is that so many couples overuse the “we” construction that they have effectively co-opted it exclusively for couples’ use, and therefore we single people can’t even use “we” without being presumed to be part of a couple (gay or otherwise).
Christina
Photo credit: Philippe Leroyer
Worldwide Onelers: The Arabs April 3, 2010
Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.Tags: Arab singles, gregarious introvert, singles around the world
7 comments
Is the Onely mindset inborn or acquired? My Arabic language teacher and another professor giving a lecture on Arab culture each separately made this statement about life in the Middle East:
It’s considered weird and inappropriate to spend time alone. If you’re in a household, don’t shut yourself up in your room unless you’re studying.
The two professors did not know each other, and their classes had nothing to do with each other. Yet they both took pains to point out this cultural phenomena, and they both used the same example of not holing up in one’s room. I began to think that being Onely in the Arab world might be a very different experience and mission than being Onely in Northern Virginia–aleast, if you’re a Oneler who needs private time to recharge. I’m a Gregarious Introvert, which means that although I enjoy being with people, I get my best recharging done when I am alone lying on the carpet, staring at the ceiling and singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” while the cats walk on my stomach.
If I were an Arab version of myself, would I still need to decompress by sitting alone in my room? Or would I be accustomed to spending my downtime in the living room with my extended family and friends, only retreating to my private quarters to sleep?
Copious readers, is it easier to be Onely in some parts of the world than in other parts?
–Christina
Photo credit: Sam and Ian
The Promised Butt-Post March 18, 2010
Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.Tags: bicillin shot, butt injection, single medical care
17 comments
Yay, it’s so good to be writing again! I have missed Onely and our little blogger community! In my last post I promised to write about butts, and now I am. But I have to be careful how I tag this post, in order to avoid creating the kind of accidental pornography that has warped our Most Popular Posts lists, for example: “Hard Core Oneler: Dick Proenneke” and “Animal Sex.”
But this post isn’t about sexy airbrushed porn butts. It’s about my butt, and no amount of airbrushing will get the lumps out of these cheeks. Why? Because my butt has been getting shots of antibiotics. Thick cold serum. From needles the size of cocktail straws. Administered slow as molasses to mitigate the pain of pressurized tissues. Every third day. But the problem is (no, we still haven’t gotten to the problem yet) I cannot give these shots to myself, and sometimes the third day falls on a weekend when the doctor’s office is closed.
Before beginning the treatment, my doctor asked me, “Do you have a friend you can ask to give you the shots?” My question to you, Copious Readers, is do you have a friend whom you could ask to give you shots in the butt? Because my answer to the doctor was, “Hell no I don’t have any friend I can ask to give me a shot in the butt!“
I’m not sure whether I meant, “Hell no; I’m not close enough to any of my friends for that”, or “Hell no, I love my friends but wouldn’t trust them not to sever a nerve or burst an artery”, or “Hell no, I’m not showing my stretch marks to anyone who hasn’t had Gross Anatomy 101″. But in any case, the result was the same: I had to scrounge around to figure out how to get my weekend shots.
“Sometimes,” said the doctor’s office manager Maura (short for Mauron), “Our patients who don’t have anyone can find an Urgent Care facility that will administer the shot for them.” Oh no, I thought, I don’t have anyone.
If I had a significant other, I would be expected to ask him to give me the shot, and he would be expected to give it. Gladly. With no embarrassment or hem-hawing. Regardless of how solid, or not solid, the relationship might be in daily life. But in any other relationship the request “Please can you stick this needle in my heinie?” would be fraught with overtones–do I expect my friend to come to my house? Do I go to their house? Do they feel comfortable punching a needle through my skin and tissue? Seeing my stretch marks? My stretched-out undies? No, no, no, no, and no.
Turns out, my mom came to visit and administered my first weekend injection, making sure to stab me right where I’d asked the doctor to draw with a sharpie: X marks the spot and, subsequently, the golfball-sized lump of liquid and tissue. Moms are on tap for dirty work even more than significant others. But my mom returned to Michigan and I, because I don’t have anyone, found an Urgent Care facility to give me my other weekend shots. Problem solved? Well, mostly, except every now and then I worry who I will call if I fall and break my face.
Still, despite the occasional inconvenience, I like being single. I’m not going to cultivate a relationship just so I can have a shot buddy, just as I won’t install a sprinkler system on the off chance that my house will catch fire. Or something.
–Christina
photo credit: Steven Depolo
Onely on Change.org: Single? Rent a Date! February 26, 2010
Posted by Onely in As If!, blog reviews, Everyday Happenings, Reviews, We like. . ..Tags: change.org, rent a date
3 comments
This is a lazy woman’s post! Here is a link to my Change.org post about Chinese singles paying people to pose as their significant others. At first glance, it’s a bad idea. It concedes and caters to the maladjusted majority opinion that people need to pair up. (Apparently I have alliteration disease tonight.) At second glance—haven’t you ever wanted to have a boyfriend or girlfriend for one particular event, like that time you were going to the Oscars and didn’t feel like walking down the red carpet alone under the scrutiny of all those pairing-obsessed paparazzi?
Or if date-renting singles aren’t your bag, you can go to the Take Action page on Change.org and find all sorts of petitions and letters you can add your name to. If anyone has an idea for a singles’-rights-themed petition, please let me know. Or go and create your own!
Lisa and I are sort of bumming because we’ve put a couple interesting links up on our Facebook pages, including the NYT article about how there are fewer men available to college women and a Change.org petition against American Apparel’s “best bottoms” contest, and no one really comments on them (except for my friend Nicole, yay Nicole!). But if someone changes their “status” to “in a relationship” then OMG EVERYONE COMMENTS RIGHT AWAY HOW EXCITING CONGRATULATIONS!
–Christina
Photo: AMagill
So I Know This Great Person. . . January 28, 2010
Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings.Tags: office matchmaking, presumptions about singles, single and looking
12 comments
Why do people try to matchmake? Is there a proper way to matchmake? What are matchmaking faux pas? I’m not decrying matchmakers in general. I myself have introduced at least two couples, one of whom (or one of which?) got married. However, in neither case did I accomplish the setup by saying, “Hey, you’re single–I know this great other single person!” Instead, I saw one friend who had a common interest with another friend, and I introduced them from that angle.
My coworker took a different approach. Talking about needing to “find his friend a woman”, he said to me, “You’re single, right?” I would have preferred, “Hey, I have this friend who likes kittens and yoga, so you two would get along–you’re single, right?” I might have even agreed to the setup, for a fun outing. But instead I flinched inside and said, “Yes, single, and happily so.”
“Happily?” he said, and I swear his eyes got wide.
“I don’t really have time,” I said. This statement, while true, was a strategic blunder.
“Time? You work four days a week!” True, that. But I work four days a week because of health issues. I don’t want to share that fact with the office. As I deal with my body issues, I use up a lot of emotional resources that are therefore not available for a romantic relationship.
I didn’t say this to my coworker. I said, “I have other things I have to take care of.” (Pause while he stares with his round blue eyes and I feel as if he sees my four-hour weekend naps and disapproves.) “I like to concentrate on my writing. My Arabic classes.” True, that, also. But why did I feel the need to defend my choice? Am I not allowed to have unstructured free time unless I’m trying to fill it with a boyfriend?
“If someone stellar came along, I might think about it,” I said. That’s not untrue, but the reason I said it was so I would not sound snotty or abrasive or defensive. But at the same time, I wondered–what’s wrong with taking a firm (or mildly offended) stance against being cornered by someone who assumes that because you’re single, you must be “looking”?
Feeling as if I had somewhat capitulated to matrimania (and feeling the flinches of all our Onderful readers), I tried to redeem myself by saying, with a smile, “Right now I just don’t feel any sort of lack in the relationship area.” His eyes were still big, and I felt I wasn’t doing justice to the whole Onely mission (the conversation having caught me by surprise with no preparation time!), so I bolted away back to my own cube.
The conversation shook me up a little more that it probably should have, because it was sort of a double-whammy: My coworker (totally unintentionally) devalued not only my choice of singlehood, but also my choice to have secret four-hour naps on the weekends.
He was just trying to be nice to his friend, though. And he thought I was enough of a quality person that he would introduce me to someone he cares about. Does that make it all ok?
–Christina
photo credit: zetson
Singles Must Show Up In Person! January 10, 2010
Posted by Onely in As If!, Everyday Happenings.Tags: absentee voting criteria, married peoples' rights, singles discrimination, spouse privileges, U.S. government discrimination
13 comments
Here at Onely (and in the singles’ advocacy blogosphere in general) we’re always griping about how the U.S. government provides married people with over 1300 legal privileges that singles don’t get (kudos to Bella DePaulo who first mined the federal statues). Honestly, though, I can only specifically name a few of those 1300 benefits: the ability to draw a deceased partner’s social security; right to pay less capital gains tax (and other taxes); right to piggyback on a partner’s insurance; right to visit and make medical decisions for a partner in the hospital. What are all the other 1,296 rights denied to singles? Copious readers, please let us know!
I’ll start the list with a Married Privilege I recently discovered by accident:
Politicians have been bombarding my mailbox with lit’riture in preparation for Virginia’s upcoming Jan 12 special election to fill a state Senate seat. I received an absentee ballot application from Democrat Dave Marsden. Now, any candidate who sends lit’riture encouraging me to sit at home on my couch and vote instead of going out in the pre-8-a.m. cold to my old elementary school has my full support! However, upon closer examination of the ballot, I realized that I would have to meet at least one of eighteen specific criteria in order to be able to vote from my couch. Here they are (cliffhanger–I have put the most exciting criteria at the end of the list). In order to vote absentee, I would have to be: (more…)
Onely is “Between Boyfriends” December 8, 2009
Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought, Reviews.Tags: between boyfriends, cindy chupak, jen scheff
10 comments
Kindle has thousands of books of essays and other nonfiction available for free sampling. During one twenty-minute highly randomized browsing session, I came upon two interesting examples of singles-bashing, which I have posted below for your reading pleasure. I mention them not in order to b&tch and moan (although that’s always fun too), but rather for two other reasons:
1) The fact that I so easily stumbled upon them shows how common hurtful stereotypes of single people (“singlism”) are in our everyday culture.
2) Reputable publishers printed these blurbs. Erego even widely read, highly educated, lawsuit-leery people either don’t realize they are being discriminatory, or they don’t think it matters. When someone neglects to question discriminatory or disparaging remarks about a subject, it’s often because they take it for granted that the subject is inherently undesirable. Proper usage: “It sucks that you’re sick” or “It sucks that you’re a Nazi”. Improper usage: “It sucks that you’re single”.
Discussion questions:
A) Which of these blurbs below reminds us of how tightly anti-feminism is woven into anti-singlehood rhetoric? Why?
B) Which of these blurbs has multiple personality disorder? Why? (Dec 18 Edit: Fangirl points out–and I agree–that I shouldn’t trivialize MPD by applying it to a book blurb. Readers, feel free to suggest other less lazy adjectives to describe this book blurb!)
So without further ado, here are the blurbs I stumbled across while Kindling. Actually, here’s just a little bit of ado–I want to say that I haven’t actually read either of these books, and I give kudos to both Chupak and Schefft for writing about single women. My beef is with whoever wrote these Kindle blurbs, which may or may not accurately portray the sentiments of the authors:
Chupak, Cindy. The Between Boyfriends Book: A Collection of Cautiously Hopeful Essays. St Martin’s.
There are two things Cindy Chupak really knows about. The first is how to be funny. . . The other thing she really knows about is, well, being ‘between boyfriends.’ You might identify this condition as being ‘single,’ but ‘between boyfriends’ has a much more positive feel, don’t you think? In this witty, truthful, and utterly charming book, Chupak unites her two fields of expertise to provide a handbook for those of us who might find ourselves in this temporary condition. . .
Schefft, Jen. Better Single Than Sorry: A No-Regrets Guide to Loving Yourself and Never Settling. Harper Collins.
Let’s be honest. No woman really wants to be alone for the rest of her life. But does being alone mean you’re doomed to be miserable forever? Definitely not! And does being single have to equal lonely? No way! You can have the best time of your life when you’re single, but you wouldn’t know that from our relationship obsessed society. . . Don’t become a statistic–love yourself and never settle!
Jen Schefft knows that better than almost anyone. [She won The Bachelor, then they broke up, then she turned down a chance to be The Bachelorette.] She was labelled a “spinster” by a celebrity magazine, and a noted national talk-show host remarked that she would be a “bachelorette for the rest of her life.” This is a terrible message to send to send to the millions of sensational single women out there, and in [her book] Schefft makes it her mission to let women know that it’s better to be single than to be in a relationship that doesn’t make you happy. . . this book tells you how to let go of your fear of being alone. . . Schefft helps you navigate the pressures of a culture that places an unhealthy importance on being in an relationship. . . being single is a time to have fun, to learn new things, grow, and blossom–not a time to feel desperate or depressed, so cherish it!
Discussion Question Answers (according to Onely):
A) Which of these blurbs reminds us of how tightly anti-feminism is woven into anti-singlehood rhetoric? Why?
Answer: “Between Boyfriends” sounds more positive than “Single”? Really? To me it sounds something between “kinky” and “claustrophobic”. People should not be judged by their dating status, but if we must label someone–a woman in particular– let’s use “single” because at least it doesn’t frame her life in relationship to a man (even a non-existent one). There’s been too much of that going on for hundreds–or thousands–of years already. Let’s move on into the 21st century.
B) Which of these blurbs has multiple personality disorder? Why?
Answer:
No woman really wants to be alone for the rest of her life! . . . This is a terrible message to send to the millions of sensational single women out there.
‘ Nuff said.
Copious Readers, how would you answer the discussion questions? Have you read either of these books? Are they more progressive than the blurbs portray them to be? Or are they–and I hope this is not the case–still more examples of the classic “bait and switch” technique used by faux singles advocates: Here’s how to live a great single life, so that you can become unsingle!?
–Christina
Co-opcrisy? November 16, 2009
Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought, Great Onely Activities.Tags: cooperative living, single living, tysons corner farm
5 comments
I was thinking the other day. (Sometimes I feel as if my brain is a rental car alarm going off and I can’t find the right button to turn it off.) During my thinking, I realized that I may be a Onely hypocrite, at least partially. Lisa and I do a lot of advocating on this site for “new paradigms” of social structure that go beyond (isolated) couples and nuclear families. Yet when I had a chance to live for myself in a community that practiced a unique and apparently enlightened form of group living, I turned it down. Am I not as progressive as I make myself out to be? Or am I just not a team player?
My friend J worked on a coop organic farm that had a small community of twenty of so single-family houses (my memory is hazy) lining a curved street with no cars because everyone parked in a small lot down at the bottom of a gentle hill. There was a community center in one of the houses, with a common kitchen. J and I ate there once–a delicious eggplant stirfry with ingredients grown in the fields just outside the door. Just beyond those fields was Tyson’s Corner, the most congested, commercial area in all of northern Virginia, which is already pretty astoundingly congested and plastic. But you’d never know that, sitting in the coop kitchen, with crickets chirping under the porch outside.
Residents didn’t have to cook in the common kitchen, but they could if they wanted to. On a big white board a calendar drawn with multicolored markers and without rulers showed the dinner schedule. Most residents cooked a meal for the entire community once every couple weeks. Again, not required, but I noticed that the calendar had a variety of names on it, many of the days were assigned.
There were houses for sale in the community. I was in the market for a house. But I decided not to buy one on the farm. Why? I was afraid of the common kitchen. No, not of germs. Not of community wooden spoons or coughing children. No, I was afraid of cooperation and calendars. The thought of even preparing a just huge pot of soup and several baguettes of garlic bread for a large group horrified me. The weight of the grocery bags! The math involved to extrapolate a recipe for six! Making sure there were enough plates! Finding all the spoons! AAAAAAAA! As some of the very kind residents showed me around, I wondered, but did not ask, if I would be branded a rebel if I *never* ate in the community kitchen, in order to avoid ever having to reciprocate by making a meal for everyone else. I looked at the separate calendar for the den cleaning schedule and had the same feeling of suffocation. What if Tuesday came around but I didn’t feel like vaccuming the TV room? What if on Saturday I was on the hook to cook chicken and dumplings but my own tummy just wanted toast and guacamole?
I just couldn’t do it.
I love my current townhouse. I do wonder sometimes (not often) whether I would have benefitted from having that community around me. Where I live now, the neighbors barely see each other, and I know very few of them. Of note, the farm community consisted of mostly couples with children. Would that have been a great environment for me–a casual environment to get to know neighbors and laugh at the children’s antics before going home to my quiet house? Or would it have been just a smaller, tighter version of our big heteronormative world? I don’t know, because I couldn’t get past my fear of scheduling. For the most part, I think I was right to listen to my shivering gut. But if everyone were as cooperation-averse as I turned out to be, how could we ever manage to produce new, fairer, and inventive ways of interacting with each other besides coupling up?
Copious Readers, have you had experiences with co-ops?
–Christina
CALLING ALL SINGLE MEN! August 28, 2009
Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought, Guest Bloggers, Guest Posts.Tags: happy single men, single man blog, single men, single men stereotypes
20 comments
Ok, well not ALL single men. We want to hear from single-and-fine-with-it men. Please tell us: Why do you like being single (or why do you not dislike it)? How do people react to your single status? What difficulties do you have being a single man in a couple’s world (if any)? And most important–where do you go for information about being Onely and male? I ask because Lisa and I received an astute email from a male reader, who said:
I came across your website recently, and while I do find what you have written to be quite interesting it seems to be written by women for women. I was wondering if you know of any blogs that take a similar intellectual tone, like the one found in your blog but focus on both a man and a woman’s perspective on being single. Any links you could send me would be greatly appreciated.
Yay, he called us intellectual! (Obviously he has not been reading our series of nutsucking posts.)
Onely does try to write about issues affecting both sexes–usually in the form of gripes about legal discrimination against unmarried people. We would love to cover more single men’s issues, but unfortunately Lisa and I just don’t know what it’s like to be a single man, and we haven’t been able to find a lot of (non-heteronormative) information on the topic. As our regular readers are no doubt aware, there is a dearth of writings by empowered, Onely single males–not only on this site, but throughout media and literature. A recent search on Amazon.com for [happy single men] returned: (more…)
TAKE ACTION: Speak Up For Health Care Reform August 8, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, blog reviews, Everyday Happenings, Singles Resource, Take action.Tags: health care reform for singles, HR 676, public health care option, single payer system, singletude
1 comment so far
Check out yet another thorough and engaging post from Clever Elsie at Singletude, this time about the upcoming vote on HR 676, a bill supporting a single payer health care system, where we are all covered by ONE taxpayer-funded public source. (Ooh, how very Scandinavian!) As always, Singletude has done her research and explains why she is a fan of this bill. I am a fan of single-payer too, but my reasoning is based more on my gut than my head, so I encourage our Copious Readers to go to Singletude for more details. (more…)
