NothingCorporate.com

I hate going to bars. First off there’s the cover charge…coming from the latin “bullcrapfee” meaning money you have to pay to go through a door. Then there’s the beer, you have to pay $5-$10 (plus tip) for a bottle you can buy a 12-pack of for $11 at the store (and I don’t have to pay a tip at the Vons).

Finally there’s the women. There always seems to be a ratio of 200 guys to every 3 women…so I get brutally shot down by some nasty girl (with a butterfly tattoo on her lower back) who I wouldn’t give a second-look to if I saw her on the street. And if by some miracle she says yes, I’ve got to pay $20 for beers instead of just $10. After which she gives me a fake number anyway.

So you’re single, but your friends aren’t. They’ve got your back though, so every time you see them, they say “hey, I know someone who would be perfect for you…” Which would be fine if the next sentence out of their mouth weren’t “there’s just one thing…”

After you hear that, you know the sentence is going to sound something like “there’s just one thing, she’s a conjoined twin and she’s also a dwarf, but her twin is 6′2″ so she has to ride around on a cart that looks like a dessert tray from a restaurant.” Ummmm….no thanks.

Ok, it wasn’t hard to find a friend who wanted to see The Dark Knight, but for every clearly awesome movie there are 4,822 movies I want to see that my friends won’t go to with me because either A) “It was directed by the guy who made Ernest Goes to Camp” is not that appealing a reason B) they already saw it or C) they want to go see it with their boyfriend/girlfriend.

That last one is the worst because not only do I get turned down for the movie, but they’re reminding me that (unlike me) they’re not a desperate freak who can’t get a date. Sure, I could go to the movie by myself, but like trying to ask for a table-for-one at brunch, it’s just not worth 2 hours of people staring at you like the obvious loser you are.

You remember when you were a kid and you thought you’d be married by 24? Now 24 is coming up pretty fast — or for most of us it came and went so long ago that since then, you’ve bought a car, changed jobs (twice), converted your VHS collection into DVDs, and come to the conclusion that drinking alone isn’t so bad.

And everything you own seems to be taunting you for being single…your queen size bed has a valley on one side and remains like new on the other, your small saucepan is so old the handle broke off (but your big saucepan is still in the back of the cupboard and shows no signs of wear), and your bottles of wine were collecting sedimentary layers of dust (until you decided to start drinking alone that is).

We all have stuff we suck at or hate doing. For me, that’s cooking. When I had a girlfriend, there was nothing better than coming home from work and not having to make dinner. I don’t think women should have to cook because they’re women or anything sexist like that, it’s just that I suck at cooking.

No really, I’m awful at it. I’ve been single for a few months now and I’m surprised I haven’t starved to death. So for me, the division of labor was that I made sure the Internet didn’t disappear and she made sure I didn’t live on Hungry Man Dinners (because no matter how good they look on the box, they kind of make you want to die when you try to actually eat one).