A Simple Answer to Your Complex Question

In the past couple of months, a good number of my male friends have asked this question of me: "Hadtomove, how is it that you can POSSIBLY still be single?"

They go on to list my (myriad, naturally) positive attributes and bemoan the fools out there who are standing on the dock, smoking cigarettes and missing my comely ship as she sails on by them down the Gowanus Canal.

So I've been pondering the correct answer to the question, at the very real risk of treading on loathsome Eric Schaeffer's territory.

I suppose the answers could be all complex. Issues of bad timing, bad judgment, and bad behavior can thwart relationships for even the most eligible. Maybe I have daddy issues, or maybe I'm too picky, or maybe I'm too busy tending to this blossoming writing "career" I've carved out for myself (ha!). Or, it could just be that I'd rather sit at home with one of my pretend boyfriends (who are legion), chastely eating take-out and musing over the latest issue of "Beauty and the Geek" than perch on a barstool somewhere all tarted up and waiting for a humorless I-banker to ask for my number. Maybe I spend too much time at the gym.

The answer could probably be any combination of the above, or none of them at all. So I've decided to go the simple route when someone asks me "How can you still be single?" I just throw more questions back at them:

"Do you know any good-looking, intelligent, genuinely decent men, preferably with a taste for adventure and relatively few issues with whom I might have a workable amount of chemistry?" I ask.

Yes! They invariably say.

"Are they single?"

Never.

And there's your answer. So quit asking. Now back to my regularly scheduled take-out and Tivo.