Why I Am Still Single

Content Warning: Sex. Also, names and identifying information have been changed to protect the innocent. And the guilty.

When I was 29 going on 30, I broke up with the star of my life’s first great love story. I had moved from Montréal to Halifax for love and probably a little bit for sex. Back in Montréal, one of several sublets included an apartment I shared with two 34-year-old women. As I unpacked my two-and-a-half suitcases, I asked my new roommates what their love lives were like. Apparently, neither of them had dated seriously since their late twenties. I was like, how did you let this happen? Followed by the conviction, this will never happen to me. And yet it did. I can pin this down to approximately three reasons.

Reason One: I stopped drinking and my body stopped lying

Though I made for a pitiful alcoholic, I was still a terrible drinker. My flaky lunch choices and exercise regimes left me ravenous, and with great enthusiasm, I inhaled the fake nourishment available in glasses of wine or Perrier, laced with raspberry vodka. There was zero pacing involved and my empty cells were soon flushed out of any sense of discrimination. Or subtlety.

My favourite thing about alcohol was the three minutes between your first and second drink when you realize that in fact, everything is bullshit. Climate change is upon us. We’re all gonna die. Your enormous potential is merely a micro-grain of sand. Pressure’s off, honey.

I loved those three minutes. It was then that I’d pounce on the evening’s temporary source of sexual gratification. Hi, my name is Erica and I do lots of yoga. Would you like to hear my life story? Would you like to make out and/or get naked?

My candour left several prospects gaping with what-the-fuck faces. But many of them said yes. As far as I can remember, we had a reasonably pleasant time.

Then I quit drinking and in came something called discernment. I tried to take my body for a few fun whirls, but this often left me sobbing in my suitors’ arms.

“I’m a parent,” said one make-out friend. “That’s not the good kind of cry.”

“Yah, I guess I’m not really up for this,” I sniffled. Awkward, though at least it was clear.

More fruitful sober hook-ups tended to involve sexual tourism in Toronto, where my Tiny and Adorable Sister always dragged me to Ecstatic Dance. There, swarms of sensitive new age peeps in tutus and spandex and crotch-drop pants move and roll around according to the deepest sensations inside their cells. At least twice after class, a handsome Sensitive New Age Guy (aka, SNAG) has been up for a sensual evening of squirting leg humps and nonviolent communication. And I’d recommend this.

Reason Two: Professional Impossible Crushes

In the months after my life’s first great love story, I declared myself unavailable. Not looking for anything serious. Just one of those Chill Types of People Who Goes With the Flow. This went great.  

I met the Generic Married Man at a rare wild night at the Cagibi Café. A few friends and I were balancing our ciders and decaf lattes over a wobbly table when he sat down and introduced himself.

“Hi.” I said when he arrived at our table. “We’re talking about our sex lives. What’s yours like?”

I would never have asked this had he exuded, hi, I am married and have three-to-seventeen children, but the Married Man did not exactly exude this.

Though he didn’t say as much, I inferred that in the past four-to-nine years, the Generic Married Man had had three-to-seven fucks. One for every kid. We became fast Facebook friends. Two weeks of all-day, everyday messages ensued. We discussed one another’s favourite baristas—bald, exuberant or otherwise—insomnia and melatonin hangovers, our lost enormous potential, theories on produce emoticons, especially the eggplant.

Two weeks later, we climbed that exciting webby playground structure in Parc Laurier, exchanging our deep and impossible wounds in the cold night air. While the Married Man’s kiss was excellent, the affair was not as racy and edgy as you might think. The produce-emoticon-messages-to-make-out-on-the-monkey-bar-hangout ratio was approximately 2700-to-1. The Married Man was far too ridiculously crazy busy and devoted to his family to fulfill my then rampant sex drive. Over too many years, I wrote him too many emails which I kept in a Word document. Total word count = as impossible as our wounds. I wish him well.

“You deserve so much more,” people say whenever they see me pouring out my soul into someone who can’t love me back. They say that it is keeping me from finding an appropriate love choice and cultivating a “real relationship.” As though just around the corner, once I stopped texting the Married Man, I’d find my prince on a park bench or in the toothpaste aisle at Jean Coutu.

When I landed in my eleventh therapist’s windowless office, I had already tried to cure myself of my undying love for the Married Man—by sticking a black rock in my underwear for the entire course of my menstrual cycle. This worked for approximately one menstrual cycle.

Meanwhile, my eleventh therapist had soothing blue eyes and a saviour complex. When he smirked at my jokes and rescued me from a suicidal summer, I took it as a sign that I was more than his favourite patient. I’d caught that thing where you love your therapist. Then we matched on Bumble and I was like great, now can we go get a sandwich? My eleventh therapist said no.

I did not stick a black rock in my underwear to cure myself of my undying love. Instead, I dialled up my obsession and proceeded to send a series of unrestrained letters straight to his Gmail. For years. Long after we would “break up” as a therapist and patient. Word count = 89.8K. I’m on my tenth draft of the novel. Stay tuned.

Ex-oh 🍆, Love Erica. Photo Credit

Reason Three: My Gay COVID Husband

In my glam pre-COVID story, my apartment burns down in December of 2019. I spent the first chunk of the pandemic hopping from mattress to mattress—from Mexico cabanas to precarious Montréal sublets that would tide me over until it seemed possible to move into a place and acquire things like beds and refrigerators. It was invigorating.

I was onto my 15th mattress when I came upon a New Sensitive New Age Friend (NSNAF) on a park bench. Charming, handsome, open to my deep and beautiful wounds.

“Hi, my name is Erica. My house burned down and I’m homeless but it’s okay, I can sublet, and as long as I walk 15 to 25 km per day, it’s not that stressful, and I’m writing my memoirs about falling in love with my therapist. It’s really great to meet you.”

NSNAF decided I needed a home, and he took me back to my burnt-out apartment and led me through a ritual to say goodbye. He burned sage and cedar as I sobbed my face off. At his guidance, I took a black permanent marker and graffitied the condemned walls with the words, I DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. After we climbed down the fire escape, I asked for a hug and cried even more in his arms. It was my first hug in more than 100 days.

NSNAF could have been my prince, except he was very gay. And there were two-to-seven yellow-to-red flags I would not let myself see. I did not fall in love with NSNAF but I did christen him my Gay COVID Husband. Though platonic, I often called him one of the great loves of my life. We spent long, luxurious afternoons reading in the cemetery. We ate dinner together and he taught me how to cook. Most nights before I dashed home in time for curfew, we’d play our best songs on the ukulele—Let It Be, Edelweiss, This Little Light of Mine. What a miracle we found each other on that park bench. I’ve said this so many times. But on brand for corona unions, we followed through with a brutal COVID divorce. I miss him. I am not sure I can write about this right now.  

My Last Great Fuck

My last great fuck was on March 9, 2020. Hauling my sand-flea-bitten ass across the Mexico sand, I came across a cute, bearded, curly-haired dude on a lounge chair under an umbrella. He was reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

“How’s the book?” I asked, pulling my mildewed two-piece speedo over my bumpy bikini line. Kafka on the Shore seemed so self-assured, I was certain he had a girlfriend. Then I invited him over to my red cabana for stir-fry. At first I wasn’t sold on the dad jokes. Plus, my stomach hurt as it always hurt in Mexico, whenever I ate anything besides granola. Or muffins.

The next morning, we met for carrot muffins and americanos. I flipped the switch and decided to conjure up the magical art of the three-day fling. I regurgitated guacamole while sucking his cock. Kafka on the Shore came loud and long, as though he were communing with the Aztec Gods. According to legend, his orgasm took at least 25 minutes. Don’t worry, he gave me a turn to hump his lean, hairy thigh and this worked reasonably well. Who could foresee the dry spell that would follow?

“After COVID, it’s gonna be so easy to find a relationship,” a fellow single darling bestie once declared. “As soon as we’re out of quarantine, dudes are gonna come running.” This was in May of 2020, back when we were still motivated enough to wash our festive, fabric masks instead of hoarding the disposable kind in bulk.

After COVID. Fresh out of my life’s first love story, I would have been horrified to know that I’d spend all of my thirties mainly single, apart from intermittent leg humps, a gripping series of Professional Impossible Crushes, and one gay husband. And yet here we are.

But if my life is low in princes, it is high in darling besties. I get my kicks through library books, laundry routines, and terrible solo ukulele covers. Insert DIY orgasms as needed.

And if Kafka by the Shore was my last great fuck, I could still be lucky.

(Written in April of 2022)