First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

How Not to Alienate a Date

Like Phoenix rising from the ashes, miraculously, I’m on a dating jag. I’m considering how to post about it. I have little interest in turning men with whom I’m trying to be intimate, into frothy (or worse, bitchy) anecdotes.

But wait for it.

If experience is any advisor, a time may come when writing will be the sweet revenge.

Snow White as Suburban Housewife

The Vancouver photographer, Dina Goldstein, has created a great site, Fallen Princesses, as a showcase for her upcoming exhibit on what happens when Disney characters don’t meet with their happy ever after ending.

Fairy tales were my first contact with romantic lives to dream about, but never realize. Disney came next. Then TV sitcoms. In those days, I was too young to boycott. But as a grownup, romantic comedies are my beef, so I rarely see them. I can’t suspend my disbelief when the girl gets the perfect guy, especially in those movies when she has two perfect guys from which to choose. The way I know it, a man may be cute, but then he’s probably not successful and if he’s successful, he’s not smart, and if he’s smart, he doesn’t have integrity, and in any case, he doesn’t want to make a lifelong commitment with me. I did have two guys vying for me once in the nineties. But that was about sex. Don’t think that I’m complaining. I lived off that story for a year. In fact, if I can make a bad incident a colorful anecdote, it’s worth the experience.

Update:
Thanks to a reader (and writer) Mary, for reminding me of the relevance to this photo of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, Into the Woods. Here are lyrics from one of the songs that still reverberate for me so many years after first hearing them. On stage, a peasant wife has just been unexpectedly kissed by a prince in the woods, and then he flees. Continue reading »

What Happens To Her Love life, When a Woman “Can?”

Waiting for a booth at an old-fashioned steakhouse last weekend, I overheard a man asking a woman sitting next to him at the bar this question, “Are alpha females socially deprived?”

I wrote his query down on a cocktail napkin in big block letters, to make sure I got it right. Privately (in my head, that is) I mocked this barfly’s lack of sophistication. But what he was asking is something I’ve wondered about for years. Then, I remembered Michelle Obama.

On the Beach

No ranting today. I’m off with some friends to the gorgeous Stinson Beach in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

Why I’m Not Getting Enough Sleep

At the 23rd annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Society, or SLEEP 2009, taking place in Seattle (please, no Sleepless in Seattle jokes, that movie made me crazy), Wendy M. Troxel, Ph.D., presented a report about an eight-year study, and it’s the kind of study that makes my blood boil, which is a bad thing, blood boiling, that is, if you’re trying to get a good night’s sleep. According to Dr. Troxel’s report, happily married women sleep better than unhappily married women who sleep better than women who have never married.

For as long as I can recall, I’ve been a lousy sleeper, whether I’ve had stable partners, or not, whether we’ve gotten along or not, and I’ve chalked it up to genetics (thanks, Mom!) only to discover that like many things I’ve blamed on my mother, it’s not her fault, but somehow mine. Please debunk this study, Bella DePaulo (author of Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After) so I can sleep better tonight.

Update: I contacted Bella DePaulo and she looked into this study. Please read her blog on the subject:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/200906/if-you-get-married-will-you-sleep-better

Photo: .delila.’s photostream

The Joy of Cooking (the Joy of Sex)

I love feeding my friends. For a recent dinner for eight, I prepared one of my favorite starters, roasted beets and goat cheese, followed by Boeuf Bourguignon with papparadelle noodles, and dessert of individual warm chocolate cake and ice cream. When I mention to married girlfriends with children that cooking relaxes me, they stare at me blankly, as if I’m speaking in a foreign tongue. I’ve never had to fix meals for a husband and family, so I don’t see it as a chore, but rather a pleasure, more in line with a hobby. And I’ve wondered if there’s a similar mindset at play, when it comes to sex.

Cooking and sex go way back, according to Richard Wrangham in his new book, Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human. In the chapter, “The Married Cook,” Wrangham traces the relationship between cooking and mating in primitive societies, and how it happened, anthropologically speaking, that women got stuck over a hot stove.   Continue reading »

Do Blondes in Gaza Have More Fun?

Recently, I signed up for Google Alerts, to be nudged whenever a news story appears about single women, and today I learned that Hamas, in addition to its militant activities, has started a matchmaking service in Gaza. According to the Associated Press, women pay a service fee of $10-$70 to the Tayseer Association for Marriage and Development in Gaza and are divided into categories, depending on their eligibility. Let me just say, if you’re over 30 and a divorcee, good luck! On the application, women detail their ideal mate, with the majority looking for a man “with a job and his own apartment.” (I’m sure those are on one of my lists.) They also need to answer the question, “Do you consider yourself pretty according to Gaza standards,” with most men requesting (and why am I not surprised) tall and fair-skinned women with blue or green eyes and light-colored hair.

Love in 90 Days

Today, I stumbled into the book, “Love in 90 Days: The Essential Guide to Finding Your Own True Love,” by Diana Kirschner, PhD, and of course, I couldn’t put it down. With chapters, like “Dating 3 to Find the One,” and “The Deadly Dating Pattern,” how could I resist? Is it possible, I wondered, that I’m single because I’m doing something wrong, and with the correct intention, focus and guidance, I, too, can find and keep love? Dr. Kirschner suggests it’s all up to me!  

She invites her readers to write a “loveless eulogy,” and say goodbye forever to that unlovable you, who has never found her mate. I decided, instead, to try my hand at a few verses about what might happen if I did.   Continue reading »

With this Ring

I have a wedding ring tucked away in my top drawer underneath the socks. It’s an eternity band of tiny diamonds. I used to think if I wore it around my finger, it would bring me a husband. My beloved grandmother bequeathed it to me. We used to talk about marriage, and she advised me not to settle.

I was 30 and single when my grandmother died. I was excited to wear her ring, but my mother refused to turn it over, even though I had become the rightful owner. “You’re not married,” she said. “It isn’t right.” It took five years of arm twisting to get the ring. And at the time, it seemed to my mother (and maybe me too) that it was a kind of defeat.

Update:
Thanks, Kady, for commenting on this post, and making me realize I’d left things hanging in gloom. Let me clarify that I now proudly wear my grandmother’s ring. It sparkles on the third finger of my right hand, where it fits best. But the ring is old and fragile, so I take it out only on special occasions.

How To Paint a Room When You’re Single

I  needed to paint my bathroom. Let me start this again. I needed someone else to paint my bathroom, because I am lousy with a brush and roller (you can see every stroke) which is why I never give myself a manicure, plus I hate standing on ladders. What I needed to do was choose the right color.

At least ten different times, I drove to a little paint store on Pico Boulevard. Hispanic painters frequent this store and are taken care of by an Hispanic sales staff. In all my visits, I was the only white person and the only girl, and the only one who had no idea what she was doing. I would stand edged in a corner at the paint chip stand, where the lighting was absurdly dim. Each time I considered a color, I had to lift it out of its slot and bring it to the door where the natural light came through. I took home about one hundred paint chips, not all at once, but slowly over weeks. I did so, furtively, because I couldn’t bare the workers noticing me sticking so many chips in my purse. I imagined them laughing at me in the back room, because I couldn’t settle on a color, and by association, they would know I couldn’t settle on a mate.     Continue reading »