Everyone in the Pool
In a fashionable restaurant where I used to work as a waitress, I had an ongoing pool with two of my colleagues. We were a gabby bunch, chatting our way through six-hour shifts. But conversations had to be punchy, twenty seconds here and there, squeezed in between customers, which is why we started the sex pool. Continue reading »
What makes us happy?
COCONUT
by Paul Hostovsky (From Bird in the Hand, Grayson books)
Bear with me I
want to tell you
something about
happiness
it’s hard to get at
but the thing is
I wasn’t looking
I was looking
somewhere else
when my son found it
in the fruit section
and came running
holding it out
in his small hands
asking me what
it was and could we
keep it it only
cost 99 cents
hairy and brown
hard as a rock
and something swishing
around inside
and what on earth
and where on earth
and this was happiness
this little ball
of interest beating
inside his chest
this interestedness
beaming out
from his face pleading
happiness
and because I wasn’t
happy I said
to put it back
because I didn’t want it
because we didn’t need it
and because he was happy
he started to cry
right there in aisle
five so when we
got home we
put it in the middle
of the kitchen table
and sat on either
side of it and began
to consider how
to get inside of it
Single Women and Cats
QUESTION: IS IT TRUE THAT UNMARRIED WOMEN OWN A DISPROPORTIONATE NUMBER OF CATS?
Marriage material (and other clichés)
From the 1988 play “The Heidi Chronicles” by Wendy Wasserstein, in which Scoop explains to Heidi (a girlfriend he could never commit to) why he’s marrying Lisa:
SCOOP: Do I love her…? She’s the best that I can do. Is she an A+ like you? No. But I don’t want to come home to an A+. A- maybe, but not A+.
Hazel Bishop
I dare say that Hazel Bishop had no time for marriage. For years she pulled double duty, as a chemist by day, developing aviation fuel, while in the evenings, cooking up recipes in search of the world’s first smudge-proof lipstick. After 300 trials in her tiny home kitchen, she landed on the perfect formula. Continue reading »
What If Being Single is Really a Great Thing?
By the artist, Nancy Spero. (American, born 1926) from “Notes in Time,” 1979. Cut-and-pasted painted paper, gouache, and pencil on joined sheets of paper.
What Would You Give Up (to be married)?
“I’d rather be free to paddle my own canoe.”
–Louisa May Alcott, 1868
The Black Dress
About a year ago, while browsing in my favorite card store, I discovered a postcard of Alex Katz’s “The Black Dress,” and thumbtacked it to the cork bulletin board beside my desk. Mr. Katz employed his beloved wife Ada as a model for the painting, which he created in 1960, almost a half century ago. I suppose some might consider this image, painted in loving tribute to the artist’s spouse, an odd inaugural emblem for “Notes from an Unmarried Life.” I find it a timeless representation of the ways we single women can be similar and different (while chic and fabulous) all at the same time.
(Check out a recent interview with Alex Katz, from Women’s Wear Daily.)
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FIRST PERSON SINGULAR is a guide to surviving, thriving and sometimes just getting through a single day. Created by Wendy Braitman (more…)
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