The end of Lonely St.

I have noticed a startling thing about the building in which my (terribly cute!) apartment is located. After perusing my management company's list of available apartments, it seems to me that my entire building is made up of studios and one bedrooms. Okay. Interesting. Even in a building thusly arranged, one would assume there would be a couple cohabitating, right? After careful observation, I have yet to locate even one couple. The names on the buzzers are all singular. People entering and exiting my building do it solo. I have only ONCE heard someone in my building having sex and that was at about 4 in the morning, which is traditionally a time that single people bring their hookups home. After all, that's when the bars close here. Name me ONE couple that lives together that has sex at 4 in the morning. Seriously, you don't know of any, right?

I live in a building devoted to Lonelyhearts. I'd like to think that my building was for the rugged individualist, the independent and emancipated, but after seeing the people in my building come and go for the last few months, there seems to be an air of mournful acquiescence to singlehood about them. The lady who talks to her shi-tzu like it's a baby... The old man who comes home from the grocery store with one small bag of groceries and sighs as he opens the front door... The young woman who always seems to be having an argument on her cell phone with someone who doesn't show her respect... My neighbor who trudges up the stairs with resigned sadness on weekend nights, dressed in slightly rumpled going out clothes... When I signed my lease, I was happy to have my own oasis of home in this brand new to me city. It was only later that I realized I had put my name on a piece of paper that effectively guaranteed the fact that I wouldn't be in a serious relationship for a year. Aiee. Elenor Rigby, party of one?

None of this mattered to me until Saturday. I was fine casually dating and pretty OK with the fact that I may, in fact, never find a lasting relationship. My motto was "Better to be alone than in asshole company." In fact, I had just kissed SB Thursday goodnight and sent him on his way when it happened. My stupid heart -- which has been the bane of my existence but heretofore in strictly an emotional, not physical, way -- started to flutter and beat in a way that suggested jazz syncopation gone awry. I tried to sleep, but then my inner herald of doom said "Go ahead, but you might not wake up." Wide awake, then, I called the only person I knew who might be up at that hour, my Ex Who Says He Will Never Love Again. He wasn't answering the phone, so I had to piece together an alternative plan. That plan consisted of opening the yellow pages to the section marked "Hospitals" and then lying on the floor, squeezing a baseball. For some reason, if I was going to die, I wanted to do it on my kitchen floor, not in bed. But that's where it hit me...no matter how free being single makes me, no matter how accepting and happy I am about BEING single, I could still die alone. And that, in the words of several sages throughout time, sucks donkey dick.

Maybe I should buy a shi-tzu.