Friday, January 22, 2010

Single Still

“What about that Dutch girl? Kas asks me. “She doesn’t do it for you?” Kas is a guy I met while on a half-day tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels outside of Ho Chi Minh City. He is on a three month trip with his long-time girlfriend, traveling through South East Asia and later on to Australia and New Zealand. I liked him and his girlfriend enough that I decided to get on the same tour as them to the Mekong. Kas mind you, is someone I have known for only 24 hours when he asks this question. Either I reek of desperate single man, or I have to watch my conversation topics a bit more around relative strangers.

His question though, is not altogether unfair. The girl in question see, is literally the only other single person in our group. There are about 20 of us, 18 of whom are happily in a relationship. In fact, there was a moment when I was a bit fearful that I was the ONLY single person in the group – when we were getting off a boat and being directed to our rooms and I got taken aside with what I swore was a pitying glance and a quiet two-word question: “just one?” I get that look and question all the time; its most annoying in restaurants when I sometimes want to shout back “yes, damnit, just one, so what?!?! Does that make me a worse person!??!” Okay, I admit. I can be a bit sensitive about this.

In any case, despite my reputation for being a lady-killer (cough cough,) I did not ask this girl if she felt the same way about traveling alone or if she was as relieved as I was to find that she was not the only single person around. In fact, I don’t even know if she is single – she might well have had a boyfriend who just left Vietnam to return home. Who knows? What I do know is that Kas noticed that we were the only two single people. I did too.

I notice this condition much more these days than I used to. This could really be the result of being desperate single man, although I like to think of it as more a result of the fact that everyone I know is in a relationship. Basically all of my good friends are married, and many of them have at least one kid. I tend to end up being the third wheel or fifth wheel or seventh wheel or ninth wheel or… well, you get the picture. The only real benefit is that I often get to sit at the head of the table. More common is for me to be the odd man out or the reason for special rules when we play games, sort of like that kid in elementary school who calls “always offense” cuz there’s an uneven number and messes everyone up when they’re playing basketball. Just find someone else man.

It is of course, not that easy. Especially when all the girls I meet traveling are doing so with their boyfriends or in large groups that are ridiculously unapproachable for a guy flying solo. Although I often laugh and blow it off when my friends say “hey, maybe you’ll meet your wife traveling!” the truth is, part of me is sort of hoping that might be true. Where better to meet a worldly and geographically open-minded person than in another country? Yet after three weeks in Vietnam, I’m exactly where I was when I started. Single, with no prospects, surrounded by couples, and eating dinner alone. What a life – aren’t you envious?

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