Sexless in the City


Sometimes reading romance novels doesn’t quite prepare you for a love life...

For this 30-year-old urbanite, love is always a misadventure: The Harvard Lickwit, Hippie the Groper, the 5% Man, and the Ad Weasel. These and many other men wander in and out of her life — but never her bed.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Still kicking, despite the quiet

Good readers: my apologies for the long silence since the last post. You were so zealous in continuing the comment thread even long after I had posted my friend’s emails that I had hopes of creaking by on that for a while — which sort of worked. But as assiduous reader VJ points out, it’s now been at least ... gulp ... a quarter since even that post, and still no signs or hints of the once-touted Sexless 2.0.

That, I hope, is still coming, though talks and other such needed details to actually launch the new version have been sidelined along with things like, say, blogging. Why exactly is that, you ask? Two reasons:
  1. I now hold a real (and fairly consuming though generally not too overdemanding) job
  2. I mostly live a spinster’s life
The job
I won’t go into too much detail on the first point, but the short version is that after working several months as a temp, the company I first began trekking out to last December made a real and indentured woman of me in May — “indentured” only in the best sense, of course. Since then I’ve been happily employed in such tasks as making sure to get my share of the twice-weekly organic fruit delivery and, lately, remembering how many other colleagues I’m collecting the Starbucks Song of the Day cards for. Well, those tasks and what they pay me for. On the whole, though, it’s probably one of the best jobs I’ve ever had (aside from the less-than-ideal commute, which can take up to 90 minutes one way, and never less than 45 — but this only when I carpool, which isn’t always). I’m nicely challenged in the work I do, have a great boss, and work with a small team of people I much like collaborating with.

I’m even getting to do a bit of paid travel! Starting Thursday, which is why I can’t make any promises of kicking this barely-blogging rut any time soon. In fact, once I leave town, I’ll be on the road almost three weeks straight — one week in New Orleans (with a quick stopover in Texas to see family), two days home, then off to India for a 9-day Thanksgiving trip to see a friend. Once back from that trip, the month is almost over, and I have just less than two weeks before my last trip of the year (at present): off to Chicago for a conference. With all this on top of wrapping up final details for the book (almost to the galley stage) and keeping up on knitting for the countless friends of mine having babies, I must be chary with promises of any blogging resurgence.

There is nonetheless the hope that jaunting off for such a colorful place as New Orleans, a town already famous in company lore for certain prior employee hijinx, and attending a meeting of several thousand could yield some adventures ... but who knows.

The spinster life
You see, whether because I've left New York and a larger church or am now cheerily staring down 30 (I’ve got eight months left in my 20s), there hasn’t been much in the way of a love life lately ... or actually in the last year. Yup, that’s how long I’ve been out here now (though it’s hard to believe), but other than having found myself a great coffee shop peopled with some fascinating older men (which word I use in the most platonic sense ... aside from their occasional efforts to flirt), there hasn’t been much to report in terms of contact with the other sex.

But really, when you spend 10 or 11 hours on work and commuting (with a wee spot of knitting or shopping squeezed in here and there), you’re doing well to have the occasional outing with friends, keep up on laundry and still cook your own meals often enough to keep within a budget. And somehow, all that pottering ’round the house on weekends and savoring Saturday sleep-ins just hasn’t led to meeting men. Finding great new recipes, yes, but men ... not so much. We’ll see what New Orleans can do me for (as the characters in a book I just finished [at right] say sometimes) ... besides great beignets, coffee and music.

Thanks for your long-suffering readership!

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