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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Now that my friends are married, they seem to be allergic to socializing with an unmarried woman.
Jul 3, 2001 | Mr. Blue was in the Berkshires last week, visiting Tanglewood, the music school and concert park near Lenox, Mass., as a kindness to Mrs. Blue who has rich green memories of being 16 there and a violinist and sitting up late summer nights and talking about Art and Harmony and the Purpose of Life. I miss those conversations, too, though mine took place in more prosaic places, in and around southeast Minneapolis. Not far from Lenox is Hancock Village, a beautifully preserved Shaker settlement, where the Shakers' conversations ended long ago and now all we have is their taste in design, like trading in the prophet Jeremiah for Martha Stewart.
The Shakers did fairly well with celibacy, all told. Any who wanted out could walk away and the prevailing view of the community's rules was pretty cheerful. They were a progressive lot, given to innovations of all sorts, the last Shakers fascinated by television and the latest appliances, and were they still around and shaking today, they'd be deeply into computers, a mystical commune of celibate programmers. Probably there are many celibate programmers out there, but without Shaker theology to prop them up, they tend to feel ashamed of virginity, a badge of a warped and unworthy person. That and other persistent grievances found in this column the Shakers dealt with by the simple means of maintaining a powerful communal life. Within it, the notion of career advancement didn't register, nor disappointment in love: You turned your eyes to Providence and got a vision of Eternity and Perfection and Harmony and that sufficed for you. And you were guaranteed the love and care of your fellow Shakers to your dying day. And you lived pretty well. Shakers were not a penitential order.
I recall the conversations of my youth about the Purpose of Life as breathtakingly grand. Magical, even. I sure wasn't cut out for a normal life as I understood it back in the '50s, so I rejected a test I could not pass, and set my sights on something higher. This solved all sorts of problems.
Now, as a besieged 58-year-old man pedaling hard to turn the grindstone that his nose is pushed against, I miss that clarity and idealism. But at least I got a taste of it when I was young and recall some parts and can impersonate it when necessary.
I'm 36, living in Los Angeles, and it suddenly hit me: I have no friends. I used to, when we were all fresh out of college. I used to host dinner parties for 12, there was always a holiday barbeque to attend, and my birthday often found me with so many invitations that the celebrations spread out over two weeks. But now that my friends are married, they seem to be allergic to socializing with an unmarried woman. They have simply disappeared. Somehow, singles and couples don't seem to mix in this town. I have never, ever been invited to do anything at all with a couple.
I've tried to widen my circle; I joined a synagogue, I bought film festival tickets and I've volunteered at more events than I care to think about. No matter where I go or what I do, all I seem to find are other couples and here I am, still single, still friendless and very, very lonely. Calling the few couples left in town does no good. "We don't go out anymore because of the kids," I'm told. Not so long ago, I made half a dozen phone calls to various people I know, and not a single one of them bothered to call me back. That's when I realized: I need new friends and I need them badly.
Is it me or is it them? When we were all single, I was very popular. How do I start all over at my age, and find a good core group of friends?
A Friend in Need
Dear Friend,
My wife and I often hang out with solo women and solo men, but I don't know what they do in L.A. It's the nature of life in these times, though, that the bond of friendship isn't strong enough to withstand the outgoing tide and it snaps. This happens all the time between perfectly decent people: Friendships that once seemed permanent simply melt away for reasons that have nothing to do with ill feeling. Things change. And frankly, most friendships are fairly shallow and based on some fizzy table talk and youthful enthusiasm and some common experience that fades pretty quickly. A true friend is someone you could call up and say, "I'm a wreck and I'm coming over and staying with you for a couple days." Or you could say, "I'm sorry to call you at 3 a.m. but I'm sitting in a truck stop confused and missing my pants and need you to come get me." Not many people have the sense of loyalty to get them over the dry stretches and be real friends. A person is lucky to have two or three of those in a lifetime, and when they die off, they're hard to replace. As far as dinner party guests, you can find those pretty easily. Just ask people. You don't have to know someone well to invite him or her to dinner. If someone doesn't return your phone calls, call them back, and if they don't return the second call, scratch them off your list.
