If I’d known in advance that I’d spend most of my adult life being single up to now, I think I’d have been much happier.

If I’d cottoned on to it earlier, and realised it was a pattern I was in, and one which wasn’t likely to change easily, then I’d have avoided much heartache. If one accepts the principle that we create our own lives over time, then, at some level, perhaps unconsciously, I have chosen this single, unencumbered, oddly insular, yet strangely public life. If I’ve chosen it, then it’s time I took responsibility for it, and planned accordingly, played to its strengths, avoided the pitfalls, protected my feelings. But it’s such an elusive shift of perspective, like the moment when you realise your shoulders are hunched up and you consciously relax them, shake out the tension. Until the thought occurs to you, you could be walking around your entire life with no neck at all, muscles knotted like steel cables.
I don’t really need to look far to see the attractions of being single, why I might conceivably have chosen it. Men in committed relationships are often quick to offer me a wistful list of the perks: the freedom to do what I want, when I want; not having to account for myself to anyone; the opportunity to be in a perpetual sexual playground, if I so choose, to explore sexuality in all its diversity. The time to allow myself to get obsessed with work, slaving away to fulfil a project, a goal or a dream, without anyone demanding I take time off for them. The selfishness of it all. The indulgence of it. The irresponsibility of it. (And yet, time and time again, I’m reminded of how responsibility can ennoble people, make adults out of children.) Am I forever to be the boy, the puer aeternus of the Jungian pantheon?
To an extent, I’ve done all this bachelor boy stuff, and bought the Single T-shirt. Singlet. I’ve rarely celebrated it, though, acknowledged that my side of the fence had greener grass, or even that the grass was of passable quality. Usually I’ve endured the single life with a sense that it was second-best, it was the dregs of the barrel, that it was borne out of a sense of failure, that I must be a crashing bore not to have secured a partner, like we’re all supposed to. Or, worse – and this is much worse, much more insidious – I blamed being single on the perfidy of my lovers, which therefore allowed me to grow a sense of victimhood on my psyche, like a particularly vivid mould on bread. With effortless moral authority, the suffering martyr/victim is unimpeachable. And unapproachable, too. No one likes the righteous, how ever soft-spoken.
Despite the firm knowledge that it takes confidence to woo successfully, I have rarely managed to even fake that sort of confidence with someone I’ve found attractive in a bar – I’ve tended to assume that if Mr Attractive hasn’t made the first move, then he doesn’t fancy me. (Which, of course, could be exactly what he’s thinking.) But someone who is overly confident and charming with a stranger usually has done it many times before, and probably is not interested in anything more than something immediate, because the hunt is what is interesting, exciting to him. So nothing much happens, unless you like that sort of fast emotional turnover, can handle it. But the problem with meeting men in bars like that is the aftermath – the void that follows a romantic night followed by breakfast is far more painful than the feeling after a fumble in a backroom in a club or in a park – because if both are one-offs, as they tend to be, the latter is at least less hypocritical, and sometimes a hell of a lot of fun. Less is lost. The camaraderie of a friendly grope far outweighs the sophisticated savagery of the dedicated one-night-stand merchant dressing up his intentions in romantic lies.
Now, it’s not easy to build confidence in London, on the gay scene – I’ve met with such extraordinary rudeness at times from guys I’ve made the effort to say hello to, that it’s a miracle I’ve not gone off men completely. So, like many gay men, I retreat to the internet, for safety, and a modicum of control – but cyberspace is a vacuum that can dismember you. All the fantasies being projected into the medium, like laser beams beaming into the night sky, seeking a target, any target, anything to reflect them, to demonstrate that they are shining and bright. So little of what is projected bears relation to reality, because the reality is often too much to bear – too much loneliness, too much need for attention masquerading as kindness. The sort of flattery/flirtation that boosts your ego but, at the slightest wandering off-script, the first drop of the ball, the mask slips and the howling need is revealed in all its sorrow and rage. Will you be the one to take the pain away? Will you look after me, make me feel safe? Will you be the one? Erm, not today, thanks.
The language of compulsory relationship is so pervasive: I am not whole unless I am in a relationship; you complete me; you are my “other half”, for I am, obviously, only half a person. Because it is A Bad Thing not to have someone to share your life with. Isn’t it? It’s what my Dad always told me.
Far more interesting, though, is one reason I’m averse to claim pride in being a single man – because of course a single man is a sexual man. Bless me, Father, for I am committing the sin of being single and a Walking Temptation.
One never knows what the future holds. That’s life. One only has one life, and it’s getting shorter every second. I need to re-invent myself again. Assume nothing. It is alright, just as it is. How else could it be?