Fever

In high school my performance might have been lackluster. And by "might have been" I mean I had a 2.7 GPA and my extra curricular activities were limited to activities I could do sitting down. High school wasn't my forte, and I am of the school of thought that believes that people who are good in high school suck in the real world. However, though I may have wasted my glory days huffing paint fumes in art club as a teenager, my adult life has clearly been a flourishing stream of success and achievement.

Okay, who am I kidding? My adult life has been a series of failed relationships, dead end jobs, and shameless attention seeking. And it's not that I don't have a righteous, sometimes zealous, a-type personality, keen organizational skills, and awe inspiring talent to be successful--I simply have not found appropriate vessel. I used to think writing was my calling, and it may still be but a stroll through the aisles at Barnes and Noble is not encouraging: Reality TV stars (although I admire them greatly for their suckling of the limelight) and their ghost-written blather about the tough climb to the bottom of the top, teenage novels marketed to adults because most read at a sixth grade level, and the preponderance of mommy memoirs and books about how its okay to be greedy or republican or both.

No, I must push on, undaunted by the tripe saturating the shelves of corporate bookstores. I can't let the fact that even Steve Harvey can get a nonfiction book optioned to Hollywood upset me or drag me away from my craft. If only life were a little more like high school, teachers constantly checking in a guiding us along the way. As a writer, after graduation, if you don't join a writing group and don't have much of an audience, there's nobody to tell you if you're moving in the right direction. There are no more letter grades to let us know how we're doing, and no syllabus to tell us what's coming next.

The last two days I've been doing battle with more than just my inner demons over the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey-- I've been fighting off a wicked stomach flu. Armed with about twenty bottles of vitamin water and three seasons of Glee I should have been well prepared for the 72 hours in bed. What I wasn't prepared for was the amount of time it gave me to ruminate. I try not to think too much when I'm sick because mostly the thoughts lead to 'If I wasn't single there would be someone here taking care of me.'

Some people went to the school of hard knocks, I graduated magna cum laude from the school of nothing-matters-if-you-don't-have-a-boyfriend. People tell me I shouldn't jump into a relationship if I'm not okay by myself. These people:

A. Are in relationships

B. Disgust me

My problem is that I'm lonely. And the solution to that problem is not to stay alone. I have great friends (bartenders) that I see often enough. I enjoy going to work (making money) for the most part. I have a fulfilling and culturally rich appreciation of the arts (GQ). I'm ready to finally bring home yet another MFB, a mother fucking boyfriend.

I am aware that my over-thinking of this matter is immensely attractive to a man. Okay, so I might not be the most easy going of guys. My voice might sound like Fran Drescher when I get excited. I may have an excel spreadsheet of varieties of men that are ineligible for dating and how many zeros behind their income would make them eligible. I still think I'm a catch, deadliest catch, but still worth taking out for a cocktail.

My experience on Match.com is proving to be even more depressing than being single. I'm now single, and looking. The active looking immediately makes me more desperate than I already was. Then there's my stiff competition on the site: men who list stargazing as a fun date idea. I filled out everything there is to fill out on my Match profile, sent e-mails to any and every bachelor that even came close to my scope of datability. So far the only person who has shown any interest lives in Schaumburg. And he likes fishing. I would just like to say that my idea of fishing is telling the server to surprise me at Sushi Samba.

It might just be my fever but reading through my daily matches makes my face burn hot, not in a sexy turned on way, but an enraged I might spit fire at the next person who starts their profile "just seeing what's out there." I'll tell you what's out there, the same bullshit that exists everywhere but instead of just being rejected by a person's face you're rejected by their entire personalty dossier.

This crankiness might be brought on by my temperature, or the lack of sleep I've been getting. Or it might be that I miss having someone around when I feel this way. I even called my mother and asked for advice (even though I know how to handle a flu). Even just hearing her tell me to stock up on Motrin was really calming. It's not so much the relationship stuff that I miss, it's the companionship. It's having someone that cares what color your snot is and how much water you're drinking that really matters.