Happy National Unmarried and Single Americans Week!

George: I was free and clear. I was living the dream. I was stripped to the waist eating a block of cheese the size of a car battery.

Jerry: Before we go any further, I'd just like to point out how disturbing it is that you equate eating a block of cheese with some sort of bachelor paradise.

I just wanted to wish all of my single, untethered friends a happy National Unmarried and Single Americans Week, endorsed by the Fresno Friends Social Club in Clovis, CA! Do something to celebrate. Have a one-night stand. Watch an America's Next Top Model marathon while naked and eating a brick of cheese. Plan your next vacation to a non-Disney-themed locale (assuming the global financial apocalypse holds off).

Point-COUNTERPOINT: I'm 34 and single. It ain't all that.

In my last post, I extolled the virtues of being 34 and single. Livin' la vida loca, baby! Yeah, well.

COUNTERPOINT: Fuck! I don’t want to end up like Eleanor Rigby!

Being 34 and single is challenging for all of the reasons it is awesome. I have all of the freedom in the world, but few people to share it with. Most of my closest friends are married and have kids. So, my nights are mine, my vacations are mine, but my social reality translates this into a lot of alone time. Yes, I see the irony here... I want to share something that on most days I cherish as mine, all mine.

I could spend the next few paragraphs describing periods of loneliness and isolation, but that would be depressing. Instead, I will offer a few snapshots from the life of a 34-year-old single woman.

I get to go anywhere I want on vacation, bitches, but it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. My ideal travel destination involves a long back-country hike to somewhere remote in the mountains or desert. When hiking alone, one sprained ankle and I’m screwed. Also, as someone who has spent time alone in a tent in backwoods Idaho, I know first-hand that my mind can go to some dark places if allowed. As much as I like my Alison-time, I’ve found there’s a fine line between solitude and paranoid delusions of downtrodden lumberjacks lurking outside my tent.

So, I’ve bought into the idea of REI-sponsored and other guided back-country trips, despite my fear of awkward group dynamics and banal chit chat. Unfortunately, REI hates single people. Not really. But REI charges a “single supplement” of $799 for the Chile trip I want to go on before all glaciers disappear. As a person who supports airlines charging obese people for two seats, I guess I have to accept REI’s argument that my tent takes up the space of a couple. That said, fuck you, single supplement, for making me feel like a burden.

When minimum wage employees feel sorry for me, I wonder if I should be feeling sorry for me. After getting a higher-paying job and a bigger apartment, I decided to invest in a couch. So, I headed to Value City Furniture and found a nice saleswoman to help me out. Here’s our conversation:

Saleswoman: OK, we deliver to your neighborhood on Fridays. We will give you a four hour window for delivery.

Me: Um, I work on during the day, but I work only 10 minutes from home, so call me when the delivery truck is on the way. Cool?

Saleswoman: We don’t do that as a policy. You just have to wait at home.

Me: I just started this job, I can’t do that.

Saleswoman: What about a husband or boyfriend? Can you get him to wait for you?

Me: I’m not married. Not an option. You can’t call me?

Saleswoman (cocks her head in pity): You don’t have anyone who can wait at home for you?

Me (inside voice): No, bitch, but thanks for reminding me.

Me (outside voice): Well, I guess no commission for you. BUH bye.

I love living alone, but what if I fall and can’t get up? In one of the best episodes of the X-Files, a Pomeranian eats the entrails of its deceased owner, an elderly neighbor of Peter Boyle’s character. Dude, I don’t want that to happen to me. But recent events suggest that unless I find me some Golden Girls, I might want to think carefully before getting pets. A couple of months ago, I had a terrible stomach virus. I needed Gatorade in the worst way but could not make it to the corner store. Mortified, I had to Blackberry my former co-workers down the street and beg for their help. Last night, I passed out cold in my kitchen after my blood pressure dropped (weird). I woke up in a cold sweat with my vacuum cleaner across my body. It’s moments like that that make me feel really alone. How much do those Life Alert bracelets cost?

Huh. Writing this “Counterpoint” has made me realize that when I say I want someone with whom to share my life, I am being more pragmatic than romantic. I guess that’s mostly right. I am pretty good at entertaining myself. I don’t feel a primal need to share romantic, campfire-lit evenings with a “soul-mate.” I do wish I had a good travel buddy. Who I could have sex with on occasion.

Really, maybe I just need to advertise on Craigslist for a hot manny who isn't afraid to pitch a tent.

POINT-Counterpoint: I'm 34 and single! Woo hoo!

I am 34 and single. No husband. No kids. Definitely edging slowly toward society's margins.

On most days, I am psyched to be where I am in my life. On those days, I am single by choice, and it's the right one. On other days, I find it challenging, to say the least, to maintain a positive spin on my spinster-hood. It's an ongoing debate in my head, and the topic is, "When I am 80 years old and sitting in a rocking chair reflecting on life, will I be OK with never having married?"

POINT: Damn It Feels Good to Be a Spinsta!

When I was visiting Indiana this past weekend, I spent a bit of time with my friends and their children. One friend, a mother of three, asked me what I had done earlier in the day. I mentioned that I took a long, leisurely trip to Target, an exciting event since I don't have easy access to one in DC. She laughed at the idea of a trip to Target being fun, noting that she "probably spends way too much time in Target."

I am not so lame that I equate being single with the freedom to go to big box stores for pleasure rather than to buy toilet paper and diapers. But, it does point to the biggest reason being 34, single, unfettered and financially independent ROCKS: I can do what I want, when I want. Fuck yeah.

My nights are mine. If I want to go home and watch an X-Files marathon or Face-Eating Tumor on the Discovery Health Channel, I can. (And since I have given up roommates, I can do this without judgment. Mostly. I can feel society judging.) If I want to go to yoga class at 8pm, I can. If I want to hit a tranny bachelor party at a gay bar in Dupont Circle, I can do that too. And I have.

My weekends and vacations are mine as well. I play soccer rather than drive kids to and from soccer. No in-laws to visit and pretend to like over the holidays. No social obligation to attend the weddings of my husband's lame co-workers. I'm planning the vacations I want ... a rim-to-rim hike in the Grand Canyon and a trip to Chile in 2009. Last year, after I quit my job and took two months off to hike and camp around the west, a married friend with two kids lamented, "Man, I would kill to do that. But it's just not an option anymore." Another friend who is going through a divorce confided that, on a positive note, he now would be able to go on the type of vacations he preferred.

Sometimes I feel like I've passed a tipping point, where it would be really hard to get married and give up some of my independence. The idea makes me a little claustrophobic. I honestly can't even imagine it. I can't imagine me as part of a we.

Stay tuned for COUNTERPOINT: Fuck! I don't want to end up like Eleanor Rigby!