The Singletons

THE SINGLETONS

I walked out of my cabin, rattling the knob to ensure the door had locked behind me.  I looked at the paper in my hand.

Single Cruiser Meetup, Lido Deck, Poolside Bar, 7:00 pm to ???

I took a deep breath and headed for the stairs.  When I stepped outside onto the Lido Deck, I smiled.  It was a lovely evening.  The sky was clear, a light tropical breeze ruffled my hair.  This was exactly why I loved the Caribbean—the enchanting nights.  Rhys always said …

I shook myself out of my reverie.  Nope.  Not going there.

I looked at the crowd surrounding the Poolside Bar.  There were about thirty people milling around the bar and sitting at the nearby tables.  They were all ages, shapes, and stripes.  A banner hung from the front of the bar, “Welcome Singles!”

I hadn’t considered that there would be people who were not like me—older, female, nervous.  But there were men and women.  Ages ranged from, I guessed, early thirties to well into their eighties.  Fashions ran the gamut from casual evening wear to beach wear.   I don’t know why I’d never considered that.  Single was single—never-married, divorced, widowed, single by design, single by circumstance.  We were all single.

I sucked in a breath, and headed into the melee … well, not actually a melee, more like a smallish gathering of awkward adults meeting for the first time.  I went up to the bar. 

“What can I get you?” asked the bartender, smiling.

“A glass of red wine, please.”

He made quick work of the pour and slid the glass over to me, along with the bill.  I quickly signed it and turned towards my fellow singletons, looking at the group gathered.  

Two men were intently discussing something that, to my eyes, was very intense.  Their heads were together, and one man was pointing towards the ground every time he said something, emphatically making his point.  That was a conversation I was reluctant to become part of.  I was here to meet new people, chat, and have some fun. Not solve the problems of the world!

There were a number of small groups laughing and chatting.  It seemed a bit forced, but wasn’t it always a bit cringy meeting new people?  You don’t know anything about them, they don’t know anything about you.  You have to do that whole small-talk dance, feeling out the other person to see if their values align with yours.  And if they do, thatks great, you’ve got a new friend.  But if they don’t, then you have to figure out how to excuse yourself without being a jerk.  Or worse, they bail, which means that you failed the potential friend test.  Rejected!

Sigh.

As well, there were a folks like me, standing and watching, trying to decide whether or not to wade into the foray.  I squared my shoulders, and walked up to the woman closest to me, and held out my hand.

“Hi, I’m Cheleste.”

The woman stuck out her hand.  We shook.

“Camy” she said.

I looked around the group.  “So, you’re single, I guess?” I said smiling.  “Like all of us?”

“I am,” she said.  Leaning in she said, “But, not all singles are single.”

“Really?” I said, confused, and a bit curious.

Camy nodded her head.  “I have a friend who attended one of these get togethers on a cruise to Alaska, and she said that there were a few posers who tried to, you know, take advantage.”

Interested, I leaned in.  “Really?”

“Yeah, you know, people pretending to be single who try to scam you.  They want you to pay for everything, or they want to come to your room so they can help themselves to your jewelry.  They pretend they like you, but just want to sleep with you. Creeps.”

I looked at her, smiling.  “You’re not going to try to get me to pay for everything, are you?”

She smiled back, “Only if you promise not to try to steal any of my costume jewelry.”

We both laughed.  “Deal!”  I said.  We shook again.

We moved towards a small table that had just been vacated by a couple, who were holding hands, leaning into each other, talking quietly.  We watched them go.

“Do you think it’s true love?” Camy asked.

I shrugged.  “Maybe.  Or they’re on their honeymoon, and wandered into the wrong party.”

We settled in at the table, watching the crowd.  

I looked at Camy.  She was younger than me, but only by a couple of years, I guessed.  I figured that we were closer to retirement than to university graduation.  “So,” I said, “Why’d you come out for tonight’s shindig?”

“I don’t know.  This is my first real vacation in a couple of years without my ex-husband, Ray.  I like people and I miss having someone to talk to.  Plus, it’s January, and we’re in the tropics.”  She looked at me, “But I do not miss having Ray to talk to.  I hope he’s up north freezing his ass off.”

“Ah, divorced.”

“No,” she said, “Worse!”

I looked at her, confused.  You either broke up, or died.

“He’s dead?” I asked.

She shook her head.  “I wish.  He had our marriage was annulled.  We were married for twelve years, and he had it annulled.  Like I didn’t exist.  Poof.  Gone.  His new bride comes from a strict—and very wealthy—Catholic family.  They would not consider letting their daughter enter into a union with a divorced man.  So, he had our marriage annulled.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, meaning it.

“And, I never even knew that he was cheating on me.  He’s a lawyer, and she was one of his big-deal clients.  He talked about her all the time.”  She turned to look right at me.  “Did I mention that she was not only rich, but twenty years younger than him, and gorgeous?”  She chewed on the side of her cheek.  “I feel like my life’s a stereotype,” she said.  “Philandering husband meets rich, beautiful, younger woman, and wipes out first marriage.”

“What an asshole,” I said.

She laughed.  “It sounds like you know him?” 

“No, but, seriously, he’s the stereotype.”  I put my hands out in front of me, as if I were reading a newspaper headline.  “Middle-aged man going through mid-life crisis finds stupid wealthy woman.”  I paused.  “Stupid because if he cheated on you, chances are he’ll cheat on her.”  I continued.  “Is taken in by stupid woman’s youth, beauty, and money.  Man found to be just as stupid as stupid wealthy woman: binding prenup in place, and he has to learn to relate to new wife who is young enough to be his daughter.”

Camy laughed.  

“And,” I added smiling, “When you meet someone new, you can honestly say that you’ve never been married.  No need to explain that baggage!”

She smiled.  “Thank you.  Your perspective is soooooo much better than mine.”

Just then a man came up to us and nodded to the empty chair at our table.  “Do you mind if I join you?”

We looked at each other, and said “Sure.”  He sat down.

“My name’s Dan.  Thanks for letting me join you.”

We introduced ourselves.  

I spoke first.  “We were just discussing what brought us here tonight.”

Camy looked at Dan.  “First meetup?”

He shook his head.  “No.  I usually try to find the singles’ group on every cruise I take.  I find that it’s easier.  At a singles meetup you have at least one thing in common with everyone there—you’re single.”  He paused.  “Well, two if you count the fact we’re all on a cruise.”  He smiled.  

Dan was a little younger than Camy, I guessed, which made him even younger than me.  He had a professorial air about him.  Maybe it was the neatly trimmed beard and the black framed glasses.  I looked at him again.  I guess he could have been an old hipster, but he wasn’t wearing a pork-pie hat.

“I get it,” I said.  “If you’re part of a singles group, everybody knows your single.  There’s no mystery.”

“Right.  No awkward questions about why you’re single—like being single is a crime or something.”  He shrugged.  “So, I make it a goal of mine to find my tribe when I travel.”

“I know what you mean,” said Camy, nodding.  “It’s like there’s like a stigma about being single past a certain age.  Especially if your a woman.”

‘I agree.” I said.  “I’ve only been on my own for a while, but I am seriously over the sympathetic looks I get from people when they find out I don’t have a partner.”

“Yeah,” said Camy, “and how all you’re couple friends slowly disappear.  The invites for dinners and get-togethers dry up and disappear.  And when you invite other couples to your house, they’re always mysteriously busy or have other plans.”

Dan nodded his head.  “I agree.  When you’re in a relationship, you tend to hang around with other couples.  Now that I’m ssingle, most of my friends are single.”

Camy spoke up.  “That’s true.  Ray and Regina—”

Did Camy just a growl when she said Regina’s name?

“—have all my old friends now.  A few of the women refuse to socialize, but for the most part I’m out, and she’s in.”

  She told Dan about her marriage—or not-marriage.

“Wow,” said Dan.  “What a jerk!  I hope you made him pay excessively for the annulment.”  

Camy smiled.  “I did.  Good thing he had Regina’s—”

She did growl!

“—money to pad his way to freedom.”

“My ex was just as much of a jerk,” said Dan.  “Although not legally married, Marie and I were together since high school, almost thirty years.  Then one day she comes home and says she’s quit her job, and wants to travel the world.  She said she was leaving the next day.   No warning.  She asked me if I wanted to come along.  I said no.  I pointed out to her that I had a job I loved—I teach engineering at the local university—”

Nailed it!

“—and we had a house with a mortgage, a dog.  You know, responsibilities.  Like most grownups.  I said I couldn’t just up and leave on a whim.  And, literally, she just shrugged, and said that she was going upstairs to pack.  She moved out that night.   The next day a letter arrived from her lawyer, demanding half of everything.”  He shook his head.  “I guess it wasn’t as spur-of-the-moment as I thought.”  He looked sad.

“How long ago was that, Dan?” I asked.

“Five years ago.  Last I heard, she was living at an ashram in India, with a guy named Joel.”

“So, you’re okay with that?  You know, the whole ‘I’m leaving to discover the world,’ thing?”

“Yeah, I guess.  Hindsight is twenty/twenty.  We’d been together since we were fifteen.  That’s a long time.  We grew up with each other, and didn’t get to experience a lot of things because we were tied to each other.”  He looked at the others milling around.  “I hadn’t asked a woman out on a date since before I had my driver’s license.  I had only ever been with one woman.  I’d never had to navigate the dating scene when I was younger, never mind the hellscape that is online dating.”

“I hear ya,” said Camy.  “Hellscape is a very apt.”  

I looked at my two companions.  “I have to admit that I know nothing about online dating.”

Camy’s eyes went wide.  “Oh my God, Cheleste!  It’s horrible.”  Her horror seemed real.  “Trolls, ghosting, cat-fishing, scams, …”

Dan continued, “The superficiality, the really bad matching software, the hit your ego takes if you’re rejected, …”

“Dick pics,” said Camy.

“What!” I said, swinging my head to look directly at Camy.  “No!  You’re not serious!” I looked between the two of them.  “Really?”

“For reals, Cheleste.  There was this guy, Roger.  He was in his late forties. We’d been texting on the app for a couple of days, then one morning I open his latest text, and it’s a picture of his junk.  Ew.”  

I almost laughed.  The look on her face was so … so “ew.”  It was the epitome of “ew”.  I’m sure that if I looked up “ew” in the dictionary, I’d see her face.

“Did you report him?” I asked.

“I did, but the company said that it wasn’t their job to police their clients.  And then they had the audacity to ask me if I had sent him any naked pictures.  I pulled my profile that day, and left a scathing review on Yelp about my experience.”

Dan was shaking his head.  “I had the same thing happen.  A woman named Gwen sent me a picture of herself with no top on, and asked me to send her pictures of my body.  When I didn’t reply, she asked me if the reason that I hadn’t sent her a photo was because I was hideous.  She said she didn’t mind.  She liked hideous.  I blocked her from my profile, and asked for my money back.  The company declined.”  He paused, shaking his head.  “Hellscape.”  He looked at me.  “So, I guess you haven’t been single long?” he ventured.

I shook my head.  “Only a couple of months.”

Camy looked at me.  “Care to share.”

I shrugged.  “Sure,” I said, but did I really want to?  I took a big breath.  “My ex-husband, Rhys and I had been together thirty-one years.  We married when I was twenty-two and he was twenty-three.  We were both still in school but, you know, when you’re young and in love.”  I paused.  “Anyway, we had three kids, two daughters and a son.  They’re all well-adjusted adults with relationships and families of their own.  We each had our own practices— I’m a GP and Rhys is—was—a dentist.  We were pretty busy, so I guess I didn’t notice the changes in Rhys right away.  He became secretive, distant, rude,” I looked around the room, thinking.  “I guess I figured that he was bored, or restless.  I even thought that maybe he was having an affair.  I wasn’t sure what the problem was, but I knew I wasn’t happy, so I suggested counselling.”

Camy nodded.  “I did, too.  Ray said no, that he’d already made up his mind.  He just decided that we were done.  He didn’t even ask me!  He and Regina—”

Grrrrrrrr!

“—had more important things to do, like get married, and have kids.”

“Kids!  Ouch!” I said.

“A one year old, and another on the way.  The next heir, blah, blah, blah, blah. He always said he didn’t want kids.”

“Rhys was a great father, and for the first twenty-eight years, a good husband.  But by last year we’d almost stopped talking to each other.  I was fed up. That morning before work, I asked him once more to go to counselling with me, and he refused.  I filed for divorce later that day.”

“Good for you!” said Camy.  “You took charge!”

“Yeah, I took charge all right.  He died the next day.  Fell down the stairs and broke his neck.  He was dead when I came home from work.”

“That’s awful!” said Camy.

“But, ironic,” said Dan.  I nodded.

“What happened?” asked Camy.

“Well, once the police found out that I had filed for divorce, they thought that I killed him, you know, to speed up the process.  I was a person of interest.  Which was its own ring of hell.  But, I had an alibi—an office full of patients—so they backed off, and Rhys’s death was deemed death by misadventure.

Camy was stunned.  “So, you were ready to divorce, but he died?  You got what you wanted without having to go through divorce lawyers?”

I nodded.  “But the kids lost their father.”

Camy shrugged.  “Maybe he should have been watching where he was walking.  If he’d been paying attention none of this would have happened.”

I looked at her.  “Harsh, but accurate,” I said, then thought,  Maybe if I hadn’t pushed him down the stairs before I went to work, none of this would have happened, either.