This post is the first in a series of being single by Kareem, a single guy in DC.

Being Single is: Arrivals, Woolly Mammoths, Companion-Free Climate Change

DC is undoubtedly a couples’ city. As a relatively new inhabitant of the federal district, one of my first realizations upon arrival was that almost everyone here was in a relationship. My awareness started out innocently: I breathed a sigh of happiness when seeing a couple having coffee together, watching a group of couples going to the theater on a Friday evening, or listening to the soon-to-be relentless stories of my coworkers and their boyfriends, girlfriends, fiancees, wives, and husbands. Every action seemed geared towards those with a significant other.

After approximately five months of living here, my own blatant failure to acquire some sort of romantic union became an increasing obsession. A feeling of bitterness started to sink in. It was all I could think about. If I stayed in on a Friday evening to read the Economist, I would get the nagging feeling that I was cheating myself and failing in the most important quest to find a companion. If I turned a friend down to go to a bar, I was ruining my chances all together. It became all consuming. I had been single for some time, over a year, but there was an excuse for that– I was living abroad and constantly traveling. The situation was definitely not conducive to partnership or dedication of any sort to another human being. But seriously! I had moved back to America with the hopes of starting a new life…one I had assumed I would have a good chance of sharing if I lived in a liberal, urban atmosphere such as Washington. What the hell? It was one thing to be single, but why couldn’t I even get one date?

But while patience is a virtue to which I can usually subscribe, it got to the point where any overt signs of romance were making me seriously distressed. When I first moved to DC and saw a gay couple holding hands, I couldn’t help but feel humbled and proud: “Look at them,” I thought to myself. “Aw.” Needless to say, the novelty soon wore off. Working in Dupont, I was bombarded left and right by gay twosomes. Soon I was flamboyantly pushing past cute, hand-in-hand couples, hunched over and mumbling, as I balanced my overstuffed gym bag under one arm and my date for the weekend (a stack of library books I’d been meaning to read for years) in the other. I retreated to my apartment, losing myself in the world of recipe blogs, whiskey, and back issues of National Geographic. I attributed my hermit-like transformation to the cold weather and overcast skies. I imagined myself like a woolly mammoth frozen in my own baron Siberia of Singledom. In millions of years I would be excavated from of my apartment cave, my arm hairs scrutinized for ancient DNA. I could see a group of European experts in white lab coats leaning over a microphone, speaking to the international scientific community, “Our research is conclusive: the specimen lived an intensely solitary life, away from the herd. A strange and thrilling case indeed.”

Then came the warm Sunday afternoon when, while resting under a cherry blossom tree in the park in my neighborhood, I attained my enlightenment. As the weather warmed and my allergies flared, I began to slowly emerge from my dark, shameful existence. Much like our fragile climate, I started warming up to a new movement I would soon come to know as ‘Singleism’ (If you want to impress your friends, play around with the pronunciation. It makes it sound all the more European, and that is hot). New awareness in mind, I began to view the idea of the single life not as an interim, but as an achievement. I became increasingly motivated by a lifestyle completely looked down upon and marginalized in mainstream pop culture and society. This realization led to my exploration of sustainable single solutions, not solutions to curb my singledom. With pertinacity comparable to Rush Limbaugh trying to open a stubborn bottle of oxycodone, I’d acquired a completely new outlook for life as a single man. Much like the ridiculously buff guys at my gym lifting the equivalent of three bulldozers over their heads, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief once I threw down the weight of my constant search for companionship. Bitter resentment turned to light curiosity. Why, even, was I expected to find somebody in the first place? Why did my social life have to revolve around such a meandering social highway, filled with pot-hole hook-ups and a lack of clearly marked road signs?

With the articles of this column as my sutras, I present to you an alternative perspective within the alternative gay community. While I haven’t completely given up on the dating scene or finding a boyfriend myself, I have now attempted to free myself from the rusty shackles of a couple-driven society. This piece is meant as an introduction, a way forward from the confines of a city in the grips of a couples’ obsession. While a guide for those of us with severe solo syndrome, this is by no means an attack upon the institution of the Couple. Instead, I’d like to think of this as a return to the freedom being single provides, an integral part of the Singleism Movement that I cannot overemphasize. And I’m not just talking about hooking up with a new face from Town every weekend. For me, and for I suspect many others, this day-to-day mindset will not do. I realize many couple sympathizers can and will argue that the points I may make are just as applicable to those people in relationships as they are to those outside the establishment. To them, I extend my hand of reconciliation and cooperation. I am full supporter of a healthy coexistence for couples and single people.

But peace aside, there is something to be said for the confident loner, that individual who doesn’t prescribe to the ongoing search online, in the bars, or at the gym, for a companion. Single should not be synonymous with pro tempore. If anything, I hope to bring a romance back to the single lifestyle that has been lost amongst the Facebook status updates, speed dating events, and disgraceful reality dating shows. Most importantly, I hope to restore a unity to the single community, a scattered people lost in a diaspora among the committed. Please join me in the coming articles as I try to redefine what being single truly is. I hereby declare myself: Single.

Sigh of happiness. That felt good.

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