Single & The City

Two adorable, garbage-eating love pigeons who found each other against all odds

Here’s a question: Mathematically, if you live in a geographic location (an island, no less) that contains a large quantity of single people, the chances of meeting someone you are compatible with is much higher, right?

I went to a teeny tiny private liberal arts college, and my friends and I figured out a similar equation that resulted in a much less favorable outcome. If roughly 2,000 kids went to our school, and roughly half were boys, we had 1,000 to work with. Then, figure there were approximately 300 or so that were “on the scene” and hung out with people we knew, deeming them socially viable candidates for boyfriends. Continuing, of the 300, say approximately half of them were taken, whittling it down to 150. Then once you factor in poor hygiene, drinking problems, guys who had hooked up with your friends, those who suffered from excessive visible ear wax, and so forth, really, there were, like, two guys to choose from.

When I first moved to New York, I figured the law of inverses would be in effect. In contrast to college, there would be a veritable platter of handsome men everywhere! You could meet new people every night! The odds were in our favor!

Until I discovered the painful truth that dating in New York doesn’t have such a negative stigma for no reason.The following factors contributed to my emotional scarring as a young single twenty-something in New York and may explain why some of my friends find it so tough:

1) The Sex and the City Quotient: I think New York has to be the capital of single women.  Blame Sex and the City. It glorified living in New York, being hot, wasting all of your money on designer shoes and so forth. But also? They met a LOT of guys on that show. Even Miranda was dating hot guys. It was drastically unrealistic. And do not even get me started on that movie, where Jennifer Hudson said she moved to New York to “fall in love”. Word to the wise, SATC: YOU ARE RUINING IT. Stop telling people to move here to fall in love and rent purses online! Men are on to our tricks and found out there are tons of desperate, single girls out there and it’s ruining it for the normal girls!

2) Finance, Pre-October 2008: I will say it- bankers are pretty much assholes. Remember Dating A Banker Anonymous? ( If you dont, oh man. Check it out: http://www.dabagirls.com) It’s tough for me to believe anyone would be that annoying in real life, so I am going to venture to guess that this site was a parody of the girls in New York who move there in order to pursue an MRS degree with a Wall Street dude.  As one of the only positive outcomes of the financial meltdown, many of these men have since left Manhattan, but still many of them linger and are just as annoying and conceited as ever. The problem is, these dudes are everywhere. Luckily, they are easy to spot, sort of like a ginger in a corn maze. Just ask them if you can borrow their pocket square.

3) Size is EVERYTHING: Remember my aforementioned mathematical equation? Yeah, I was wrong. No law of inverses here. With a city so enormous, it’s actually kind of tough to meet people. You don’t run into the same people over and over, you don’t hang out at the same bars (unless you are like me and the bartenders at P.J. Clarke’s knew your name, hometown and social security number. What up Creighton!)  you don’t go to house parties with the same group of people. It makes it relatively difficult to meet guys, because god knows there is nothing more appealing than some greaseball sidling up next to you at a bar and asking where you’re from while you’re trying to talk to your girlfriend about the death of her beloved cocker spaniel. Total life fail.