Notes from a Retired Bachelor
By Christopher Daish
Published August 2012
Published August 2012
Notes from a Retired Bachelor
Surely it doesn’t get any better than being actively single in New York City, the most colorful and diverse city on earth, for I used to think so, but may I digress. When attempting to piece together the hazy bar stool encounters in search of what I thought was love, deep down all I wanted was a brief human embrace, the prospect of waking up next to that person and worse still having to wearily construct a breakfast that showed I cared and that the night wasn’t merely a transaction. Well, whom am I kidding.
In a city saturated with people, never have I encountered so many lonely souls. Most Sundays I used to leave my beloved decadent East Village squalor in search of these very types (insert self) and oscillate westward to The Windsor (West 4th at West 10th Streets) in what became “Office Hour Sundays” with my old mate from high school Cam McKnight. It felt like I had travelled back in time to my college days, surrounded by an army of men dressed in chinos and crisp collared shirts high fiving, talking stocks and fantasy football movement, and hoards of zombie-esque women in search of what they probably wouldn’t find three sauvignon blancs deep, reverting to online shopping banter. Restaurants had become oceans of couples on blind dates, matches made in cyberspace, heads in cell phones, devoid of human touch. Perhaps I’m getting carried away, but this is what I felt it had come to, technology driving us apart rather than bringing us together.
On the brink of throwing away my bohemian joie de vivre approach to life, and re-joining Facebook, I met Stephanie Suits. Everything made sense. Love is ever present and falls out the sky when you least expect it, and life is timing. Without the periods of loneliness and despair, and uncomfortable dates spent talking about dead pets, you cannot begin to appreciate the gift horse when it looks you in the mouth. The newfound lightness of being that Stephanie brought to my world made the merry-go-round of singledom a distant and forgotten memory. When you know, you know.
We will be tying the knot at my beloved Sydney Harbour Down Under on January 6th 2013. There is nothing like a Sydney summer to offset a NYC winter. We have accounted for one wedding crasher and they shall be fed and will have second dibs on the dance floor. Save the date.
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