Dear Diary, I have decided that singledom represents a gross invasion of solitude, in the way France was once invaded by the Nazis. Everyone needs their own ''space'', the final frontier to self-discovery, but I have a passport to the universe. You can find me in suspended animation to the left of jolly, jackass Jupiter, as I have no visa for Venus, the planet of refinement and love. Not even a landing pass.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the novelist and writer of One Hundred Years of Solitude, would sneer at my feelings of isolation, my lack of company, calling my three months of solitary confinement a mere cent's worth of a century, a blink of unhappiness. It may be a transitory stage, yet, if it's all the same to him, singledom feels like a generation of whipped silence to me.
It's puberty all over again. I feel green, unknowing, vulnerable. I am the Little Red Riding Hood of trust and wonder, and just as apprehensive. The ripple of a curtain unnerves me. When I was a child I used to fantasise with glee at the terror of being devoured by a hairy brutish thing that came tapping on my bedroom window in the middle of the night. But enough of my ex. Or, indeed, of the sordid detail of how most of my relationships begin.
I have developed a surprisingly naive interest in sensuality and pleasure, which translates roughly into my enjoying the vicarious thrill, the only buzz presently available to me. I am an anorak on the Internet of love, voyeuristic and uninvolved. I am, in effect, as naughty as Mary Whitehouse's underwear. I have late baths in the moonlight, and early glasses of wine in the sun. Chocolate bingers are wimps, yet a secret square tastes keenly of sin. I am as evil as a charity raffle.
My self-esteem is fluctuating in strength like the cafe tea of all Glasgow pitstops. Sometimes, I feel so unassertive, I worry that even electric doors will not open for me. The lethargy of the glass slices at Queen Street Station have already caused me seconds of panic; that's about a minute each week spent suffering unnecessary paranoia.
Meanwhile, the rain continues to piddle on the pavements, and the wind continues to burp down the chimney and at my balcony. It whistles sarcastically at my bad temper, as if I've upset it personally. It's probably male.
Even nature is turning against me. My sex appeal ebbs and flows, like the sea, and at its lowest, is pitiful and decaying. My cupped living room lights look like eyelids closed in sleep at having to watch my stultifying, domestic routine. I am going through a somewhat somnolent phase. If my walls had ears they'd have headphones on.
I am unusually sensitive to the forecasts of horoscopes, and they are insensitive to me. I think my life is already mapped out, yet I feel lost. I want reasons for my unreasonableness, and that of others. My lack of faith in the male species, as lovers, not just appendages to take out the rubbish and carry the shopping, is becoming a religion itself. Although, as most men think they are God, then I fear I may have to find atheism, double quick. Sadly, I am transfixed by the love story, and hypnotised by the happy ending, while sober. And I am only alive and alert to the possibility of romance when drunk. But I guess that's the case for everybody. I think.
During my more whimsical moments, of which there are many (critics of my work say too many for such a short career and average-sized column), I reflect upon my life by looking in the mirror and checking for lines. I muse upon the past by checking my filo for phone numbers I might like to call in the future. That's filo as in fax, not pastry. I only cook up a storm.
My fulsome sentimentalism is new. I have a ditzy and girly obsession with fate and destiny, two strippers I met at a hen party. Nice buns. I anticipate deliciously the metamorphosis from bystander to participant, in the sacrifice that is becoming the willing victim of a predatory male sexuality. I wish. Like the previous sentence, the act itself now seems too complicated. And, as I skip through the deep, dark, bushy forest of masculinity, with my cape and basket, I see too many sheep in Grandma's clothing. I am inundated with feminist sympathisers, who've had the obligatory virility bypass. Too much baa and not enough bite.
On a Wednesday evening, I know that Ally McBeal talks to me directly, and I feel her pain. I've been told that there are plenty more fish in the sea so many times, the philosophy is beginning to conjure up surreal images, piranhas, in fact, by Dali. When life gets weird, I find that it can definitely get weirder.
I am, dearest diary, the queen of singledom, and am thinking of charging for the excess privacy my land can afford. Osama bin Laden, who should be, and Clinton the serial clincher, will be receiving a glossy, colour brochure. Singledom is a state of grace, like that induced by a temazepam pre-med.
Yours, Anvar
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