Keep Calm and Carry On

Alternate title: Another One Bites the Muff

After a year-long self-imposed celibacy kick in which I kicked the drinking habit, rid my life of toxic friends, and finally landed myself in a healthy living situation with a kick-ass roommate, it's comforting to know some things never change. And by "some things" I mean my inability to find myself attracted to someone well-suited for a relationship with yours truly. But after reading AM New York (that beacon of newspapers), I must say I'm feeling pretty darn good about my luck in the romantic arena. Yep, I'm doing just fine.

About 3 months ago, I read that St. Anthony (commonly known as the patron Saint of all things lost) is also known as The Match Maker. In olden times (location unknown--probably my Grandmother's kitchen), statues of Tony were hung upside down, held "hostage"--if you will--in homes where a husband needed to be found for the daughter of the house. Upon hearing this, I quickly informed my roommate, who has suffered the same dating misfortune that I have in days/months/years past and swiftly procured a statuette of the acclaimed miracle worker for our tiny apartment. Once home, however, I realized that St. Anthony, in this particular depiction, is holding the baby Jesus. With Baby J on his arm, sporting a rather embarrassing hair-do (which I later found that he made quite popular in his day--this alone is the miracle that should have qualified him for the Sainthood), St. T seemed too pious to string up and dangle from the ceiling for the mere purpose of our laughable love-lives. So atop the kitchen table they sat. T & J joined us for breakfast, scrabble matches, and four-hour complaint sessions where far too many cigarettes went up in smoke along with our hopes of finding some fun.

Coming out of dating retirement proved difficult to say the least. The arduous task of sifting through the endless menu of dating websites with their various forms of feeble flirtation methods ("Send this person a Smile," "Wink at So-and-So" etc.), taking one's life in one's hands meeting strangers, and later discovering their dirty secrets of relationships "not quite over;" I began to lose faith in humanity once again. My life was a parade of colossal dating disasters (psychoanalysis in a Starbucks, being accused of anti-feminist behavior for having shaved legs, and an unabashed anti-Semite--just to name a few). St. Anthony was having his way with me, and his tiny, balding, plaster head beamed brighter and brighter as I collected more and more horror stories.

Just after Christmas, my roommate declared her distaste for St. Anthony and the bum luck he has brought us both. Still intimidated by his right-hand little man (may God save my burning soul for saying), she could not fathom throwing him away or stuffing him in a box somewhere under the bed. So, she simply placed him in the cupboard under the sink.

Now, call me superstitious, call me spooky, or call me a crazy old Italian lady (someone had to take over that title since Grandma passed); but miracle of miracles, my roommate went on a successful date a mere 48 hours later. Against all odds, she met (by chance--no internet intervention necessary!) a lovely boy whom she enjoyed spending time with. And then, wonder of wonders, I spent the evening with a girl and FINALLY (after a good 7 hours of movie watching, dining, shopping and STALLING) made a move. Low and behold, she was on the same page and we were off and running (a race against the imminent break-up clock). I have found, historically, that my "relationships" have a shelf-life of about three months. Perfect! I thought, that will carry us through to the end of March, get me out of my wonky first-date-stop-and-go patterns, and provide some material for writing (I promised myself I'd blog in '08).

That was New Year's Day. After six short days of hemming and hawing over the cliché "Does she dig me?" conundrum, I finally got my answer. It seems, as per usual, I have found myself with someone who is "not ready for anything." And, having just come off a year of Saintly behavior myself, I'll admit, humbly, that I am ready for a lot of things...

This can only mean one of two things: A.) St. Anthony hates lesbians. Or B.) He's annoyed that he has to find my keys/cell phone/credit cards etc. every time I leave the house and has left me to my own devices in finding a mate. For a few days I thought Tony had purposefully given me the bums rush, the runaround. I thought he had served up the worst of the worst in order to punish me for losing my personal belongings on a daily basis.

But then, a sign from the divine…through that Holy vehicle of The Word: AM New York…"A man who told a 911 operator he killed his girlfriend and cooked parts of her body faces a capital murder charge…Deputies responding to the 911 call found a gruesome scene: a human ear boiling in a pot on a stovetop and a hunk of flesh on a fork sitting atop a plate on the kitchen table. Authorities believe the man arrested in the death of his 21-year-old girlfriend cooked parts of her body and may have tried to eat them…Authorities say it is unclear whether McCuin consumed any part of the woman's body. 'We cannot prove that he did, he was either going to, had been, or led us to think that he was doing it.'"

Now, considering that I've been asking St. Anthony to send me someone to come eat me, I guess I should be grateful. Thank Tony for small favors. Sigh.