Writer Vixen Explains It All

Imaginary Bitches (A Review)

Best of Writer Vixen

Originally published for "Zeitgeist: Quirkyalone Pop Culture" on Quirkyalone.net.

Choosing to remain single in a coupled world is sometimes a lonely gig, never more so than when all of your close friends are smugly cocooned in their couple-bubbles. It can make you feel like the last single person on Earth.

As once-single friends morph into couples, it often becomes irritatingly apparent that they no longer understand the challenges or perspectives of singledom. You sometimes feel like hitting them over the head, yet you still love them and yearn for common ground to maintain your friendships. This painful conflict is played out to hilarious effect in the engaging Web series Imaginary Bitches.

Eden is the last single girl in her circle of friends, refusing to compromise her standards simply to have a boyfriend. After an amazing date with a guy she really likes, Eden calls each of her friends to share her exciting news, but they’re only interested in talking about their relationships. Increasingly dispirited with each aborted call, Eden discovers, to her astonishment, that she has conjured an imaginary friend named Catherine—a friend who’s avidly interested in discussing all the details of Eden's date.

But Catherine proves to be less a “friend” than a total bitch, with lots of nasty things to say about Eden and all of her real girlfriends.That's right, Eden herself is not exempt from Catherine's bitchiness. Furthermore, Catherine is soon joined by a second imaginary bitch named Heather. The imaginary bitches quickly establish their presence in all of Eden’s relationships, leaving her to deal with the fallout even as they help her sort out her friendships and her love life.

Is it Better to be Married or Single?

Best of Writer Vixen

Originally published as "Defending Marriage . . . and Singledom" for "Zeitgeist: Quirkyalone Pop Culture" at Quirkyalone.net.

You’d think it was the first time anyone’s ever gotten a divorce.

Sandra Tsing Loh’s recent admission in The Atlantic that she’s divorcing her husband after 20 years (following her own extramarital affair) has ignited a firestorm of high-minded controversy debating the pros and cons of marriage. The story was picked up nationally, with nearly all the major news outlets chiming in online, on air and in print.

The particular point of contention is Ms. Loh’s theory that perhaps the reason we have a divorce culture is because we marry too often. Citing “all the abject and swallowed misery” she observes in modern marriage, she wonders, “Why do we still insist on marriage?”

Then she really gets down to it, ending her polemic with

"a final piece of advice: avoid marriage—or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.”

Reality TV Idea #1: "I Complete Me"

Best of Writer Vixen

The following is excerpted from an essay originally published on Onely on 30 July 2009.

"Onely: Single and Happy" is a blog that offers fresh perspectives on living solo. It's produced by the dynamic writing duo known as "Lisa and Christina," both of whom hail from the East Coast. They are also the advice columnists for Quirkyalone.net, the newly redesigned online home of the quirkyalone community.

Christina and I have decided to pitch our own Reality TV show, called I Complete Me. We don’t have any illusions that anyone will actually take us up on the offer, but just for kicks, here’s what we propose:

I Complete Me
(alternate title: A Shot at Independence)

SUMMARY

Instead of forcing (supposedly inept) single people into the world of coupling, (overly dependent and unhealthily) coupled people are forced to navigate the world as singles for a full month. Both members of a pair are ranked and judged against other pairs according to how well they handle the single life.

CONTESTANTS

Pairs are nominated and chosen on the basis of how “unhealthy” their friends and family think the pair has become as a result of coupling. The best contestants are those who (separately or together) have lost track of the “selves” that friends and family used to know and love. Have they stopped paying attention to their single friends? Have they dropped their favorite hobbies? Is every weekday and weekend night spent, in some way, shape or form, with the significant other? Do couples take personal offense at invitations that do not automatically include the significant other?

Breaking Up Is (Not So) Hard To Do

Best of Writer Vixen

I was commiserating with my friend Jackie over the recent breakup of her two-year relationship. "I thought breakups would get easier after my 30's," she lamented over triple-tall-non-fat mochas at Starbucks. "But instead, they seem to be getting harder."

I suggested that perhaps that’s because of the way her boyfriend ended things. After two weeks of not hearing from him, she came home from work one evening to find a Post-It note on her front door saying that he’d met someone else.

Some men just have a knack for taking your breath away.

Personally, I find that breakups actually get easier as I get older. First, you get more practice. Like anything else, the more you do it the more adept you become. And although it’s not something anyone wants to practice enough to become, say, Carnegie-Hall-level perfect, your skills definitely improve as time goes by.

If You Can't Get a Life, at Least Get a Clue

Best of Writer Vixen: Originally posted May 2007

I had lunch at Café Rouge in Berkeley on Saturday afternoon (still the best cheeseburger in the entire Bay Area). As I sat at the bar flipping through Sue Ostler’s Relationships that Rock!—research for my latest literary idea about a series on successful singledom—a demanding, nicotine-edged voice intruded on my reveries.

“Relationships that Rock! . . . Is that a book about marriage?” The voice insisting on my attention emanated from the expensively dressed, perfectly manicured woman of a certain age seated to my right. She was washing down the last of her linguine primavera with the last of her second martini.

“Actually,” I replied, “It’s about being happily single.”

“Being single sucks!” she declared loudly.

Embarrassed for her, I looked away as I sipped my Diet Coke. Undeterred, she turned to the 30-something bartender with the trim beard who was trying to suppress a smile as he cleared away her plate. “I’ve been single since 1968 so I should know what I’m talking about!”