Day 82: boy troubles.

Over the last maybe week, I have been vaguely troubled by the lack of a boy in my life. I say vaguely, because in general I’ve been feeling ace about just about everything. I don’t feel like I need a boy to feel good about myself or like a completed human being, but the thought has occurred to me that it might be nice to have one around. Sydney is a tough town for boys. No, let me rephrase that: Sydney is a tough town for single females. Finding good boys is the tough bit. By good I mean clever, interesting, spunky, successful, but mainly with any clue in their head about how to treat a female, or any interest in treating one well. Of these there are very few. Mainly men in Sydney are gay. Of those who are not, a large percentage are arrogant, dim-witted players with bad style, or just so emotionally retarded and commitment-phobic that any meaningful interaction is almost impossible, and certainly infinitely pointless. Or maybe I’m just mixing with the wrong crowd. This could well be the case. For a start, I know plenty of really cool, emotionally stable and genuinely interesting and charming boys all of whom are of course taken. Surely some of these boys had to be single in Sydney at some point? Which means maybe there might be others out there somewhere, right? Maybe I just need to try going to different places. Which brings me to another problem: going to places at all. While I have definitely made an effort not to completely avoid popular watering holes (in fact I have seen it as a test of my metal to see whether I can go out sober and still have a fun time), I haven’t been going to bars as much as I used to. The appeal of hanging out around increasingly drunk people into the wee hours has not been as strong as that of getting more sleep, getting up earlier and going out for a jog (for example). Which is all well and good, except that in Australia (as far as I know) you don’t meet boys on jogs. You meet them in bars. Or at parties; drunken ones. “What about yoga boy?” I hear you ask. You’re right, he may well be the perfect man, but I haven’t seen him in class for two weeks, which could mean he’s on holiday, or that he’s stopped doing yoga, or merely that our schedules are out of kilter. Do you see how difficult this is? Even the fact that I’m thinking so much about a boy who I haven’t had a proper conversation with, indicates just what a dearth of good available men there are in this town. But honestly, worrying about it really isn’t something I currently have energy for. So I suppose I will leave my level of “troubled” about boy or lack thereof at “vaguely” (or maybe turn it down to “not at all”), only resolving to at least try and put myself more in the way of the miniscule scattering of quality boys remaining in this town. Getting up the courage to talk to said quality, should it happen along, without the aid of alcohol is of course another matter. But then, if the man is indeed as quality as he looks, he shouldn’t have any trouble in taking care of introductions himself.