After being single for a long time, people start to pick on you. They begin to look at you in disbelief. Either that - or after being single for a long time you start to think people are picking on you or looking at you in disbelief.
I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens today for the first time, just because I thought I should. 52 acres of meticulously landscaped floral heaven smack dab in the center of a sooty New York borough. I am unemployed, and have been living practically next door to the damn thing for three years. I figured I just shouldn't delay any longer. Telling people I've never been to the BBG was getting embarrassing.
It was nice, I suppose. I mean, I think eight dollars is a bit much to ask, but I guess it was... nice. But it's funny how they treat you like a criminal in some places when you're single. Like, when I walked through the garden entrance after paying admission, I set upon one of the two diverging paths. Right away, a security guard, who was standing near a golf cart chatting with two groundsworkers, called out, "Um, excuse me!"
I stopped where I was, already indignant. "Yeah?"
"Can I help you?" I stared at him blankly, then shrugged.
"You have your receipt?"
I waved the Garden map and pamphlet I had just been given at the gate, thinking that was proof enough that I was a fully paid customer. It wasn't.
"You have a receipt you can show me? Would you permit me to look at it?"
I pulled out my wallet and dug out the tiny bit of paper that was my receipt. The black-clad guard took out his pen and poked a hole in it. "Okay, my friend, I'm just checking to make sure they didn't overcharge you. So I'm on your side, okay? You have a great day."
"Thanks, you too."
My first thought was, "fucking Brooklyn." But my second thought immediately after was, "Jesus Christ, when you walk into a place like this on your own, a single young guy, they think you're in the wrong place, or that you're up to something. If you don't walk in holding hands with your wife, or surrounded by 18 kids in matching yellow t-shirts, then you are a fucking weirdo. Your natural aroma of desperation is not good for this historic garden and its ancient trees. You are tainted. Seriously, what the fuck are you doing here?"
Honestly, I don't know what I was doing there. I just wanted to see it.
There were fourteen school groups there, all in different colors of matching T-shirts.
As a certain Mancunian songwriter once crooned in the middle-1980's, shortly after declaring that a certain female monarch was no more: "Life is very long when you're lonely."
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