A lot of high-rises also come with parking, which is good in town with crappy parking and police that hand out tickets like John Wayne Gasey handed out lolipops to underage teen boys. I also like the fact that most high-rises have balconies. Just about every apartment I've lived in has had a balcony and was located near a bar. This is particularly fun around 2am when the bars close and the show begins.
You KNOW you want it baby, Yeah!
Honestly, I'll often just wander out to my balcony around closing time just to watch people stumble around, throw up in the gutter or engage in what I call drunk fights. These are different from real fights in the fact that, usually, neither party can really stand up straight, keep their balance or throw a real punch. It's usually a lot of yelling and smack talk, followed up by some shoving or the traditional "drunk male chest bump" which is then usually followed by a slap or a punch. The great thing about drunk fights is that the punch generally ends up knocking both people down and then they roll around for a minute while their friends come in to break things up. It's like clockwork.
Then there's the always fun lovers' spat. A guy and girl stand on the corner and air all their dirty laundry publicly. The woman is generally hysterical because the guy, A) looked at another woman, B) forgot something important, or C) is drunk...again. It doesn't really matter, it's fun to watch, even from 20 stories up. You'd be surprised how much of a conversation you can hear that high up, especially when they're yelling at the top of their lungs. Oh, you hear the usual, "WOOO'S" and "HOOOT'S" but it's the drunken spectacle I really enjoy watching.
Sometimes, though living in a high rise has its downside. For instance, the other day, I was sleeping on my couch, which I often do, and my phone rang. I was startled out of a deep slumber by its constant ringing. I looked at my iPhone, the time was just after 4:30 am. Now, you have to understand, since I left TV and radio, no one calls me that early unless it's something very important. I didn't recognize the number, so my mind had a million awful thoughts running through it. Was it the hospital? Was a family member in trouble? A friend who needed help? I had been asleep for just over two hours and suddenly I was faced with something potentially horrible.
Fortunately, it was none of those things, but it was still pretty horrible. Dave, the front desk guy was calling to ask me to check my bathroom. Still a little drunk from sleep, I wasn't sure I understood the question.
"I need you to check your bathroom to make sure it's not leaking somewhere," Dave said. Still a little confused, I managed to pull myself off the couch and make my way to my bathroom where I promptly stepped into what felt like a kiddie pool. I have a ledge between my bedroom and my bathroom, about a two inch ledge. So any water that manages to leak out onto my floor, it collects. Well, let me tell you, it had collected...in a big way.
It seems I had a leak coming from my toilet tank. I didn't know. But somehow it had started to leak during the night and flood my bathroom floor. This would be okay if I lived in a house. In a high-rise, though, it's a minor catastrophe. My water was leaking through to the floor beneath me and they had called to complain.
In my time living here, the pipes have proven to be the biggest issue, with clogs happening all the time. As I type this, my garbage disposal is basically useless as my sink is backed up. But that's okay, you learn to cope with a few setbacks when you live in a high-rise.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "What does this have to do with 'bachelor alone-ness?'" I'll tell you. One of the hallmarks of being a bachelor is being alone. Learning to be alone, learning to enjoy being alone, dealing with problems...alone. I'm not talking about life-changing, world-shattering kind of things, but, my toilet is backed up and my garbage disposal won't work and my microwave is on the blink and for some reason the elevator isn't working again kind of problems.
Being a bachelor means never having to say, "I can do it." Seriously. I hear all the time from my "partnered friends" who are always complaining that their girlfriend or wife is making them put up new shelves in the closets, or fix the plumbing or build a porch. Men with girlfriends or wives do things they normally would never do because their significant others ask them to do those things.
As a bachelor, I have no one to ask me to do things I don't want to do, like fix my garbage disposal, or mow the lawn (hell, I don't even have a lawn), or build anything...at all. I'm not trying to impress anyone or show off my alpha male-ness to anyone. I can simply call someone up and say, "Hey, I have a problem, come fix it" and someone shows up a few minutes later wit a toolkit and in an hour or so, it's fixed. Yay for me.
As a bachelor, I often walk around in only my boxers and a t-shirt (although lately I've been wearing my "I"m Working" sweats I got from a friend last Xmas) and I can leave my dirty dishes on my coffee table and I can go months without dusting or mopping. I was making dinner the other night and I had made chili and burgers. I whipped it up in about 20 minutes and then I grabbed "the Plate" and served up a meal. "The Plate" is a particularly bachelor-like phenomenon I believe. I have a single plate that I eat just about every meal on. I don't wash it, I don't wipe it off, I eat a meal off it, I put it on the counter and then I serve up my next meal on it.
I do this because, first, I hate doing dishes. And second, I hate doing dishes. So I use the same plate over and over. My only other option is to buy paper plates, which I've done in the past, I'm not above that. So here I am, with my "plate" and I consider pulling out a bowl for my chili. But then I think, why? So I pull the pan off the stove, let it cool for a second and eat my chili out of the pan.
See, this is what bachelors do. And we do it because we're alone. We don't have anyone looking over our shoulders telling us NOT to eat off the same plate every single day, or NOT to eat our chili straight out of the pan. This is why bachelors ENJOY being alone and being bachelors.
Listen, I love my friends, I love being around them, I miss them when I'm not around them for any length of time. Just tonight I went out to have a beer for an hour and half with probably my best friend, just because I enjoy being with her. She makes me laugh and I feel at ease with her. But then she goes home and I go home and we can both be bachelors in our own little worlds.
Does it get lonely? I think most bachelors would say yes, sometimes. But for the most part, we revel in the alone-ness. And here's why: the alone-ness also equals freedom. We don't have anyone to answer to, we don't have anyone looking over our shoulders, we don't have the kind of responsibilities that couples have. This is the essence of being a bachelor.
I've heard from several people that the bachelor lifestyle is a kind of Peter-Pan lifestyle. In other words it's where the person never really grows up. This confuses me. I suppose we all have different definitions of what being a "grown up" means. Yes, I'll admit I act well below my age at times. And if being a grown up means having a wife and children, a mortgage and a job you hate, well, then, you can keep it. I know a number of bachelors who are very responsible. In fact the bachelorette I met tonight, my friend, is one of the most responsible people I know. She's pretty grown up, even if I'm not sometimes.
I suppose, in the end, being successful at being alone is a uniquely bachelor trait. It's part of who we are as bachelors. We don't want to sit alone at home on a Friday night, we'll normally go out and FIND something to do, people to be with. But when the bars close, when the lights go up and the drinks are done and the conversation is over, we're perfectly okay making the walk, or drive home alone. It doesn't fill us with sadness or regret. On the contrary, we don't mind going home alone, in some cases, we enjoy going home alone. The alternative is having to answer to someone, or facing the awkward morning after where you're trying to remember the other person's name and help them find their keys and cellphone.
Of course, sometime we're also the ones throwing up in the gutter or getting involved in some kind of drunk fight. Either way, it's still better than having a lover's spat on a streetcorner at 2:30 am, to the amusement of every balcony dweller in a three block radius.
And when faced with those options, bachelor-alone-ness wins again.
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