A Day in the Life of a Single Husband

My wife is my best friend. I know to some, hearing this cliche causes them to roll their eyes. But it’s true. That’s one of the major reasons why I proposed to her in the first place, because she is so incredibly enjoyable to be around, and I don’t want to spend my time with anyone else but her.

When the pandemic hit, that was a real test for a lot of couples. Everyone living together in their own personal bubbles—the ones that followed the guidelines and wanted to be safe, anyway—for several months at a time, being in each other’s business every waking moment. We had just gotten married a few months prior to lockdown happening, so it quickly became a pressure cooker to see how we would do in such a stressful environment. As it turns out, we thrived in it.

Yes, we had both been laid off from our jobs after a few months into the new world of masks, shots, and nasal swabs, but we had each other and our cat. We were happy, content. We passed the time with movies, reading, and at-home exercises like everybody else. No matter how frustrating things got, we never snapped at one another or loathed the very idea of our relationship. We continued on, and came out stronger on the other side.

With some friends, you see them on a regular basis. Whether at work, or a weekly trivia night at a bar equal distance from everyone’s place, or at a recreational softball game. You might text daily, sharing the latest memes or articles from reddit. As intimate as a friendship can be. It really depends on the physical distance, and how much of an extrovert you are willing to be.

Other friends you might only check-in on every few weeks, if not months or years. A brief text or email email exchange that is essentially just asking, “Are you still alive? Yeah? Alright, good chat.” These are usually friendships with very deep roots, going back to college, high school, or even childhood. A book you just read or an anecdote you heard that might remind you of them fondly, and want to check in. They have their lives, and you have yours. Both orbiting around the same sun, but at different speeds.

My wife has several friends both local and abroad, from different aspects of her life that she’s constantly messaging with or making plans to meet up and hang out with. Whether it’s a whole day at Disneyland in Anaheim, or the next historical costume ball that’s being planned in a luxurious Venetian palazzo. She has her pretty little fingers in several pies, and always has a knowledgable someone she can turn to when she has a specific question about something.

I myself am the opposite. I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.

As I write this, I turn 39 years old in May. The next year, 40 years old. I always tell my wife there’s no reason to celebrate my birthday unless there’s a ‘5’ or a ‘0’ after the number. I feel those are the birthdays to celebrate because it’s a good span to reflect and celebrate living that long. They’re solid, complete numbers. You’re a different person at 25 than you were at 20. Just those 5-years can make all the difference. And a whole decade as a range? You’re an entirely different entity altogether.

Cameron at 30 cringes at who Cameron was at 20. Why is Cameron speaking in third person? It’s creepy, and Cameron should cease immediately. I was a bit of a misfit in high school, primarily because I was involved in musical theatre and not sports like the rest of the boys my age. In my 20s as I started attending community college, I took it as an opportunity to try to just be myself and really see who I was and what I was into now that I was on my own and free of the chains of what my peers thought. I was already coming to that mindset my Senior year when I realized, “Why do I care what these people think of me? If I’m lucky, I’ll never see them again!” Except for the handful of friends I wanted to stay in touch with, of course. Not every friend remained local, a majority of them moved away, but it was still manageable to maintain these friendships primarily because of social media (back when it wasn’t evil).

Like a bucket of water left out in the sun, every year the bucket got shallower as the different friendships evaporated for one reason or another: proximity, scandal, fights, or even carelessness. As if though having these people as friends on Myspace or Facebook still counted. Technically you were still seeing what they were up to, even if you weren’t hanging out with them in person.

Without even realizing it at the time, I was growing a little lonely.

I like to perform for people, making people laugh and feel comfortable. I’m very extroverted that way. My wife has to remind me at times that I don’t always need to perform, that I can just be myself without having to turn on the court jester button. I think I do it because I don’t have any friends left, so I have this need for attention, and to try and make sure people like me. It’s something I could definitely get to the bottom to if I went to therapy long enough.

I do have a handful of close friends left, but no one close to me that I can hang out with on the weekends or anything like that. Not surprisingly, the majority of my friends are from musical theatre back in high school. Are we the stereotypical theatre kids with theatre kid energy and break out into song at the drop of a hat? Hell no. Those types of theatre kids are obnoxious and need to stick to the Renaissance Fairs that they plague. We’re mothers, lawyers, teachers, and in my case, an ad man. The times that we do all hang out together, usually at Disneyland or one-on-one for a podcast, it’s all about making each other laugh while exchanging the latest hot goss about people we went to high school with and what they’re up to now.

My problem is I’m set in my routine, and I get anxious about breaking it. I work from home Monday through Friday, start prepping dinner around 5:30pm, sit down for a lovely meal with my wife from 6pm-7pm, take out the recycling while my wife showers, and then we’re in bed reading our books until about 8pm. The rest of the evening is watching our television programs or a movie until 10pm, when we then get ready for bed while we watch the local news until Sports Central comes on at exactly 10:38pm every night (except on the weekends when it starts sooner). Sleep, wake, work-out, repeat.

It’s comforting because I know what to expect. That’s why I could never make it as a freelancer. I grow anxious about unknowns.

More recently I’ve felt this particular pang of loneliness. I notice it a lot more when my wife is away. I don’t want to discourage her, or make her feel the need to change her plans, but when alone with my thoughts, it does make me think about what I’ve accomplished in my 38 years on this planet, and how much longer I have until the inevitable end. I always thought I’d like to live to 125 (again, a nice solid number), especially with the advances in medicine that one day might even make it possible.

I feel like I need to share with you, the reader, that I am NOT, nor will I ever be, suicidal. That has never been in the cards for me. With so little time we have in this life, why would I want to exit it sooner? There’s so much beauty, potential, yada yada yada, that I want to live and savor every minute of it. I don’t want to take the easy way out, no matter what the circumstances may be. So if I ever do end up dead from "suicide," know that it was staged and call Hercule Poirot to find the real killer.

All that being said, there was only one time I ever was “suicidal” and it was during my Senior year of high school. I was upset about a close friendship of mine that was coming to an end. I had developed feelings toward the friend, but she was seeing a guy I wasn’t a fan of. We were no longer hanging out because of her new beau. My parents noticed I was staying in my room a lot more because of how I was feeling, and thought I should go out and be around people. A group of friends dropped by to recruit me into having fun that Friday night when I was in the depths of my feelings, and I begrudgingly went with them. I didn’t last 10 minutes until I told them I appreciated them coming to get me out of my shell, but I wanted to go back home. Once back home, I took 6 ibuprofen and went to bed. That was my “cry for help,” and myself never being the sharpest tool in the shed, thought that the overdose of ibuprofen would send the message that I was miserable. If anything, it cured my headache. I’ve since been forever embarrassed by this incident.

My wife will be away in May for a return trip to Fêtes Galantes in Versailles, and as it so happens, will be away on my birthday as well. She already feels terrible about it, so leave her alone. I'm honestly okay with it, the day doesn't have to be about me. The original plan was she was going to go with a mutual friend while I stayed at home and took care of the cat. Unfortunately, Dinah then passed away unexpectedly. So while I’ll be alone for almost 2-weeks, I will find things to do so I’m not simply staying home by myself and taking edibles every night. I plan on attending comedy shows at places like the Laugh Factory or Dynasty Typewriter. I’ll plan on reading and writing more of my latest script, Infamous. I’ll drive out to museums and maybe even catch a movie or two. I will most likely let gluttony overtake me in the form of ice cream and pizzas. That much should be a given by now.

Take today for example, the whole reason I wrote this piece. And yes, in retrospect maybe I should have called it, “My Thoughts on Friendship,” or “Confessions of a Lonely 38-Year Old.” Today has been incredibly relaxing.

I woke up close to 8am, which is a rarity for me. Normally my body automatically wakes me up at 7am to go running. I got up, made a hearty breakfast of three eggs, four pieces of bacon, a hash brown patty, and a cup of coffee while I listened to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me! on the bluetooth. I ate my breakfast while briefly continuing to read an article about AI boyfriends in The New Yorker.

A little after 9am I left the house to walk a mile and a half to the Studio City Public Library for their monthly used book sale. I took with me a bottle of water, my wallet, and Third Girl by Agatha Christie that I recently finished. I continued to listen to my podcasts while I walked for 20-minutes to the library, sporting my new “Tell Your Dog I Said ‘Hi’” hat from @WeRateDogs.

I arrived at the library and the book sale was in full swing. I browsed the fiction and non-fiction sections, and end up with three hardcovers: Little Drummer Girl and The Tailor of Panama, both by John le Carré, and Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I always pick-up Le Carré when I can, and I’ve had Caste in my To Read list for several years now. All three were only $3, a bargain. 

Afterwards I walked down Whitsett Ave to Artelice Pâtisserie as a smol tweat. The treats I got were an almond croissant with creme and chocolate chips, as well as a classic pain au chocolat. And of course every order comes with two free macarons so I chose pistachio and cookies and cream.

From there I walked back along Ventura, took the side street of Valleyheart Drive until I came to my favorite Little Free Library and deposited my copy of Third Girl. From there I walked back along Moorpark and eventually arrived back at home. Overall I walked almost 4-miles that morning, and avoided all the No Kings protests.

When I got home I read a book for almost two hours, and then switched to writing. This was supposed to be just a warm-up exercise before I resumed writing Infamous, but I’ve gotten a little more involved than I thought I would. That’s primarily the beer I’ve been sipping as I write this.

I can write when I have a beer or dram of Scotch with me, but never on edibles. Not to say my writing can only happen if I’m under the influence, far from it. I wrote all of The Patch in the wee hours of the morning before heading off to work in Venice, CA for a few years, all sober (but sleepy). Same with my blog entries and any other writing project. 

My lovely aunt recently sent me a case of HenHouse Big Chicken IPA and I’ve been whittling it down over the past month just to free up the fridge space. I normally stick to Scotch, but even then it’s been just sitting my liquor cabinet untouched recently. I just have’t been in the mood for it. Microdosing edibles has been more relaxing to me when I’m alone, but I could never write while on them. Ideas, sure, but it’s too overwhelming to try and focus, let alone expand upon, ideas via writing. It just so happened to be a gorgeous afternoon, so I figured a refreshing beer would be a lovely companion while I jot down my thoughts and the cool breeze flowed through the window and tickled my toes. “Write drunk, edit sober,” said Hemingway. I think I might for this piece.

Going back to my current predicament of not having a large group of friends, I did reach out to an old friend from high school recently to see if they wanted to hang today, but unfortunately they had plans. They do want to try and find time in the future for a hang though, and I believe them. Because they’re also in Los Angeles, it’s part of the culture to say, “Let’s hang out sometime,” and never follow-up on it. That’s what happened with this friend at first, one year prior.

He had reached out to me because a woman who was a few grades below us had reached out to him on Instagram last year, wanting his help with making a film about her life. She had mentioned me at one point, and he wanted to hear from me my experience with her. 

Her whole pitch was that there was a cabal of evil vampires living under Coronado island, controlling the levels of society and was one of the reasons her mother was taken from her and she was placed in the foster care system. I know this because she made a similar pitch to me years prior, wanting my help making a graphic novel of it since I was in comics. Through our conversations, I realized she was unwell, but she became more unruly when I told her I wasn’t going to help.

Ultimately I had to block her because she continued to send novel after novel of texts, lashing out and claiming I was a part of the conspiracy she was trying to warn me about. She then eventually found my friend in her yearbook rolodex, and knew he had credits as being a cameraman on several projects.

I told my friend about her claims, how she first approached me, and then our falling out once I realized I couldn’t help her. We felt bad for her, and we eventually reminisced about high school and fun times we had with our group of friends. I told him we should grab lunch, and then of course life got in the way and I forgot about him until recently.

I do hope we manage to hang out at some point, because he always seemed like a reliable guy. No red flags, he always was honest and never problematic.

There’s always joining a recreational dodgeball league or soccer league as well to try and make new friends. When I see practice for these types of outings is always on a weekday, I immediately feel bad that I would be breaking the routine with my wife. But she’s supportive, and I think realizes I might feel better getting out of my shell and putting myself out there. It’s just scary. People always joke it’s hard to make friends as an adult, but it really is. Sure I have a good camaraderie with my co-workers, but I honestly would only want to hang out with two or three of them outside office hours. If you happen to be one of my co-workers who stumbled upon this entry, I’m of course talking about you being one of the preferred hangs.

When looking for new friends, it’s important to make sure they’re on the same wavelength. My idea of Hell is attending clubs or bars with loud music and drunks while overpaying for drinks you could get at the nearby liquor store for a fraction of the cost. Now a movie, book store, or restaurant? That’s definitely more my speed.

I always can find things to entertain me when I’m by myself. Sometimes it’s nice just to go at your own pace without any pressure from others to stick to a schedule. I cherish hanging with my wife, and will always choose to do so over anything else. But for extended periods of time, it would be to my benefit to have a local friend to hang out with, even if it’s just as simple as grabbing a cup of coffee.

While I don’t believe in New Years resolutions, I do believe in trying to make oneself better. Finding likeminded friends would help me find that sense of community I sometimes feel I’m missing. And that’s the thing: there is no deadline to worry about. New friends can pop out form the most unexpected of places. 

What I need to focus on is putting myself out there, breaking from tradition, and enriching my soul with new connections.

P.S. This blog entry isn’t an plea for people to reach out and offer to hang, by the way. That makes things awkward for everyone. If I want to hang out with you, I’ll let you know, okay? See that? I’m like a hermit crab retreating back into his fancy shell already. But thank you for your concern, I assure you I’m okay!