Free Radical

Pretty Lady is not a Single Woman anymore. But she has spent enough of her life as one to vouchsafe that Spatula's description is not so far off the mark:

Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's all in my head. Maybe when I get introduced to other women at parties, they don't often grimace and refuse to acknowledge my existence. Maybe there is no pattern to party invitations in the first place, wherein I get about 1/3 of those extended to couples. Maybe I only perceive the fact that my married female friends don't always want to be around me, so as not to expose their husbands and marriage to a corrosive environmental factor: a woman on the loose, dangerously unclaimed.

Maybe when people ask me whether I am married, and I say "No", they don't judge me. If the questioner is male, and he asks me out, and then fails to hear and understand "No thanks" at least 4 or 5 times, he is not treating me as fair game, he is just demonstrating social acceptance. And I should be thankful to be asked whether I am married or not, because it's nice for people to show interest in my life.

Pretty Lady, in her single days, often felt that when she received invitations from married friends, that she was like television. They would sit at their kitchen table, earnest in their stolid, comfortable Togetherness, and listen agog to her Stories of the Outside. She felt like an exotic animal, a free creature, a glamorous sojourner--anything but a Regular Person, with regular problems and concerns, just like everybody else's.

In Spatula's case, as in Pretty Lady's, the social problems of single femalehood are (and were) compounded by the subtler problems of single female artist-hood. This is the real kicker. Simply, nobody knows what to do with you. They can't relate at all. They make wildly inappropriate business suggestions (you could start a salsa company, and draw your own labels!) set you up with wildly inappropriate people (my cousin Vinnie is an artist. He paints seascapes, and drives a school bus!), and stare blankly when you speak about issues of central importance, such as the kinesthetic impact of a Tamayo, and the need for universal, subsidized health savings accounts.

More insidious are the subtle manifestations of what Pretty Lady, after years of resistance and denial, can only describe as envy. It seems dreadful even to speak of it; surely this could not be so! For single lady artists are not so much at the bottom of the economic food chain, as entirely outside of it. We exist on very little but faith and willpower. Most of us have no health insurance, no IRA, no steady income, and no safety net. We wake up at 3 AM in a cold sweat. We look at our life's oevre of unwieldy aesthetic objects, and at our empty bank accounts, and wonder why on earth we cannot imagine ourselves doing anything but this. Surely any life path would be easier by far than this one.

To then be subjected to the petty sabotage of those citizens who do possess such luxuries as jobs, homes, insurance, retirement accounts, spouses, and children, seems the height of unjust absurdity. But so it is. They talk you into 'loaning' them a painting, crow with delight over it, then stop returning your phone calls. They demand 'friendship discounts' on bodywork. They exclaim "you're making out like a bandit!" when you actually sell something. They treat your basic requirements (I need time to paint, and a place to do it) as trivial, coy evasions. They forget to mention your name to their friend who is starting an art magazine, their relative who collects art, and their coworker who runs a gallery. They leave your manuscript in their trashpile and your portfolio unopened. They cannot attend your opening or pay market value for your work, but recommend you for jobs involving humiliating, insecure, badly paid labor. "That's about right for her. Take her down a peg," you can hear them thinking.

Gracious. Pretty Lady is actually getting worked up.

What she chiefly learned, over a decade or so of this, is that the world changes very, very slowly, and most of the world is not ready for ladies like herself and Spatula. They cannot yet conceive that a single woman could have a core priority that is unrelated to breaking up marriages, engaging in kinky sexual behavior, finding a sugar daddy, cossetting losers, doing other people's dirty work, and generally being immature, hubristic, and irresponsible. One must be like Barack Obama; infinitely easygoing, forgiving, agreeable, but with a core of ironclad resolve and unflappable self-esteem. One must be prepared to jettison former friends like the Reverend Wright, who prove untrustworthy in the event. One must be able to cope with the occasional Massive Betrayal, without losing the will to continue.

Most importantly, one must nurture one's True Friends, and be on the lookout for more of them. Pretty Lady's True Friends are more than she can name, but they know who they are. Thank you, all of you.