brett

Singlehood (or is it singledom?) is actually kind of sweet. When I first moved out, some of the benefits of living alone occurred to me. One was that I hadn’t slept alone for the better part of ten years, other than occasional angry layovers on the living-room couch or that horrible mattress in the guest bedroom. (What can I say? We didn’t get many guests, and they were usually just my unwelcome friends sleeping one off.) That first Sunday I woke up not because someone’s knee banged into my ass or a hand lazily covered my mouth and nose and stopped my breathing but because my body had gotten enough sleep, and I could watch football in my underwear until midafternoon without someone ragging on me to “at least put on some pants or a T-shirt.” Jesus, could I now live my life free, as the Founding Fathers intended? Damn straight. And just about now I was beginning to hit my stride. Any minute.

At UCCC, as you might guess, we don’t cast a very wide recruiting net. Not when we can’t offer football scholarships to entice people. Mainly, we stick to recruits within the surrounding region, a car ride away. Rarely, there’s an overnight. And when that’s not happening, when Coach Wells and I aren’t visiting high schools and eating casseroles with kids and their parents, and when the team’s not practicing or playing or reviewing film, I’ve got all the time in the world. Now that the wife and all related running around has been eliminated from the picture, suddenly the world is my oyster. I can catch up on all the Entourage and Two and a Half Men I can shake a stick at. Better yet, I can stop putting off my brilliant idea for body-tight athletic apparel that regular people can actually afford.

Or, rather than trying to lose myself in work, I can quit trying to give myself a guilt trip and just wind down from a fairly momentous event in my life. I can call over a buddy—whichever one of my supposed lifelong friends isn’t caged at home for the night by his wife in a way that’s surely not nearly as interesting as it sounds.

Significant others. Wives and husbands. How people change when they become a unit. What a person did when they were single just doesn’t happen afterward. A guy or girl just can’t do all the stuff they used to. They go without. They sacrifice. When I think about how I was when I was independent, self-sufficient … Come to think of it, was I ever alone, independent, self-sufficient? From as early as I had a driver’s license, I was with Layla.

Well, no more. I’m back to being something I never was: on my own. And you know what? It’s a little slow-paced sometimes, but it’s nice. It’s really an opportunity more than anything. Now’s my time to shine. Not glow—not like one of those green necklaces kids wear at fireworks fairs. I’m going to explode in glory, like the fireworks themselves.

I explain this to Jared, who’s over watching a Monday-night game. He didn’t react much to the stuff I told him about the walnut picking and the “kidnapping,” but now he says, “You go, man. Don’t let anybody piss on your flame. More important … you got anything to eat in this house? Watching football makes me hungry. I’m like Pablo’s dog.”

“Pavlov’s dog?” I correct him. I remember at least this from Psychology 101.

“Him, too,” he says. Then he starts talking about the mudballs Layla used to make. They were some sort of Rice Krispies, chocolate morsel, butterscotch, peanut, and marshmallow combination. Neither of us wants to go into superlatives, because it’ll make us both miss them more, but we’re on the same wavelength: They were unbefrickinglievable. They even overcome my annoyance at her.

He sighs.

“Don’t say it,” I say.

“I’m not,” he replies. “Any mention of the mudball would just bring us both down.” He sighs again. “But …”

“Now you’re going off all John Wayne Bobbitt on me.”

“What?” he asked.

“Half-cocked,” I explain—but it’s already too late, because the idea is already planted in both our minds.

My rush to the kitchen yields a bag of pretzels—or what was a bag of pretzels but now is mostly salt. Being the good host, I offer it to Jared first.

“You know, when these go empty, you can just recycle them,” he remarks.

We sit in silence until the next commercial. It’s a life insurance ad.

“I’ll make the fuckin’ mudballs,” I cave at last. So I get up and run to the front door before he can talk me out of going to the supermarket.

In fact, he’s thinking just the opposite. “And don’t waste time chatting with some floozy,” he says.

“Well,” I say, not missing even a beat, “if I see your girlfriend there, I’ve gotta at least say hi. And can she check for my socks in her sock drawer?”

The door slams on some reply beginning with “F—”