Last Call: Batching It
Vinciguerra, Thomas
LAST CALL by Thomas Vinciguerra Batching It WHEN SOMEONE ASKS ME IF I'M MARRIED—which, to my considerable annoyance, seems to be happening more and more often these days—I usually crack wise....
...What I'm really aching to say, though, is, "No, I'm a bachelor...
...WELL, SO BE IT...
...is implicitly in search of his other half, often as not with an element of panic creeping into the process as the years tick by...
...they unwind in dream pads...
...No, I'm happy" or "Not since breakfast" are the standard responses...
...James Bond, of course, was a bachelor incarnate...
...Single" is a singularly feckless term that conveys little of interest beyond marital status...
...I am, in fact, a bachelor wannabe...
...Meanwhile, in the real world, "hatching it" is still a perfectly acceptable, if somewhat archaic, locution for going about the unattached life...
...the once ubiquitous "gay bachelor" would now likely lead only to confusion...
...They don't live in apartments...
...But what's a dream if not a blueprint for reality...
...John Forsythe was never exactly a party kind of guy, but can you imagine tuning in to watch him on something called "Single Father...
...The clubs they frequent don't have neon lights and velvet ropes out front...
...A single is a single until marriage, but a bachelor—in spirit at least—is forever...
...But who ever "singed" anything except a song...
...My current dream pad is frequently the source of nightmares...
...A show called "The Single Guy" was probably inevitable these days...
...Bachelors don't order in Chinese take-out...
...Please note: Not "I'm single...
...Just because I have yet to achieve true bachelordom doesn't mean I can't see myself amid its idylls—the splendid lack of commitment, the loving and the leaving, the endless one-night stands, the pajama-clad vision of the 73-year-old Hugh Hefner...On second thought, could someone please find this single guy a nice, nurturing relationship...
...In that respect, it is of a piece with "letter carrier," "firefighter," and "waitron...
...By contrast, at the mere mention of "bachelor," a uniquely tantalizing image is instantly formed: that of a bon vivant, a high liver, a rakish cad with cash (not a gold card) in his pocket and a martini (not a cosmopolitan) in his hand...
...As SHOULD BE ABUNDANTLY clear, it's a weighty mantle, this business of being a bachelor, and it's not for everybody...
...HAVING GOtTEN THIS FAR, IT IS TIME NOW FOR A confession: I have yet to actually declare, "I'm a bachelor...
...And my looks don't so much kill as confound...
...But when, in pursuit of gender-neutral accuracy, enlightened minds abandoned "mailman," "fireman," and "waiter," those practitioners lost nothing of their identity in the process...
...They reek of the nineteenth century or, at best, the 1950's...
...Think "single," on the other hand, and you think "incomplete...
...bachelor" is a way of life...
...The single person ("singleton...
...Bachelors are heartbreakers...
...Felix Unger and Oscar Madison were bachelors first and divorced men second...
...Yet one suspects that the genre conveniently doubles as a defense mechanism...
...That's because I don't own a hibachi...
...Their days were probably numbered once "spinster" was jettisoned as the sobriquet of choice when referring to a never-married woman...
...Single" is an adjective...
...THE BACHELOR IS A STAPLE OF POPULAR culture in a way that a single simply isn't...
...IT'S NOT CLEAR WHEN "BACHELOR" FELL INTO general disuse to describe an unmarried, undivorced, unwidowed man...
...The shopworn phrase "eligible bachelor" is a redundancy...
...Perhaps, by way of compensation, a campaign should be mounted to champion the not unfamiliar—and mightily empowering—term "bachelorette...
...70 April 2000 The American Spectator...
...they whip up Chateaubriands on hibachis...
...THE TRIUMPH OF "SINGLE" IS PROBABLY due to its convenient androgyny...
...Bachelors, of course, freely avail themselves of the opposite sex, but their availability is of their own volition...
...My little black book is filled with my grade-school teachers' addresses...
...But whenever it happened, the language lost one of its more richly descriptive words...
...they have membership committees, cigar smoke, and overnight privileges inside...
...BACHELORDOM, IN SHORT, IS A STATE OF masculine grace...
...That's a demographic, not a television program...
...ADMITTEDLY, BACHELORS HAVE A LONG ROAD ahead of them in their quest to regain respectability...
...As if to settle any doubts on that score, his archenemy Blofeld came along on the day of his wedding to Teresa Draco to blow the bride away...
...Possibly around the time that "racism" replaced "bigotry" and "sexist" supplanted "chauvinist...
...If it weren't for microwaves and cable, I'd have packed up for the Ross Ice Shelf long ago...
...They own little black books...
...True, one increasingly comes across "single by choice" as a resolutely announced category of personal identification...
...Or maybe toast...
...Bachelors are not only single by choice, they are single by definition, with no qualification of their title needed to describe their status...
...In fairness, it must be conceded that "spinster" has long suffered from pejorative overtones that never afflicted "bachelor...
...Their looks kill...
...Not so with "bachelor...
Vol. 33 • April 2000 • No. 3
