Gimme A Snowcone

Do you ever have trouble figuring out what's going on in your very own head? I am having one of those days. One of those weeks, actually. Maybe one of those fortnights.

While I was tie-dyeing some socks today, one of the color combinations got rather out of hand, and I kept trying to get a handle on it, adding darker and darker greens until, well, I have really no idea what I'm going to end up with. I mean, it's tie-dye; it's always a gamble.

But lately, I swear that's a metaphor for my whole life. Or least the current state of it. I really have no fracking idea what I am doing.

I know that I am not quite happy with a lot of it. I know that I am suddenly overwhelmed with loneliness or longing. But then when I imagine what it might be like to have a boyfriend (which is generally the answer to that particular sort of longing), well, the very idea makes me want to wriggle away and go dancing at some giant mythical party with a hundred gorgeous slave-boys.

(Shut up, I know slavery is wrong; this is a fantasy. And no, my fantasies don't generally run to subgugation; it's just that slave boys are often depicted in nice little purple togas, their skin lightly oiled, and equipped with big bunches of grapes in the one hand and nice fat palm fronds in the other, the better to wave at me with.)

Okay, fantasy over. Where was I? Oh yes, wriggling away from the restrictive clutches of having to say yes to just one boy.

The trouble is, I am not being presented with that problem. I am not being presented with any problem having to do with any specific boy.

I am being presented with a singular lack of boy. A few of them were emailing me, and vanished, as the email boys often do, before you ever get a chance to meet them, even when you've taken the bold step of asking them out and they've said sure, and then when you try to arrange a date, nobody has time that week and so you agree to meet next week, but by next week they've either lost interest or found some magical perfect mate with whom they are off on some Hawaiian island, and there you go, now you are back to the slave-boy fantasy.

In fact, I'd settle for it simply being Celebrate the Bicycle Day again. Every day. Because it's occurred to me not once but several times over the last few days, while I was milling around in my metaphorical mess of color, that I really ought to make it a prerequisite that any theoretical boy with whom I might theoretically become involved at some potential future date should of necessity be a Bike Boy, and preferably, a Bike-Obsessed Boy. And in fact, really it might be best for all concerned if he rode fixed-gear, not because I am a snob about such things (all bikes are good bikes!), but because, well, it's a bit of a spiritual experience, only it's the kind that one likes to be able to rhapsodize about with a like-minded someone.

Oh golly, what a long-assed post this is. See, I told you? Lost in a tie-dye factory, right? I mean, if it were only a fortune-cookie factory, you might be able to send for help via message-in-cookie, or perhaps retrace your steps using that long long strand of cookie-fortune-paper you so cleverly laid out on your way in.

On the other hand, there are good things about messily tie-dyed items. I mean, consider the Icee. I refer, of course, to the rainbow Icee, which amounts to nothing so much as a tie-dyed snowcone. And how can you argue with a dessert that stains your tongue in variegated stripes of blue, lemon, orange, and red. (Rhetorical questions get no question marks, mind you.)

That's all. What, you were hoping for a witty punchline?