After a rowdy happy hour on a rooftop bar in Uptown I headed to my last volunteer session for the Fringe Festival last night. I was a little drunk. (Shh, don't tell!) I sort of stumbled around the venue for awhile, did what I thought I needed to do as an usher. The girl who was doing the box office wanted to see the show at 8:30, so I offered to take over for her as soon as the show started so she could pop in. Big mistake.

Me, being drunk, was barely able to count, much less multiply, subtract, and do other basic math. What's worse, the booze went straight to my face and I know I was flushed for the entire evening--it was probably so obvious that I was drunk! Stupid of me, but it was a stressful week and I needed a drink or three to calm down.

The 10 p.m. show, which I was also ushering, was completely sold out. A line stretched from inside the venue all the way down the block. I didn't have much to do while the box officers were doing there thing, so I just stood by the table and eavesdropped on conversations of the people waiting in line.

Two really hot, young gay guys were towards the front of the line. I couldn't stop staring at them because they looked so good together. They were probably a year or two older than me, dressed very well, and obviously took care of themselves. Our gazes would meet every now and then (as mutually-gay gazes always do in a crowded room), but it was no big deal. Two other really hot gay guys showed up a little while later and met the first two guys. One of the guys who had been waiting in line hugged the two new guys and said, "This is my boyfriend, Jonathon."

For some reason those words just ripped through my chest. There is something so comforting about being able to introduce somebody as your "boyfriend"... I had forgotten about that. For the first time in a really, really long time, I felt desperate to have a boyfriend. I was mad at myself for not having one. I wanted to have someone to wait in line with, to put my arm around in public, to get coffee with after the show and do the play-by-play. I was confronted with not one but two attractive, seemingly happy, normal, guys. Meanwhile I stood alone next to the ticket booth with a pile of programs in my hands, nobody to talk to. I felt very lonely, even though I was in a room with a hundred people.

When I started admitting people and tearing their tickets, I tried to make eye contact with any of the four guys as they came through the line. None of them even looked at me--they were too busy talking to their boyfriends.

Which is how it should be.

I've been so happily single for so long now. I don't want to become one of "those guys" who is desperate. I'm 24, ridiculously busy right now, very social... I don't really need a boyfriend.

But there's something so nice about it. My friend Kat told me last week that she is amazed that I am not in a committed relationship. When she first met me a year ago, she just assumed that I was because, according to her, "Of everyone I know, you seem the most like 'relationship material.'" But I haven't been pursuing a very serious relationship in the past year since I broke up with Bryan. It hasn't been a priority, which is all well and good. A co-worker is trying to set me up with her nephew, and he is apparently chomping at the bit to meet me, but I don't even want to meet him. On one hand I do want a relationship, but on the other hand I don't want to fuck things up right now because I am pretty happy.

For some reason I've forgotten about the good things of having a boyfriend--I just remember clingyness, drama, drunken arguments, sleeping across the room from each other. I forgot about waiting in line to buy tickets to a theater show on a Friday night.