Single in the city

I read once that New York is a great place to go if you're single, because they're so many other single people, but when you've been married for almost four years like I have, it's hard to know what that feels like. Well, except when Sarah jets off to Milan for a week. Then it sort of feels like I'm single again, but for one fact: When I was single, I never lived alone. I lived with a couple of guys in a decrepit, unsafe building that was torn down the month after we moved out. Then I moved with a bunch of guys into a townhouse in which we staged tournaments of the poker and Halo variety, and occasionally slept (that is, when we weren't trying in vain to deactivate a housemate's car alarm in a torrential rainstorm at 4:00 AM).

So I don't quite understand what it means to be really single; I've never lived alone. But this week, with Sarah in Italy again, I decided to see what it feels like being single in New York. Naturally, I started by going to a bar.

A couple I knew invited me to hang out at 230 Fifth, a rooftop bar, on Sunday night, the night Sarah left. It was perfect! I thought I'd arrive two hours late, chat for a bit with friends I hadn't seen in a while, and drink a couple of beers. Then I'd go home and congratulate myself for being social and convivial. And the best part was that the day after was Memorial Day, a national holiday.

I tried calling and texting the people who were supposed to be there, but no one was answering their phone. Must be so noisy that they can't hear, I thought.

It's a good thing I bothered to wear a button-down shirt and nice shoes, because when I arrived at the place at 11:00 PM, there was a sign at the door ordering me to "dress to impress" or something like that. Eight bouncers stood at the door. Okay, maybe there weren't eight, but there were at least three, which still seems to me like a lot. Obviously, this was a classy joint. They checked my ID and waved me through, and I got in an elevator with a yuppie and a hulk of a man who -- surprise -- was another bouncer. "Couple of marines threw a bottle of water off the roof," the hulk said, shaking his head. It was Fleet Week in the city, so it didn't seem out of the ordinary that a bunch of military men might have gotten frisky at a club. "The guys downstairs said it sounded like a garbage bag hitting the sidewalk."

"I thought you guys only used plastic bottles up there," I said.

"We do," the hulk said, looking at me like a pitbull looks at a nugget of dry dog food. "You think a plastic bottle can't kill a man from twenty stories up?"

And with that, the door slid open. I followed the yuppie -- who obviously knew where he was going -- up a flight of stairs, through a small crowd waiting to use the bathrooms, and out onto the roof, into a crowd of beautiful people.

Here is why I don't normally go to places like rooftop bars in Manhattan: Half the people seemed to be checking out the other half, which is exactly what you do in bars when you're single. But I wasn't single; I was merely pretending! I wasn't looking to pick anyone up. I wasn't even there to meet new people. So it was a little annoying being on the receiving end of four hundred pairs of judgmental eyes as I snaked through the crowd trying to locate the couple I knew and failing miserably. Why wasn't anyone answering his or her phone?

Here's another reason why I don't do the rooftop bar thing: A quarter of the people were wearing red bathrobes, which are apparently handed out to patrons to stave off the chilly air. Even the guys were wearing red bathrobes. I couldn't think of a less manly thing.

I decided that since I was already there, I'd get a drink at the bar and wait around to see if my friends showed up. Big mistake. My Sapphire and tonic cost $13. The bartender was generous with the Sapphire, but this was rooftop robbery served in a plastic cup.

There were some nice things about the place. The view was impressive, especially since the Empire State Building, just a few blocks away, was lit up spectacularly in red, white and blue for Memorial Weekend. The place was spacious and comfortable and well designed, which is boring in theory but not in practice. It would've been a great place to hang out for a few hours if you were with friends. But alone and married, I was feeling like 98-pound nerd at a pickup game in Rucker Park.

I took a swig of my drink and called my friend one more time. He finally answered and told me that he and his wife had made a last-minute trip to Indiana because his sister was having a baby. "Great," I said. "Is anyone else going to be here?"

"I don't know," he said. I imagined him at a hospital in Fort Wayne. He would not be wearing a red bathrobe. "AW and JC are supposed to be there. Sorry we didn't tell you that we wouldn't be there. It was a last-minute trip."

AW and JC were two guys I didn't know that well, but I tried calling AW's number anyway and got nothing but voicemail. That's it, I told myself as I downed my drink, I'm leaving.

My attempt at living it up single-style had completely flopped. I took the elevator down, left through the back entrance, and proceeded to walk in the opposite direction of home for four blocks before I realized that I was going the wrong way. It was almost midnight. I needed to pick myself up from my sour mood. So, naturally, I went to a restaurant and ate dinner alone.

Believe it or not, this was kind of a happy ending to my night. While I consider it slightly sad to dine solo, there's also something romantic about doing it, and only the most secure people can truly enjoy it without the benefit of a distraction, such as a book. Location has everything to do with it, so I picked a 24-hour French cafe called L'Express on Park Avenue. The gentle arches and lazy ceiling fans made me feel like I was in Morocco, but the bottle-festooned bar was straight out of a Manet painting. I ordered a prosciutto omelet and briefly considered asking the chef to hold the scallions, but thought better of it.

I was the only solo diner in the place who wasn't drinking an alcoholic beverage.

But the omelet was superb, the accompanying fries and salad were good, and I decided to forgo ketchup to keep the experience as authentic as possible. This must be what it's like to live the life of a single artist in Paris, I thought. I was Toulouse-Lautrec. I was Picasso. I was Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge.

Then I paid for my authentic French experience with a portrait of Andrew Jackson.