Everyone is either getting married or watching DVDs

First published in Frankie magazine.

Originally published in Frankie magazine 2004

I have a shocking hangover and I’m supposed to be meeting my friend Holly for breakfast because we haven’t seen each other for ages and it’s about time we caught up. I get to the caf and meet her and while I push around my eggs and suck back an orange juice like it’s nectar of the Gods (which it is right now, it really is), I tell her about my antics the night before and the guy I was tuning and how I’m about to get stuck right into that whole, “Is he going to call?” scenario and my hand is propping up my throbbing head and Holly is looking at me like I am a total trashbag, which of course I am, and I want to change the subject so I do and I ask her what she got up to last night and she tells me she stayed in and watched a DVD with her boyfriend.

I’m not surprised. It’s what everyone’s doing these days. Going out has become the vestige for the seedy and desperate folk – it’s all about staying in and watching DVDs. Ask any polished looking 20-something year old on a Sunday morning what they got up to last night and chances are, they stayed in and did the Friends box set. And if you’re not doing that, you’re getting married.

I actually didn’t notice it happening. One month I realised I had a shameful balance in my bank account and had a lot of champagne hangovers (it’s a theme, I know) and sugared almonds in my life - not to mention a kick arse collection of shoes and dresses. I realised I had attended back-to-back weddings for the past month. I was broke (registries should be banned. Stingy aunts always beat me to the cheap presents) and I was romanced out. I almost preferred the DVD option because at least then I wasn’t subjected to witnessing other people’s perfect relationships.

Getting married is the reward of the DVD watching. It’s the culmination of all those nights spent curled up on the couch, ‘doing the Trilogy’. I’m not sure how I am supposed to fit into this new trend. I don’t have the fiancé to watch the DVDs with and this means that essentially when I go out, I am advertising myself as a potential DVD watching partner. Hitting the club circuit has become an necessity; Wanted: Partner - so I can stay in one of these nights and just watch a DVD, and save some damn money instead of blowing it all on these overpriced red bull and vodkas and talking inane gibberish at a ridiculous volume and hoping you don’t turn out to be a freak and I’ve wasted a solid hour getting to know you when I could have been tuning blue shirt guy in the corner over there.

All those engagement presents, wedding presents, christening presents… bloody hell, where is the party for the single person? I’d like a breadmaker in my life too, but you just can’t go out and buy one, you have to get one of those things as a present, and what happens if I don’t meet DVD man and I never get the chance to recoup all this gift-giving I’ve done over the past few years? But the lack of dosh and the hangovers are one thing – the lack of an alternative is another. What choice do I have? If I stay in and watch a DVD by myself and you ask me what I got up to last night and I say, “Oh I finally got around to watching Napoleon Dynamite, and you say, “Who with?” and I say, “Oh, just myself,” that’s when the sympathy looks really come into play.

I clarified my theory that everyone is either getting married or watching DVDs when I went back to my hometown recently to do a bit of catching up. I watched my brother play soccer and literally spent the entire 90 minutes on the sideline listening to the girlfriends of the players discuss engagement rings and insurance and whether living together indicates a commitment that you will one day secure the relationship with an engagement, and whether you should have the engagement party right away or leave it until it’s closer to the wedding, so as to build the momentum, and I was worn out by the end of it, because what was I supposed to say?

I went and met my friend Beren for a drink and I was lamenting the fact that these girls were all younger than my 26-nearly-27 years and yet it was all about getting engaged, they were all doing it or had locked it into their five year plan and Beren agreed that it was cool now to get engaged but he tried to reassure me that it wasn’t a plague or anything, it wasn’t happening everywhere and I wailed that it was, and if I wasn’t attending weddings and engagement parties, I was struggling to find friends to play with me because they were all staying in and watching DVDs and he agreed that DVDs are where it’s at. Then he hugged me and told me that I was overreacting and I believed him because it made me feel better.

And then my friends from high school Sarah and Erin walked past and I was so excited to see them, and I asked what they were up to that night and Erin said, Oh I’m just going to stay in and watch a DVD, and I looked at Beren and he tried to suppress a smile, but it didn’t work because then Erin added, “And did you know that Sarah is getting married next weekend?” Yeah, no, I didn’t, but I just replied, “Of course she is.”