2002-10-20 - 12:16 a.m.

There is something that happens to people who stay single in the suburbs. At least this one. Many of my classmates were third generation in this town, as am I. People go away to college, or take jobs in the city, but they stay, or they come back and get married and have kids, raise families near their families.

But there are others, too. People who stay because it's all they know, or are too lazy to look beyond. They're in the same bars you went to with your fake ID at 18, and it doesn't look nearly as appealing the second time around. One of the reasons I left here, actually. I don't want to go into a bar and see a guy there I used to drink cheap beer with in high school, butt hanging out of his pants, who has his name engraved on the barstool. Talking about the same shit he talked about then, telling me he lost his license for DUI, is living in his mothers house to "help her with stuff, you know...", has never been married, never found the "right girl", he guesses.

But they have camaraderie, these guys. There are women, too, and a few couples, out every night in a dive bar getting hammered, because his first wife has custody of his kids. And I have a friend, who had definitey got serious problems, who has adopted a group of these people has her friends. Doing those things, you know, that were rites of passage, that ebb away with the increased responsibility of adulthood. Not so pretty when you're pushing 40.

And Patty, unfortunately, is getting sucked in to it too. This alarms me, as she is getting divorced and will be sharing custoday. She tried to talk me into going tonight, a little party for L's birthday, c'mon, she said, you'll get to see all the freaks.

But tonight, I'm gonna pass on the freakshow.

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