Young, Drunk and Single

A Midwestern girl learns the ropes of dating on the Upper East Side By [Kait Remenaric] Brokers and bartenders, doctors and dads, lawyers, realtors and traders. Arrogant bastards, conniving cheaters, liars, jerks and low lifes. The list goes on, the dates add up, and the Rolodex of phone numbers, emails, Facebook friend requests and failed relationships continually amass. Welcome to the dating life of a twenty-something gal searching for success and sex in the heart of Manhattan. Five years ago, before the ink had even dried on my college diploma, I sold my car, packed the few belongings I had, and bribed my two best friends with a case of Bud Light and all the New York pizza they could possibly eat in one weekend to drive me from the Midwest to the Upper East Side. One six-story walk-up, two Totonno"s pizzas and three much-needed beer buzzes later, I was officially a New Yorker with a political science degree, a Metro card and a map of Manhattan. I moved to New York to escape the thralls of small-town life in Middle America. I wanted to pursue a career in fashion by day while maintaining a fabulous social life by night, as my enviable friends back in Ohio drank their cheap beers next to tobacco-chewing men in flannel shirts and trucker hats at bars that closed by midnight. It didn"t take me long to achieve my professional goal when I landed a job as a sales executive at a major fashion brand, but I quickly learned that $12 martinis, sushi dinners and cab rides to the Meatpacking District were out of my budget if I wanted to stay in my Upper East Side apartment with heat and cable rather than in a refrigerator box on the Lower East Side. Eventually, I figured out that the local bars of the Upper East Side with happy hour specials, chicken wings and young, post-college crowds were just as fun and intoxicating as the trendy, overpriced clubs and lounges of downtown Manhattan. But what I still had yet to figure out was the New York dating scene. While flannel shirts and trucker hats were replaced with Brooks Brothers dress shirts and hair gel, and talk of the county fair and rising gas prices was replaced with summer houses in the Hamptons and the plummeting stock market, men were still men. I immediately ran into the conflict of quality versus quantity. Every bar was filled with single men on the prowl, looking for a girl to take home that night and to never call again the next day. I had my fun, too, with an occasional corner-of-the-bar make-out session here, a one-night fling with a tennis pro there, and flirting, number exchanging and shot-taking all along the way to boot. But in due course, the old â??get drunk, hook-up and never look back routine got old. The men I actually liked never called again, and the not-so-great catches to whom I should have never offered my actual telephone number didn"t get the cold shoulder hint. A few fuzzy memories paired with several hangovers and multiple bad dates, and I was ready to throw in the New York dating towel. But then one night I met a cute law student from Long Island who lived just a few blocks away. He was smart and witty, on the path to a successful career, and was looking for more than just a one-night stand. It had taken me a good year into my New York career to find a quality guy looking for more than just sex, but in the end, it was well worth the wait. A few months into our relationship, I found him in bed with another woman's the very same night he had met my mother for the first time. The wait that had been so worth it was pulled out from under me quicker than the M15 bus to Yorkville barreling through a yellow light. This was just my first New York heartbreak, and the sad reality that I didn"t realize at the time was that I had many more to come. It"s been a few years since that first New York heartbreak, but while I"m a little older and a lot wiser, the city"s dating scene hasn"t changed one bit. Whether you"re a single guy or gal, dating in this town is tougher than hailing a cab in the pouring rain in the middle of Times Square. So where do we go from here, single New Yorkers? For me, it looks like I"m back to young, drunk and single on the Upper East Sideâ?¦ _ Kait Remenaric drinks, dates and dwells on the Upper East Side.