Single In Sun Valley

I have been single in Sun Valley (See also: Single In Sun Valley) for thirty-six hours and have already had a complete stranger kiss (or rather lick) my face, been wordlessly hit on by a recently single man on the bounce-back who spoke a cumulative total of fifteen words to me and scored a date with a tall, dark and handsome man whose name I don’t know, who will be in town for one whole week and who may or may not have a girlfriend.  The latter being an apt microcosm of mountain town life at it’s debaucherous finest.  Welcome to single life in Sun Valley.  Or any mountain at that. 

Contrary to what Jim Carey might have said, Aspen, and its mountain town brethren, are not places where the women flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  And while the beer does flow like wine, the women are few and far between.  Sausage fest is the name of the game.  And, as I was so aptly informed today, if a woman is looking to “get fucked” (direct quote) she should cruise on into a mountain town where, the reality is, the men flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  Or bucks in rut.  Or like bugs to a light at night.  And this is how I ended up with two guys, who may or may not have girlfriends and only one definitive name that I know.

I guess this is what being single in Sun Valley means (Sun Valley serving as a convenient microcosm for any mountain hamlet populated by rich, upper middle class white kids with too much money, lots of time to kill and an overabundance of whiskey).  I’ve been here for forty-eight hours and I already know who’s sleeping with whom, who was sleeping with whom, who wants to be sleeping with whom, who I can’t sleep with because they were sleeping with whom, who will be pissed at me if I sleep with whom and who I want to sleep with.  This is a recipe for chaos if I’ve ever heard one.  As a Whiskey Jacques bartender so appropriately put it, “This town’s a boiling pot.”

He also pontificated the two rules of Sun Valley, “Don’t get jealous and don’t talk.”  In other words, whomever you are sleeping with has probably slept with your best friend.  Or will. As my best friend's boyfriend delicately informed me upon my arrival, "You don't lose your girlfriend, you lose your turn."   So don’t get your panties in a bunch about it.  And unless you want to become the town whore and simultaneously piss of said best friend whom your current lover was (or will be) sleeping with, keep your fucking mouth shut for God’s sake.  Again we see Exhibit A of mountain town singledome, everyone ultimately sleeps with everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business.  Because, when you put a bunch of never-say-no adrenaline junkies in a small town and give them a limited amount of time to eat, drink and be merry before entering the real world, chaos is sure to ensue.  Plato himself, bastion of Western masculinity that he is, once noted that no town can live peacefully, no matter what its laws, when its inhabitants do nothing but feast, drink and tire themselves out in the pursuit of love. Or sex.  

And so we return to me at the bar.  With one man attempting seduction sans words because he is too afraid to grow a pair and actually engage in a conversation with me, and another growing too big of a pair and asking me on a date to the burger joint even though I don’t know his name.  And here we learn what it means to be single in Sun Valley.  From a girl’s perspective.  It means that a plethora of men will engage you in semi-meaningless conversation in an attempt to meet you at The Cellar, buy you a shot of Crown and, if all goes according to plan, take you home.  And because I believe in the brevity of human existence, and the subsequent need to take life by the balls, I find this alright.  Why not give it a shot.  Who knows.  Maybe that moment will make all the difference. This is not necessarily the escapist hedonism that it seems.  For many it is a necessary, even lifesaving, escape from their harsh reality.  It is a means of holding onto the only thing that feel real when everything else is flaking into rhetoric or falling down in shambles around you.  So let’s do this – welcome to being single in Sun Valley.