I just shared a story via e-mail with my friend John that goes something like this:

Saturday night I was out with a bunch of friends celebrating someone or other's birthday. I was with my two future roommates, very good friends of mine, and another couple, two very good friends of theirs, was also present. These two friends of my friends have, as these things go, become friends by default. I see them often, can tolerate them for the most part, and because we share our friends, we must peacefully coexist.

These two friends of friends, I'll call them Dick and Jane, have recently gotten engaged and are happily (hmmph) planning their wedding that will take place in October of 2006.

I was sitting at the bar, minding my own business, drinking an expensive vodka concoction, when I felt someone decide that it was ok to put his hand down my pants. That person was the happily engaged Dick.

Startled, inwardly revolted, and unbearably uncomfortable, I did what any single girl in my situation could do at that moment, and ignored it. I was surrounded by friends who had not witnessed the action, and with a minor choke on my beverage, I tried to focus on the conversation that I was in the middle of during the mentioned indiscretion.

And then it happened again.

To make matters worse (oh yes, they can get worse), I was wearing one of my favorite pairs of pants that are unfortunately, too low cut to really get away with wearing anything underneath without fearing I'll look like some tacky thong-shower. What I'm saying, now, is that there was indisputable ass to hand contact. Not something, I imagine, that should happen between an engaged Dick and a single friend of his friends. Also not something, I believe, that should happen in friendly jest at all.

I didn't say a word. I can't. And I wonder, really, that anyone can really understand my situation other than another single woman.

To shed a little light on the topic, I suppose I must mention that I was only one of two single people present in the group of revelers. I was surrounded by longstanding couples, all of which have known one another for years, decades even, had gone to grammar school together. For me to speak up in said situation would, inevitably turn me into any of the following: a liar, a whore, a troublemaker, and (in the hours/days/weeks to follow) an outcast. I’ve seen it happen on a dozen occasions, and even though I was angry and understandably upset, I can’t even tell one of my closest friends what happened, because I know word will spread and I, without a doubt, will be the bad guy.

Now why, I wonder, is that?

Is it easier for girls like Jane to point the finger at me in order for her to ignore Dick’s obvious issues? Is it because I’m single that I’m automatically viewed as a desperate wanton, looking to steal all men within an eight-mile radius? Does it have something to do with the unique mixture of pity and fear that happily engaged and/or married Janes feel toward single women?

And, before anyone feels the need to chasten me for the people I chose to spend my leisure time with, I feel the need to point out that this is not a condition limited to those of certain educations, incomes, classes, what have you. This happens across the board, and what happened to me on Saturday night is not an isolated incident. You’d think, actually, that by now it would have ceased to bother me, but that’s hardly the case.

How do I feel about it? Hopping mad, for one. Sort of, well, gross as well. Like I’m viewed as some cheap tramp that enjoys such attentions (or deserves them, maybe?). I hate it. And unless you’re seen as half of a pair these days, it’s the attention that you seem to get more often than not. When I do go out in groups, I’m very conscious of the balance of power anymore, gauging who’s got my back in such a situation, planning exit strategies, and realizing that, more often than not, I’m on my own.