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Illustration by Chelsea Charles
My single friend and I have decided grocery stores might be the new single bars. Our plan? Hit the grocery stores at dinner time. Why? Because we figure single men are not as organized as we are. They might be shopping because they’ve suddenly realized two things: they are hungry and there’s no food in the house.
This is what the world of dating has come to during our pandemic lockdown. Sober trips to the grocery store in clothes casual enough that you don’t look like you’re trying to pick someone up and yet classy enough that you don’t repel the person you are hoping to attract. For our third attempt at grocery-store cruising, it took me 45 minutes to select from the two pairs of jeans and three tops I currently cycle through to create the perfect “I’m-a-lot-of-fun-without-the-mask-on” outfit.
“Watch out for track pants,” Danielle cautioned as we entered Sobeys. “My cousin, Steve, says this means the guy has given up altogether.”
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There is something you need to know about me: I am not only single and living alone during an unprecedented global pandemic, I’m also suffering from a rare autoimmune disease called thyroid eye disease. TED, as it’s called, causes the muscles behind the eyes to swell. The swelling comes and goes. My eyes will suddenly turn red. I’ll feel pressure out of the blue and tears will start to flow with no warning whatsoever. There is no rhyme or reason to TED. It just happens at random. As supreme luck would have it, TED showed up in my life without fanfare or warning in late 2020, while I was organizing an outdoor, physically distanced date with a promising fella on my dating app.
I woke up one day and didn’t recognize myself. With my eyes bulging, sore, swollen and red, there was no way I was going to meet a new guy with only my eyes to recommend me. I cancelled the date and the app. I am an insatiable extrovert who normally subsists on random conversations with strangers, eye contact and smiles, but I started hiding behind sunglasses, watching the world from a polarized closet of my own making.
Not this evening, though. Not for the grocery-store manhunt. I did my makeup, straightened my hair and put on mascara. I bravely perched the sunglasses on my head. Entering Sobeys, I felt confident and determined.
We had ventured out of our neighbourhoods. My absolute favourite place to shop is not a dater’s paradise. With a steady stream of elderly men and young couples with kids, my local Fortinos is to grocery-store dating what Swiss Chalet is to romantic dining. For this evening’s outing, Danielle and I had decided to try a Sobeys north of downtown that neither of us had been to before.
This was undoubtedly the worst grocery store we’d ever been in. It was dark. The aisles were choppy. Even the way the food was organized didn’t make any sense. Who puts onions on one side of the fruit and then more onions on the other? The produce section was deader than a university bar during morning classes. One woman stood by the tomatoes, forlornly trying to peel apart the open ends of a produce bag. Disappointment set in. But after having to backtrack a few times to find the fruit and vegetables we needed and realizing just how poorly designed this Sobeys was, hope returned.
“Only single men would shop here,” I said to Danielle.
Lo and behold, as we neared the processed food, there they were. Five solid prospects slowly pushing carts by the tinned beans, frozen dinners and dairy fridges.
But just when I thought, “Okay, time to pretend I can’t find the Kraft Dinner and lure one in,” my eyes went berserk. TED decided to kick in. My right eye felt like it was going to pop out of its socket. My left eye teared up so badly it was like viewing the world through a milky cataract.
“A hot one just left pasta and pasta sauces,” Danielle said excitedly. I frantically rubbed at my left eye while I craned my neck to see out of my right. “Where? Where?”
“Go down the chip aisle,” she whispered.
I spotted the handsome target with my one good eye. He was on my left, I’d have to get turned around so he was on my right. I briefly weighed the possibility of looking too obvious if I did a U-turn at the salsas to head back in the other direction. Then I bailed.
I might have hit the jackpot at the ice cream freezers when a guy stopped to ponder the selection but by then I was completely distracted by the fear that my mascara-drenched eyelashes were becoming lodged between the top of my eyeball and my eyelid. In a moment of panic, I dropped the sunglasses. Tonight was clearly not my night.
In the end, the only thing that didn’t come up empty was my left tear duct. Danielle and I agreed: That was the worst grocery store ever but you can’t argue with five decent prospects.
The pandemic took away 90 per cent of my social life and TED obliterated the remaining 10. The loneliness was as crushing as the worry that I would suffer with this for life. My doctors and the literature tell me I won’t and so it shouldn’t bother me too much. My doctors and the literature don’t sit at home alone every Friday night, cozying up to Netflix and the cat, wishing the bars and restaurants were open and then realizing it might not matter if they were. Not until my eyes clear up.
But I am determined. Taking away my ability to see and be around people has made me realize how much I need to be around people. I’m like a partygoer who notices the chip bowl is getting low and will do whatever I can to snag the last chips: eyes and masks be damned.
Danielle and I are going again next week. This time, I’ll bring eye drops, tissues and a bit more courage.
Colleen Stewart lives in Burlington, Ont.
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