I spend an hour after my eleven o'clock class -- before meeting Glenda for lunch at one -- roaming the library. They have an elaborate comic book / graphic novel collection recessed in one of the danker corners of the building that I sometimes poke around at when I have a few minutes free on campus. On my way back there, though, something else grabs my attention: Living Single: Inside the Private Lives of a New Class of Single Americans. It's a big, flat, hard book, with just the title emblazoned in slick, grey lettering on the otherwise shiny cream cardboard of the cover. Someone left it out on one of the restocking carts.

Riffling through the pages, I gather that it's a stylish sort of picture book, more or less, a cream-colored coffee table book with large color photographs of well-groomed individuals posing in their magazine-quality houses or apartments -- each facing a brief biography cum personal-philosophy essay. In a large font. With lots of white space. A quick read, clearly. For the busy single, I suppose.

I flip open somewhere in the middle of the book and find myself staring at one Candice Flogenbottom, a 33-year-old publicist for the Oprah Winfrey show in Chicago (according to the caption). Her parents were both only children and she feels living alone gives her the freedom to excel at her career. Okay. She has friends she sees often, so she's not a recluse or anything, and -- yes -- she does have a long-term boyfriend. She lives in an apartment with perfectly clean cream-colored walls with cream-colored sofas and little decoration save a pair of posters advertising old exhibits at the Chicago Museum of Art. She's an angular brunette with a bony face and skinny legs, leaned up against an expensive-looking oak table beside the leather sofa, wearing a gray pant-suit with her arms crossed over her flat chest. Despite her thin-lipped, uneven smile, she doesn't look like a happy person.

25% of Americans live alone. This according to the introduction. More Americans live alone today than ever before and a whole new sort of lifestyle has been growing up around them. Singles culture. Apparently this new singles culture includes fancy sofas, bold eyewear, jobs with magazine publishers and network television programs, not having kids, and learning to not have to apologize to parents. Sounds dry.

I consider briefly checking out the book, to take home and look at closer. But I won't. Marriage makes me nervous, but I don't want to get into something that glamorizes just giving up on it.

* * *

Glenda's not about to get married. She doesn't need a coffee table book to help make that decision. If one thing's remained constant in her life since I first got to know her in high school, it's that conviction. She still makes it perfectly clear nowadays -- whenever the word "marriage" comes into a conversation -- that she is, in fact, not about to get married.

"Did you get the wedding invitation from Abe?" I ask. We sit at a booth at "Mother Noodle," against a wide, flat expanse of glass that presses against the bustling pedestrian traffic. The restaurant's at a prime location right across the street from campus, along one of the most well-traveled sidewalks in town, perfect for between-class meals and meetings.

"Yeah, he's getting married! I think it's so funny." She talks fast, pulling energy from the motion outside. "I'll always think of him as little Abe from high school I used to slap on the butt and say 'Abe!' to." She laughs.

"It's strange to have high school friends getting married, huh?"

"Rosa got married last summer to some guy she met working in the mall."

"Yeah, I know, but I never knew her very well. I know Abe."

"I think it's cute."

"Marriage seems like such a distant concept, don't you think? Like out there with working at the same job for fifteen years or having kids, out there in a different world. Like owning my own car."

"I'm never getting married. It'd be boring." She fishes some noodles out of her bowl and stuffs them into her mouth, a drip hitting her paper placemat.

Glenda's cute. She's got the bright personality, a sleek body, and gorgeous shoulder-length blonde hair -- she attracts more people (guys and girls, in my experience) than she knows what to do with. Of course she would think permanently attaching herself to just one other person would be dull. It would be for her. She likes to flirt with strangers in bars, go to strange parties, get herself into odd social situations just to see what happens. She could live her life single and probably have enough skill and creativity to have a full, happy life and probably raise healthy kids -- if that's what she wanted.

I think of Candice, on the other hand. I can't see anyone getting real excited her. I envision her friends as people more-or-less like her -- gray, pale, angular, and really into non-threatening modern art. Candice is probably a hard worker, well organized, and intelligent (popular television programs don't hire people who aren't, I imagine), but she doesn't give off the air of sex or spunk that are hallmarks, I think, of truly balanced individuals. Even those in their thirties and beyond. Living single might be less of an option for her and more of a cold reality.

This is not to say that Glenda's perfect, but when she says she doesn't want to get married, I think she's being perfectly honest.

I bite into an egg roll.

In the past it'd been much easier to be so full-frontal idealistic about stuff like this. 'I'm never getting married and I'm going to be a rockstar in Germany!' Reality looms these days and I know my views on the matter are changing and I wonder if, at some deeper level, Glenda's are as well.

I squint at her a bit, to make sure I read everything off of her face. "You don't think you ever might want to just be boring and comfortable?"

"I want to be comfortable, yeah, but not boring." She looked at me square-on as if to ask, 'is that a complete enough answer for you?' "You plan on getting married?"

"I guess so. No plans exactly right now, but I'd assumed that I would sometime."

"It's not like you have to do it." She takes another bite of food, looking out the window at a pimply guy and girl who've paused near or window to talk.

I take a spoonful of miso. "I didn't have to go to college, either."

"But college has been so cool!"

"Did you know what college would be like before you actually got here?"

"I had an idea, yeah."

She had a year-long "thing" with a computer science undergrad during high school. She would never define the relationship as boyfriend-girlfriend or anything, but there it was. And there he was. Res, his name, an abbreviation for "Resolution" or "Resource" or something like that. He had a shaved head -- a big deal for us at the time. Unique, exciting, and definitely in college. So, when Glenda entered the university, she had already been introduced to the world and had it all planned: Major in Russian, take literature classes and a couple computer science classes (web publishing) for fun. She just does well what she's required to do, gets good grades, and has lots of extra energy to be a weirdo on the side and break whatever rules she feels need breaking.

Hot girls have a lot read into them by other people -- a boy with a crush, for example, starts daydreaming about how the girl's probably into x, y, and z and doesn't like a or b -- and these girls can either feel really oppressed by the situation or learn how to spin it to their advantage. Most probably experience some of both. Glenda definitely knows how to spin it to her advantage and has quickly grown into an energetic libertine as a result.

Abe, on the other hand, lives his life quietly within the lines with a wholesome sort of nonjudgmental positivity. He got his management degree in May and has already settled himself into the middle-management world of some random engineering firm in Dallas. They'll probably give him a gold watch in thirty years and he'll consider his time well spent. Or maybe they'll unceremoniously lay him off in ten years and he'll finally get to experience the unsure-of-the-future existential freak-out some of us got out of the way a couple years ago (or are currently in the middle of). Actually, I hope not. I do wish Abe the best.

"Maybe Abe'll chart some new territory for us," I comment, finishing my egg roll.

"I need some water. Marriage will be good for him. Have you met his wife-to-be?"

"No. No one has."

"She lives in town, right?"

"Yeah. And they're having the wedding here instead of in Dallas."

"Do you know what the deal with her is?"

"What the deal is? Yeah, Abe's giving her dad six head of cattle."

"Water, please?" Glenda waves down our small frightened Thai waitress. "I mean, who she is. I haven't heard anything from Abe in a long time. Except for the wedding invite."

"I don't know. Abe don't keep in touch with anyone."

"Look at these two." She motions with her head out the window to the couple outside. They look young for college students -- small, with faces still lightly breaking out. They alternate talking quickly and giggling, looking at passing cars, the ground, traffic lights, and occasionally each other. "Isn't that adorable?"

"Can they see us in here?"

"Probably. Don't worry about it." Glenda's matchmaking gene kicks in. "I want to go push them together!"

"Don't do that," I say. But I know she won't.

"They just need to hold hands or kiss. Then they'll be more comfortable around each other. They should go make out in the library. That's what I think." She takes another bite out of her noodle bowl.

"Really?"

"Yeah. It'll help their grades."

"Really?"

"I swear -- make out with someone in one of your classes, and your grades will improve. Don't know why, but it works."

Sounds plausible enough.

"Well, not right in one of your classes," she continues. "You have to make out with them outside of class." She gestures with a chopstick.

"What if they don't want to kiss?"

"Look at them standing and talking. Something's up, James."

"We're sitting here talking and nothing's up. I wonder if our waitress assumes we're a couple."

"I don't think we act like a couple."

"I think we act like couples do after they've been together for, like, five years."

"Yeah, that's kind of true."

"I worry that Abe and Jessica --"

"Josephine."

"And Josephine started off their relationship like that, nervously pacing around each other without knowing what to do."

"It's fun to watch friends do that, though. Causes little bits of drama and intrigue and then it all gets brought out into the open and everyone feels closer."

"You, for example, know how to attract guys, though, right? You've learned how to, like, show a guy that you're interested and want to get to know him better, or whatever."

"Yeah."

"And as you date more different sorts of guys, you get a better idea of who you like spending time around."

"Yeah."

"So if you ever decided to get married --"

"I'm never getting married."

"Okay. My point's just that you have a good idea what you want and how to get it. And those two might not." I gesture outside with my hand. "And then they finally hook it up and make out in the library and date for four years because they don't want to risk going back out to just being by themselves."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Then they marry and have kids and live okay but never got the chance to, like, explore and get to know the sort of person they really enjoy."

"That's just how some people are."

"But what if he's really gay, or she deep-down likes guys who can talk to her about French erotic poetry or whatever she's into."

"When you date someone for a long time, you grow into them."

"I know. It still just seems sort of tragic."

"They look smart. They'll figure it out."

The girl looks at her watch and makes a surprised face. They each say a few more words and then part ways, each waving meekly. It must be close to two -- she probably has a class to go to. They fade into the briskly flowing rivers of pedestrians.