We’re sitting on a rooftop patio in a chic section of downtown, the ocean breeze rummaging through our hair, the sun setting on the mountains.  My son is at home with his beloved Unky, undoubtedly in his underwear, glorying in doing Guy Stuff: eating popcorn and watching Shrek for the seven hundred billionth time.

We’ve just finished eating a vast array of sushi, my dinner date and I, and as I finish the last of my water, our waiter drops off the billfold and tells us to have a good night.

“Thank you,”I say, and reach automatically for the bill.

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I watch my son from the window at the kitchen sink, he lines his cars up one after the other, a long multi-colored lineup of shiny toys, broken only by the pilfered dustbin, his ramshackle ramp.  He is wearing navy blue pajama bottoms with boats on them and his hair has a snarled, comical tangle at the back, his signature unruly bed head.  The birds are chirping and it’s barely dawn and he seems cognizant of this, whispering imaginary conversation between the red truck and the yellow car.

“I’m going to the supermarket,”says the red truck.

“I‘m going to the beach,” says the yellow car.

He is so good at playing by himself, my son, and I am both proud and saddened by this.  He has to be good at it; I have even less time than most Moms to play with him; I’m on the computer firing off urgent emails or I’m cleaning the bathroom sink, or I’m wandering around trying to find his right flip flop.  In another life, I imagine that I might be pregnant again around this time, brewing a sibling for my golden sun.  Then he’d have an instant playmate: someone who would both infuriate and endear him, who would be the only other person who would understand what it’s like to have a Mom like me.

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Several months ago, when I was settling into the still-uncomfortable role of Sole Head of Household, my brother told me to stop being such an antisocial old lady and get the hell out of the house, meet someone of the opposite sex who didn’t enjoy peeing in his own bath water.

I remember the moment clearly: my 29-year-old sibling and my two-year-old son were sitting on bar stools in the kitchen of my half-decorated new home, eating toasted sandwiches, one of them with breadcrumbs surrounding his lips and trailing up into his cowlicked blond locks.

“I know,”I sighed,”I miss people my age. I miss flirting. But what? I’m not going to meet a hot prospect in the canned fruit aisle. I’m too haggard for the club scene, and I am totally not asking anyone to set me up.”

“Online dating,”my brother replied, and I looked at him suspiciously. “I did it,”he continued,”I had no time for the bars and I met some cool chicks that way.”

My brother is a good looking man; he’s athletic, fun, and well-employed and he’s never had a problem with the ladies. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite, he’s mostly had to fend them off.

“You dated Internet girls?”I asked incredulously.

“Yeah,”he said nonchalantly,”It’s not weird anymore. Seriously. There are a lot of single Moms on there. You have nothing to lose.”

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I had to get up from my computer three times while writing the headline to this post, walking in circles and cracking my neck, inspecting the sink for any errant ants, wondering, is there maybe some pudding in the cupboard? Anything to distract myself from my nervousness at stepping into this taboo topic.

I picture Doctor Laura with her crackling voice and defiant understanding of the Way Things Should be Done: no dating for the single Mom until the child is 18 and out of the house, she would say and so I think: yes, you know what? I need to write this.

Married couple sex is discussed openly and with gaiety in the media: husbands make lecherous jokes, wives roll eyes, advice columns explain patiently how to keep the spark alive. Twenty-something relationships are highlighted in ad campaigns: naked, brawny couples rolling in white sheets in underwear and sexy tank tops. But there’s not too much out there for the Single Mom who is devoted wholeheartedly to her children, carrying around a bit of a hole in her own heart. Ecstasy for the Single Mom isn’t sexy, it’s taboo.  It’s baked with guilt and suspicion and a half a cup of “you really shouldn’t be doing that.”

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My friends fall into two distinctive camps: the Never Been Marrieds and the Blissfully Domestic with at Least Several Kids. The NBM’s are mostly beautiful women in their early thirties, with glossy careers and cut-crystal wine glasses, stainless steel refrigerators stocked with goat cheese and aperitifs. The BD’s, on the other hand, have smudges on their countertops and overflowing laundry bins; they have traded in their stiletto booties for lululemons and washable t-shirts. At night they sit on the sofa with their increasingly rotund husbands, sorting socks and checklisting menus while their children sleep upstairs. Unsurprisingly, these two groups of friends rarely mingle. And perplexingly, I don’t fit in with either of them.

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