It’s official. The novelty of being single has worn off. Chance encounters of intimacy are being chalked up as vacuous and desperate. The 3am party/bar deal-sealing perve scan is clumsy and unfulfilling. On cold Friday nights there is a lonely patch on the couch where a cuddle-savvy girlfriend should be – a giggling navigator for a rally course of DVD’s – not this calculated scrolling through names in a mobile address book – a photon blast of desire condensed into a sprinkling of digital tickets in the casual sex lottery.

Booty call. For anyone not familiar with the term, this is when you ring up someone, usually late at night, purely because you want to sleep with them. I have been guilty of this. Well, it was more of a vague, rambling, inconclusive booty text. (The kind Mr Darcy would have written, if they had mobile phones in Pride and Prejudice) I find the term categorically hideous – my ex-Christian super ego, unable to accept that complex sensitive me could stoop to such blatantly lame pseudo-sleazy pop culture predictability, only contacting someone because I wanted to ‘pat them like an animal.’ No, no – it’s not about that – it’s about meeting up in a raucous bar and having nervous half-conversations that trail off, and spending $50 on alcohol, and ultimately getting really tired because it’s 2am and you don’t have the courage to say what you really want. That you want to be Captain Intimate with someone and at the end of the day it’s only physical.

*Sigh*. I was born with enough hormones to power a queen-size planet. The axis of my heart oscillates with such terminal velocity, that luminous rainbow vapours spiral through my eyes like galaxy tides.

You know those nights where you feel so lonely you could die?

Someone once said that sex is never purely physical, no matter who you’re with, and that no one-night-stand is devoid of emotional attachment. At the time I agreed, though I’m not so sure these days. I had my idealism towards ‘romance’ burnt out of me temporarily by the electro-shock intensity of a couple of emotionally manipulative relationships – coupled with increased personal confidence through my own performance art – for the last three years I’ve been able to enter the once pathologically daunting singles scene and tailor my own emotional output to enjoy the improvisational lust-theatre without too many murky spiritual hangovers.

I was once alerted to the rumour that I act awkward and lonely to get girls to sleep with me. I took the accusation rather heavily – and internally allowed myself a brief, half-bitter chuckle at the notion that someone who had vowed to be with one woman for the rest of his life had ended up with the street credibility of an indie-nerd Hugh Hefner. My only response was ‘what if I really am awkward and lonely?’

Along the way, I have found myself utilising the disclaiming mantra of ‘I’m not really looking for a relationship at the moment,’ which seems like a valid, earnest, get out of jail free card, until you think about it for a second – what a flimsy concept! All it means is ‘If I liked you enough, I’d try and have a relationship with you, but I obviously only like you enough to sleep with you,’ it’s a terrible, but true, premise.

The blurry, ambiguous, confusing ‘seeing each other’ scene has been an intriguing and tumultuous vortex for the last three years, but it’s something I feel I’ve outgrown. I want comfort. Stability. Waking up with someone smiling at me who loves every cubic centimetre of my soul – and who I feel like I’ve known for years.

Vive la girlfriend!