A Taste of "The Plunge"

Good Sabbath, everyone. As promised, below is a brief excerpt from "The Plunge." It will likely be rearranged and changed from its current state, but this will give you a glimpse into the work.

"The day I decided I was ready to fall in love started out like any other mundane, typical day. My teeth were brushed, my shirt stiffened with starchy-goodness and my morning coffee oozed out of the top of the cheap lid of the cup that my employer had given me as marketing material. For me, marketing materials meant, “Keep four for yourself for every one you give to the customer.” I already had a dozen of these “traveler’s mugs”, two-thousand pens, four sunglass clips and three paper clip holders. Not to mention an alarm clock reserved for our premiere clients. Let me tell you, nothing says premiere like a three-dollar clock that keeps time about as well as Jack Bauer after his second fifth of Johnny Walker Black.
Humid air drowned my lungs with a mix of pesticide, car emission and depleted ozone. Sweat poured out of my skin after one minute of walking downstairs and getting into my company-provided 2006 green Toyota Camry. Yes, it truly was a day like any other.
Women for me provided a variety of obstacles. The first and most obvious being a substantial drain of resources, namely the financial kind. I had never been the type to think about the future. It always seemed so far off and it loomed as a place that deep down I never thought I would go save for Doc Brown’s Delorean and a hoverboard. That’s not to say that I thought the Grim Reaper would want to do an early lunch, it’s just that I had way too much fun spending all of my own money on me. Not to mention, the copious amount of free time that wraps a single person in a cocoon of happiness is absurdly satisfying.
For some reason on a fine July morning I reckoned that enough was enough, and I felt ready to take the final, ultimate step into love/matrimony/alleged unhappiness for the rest of my natural life. It’s kind of really hard to explain the sensation that overcame me, like a vision from the heavens. Just the Christmas before, my mother told me how she remarked to a friend that I would never get married because I was so in love with myself. Mom knew me best, and was totally correct in her observation. Being alone provided non-stop respite and a kind of freedom impossible to achieve confined in a relationship. I never thought I needed a woman or anyone else to make complete me or that I contributed to society. I felt right as rain with my XBOX, high-definition television, and Star Wars toys.
Though deep down I still felt like the core of and the most important thing in the known universe, I looked around and saw the other men who had undoubtedly felt like me at one time who had taken the plunge into eternal love. See, that’s what I wanted for a small blip on my life’s radar. I wanted the generic wedding band, the Japanese mid-class gas-efficient car, the nagging wife, whiny kids and car seat. Nothing sounded sweeter than gaining twenty pounds, losing my hair, commuting three hours a day and coming home to a house in disarray where free personal time suffered complete extinction.
I had a meeting on the morning of that fateful day with some persons in my industry at an IHOP in College Station, Texas. Nothing says intense business negotiations like the Fresh ‘n Fruity and coffee. Their words hovered above the room, not making it close to my ears. I found myself in a euphoric mood to find love, which had previously been oxymoronic coming from my brain.
I agreed that I would actively pursue a life of love, though finding wasn’t like picking a penny off a scorching sidewalk; you had to do some work. Rolling up my sleeves and tossing my fragile ego into the dating arena wasn’t the only concern, I would need a venue to hunt my cunning prey. Bars are an exercise in futility, with the variables too mixed for consistent success and often smoke-ridden sleaze factories. College would have served as the prime venue, as it is the height of female cavorting. By missing the college boat, I risked being thrown into the dating life of a young professional. I was forced to move into another arena. I knew what had to be done. When I returned to my bleak little apartment I was going to do the one thing that I had always poked fun at. Yep, I was a loser. I was going to join an online dating site."