The Curse of the Singles Table: A True Story of 1001 Nights Without Sex

by Suzanne Schlosberg
Warner Books, New York, 2004

reviewed by Nicolette Westfall

Although I am not well-known, I share several commonalities with Suzanne Schlosberg and Condoleezza Rice; we’re independent women, over 30, and we’ve all dealt with the publicly crippling label “single.” In Puritanical times, widowed, single, or powerful women, especially as old and obsolete as those in their late 20s or early 30s, were seen as threats to the establishment. The example of Bridget Bishop quickly comes to mind here. She, being an agent of the Devil, managed of her own design to run two thriving taverns and even had the nerve to argue with her various husbands in public (1). While being an independent woman or a woman who encounters prolonged single hood can be quite a freeing experience (reviewer’s personal account), it is not without its modern day backlashes.

Condoleezza Rice is the most recognizable and accomplished female political representative of the United States of America, yet on the international front, she has been reduced through foreign opinion to the only denominator important in a woman’s life (next to motherhood): her marital status. Consider Russian LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s rebuttal against Rice, who criticized Russia’s relations with the Ukraine, “Condoleezza Rice released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children. She loses her reason because of her late single status. Nature takes it all. (2)” Zhirinovsky’s quote at first appears absurd to my modern western woman’s eyes, and yet, as I eagerly dive into Schlosberg’s The Curse, its surreal glow begins to wash away…

What emerges in its place is the horrifying reality that heterosexual women (especially celibate women) do indeed spend an awful lot of time thinking about our marital status and the most important appendage attached to it, the almighty penis. Here I do not profess to claim to know what Rice’s sexual orientation is—nor do I care to, for I am not one of those members of society who demands that people identify themselves according to their sexual preferences (3). Suzanne, however, is like me, admittedly, a woman who enjoys companionship and sex with a man.

There is one overwhelming problem that sticks out like a rusty nail in her otherwise independent and stable life as a professional writer. It runs throughout the book as a nagging theme that digs and cuts and tears at the core of Schlosberg’s very existence—she can’t find the right man to be part of her life and as a result, encounters the temporary demise of her sex life. It doesn’t help that her friends and family harass her endlessly about her shameful singledom. To lighten the burden, she makes jokes a plenty as she spends countless hours looking for Mr. Right (1358 days, to be exact). Her endless search for the man that gives off the right spark is where she and I differ. My “dry spell,” which lasted all of 870 days, was not about searching, longing, or chasing after a man; it was about running as quick and as far as possible in the opposite direction. Where Schlosberg obsessively reloaded match.com, I fanatically avoided all propositions and invitations to end my brutally torturous celibacy streak.

I reached the last dry patch of Schlosberg’s book, when she discusses how visiting Provideniya, Russia finally put an end to her obsession with finding a suitable heart beat with penis attached. I knew that we’d both traveled the waters together; she chasing, I running. Regardless of our approaches, we were both like so many millions of other women out there—saturated by male influence. A man can be present or absent, either way, his affect on the heterosexual female is quite dominating. She suddenly learned to be happy simply by being. In an ironic twist that Zhirinovsky might find insulting, Schlosberg discovers that contentment comes from an inner source, not the search for external joy through finding and latching onto a man.

Of course, in the end, as with all fairy tales, she finds Mr. Right and marries him. As a woman over 30 (4), she ultimately ends up consulting with a fertility specialist and kept a fertility log (5). Finally, she is fulfilled and she can stop searching for what is missing (a man and babies).

The transition from free loving early 20s to the late 20s and nervously sitting at the singles table at weddings to obsessively seeking out the right mate once the 30 benchmark has been reached doesn’t necessarily mean that Schlosberg tosses in the feminist towel. According to a study by Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan (6), having serious heterosexual relationships is something that does not take away from being a feminist—in fact, feminism improves heterosexual relationships (7). Despite such optimistic reconciliation of heterosexuality and feminism, I find therein little consolation, for it is quite disturbing that both sides of the coin have spent most of our spare time and energy focused on men instead of ourselves.

(1) Bishop was executed in 1692. University of Missouri-Kansas, School of Law: “Bridget Bishop” [web page on-line] (U MK Law, accessed 31 October 2007); available from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/SAL_BBIS.HTM: Internet.

(2) Yaroslava Krestovskaya, Pravda. “Condoleezza Rice’s anti-Russian stance based on sexual problems.” [online edition] (Russia, 2006, accessed 31 October 2007); available from http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/88/354/16724_Condoleezza.html: internet.

(3) As someone who is not threatened by other people’s sexuality, I subscribe to Kinsey’s Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale. Visit The Kinsey Institute online for a comprehensive explanation of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/ak-hhscale.html.

(4) For explanation regarding lowered female fertility rates with aging, see Speroff, L. “The effect of aging on Fertility,” Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology. 1994 April; 6(2) 115-20.

(5) Schlosberg, Suzanne. The Essential Fertility Log: An Organizer and Record-Keeper to Help You Get Pregnant, Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2007.

(6) Rudman LA & Phelan JE (2007). “The interpersonal power of feminism: is feminism good for romantic relationships” Sex Roles (DOI 10.1007/s11199-007-9319-9)

(7) As reported in “Feminists are sexy, study finds.” (World Science, 2007, accessed 15 October 2007); available from http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071015_feminist.htm: internet.

Nicolette Westfall has made it this far, despite being openly guilty of accepting her natural state (womanhood.) She’s been published in various spaces including Bust, Word Riot, and Mississippi Crow.