Harvest Time

History will have us believe that Thanksgiving celebrates the first successful harvest after Native Americans helped Pilgrims acclimate to the new world. The “natives” introduced Pilgrims to corn, game, and tobacco, while the Pilgrims bartered with gun powder, whiskey, and syphilis. It’s hard to say who got the better deal. I like to imagine that gay Pilgrims were intrigued by the Americans’ toned bodies, darling beads and headbands, and leather ensembles, while the latter admired the former’s sensible style, including felt hats and patent leather shoes that put form before function. Regardless, they came together on that special day to give thanks for what the earth had given them, and express hope that it would carry them through the winter.

The end of the harvest: what better metaphor to describe this time of year for dating in New York? We spend the summer carelessly tossing seed and sowing our oats wherever we can, wantonly checking here and there to see if anything will grow. The traditional fields: bars, clubs, mixers, and parties, are then fallow; the real cash crops are all being cultivated on Fire Island or other summer getaway locales. So we wait for the heat to fade, the Labor Day parties to die down, and for our schedules to return to normal. Our phonebooks filled with one night stands, or summer crushes, now seem to taunt us with loneliness.

But even before the summer warmth truly fades, the urban routine and back to school sales shake us into reality. Autumn has arrived, and it feels like a new beginning. A new “semester” has begun and new opportunities for love begin to grow. As crops spring up around us, we take time to survey our options. The new transplants, or students in the New York soil, are often not developed enough, and won’t repot into relationships very well, so it’s often best to let them grow, weather the winter and succeeding seasons to see if they eventually mature.

The yearlings, or other saplings who’ve survived a few seasonal cycles seem the most desirable– since they’ve not yet put down firm enough roots to be immovable, nor are they as insatiable as the aforementioned neophytes.

But this is no guarantee these “survivors’ can be successfully plucked into a new, less hostile, life in lieu of their binging and clubbing routines and expected to adapt to confines of a relationship. No,perhaps the rooted veterans of New York City are the ones to invest in. Their roots are strong and stable, their branches and connections are far-reaching, and they provide plenty of support and shelter.

No matter what season, we will always encounter these different stages of guys, but they seem to be most apparent in the fall. Most of my fall was spent dropping leaves of friends from my branches, but also sampling as much produce as I was able to before the harvest was over, and now, whether we’d like to believe it or not, it is over. Thanksgiving, like any major holiday, marks a day when we feel like our achievement or failure is directly related to our relationship status. Whether we spend with friends or family, if it isn’t in the arms of a boyfriend, even if he’s only a zip-code away. If we can’t share him with our family, we feel we’re somehow missing out.

I say it’s the end of the harvest, because following Thanksgiving, you have only days to find a date to the holiday party, which inevitably will end up being your friend anyway, and then the actual holiday will be spent in much the same way as Thanksgiving, either sulking in singlehood, mourning our lover’s lack of proximity, or perhaps for some, blissfully together. Then New Years Eve is right around the corner and we get the chance to punish our livers without guilt for having no one but the nearest stranger to kiss as the clock strikes 12. So really, if it hasn’t happened before this holiday, it is unlikely to happen for the holidays, unfortunately.

Maybe this is why the Pilgrims and the Native Americans got together for that celebratory meal. With the winter ahead, neither party knew when they’d have the chance to find someone to pass the cold winter months in their cabin with. Who knows, Pocahontas and John Smith may have officially announced their love at the first Thanksgiving (if you are willing to ignore glaring historical inaccuracies). Whether you find yourself alone this Thanksgiving, or not, harvest season isn’t the only time you can find a boyfriend. Though one can’t be guaranteed for the holidays, it seems hardly a coincidence that the annual Toys for Tots benefit, unofficially claimed to be the ‘husband finding event of the season’ falls on the following weekend after Turkey Day. If that doesn’t nab you a man I’m not above praying to the ghost of Pocahontas for a little Indian summer, but like the original Manhattanites, I’d settle for some shiny beads.

Originally posted on 11/25/08 on http://www.homo-neurotic.com/2008/11/25/everybody-does-it-harvest-time/