Confirmed bachelor, it’s a wonderfully old-fashioned phrase, the tacit tolerance of another age.
While I wasn’t coy about my sexuality, or crossdressing, I had adopted the lifestyle the phrase suggests.
Having found a comfortable routine, I was content to keep life at arm’s distance, living vicariously through the books with which I surrounded myself.
Turning forty exposed a few cracks in the edifice; the friends of my twenties began to raise families, or die. I didn’t know which I envied most.
Forty’s about halfway with my family, and while not particularly lonely, the prospect of an extended, solitary old age appalled me.
Something needed to be done.