Single's Line: Talk Of The Town

Disclaimer: The following is a true story, which highlights the fact that when it comes to relationships, mountain towns are notorious for both their gossip and gossip fodder.

It really is a small world after all. This became rather apparent as my alter ego was making out in the dark corner of a nameless Colorado bar on, pardon the cliché, a leather loveseat. It seemed so discreet at the time, but in my drunken haze I didn’t notice the shred paparazzi closing in on me. I managed to flee the situation and took off in a stretch taxi, leaving my once potential striped suitor on the curb. A friend later said that as he waved goodbye, he resembled a mime in the rain, on an empty street, trapped in a wet, wet box. I had made a clean getaway.

The next morning as I was catching a ride to the Denver Airport, my cell phone started ringing. I read the number and realized that the previous night’s brief encounter may have a longer shelf life than I initially feared. When a friend calls you or, shall I say, calls you out from a different time zone, you realize just how small this snowboard world is.

Now imagine living in the same stale ski town, day in and day out. Perhaps, even year after year. While it can be comforting to run into bros at the coffee shop, shred shop or post office, it’s not that rad seeing one of your friends in the grocery store buying cream to cure that mysterious rash they woke up with. It is even less rad when it occurs to you that the individual who gave them the rash woke up next to your roommate the morning before, especially if you and your roommate share a bathroom. It is an inevitable fact of life that everyone in a mountain town knows everyone’s business, not just the pharmacists.

At times, people may even know you better than you know yourself. This is particularly true if you blackout when there are cell phones and pocket digi cams covering every angle of each indiscretion. Those four gigs of family reunion photos are easily erased after five shots of tequila, and a memory card instantly transforms into a “bad memory” card. At least the cameras are small enough to operate with one hand, leaving the other free for your friend to hold your hair back as you purge yourself over a toilet.

But even worse than your own infamy, your local friends will know everything about your significant or, as the case may be, not-so- significant other as well. As soon as you start dating someone in a ski town, you will learn the who, what, where, when the restraining order gets lifted and why of every relationship they’ve ever had.

Then there are people who you might not be attracted to right now. You laugh and gossip about their encounters haphazardly, but what happens two seasons later when every other suitable mate has been drawn and quartered by the town grapevine? It is then your turn in the mix and that same catty scrutiny that you once fed into hasn’t changed but you are now the sport being stalked by the verbal hunter.

As they say on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe, “You don’t lose your chick, you lose your turn,” which can be of solace when you breakup, because the relationship turnover in a mountain town is frequent. In other words, think of your barroom kissing bandit or month-long love interest as a high-speed detachable mate—one minute you’ve got no place to go but up and the next it is all downhill. Or maybe, I’m just bitter.