This column original appeared in print in July, 2006.

“I’ve never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.” – Mr. Spock, Star Trek

I get asked all the time by friends, strangers, readers of this column, and the occasional ex-boyfriend, — why I’m “still” single.

Sometimes I answer metaphorically: I say I’m from another planet (which most people seem to find insultingly easy to believe). I threaten to take off my normal “human female” costume to reveal myself as the reptilian she-devil from Planet To-Hell-and-Back that I am.

Sometimes I answer with the truth: that I was married, once. To a man I thought accepted me, scales and all.

Other times, I lie. I say I’m afraid of commitment. I blame my lack of culinary skills. I ramble on about my boring wardrobe, or I cry crocodile tears and say “I have NO idea.”

But I do know why I’m single, and I’m pretty sure I can lay the blame entirely at the stoic feet of Mister Spock.

Growing up, we didn’t watch much television, but one show my brothers and I caught as often as possible was Star Trek. I loved the beginning music. I loved the sky of stars across the screen. I loved the words: “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise …”

I completely embraced the philosophy of intergalactic adventure and decided to apply it to my own earth-bound existence. I would lie flat out in the backyard, arms flung wide, saying “Life, the final frontier.”

I boldly accepted my mission “to explore strange new worlds.” I was thoroughly ready to “go where no man has gone before …. “

Only one problem. I was a girl. I was supposedly too “emotional” for captaining my own ship.

Maybe that explains my infatuation. Not with the oh-so-manly Captain Kirk, or the roguish Scotty. No, I was head over heels for Mr. Spock. I loved his relentless logic. I didn’t find him irritating; I found him inspiring.
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I even loved his human side. I loved it when some emotion nearly penetrated his too-thick cranium. I loved it when he lost his intellectual balance. I loved it when he came this close to being human. I even loved it when he got brought up short by some acerbic put-down from Bones.

I was fascinated by Spock’s dichotomy – the push and pull between the mind and the heart.

So, I cultivated dispassion. I developed a mania for sending messages of peace-loving prosperity with my V-forming fingers. I mastered an impassive gaze. (Or so I thought; pictures from that period reveal a girl suffering from facial contortions so severe no wonder the most common phrase I heard was “If you’re not careful, your face is going to freeze that way.”)

I developed an irksome penchant for using 12 words when three would have done (a habit I maintain to this day). I became extravagant in my employment of the perfect, sardonically-arched eyebrow.

My desire to be Spock-like manifested in the way I reasoned, spoke, even in the choices I made. I probably can thank my general eschewal of drugs and alcohol (at least in my younger years) to the fact that I didn’t want to lose control of my faculties – which would have been very un-Spock-like, indeed.

So deep was my identification with Spock’s mind and approach to life, love, and thinking, that I may well have been the first and possibly only case of a televisional Vulcan mind-meld.

By senior year, I enjoyed a three-day suspension from school because I had the intellectual sangfroid to ask a teacher “Is that a rhetorical question or do you expect me to answer?” in response to his illogical screeching of “Just who the hell do you think you are, young lady!?”

As a woman, I graduated to frustrating no end of men with my maddening mind. I’m sure I’ve squelched many a romantic moment by musing aloud on the impracticality of love. Plus, unlike Spock, I couldn’t always maintain my grasp on logic — especially when I was grasping for love (something at least, finally, I’ve grown out of).

The Trekked-out truth is that I can wear my “earth woman” suit ‘til the cows come home, but inevitably, my disguise falls away. The hat falls off, and men see me for the pointy-eared, logic-loving Vulcan vixen that I am.

My vulcanic tendencies are more likely to inspire frantic cries of “Beam me up, Scotty,” than an impassioned treatise on the logic of love. — Ergo, my single status.

And, that’s about as direct an answer as I can give; apologies to Mr. Spock.