The Curse Of The Singles Table
A True Story Of 1001 Nights Without Sex

By Suzanne Schlosberg

• About the book • Read excerpts

• Suzanne's Rules for Internet Dating

• See the foreign-edition covers

• What happened after "The End"

• Reviews and feature articles

• Book tour dates • Celibacy Chronicles

• Buy it at Powell's or Amazon

What's The Singles Table?

Exactly where you don't want to be seated at a wedding reception, if you happen to be over 30 and unmarried. That's because the Singles Table is the place you most feel the indignities of being "still single" - that dreaded state following your twenties when you were merely and blissfully "single."

In her new book,The Curse of the Singles Table, published by Warner Books, Suzanne Schlosberg tells the true story of her outrageous attempts to escape her insufferable singlehood, find true love and live happily ever after. But short of that, she'd settle for a little sex - because, at last count, she has gone for over 1,000 days without it.

What's a girl got to do to get laid around here? If you're Suzanne, whatever it takes. That means, among other things, embarking on a cross-country search for the most date-friendly town, taking an ill-conceived trip to Club Med, undergoing an assessment on the "Am I Hot or Not" Web site and improving her feng shui with a fishless aquarium. When all else fails, she heads off to Alaska to commemorate the Streak with a torturous 450-mile bike ride and, improbably, becomes stranded in a nearly abandoned military outpost in Arctic Russia.

Day by day, as she turns into the Cal Ripken of unintentional celibacy, Suzanne somehow manages to keep her zany sense of humor, gain uncommon insight and, ultimately, conquer the curse of the Singles Table.

From The Pages Of The Curse Of The Singles Table

Read Excerpts

What's Gilligan's Island?

Who's Cal Ripken? Who's Ted Koppel? What's Gilligan's Island? Who's George Will? Who's Arnold Horshack?

These are some of the questions posed to Suzanne by Mainstream Publishing, her British publisher. Suzanne did her best to help with the British "translation," but some things - like Arnold Horshack - just couldn't survive the trip across the Atlantic. Alas, her reference to the dorky Welcome Back Kotter character was dropped. You can read the British version, titled The Curse of the Single Girl to find out what else was changed. As far as Suzanne knows, the Australian version hasn't been altered - well, except for the cover. Below are some of the foreign-edition covers. Also, coming soon: the Japanese, Russian, Chinese and Thai editions.

The British Cover
Since the concept of the "Singles Table" at weddings doesn't exist in Great Britain, the book has been renamed 1001 Nights Without Sex: The Curse of the Single Girl.

The German Cover
The German title translates into "Imagine You Are Still Single And No One Catches On To This!" According to Suzanne's German publisher, "It's a nice, well-rhythmed, sprightly, fresh title."

The Dutch Cover
The "Singles Table" is also a foreign concept in Holland, so the book has been retitled Hopelessly Single. Suzanne is certain the Dutch editors meant "hopeless" in the most optimistic sense.

The Australian Cover
The Aussie publisher describes Curse as "a hilarious account of life in the single lane that will be catnip to women readers and 'Sex and the City' addicts everywhere." Read the Aussie press.

The Romanian Cover
The Romanian edition, loosely translated as "Too Much Celibacy," is so ... so ... former Eastern Bloc.

So Did She Live Happily Ever After?

The Curse of the Singles Table ends with Suzanne introducing Paul, her streakbreaker, to her family - an episode that involves an emergency trip to Banana Republic and a prolonged bout of flop sweat. But since this book chronicles a true story, Suzanne's life has gone on, and readers may wonder: What happened next?

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Within the next year, Suzanne and Paul concluded that they had met their match and decided to elope to the Canadian Rockies. Paul formally announced his intentions with the immortal words: "OK, go ahead and call Alaska Airlines." Just after securing the reservations, Suzanne sat down and composed her wedding vows. Paul waited a little longer to work on his vows, breaking out in yet another flop sweat as he completed them less than an hour before he was due to recite them.

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The only downside to eloping, of course, was having to leave behind Angela, the one hairdresser on the planet who has ever successfully tamed Suzanne's frizz. Even Suzanne's extensive session with her flat iron couldn't salvage the disaster perpetrated by the hotel's hair salon.

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It probably wouldn't have mattered, anyway, since the wedding took place outdoors during a light drizzle. Flummoxed by trying to hold an umbrella while carrying her flowers, Suzanne tripped and sent the bouquet airborne, uttering a profanity that is now preserved in perpetuity on her wedding video. The ceremony was held on a bluff overlooking Moraine Lake and performed by a former park ranger with a thick handlebar moustache and John-Boy Walton spectacles. It was witnessed by about thirty tourists who happened to be hiking in the area.

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Still suffering from her sense-of-style disability, Suzanne had to rely on her sister, Jennifer, to help her pick out her wedding dress, a beaded number pulled off the rack at a shopping mall in L.A. It looked smashing with the New Balance sneakers Suzanne wore on the short hike up to the bluff.

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After the ceremony, Suzanne called her family and announced over their speakerphone, "I just got married!" The reaction of her brother-in-law, John, was immediate: "Who'd you marry?"