The last man on Earth walks into a bar, and says “Drink, I’d like another bartender”.

 

Except that he isn’t the last man on Earth, so he strides up to the bar and asks for Campbell’s table, as he’s been told to in the email. The woman behind the bar is attractive, a tall twenty-something, with shiny brunette hair and a lively face. She must find him handsome - as she gestures towards us and pours his lager, her eyes turn to sugar and her ample lashes swoop up and down. He doesn’t seem to notice.

 

It’s easy to see why she’s fluttering her lashes - he sticks out in this dowdy corner pub like a sore thumb. His well-tailored blazer, carefully manicured beard, piercing hazel eyes, chiseled features and confident posture all combine to make the air around the man thick with power. He moves towards our table in the corner with long steps and an alacrity that one can tell is habitual. He introduces himself as Thomas and takes the last empty chair. Close up, his air of power and control is instantly broken by his expression. He’s miserable… and terrified.

 

Loneliness will do that to a person. The stigma of admitting publicly that you are lonely, even in post-Covid times, is incredibly strong. I’d put out the call for lonely people to speak with, and within two days, I’d had almost 150 messages. The six people at this table (seven including myself) are the brave ones - the ones who actually showed up... the short end of a very long list.

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If you look at the statistics, Haylie is the poster-child for the modern loneliness epidemic. She’s a young Māori woman, a single parent living on a low income. She shares a small flat with her son, about an hour out of town. She admits that to come to something like this, or to take her son to playgroup, costs more in petrol money than she can really afford, but she’s desperate.

 

“I just need to get out and be with other adults or I’ll go crazy. My ex-boyfriend’s parents rent the flat to me for cheap, so that we have somewhere safe to stay, and I’m really grateful, but it’s way out of town. I do feel isolated. And getting a babysitter to go anywhere can be a real mission.”

 

When I ask how she finds playgroup, she admits to having mixed feelings about it.

 

“I know it’s good for my boy, he’s really social and he needs that time with other kids. I need the social time too, but it’s weird… it feels like it’s not really social, like they’re not whole people. I think you get that, with young kids. I feel like I stopped being Haylie a long time ago, and just became Jayden’s Mum. Like, I’m not a whole person, and the other parents aren’t either… it feels kind of shallow. Even though there are people, I feel lonely there too.”

 

As the conversation moves around the table, Haylie’s thoughts are echoed again and again.

 

“It’s like a lockdown inside my head” says Jason, a scaffolder in his early thirties. “I want to be out amongst it more, but I’ve stopped going out with my mates, because…I don’t know. I just feel kind of empty and I think…even around guys I’ve known my whole life, I feel… nervous. Threatened. They’re not doing anything to make me feel like that. I don’t know why I do."

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A pioneer in the study of loneliness, the late John Cacioppo seems to have known. In his 2013 Tedx talk, he outlined how isolation can trigger the human brain to be hyper-vigilant to social threats, making us nervous or negative in company. It’s a vicious cycle, I explain to Jason, that the connection and company you crave could actually make you behave in more antisocial or unsociable ways. I ask if he thinks that any of his other mates might feel the same way he does.

 

“Definitely, I think so. There was a group of five of us that always hung out. Two of the guys got married last year, and one of them has a baby on the way, so they’re busy at home and we don’t see them much now. I think the three of us that are left probably feel… I dunno. Not jealous, really, but definitely… I dunno. Covid was tough, too. I couldn’t work during lockdown and it’s taken a while to get back on track with my income. Nobody wants to be the guy who goes out but can’t afford to shout a round. So it’s been pretty shit to be honest, and I think the other guys are going through it too… but we haven’t talked about it, not really.”

 

Thomas listens with interest to Jason. After a brief pause, he tells how the dissolution of his own marriage has pushed his feelings of loneliness to the brink.

 

“Like your friends, I found that my social life changed when I got married. I saw less of my single friends, and we hung out with other couples, for the most part. My career started to take off, and I started having the odd dinner with a few of the other senior team members. Our friendships weren’t all that intimate, but I enjoyed their company because they got it - how lonely the grind is, when you're in management. You have to have some professional distance between you and the bulk of the staff. The problem is, I figured out quite quickly that lonely people don’t cure each other’s loneliness, they just end up being lonely together.”

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Around the table, heads bob in agreement. Thomas fiddles with the cuff of his shirt, before continuing.

 

“So I was working pretty long hours, and then I got CFO, and I decided to set some boundaries. Home to the wife and kids by 6.30, every night, I told myself. I went home, though, and I was constantly on my phone, checking emails. My wife hated it, and rightly so. Also, we were quite a progressive couple so I’m not sure how it happened, but it ended up with her raising the kids and managing our social calendar, and me just working all the time. Her having to nag me to take her out or go and spend time with people, and me wanting to, but being too tired.

 

“When we finally split last year, she took the social calendar with her. Fair enough, too - all of our friends saw her more than they saw me. My lawyer thinks the divorce was a great success. It was amicable, and I get to see the kids whenever I want. The dog lives with them. She keeps the place in Epsom, the place on Waiheke, her car and some cash. I get the rest of the investment portfolio - a handful of other properties, shares, the boat. I haven’t had time to take that boat out in almost a year, so it’s become a meaningless toy at this point.

 

"I’ve moved into one of the little apartments I have here in town. Now, I have dinner with workmates occasionally, I get in an extra gym session some nights, and I’ve been trying to date… but most nights I just end up alone in my apartment, on my laptop, with takeaways.

 

“The other night, I was signing in to an app that I hadn’t used in a while, so it came up with a page that said ‘Let’s verify that you’re a human’. I must have stared at it for about five minutes.

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"All I could think was 'Yeah, let's."