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When I agree to go "undercover" to a WNYC 40 & Under Singles Event, my friends — devoted listeners of public radio — are annoyed.

"You don't even listen to public radio," they point out.

"But I like public-radio people," I respond.

This is true. Public-radio people, as much as they exist as a self-contained subculture (the studious-yet-conspicuous glasses, the liberal bent, the tote bags) are my kind of people. At least, I assume they are. I'm a near-sighted, college-educated book reviewer. Except for the minor detail that I don't actually listen to public radio, I fit snugly within the demographic.

Also, I'm newly single. The event promises me a valuable opportunity: a chance to

suss out my compatibility with those I assume will be semi-pretentious, philanthropically inclined and media savvy. It's a project with great journalistic merit.

Of course, this is all in the abstract. When I get off the L train and catch my solitary reflection in the window of a Polish deli, I feel more alone than single. I also feel a little soft in the guts.

I remember a time when being single felt like a constant, insatiable hunger, when every trip to the supermarket was a possible run-in with a girlfriend-to-be, every hastily chosen seat in a movie theater a potential conduit to a love tryst. These days are not those days. This time around, singleness feels less like hunger and more like mild nausea.

Which is still how I feel when I enter the Brooklyn Brewery — a little less than confident. But I'm also not alone: I've brought a friend, and I've sent him in before me to case the joint.

As I shuffle toward a table of nametags at the entrance, Jon comes out to fill me in. He's wearing the cultivated scruff of the underemployed actor: a pink short-sleeve button-down, a trucker hat and three days of stubble. The image of the casual-yet-curious single man. I'm wearing a work-appropriate polo shirt and slacks, which makes me feel like an asshole.

"There's one hot girl here," he says, "but I think she's with her boyfriend."

Ridiculous, but somehow not surprising. Even in the tenuous havens of the unallied, the coupled folk

follow and mock.

I pick up a nametag and scribble my signature across the bottom. I notice my tag is labeled "Oxytocin." Jon's, I see, says "Dopamine." I experience a brief wave of anxiety. Dopamine, I'm inexplicably convinced, is much better. Have I fucked up already?

I turn to the ladies behind the nametag table. They're both wearing white lab coats, which is obliquely creepy. I notice that one of them, a short girl with a short brown ponytail, is potentially cute.

"So what are these chemicals all about?" I ask.

"They're for a game you'll be playing later," Ponytail says.

You'll be playing? Ouch.

"You know, this is Radio Lab — 'Where science bumps into culture.'"

I know from my "research" that the event is being hosted by the NPR program of that name, though I'd never heard of it before I got my ticket, let alone listened to it.

"Of course," I say. "But is Dopamine better than Oxytocin?"

Ponytail lets a relaxed, sympathetic smile spread across her face.