First dates

I love taking myself out to restaurants alone. I do it every Sunday evening, a ritual that feels almost Kantian in its consistency: if I’m in New York on that night, unwaveringly, I go to Crocodile. I order the same thing every time – their Manhattan Normande, which I love even though it bothers me that they made the cocktail a feminine in French, the leeks vinaigrette, the trout and a chocolate mousse with a fresh mint tea for dessert.

The restaurant has booths on the right and left and a series of small, 2-people round tables in the middle. That’s where I prefer to sit: bang in the middle, not too far at the back, both because I have my favorite waiter (he’s lovely, confounded by my tea order every week, and always up for a little gossip about the other tables around) and because it means I can hear conversations from every direction. Judge me if you must, but few things are more enjoyable than trying to guess how people know each other: tables of 5 that look like an awkwardly crashed double date, old couples celebrating more time spent together than I’ve been alive, families trying to teach their kids how to sit still for a 3-course meal. My absolute favorite thing to be next to: dates, especially the first ones. It’s weird to me that people would choose to meet for the first time at a restaurant, let alone a fancy one. Then again, these are fundamentally different people from me, which makes it that much more fun to eavesdrop.

Last week I walked past my first date neighbors outside the restaurant as I walked in. They both looked very attractive and also completely lost, so I assumed they were headed to a cooler place than I was. I thought two things going past them: one, I like his tattoos, and two wow – she’s very, very blonde. She was, I confirmed once they sat down, the kind of attractive that was almost provocative. Platinum hair, very red lips, black leather outfit and no-bullshit eyes, there was something about her that seemed like it had seen it all. I loved her voice – sugary, sultry, with an LA accent. He was dimmer than her, shoulders hunched, long hair falling over his face. He spoke a little too quietly, in that way anxious men do, with some strident intonations occasionally piercing through.

They take an upsettingly long time to order, dancing around the menu like we didn’t all know they're going to order, she a salad, he some meat dish. I lean in at some point to recommend the leeks, partly because I like their vibe, also because indecision makes me anxious. I know, she replies, immediately it seemed a little offended that I might assume she didn’t. She asks me if I lived nearby – I don't, and I could see the cogs turning in her head trying to figure out what one might be doing here, alone, on a Sunday evening, having a three-course meal and a cocktail. You should check out the bar upstairs, she tells me, although why one might tell a clear regular about something that’s in the building is beyond me. I smile, tell her I might someday, turn back to my Manhattan. It takes them another twenty fucking minutes to order – am I the only person that this drives crazy? I think, and I say this with as much retenue as a 27-year-old spoiled brat from Paris has (none), I would have simply walked out on him. They settle on the salad (sad), the leeks (they better), a fish option (“when you say it’s cooked in butter, how much butter do you mean? Because I’m lactose intolerant but like, not that intolerant”) and the chicken (it’s huge, they don’t know this yet but I’ve seen others order it and I can’t wait to see how they handle that).

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Oh my god. I’m writing this sat in a place where other people also come for dinner alone and what unhinged characters there are here. A man dressed in a coat that can only have come straight from the 1950s, the kind of raincoat that’s so devoid of color it makes you think they really did live in sepia back there, just walked in. The worst part of that is that the raincoat is the least offensive item in his appearance: he’s sporting what the French call a moustache en brosse, that I can’t translate for you because writing this just once was already difficult enough on my poor fingers, and one of those train conductor hats, also sepia, that seems to have entirely lost its will to live. This is, to be clear, entirely less exciting to be sat next to than first dates, because you already know men like that will pull out a worn out copy of Hegel that they’ll barely understand, and will one day mansplain to a woman (‘it’s all about progress in history, you know?’), while trying to think of a way they can shoehorn the fact that they read this book in a small West Village café with cheap wine and (though he wouldn’t know this) terrible chocolate mousse like the True Blue New Yorker he is. Anyways.

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The more their dinner unfurls, the clearer it becomes this is a revenge date – the spot makes sense now – they’re both talking about their exes but especially she, how awful her ex was and how she wants nothing to do with him anymore, except she’s saying it over and over again in a way that makes me think it isn’t true at all so I ask her, the first time he goes to pee (he comes back very upset about the staff showing him the long way around to go, and the fact that his ex’s art is hanging in the bathroom, which you know what, that’s a totally and potentially the only fair reason to bring up your ex on a date), I ask her when she saw her ex last.

‘Oh!’ she laughs in her sugary voice that I want to bottle up and listen to before I go to sleep. ‘Last night! He doesn’t need to know, though’.

Okay – although my strategy wouldn’t have been to talk about it, but to each their own. They spend a significant amount of time afterwards talking about his ex, whose art he was rattled to see while peeing, I understand, I’d hate that too, and then she says decisively, one hand on his and in a voice that makes it clear he’ll see her naked tonight: ‘you’re in a better place now’. I love this hand, I love this moment: the mutual recognition that you can breathe now, you're on the same page. I relax, too, on their behalf.

At this point my waiter comes with a free glass of champagne alongside my chocolate mousse and we get lost in a conversation of our own – his latest STD scare, my latest travel plans, how horny all of New York seems to get the moment temperatures get above 60. I pay – I leave – I thank him and them for the evening. For her sake, I hope he's good in bed – I already know he isn’t.