NSA Dinner

Georgetown is the new Fremont.

This is the fourth most-often uttered phrase in Seattle, after “hello”, “please”, and “give a hoot, don’t pollute”. Fremont is apparently where all the interesting stuff that happened twenty years ago that makes people want to move here now happened, and Georgetown is apparently where it is happening now. Of course, nobody talked about Fremont like that when it was rough and real and cool, but memory is a strange beast.

Georgetown is full of artists leading gritty, sexy lives in unheated lofts that used to be factories and they drink dollar PBR in smoky, up-and-coming dive bars and they eat avante garde up-and-coming dive bar food and they listen to music that mere mortals find painful to be in the same room with and they don’t even have their finger on the pulse: they are the pulse. At least, this is the sense I get about Georgetown six months after moving here.

I don’t live anywhere near Georgetown. In fact, I couldn’t ever live there: I’m deathly allergic to aviator sunglasses and anyone who has ever uttered the phrase “yeah, bukowski totally changed everything for me”. I would go into anaphylactic shock and die.

But I can pack my epi-pen and go there for a night, I suppose, which is good, because Georgetown is the home of a new restaurant called the Squid and Ink, a vegan dive bar pub-by sort of establishment. I can tell this place is unspeakably cool and utterly indifferent when I pull up in my old champagne honda civic and feel ashamed to park and get out of my car. I already feel bad about myself and I haven’t even stepped inside the door yet. If I were the Old Spaghetti Factory and I met the Squid and Ink, I would go home, put on an R.E.M tape, and kill myself.

I am at a place like the Squid and Ink and not at the Old Spaghetti Factory because this time the date suggested that I pick the place, and I am clearly a glutton for punishment. The only thing better than eating an overpriced meal at a mediocre Seattle restaurant is eating in an overpriced, mediocre restaurant that can make you feel uncool and unworthy of the vinyl booth you sit upon at the same time. I had read a review for Squid and Ink awhile ago in the Stranger and the review was nothing special, but the name stuck with me. I think Squid and Ink is a great name. There are a whole passel of restaurants I would love to eat at, just because of the name: How to Cook a Wolf, Bizzarro, Earth and Ocean, the Stumbling Monk. I have no idea what kind of food is served at any of these places; they are probably all some version of overpriced and/or mediocre. Who cares? Also, I don’t eat meat and restaurants that serve fake-meat substitutes have a special place in my heart, and Squid and Ink is full of fake-meat substitutes.

My date is almost as early as I am (I am only twenty minutes early this time). She has a lot of hair and nice boots and birds of the DIY-esthetic sewn onto her jacket. Holy fembots, batman. She is probably the first queer woman in Seattle I’ve met with long hair and a jacket that matches her shoes (and not black leather; that doesn’t count). 95% of the queer women in Seattle resemble (or attempt to resemble) Shane from The L Word. The other 5% have unkempt ponytails and play Dungeons and Dragons. This is exciting; Nice Boots looks even more out of place than I do here.

We meet outside sort of clumsily– we’re the only two people out on the street in eyesight, and I like to think that I look a lot like the photo I sent her of myself. We are clearly each other’s date, and yet we still feel the need to size each other up for a full five seconds and then start asking “are you… ???”. We stupidly settle that matter and go inside. Someday I will learn to be more assertive, maybe when I have more money. There are a couple of angry, drunk hipsters sitting at the bar, and there are a few angry, drunk hipsters wearing funny (and I presume ironic) hats sitting in one of the booths. There is hardcore music playing very loud, even though it is 6pm on a Monday. I don’t get it. I will never understand why it is cool to wear your little sister’s pastel jeans from 1988 and shake your head instead of dancing like a maniac at your favorite band’s concert, but whatever. I am here for the fake-meat fish and the company of this very nice and well-accessorized girl, not for the crowd and ambiance.

Nice Boots is only slightly put off by my choice of restaurant. She is doing a good job of pretending she doesn’t mind at all, that she does this sort of thing all the time. She has never heard of this place, and she would never, ever come here if I had not suggested it, but she does have a sense of adventure and clearly an ability to go with the flow and ignore the too loud music and our surly server. I find out that she is a waitress and she also makes jewelry and she is acting in a play that is going up next week. I am blown away. Nice Boots can’t make much more money than I do (I guess, unless she works at Canlis, but that’s not the vibe I get). I suddenly feel bad about posting that ad, about taking her up on her generosity, and I have to remind myself several points throughout the night that I have no groceries and no money to buy more groceries until February fifth and I am exactly as poor as I know I am, and I need help. If I was a waiter in a restaurant, and I made even a fraction more than I do now, I would probably help me out too, because I am a sucker for a good story, and also, hello: I am pretty pathetic these days.

But the feeling subsides, and the conversation eventually loosens up. Nice Boots is quieter than the Bridge Builder and she doesn’t think my jokes are funny, but we get by. After awhile, we get some service (waiters in Georgetown are working really hard on being aloof and bitchy). I find the menu a little intimidating. If you’re not a vegan (or if you’re not really enthusiastic about meat made out of soy protein and ground seaweed), this menu looks kind of gross and ridiculous. Nice Boots is trying not to look appalled. Ham and cheez? Seitan seirtare? Vegan Poutine?

Nice Boots wants to know what, if anything, I am planning to order. She has been looking at the menu, scanning each page over and over again, looking for something familiar, finding nothing. Secretly, I want to order everything. I love going into a restaurant and being able to order anything on the entire menu. This does not happen very often for me. The first thing every vegetarian does the minute they get handed a menu in a restaurant is to scan every line item for the following words: chicken, pork, beef, steak, etc. How do people who eat meat ever decide what to eat? I never have this many choices. It takes me forever to pick just one thing. I settle for one of their specials, the fishsammish (vegan fishamajig! yes!). After some cajoling, Nice Boots decides on the TLT (tempeh, lettuce, tomato).

I want her to know that she has probably made the right choice, but I hold back. We talk about travel instead– she’s spent a bunch of time traveling through South America and I am listening intently for awhile. I love talking to people who strap on backpacks and go places. They make me envious and nervous. I could never do this, yet I have life plans that include doing this eventually. My attention is all hers until I realize that she is pretty bad about reflecting on her experiences. I realize she has said that she loves brazil maybe a half dozen times in the last two minutes. She has a dreamy look in her eyes, but it seems sort of manufactured. This is not how I talk about the places I really love; this is how I talk about the places I know other people will find exotic or interesting that I pretend to have loved but really just felt pleasant about and pretending to love them makes me come off as more worldly. Maybe this is totally untrue and if I went out for a second meal with Nice Boots I would realize the error of my first impression, but we’re not going on a second date, so we’ll never know.

The food arrives quicker than I thought it would and I can stop thinking about how Nice Boots would like to present herself. The fishsammish has some of the butteriest, fluffiest bread in the world. I fucking love vegan comfort food. It is so bad for you, so completely hedonistic and over the top. I have never eaten non-vegan food with so much grease. The bread alone seems to scream ‘fuck you meat eaters, we too can die early deaths!’. The bread is spread with a massive amount of vegan tartar sauce (which tastes exactly the same as nonvegan tartar sauce), and there is, predictably, a heap of fake fish filet. It 1. looks like fish filet and 2. tastes like fish filet. I say a silent prayer to the person who created the meaty kind of fish filet which neither looks nor tastes like actual fish. It is not that hard to imitate with soy protein and dried seaweed. I am covered in grease, and I am chuckling maniacally to myself as I lick my fingers between bites. This is great. There is also a cup of soup that came with my sandwich, but it is very spicy and not that interesting when it sits on the same plate as this great, great sandwich.

This date is actually going remarkably well, considering that Nice Boots is pretty quiet and feels out of place and I feel sheepish and awkward and we are in hipster hell. I catch myself feel wistful that I am meeting her in this setting and not on some other first date, like in a coffee house or at a park, because she is fun enough to talk to and she might have made a good friend. At the end of the date she tells me that she thinks I am brave and she admires me for doing something so brazen. I respond with another round of ‘thank you so much’; there is nothing else that I can say to this person. I am once again full and I am overwhelmed by her kindness. Secretly I also think that the women who are buying me these meals are probably a little crazy, a little lonely, a little bored, and a little naive, but they are also kind, generous, spontaneous, adventurous, and fun to be around for an evening, and I am not going to argue with myself any longer about whether or not I truly need the charity.

Nice Boots walks me to my car and bids me goodbye and invites me to her play, which opens next week. The tickets are on the house.