NSA Dinner

This blog is about two things: loving good food and being nearly broke in an expensive city.

Seattle is very friendly, and very lush and green, and very expensive. This would not be such a huge problem if everyone did not seem to have a job in the tech industry and therefore not mind the insane cost of living. But apparently everybody except me has a tech job and can afford it, so even the dive bars overcharge. But I’m an not a techie; I’m an overprivileged twenty something with a BA in Psychology, $17,000 in student loan debt, and a non-profit job with a monthly salary that couldn’t cover the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment here in Seattle. I have no future in tech, and I don’t want to work in tech, I just want a raise. More than half of my salary goes towards paying my rent and I am technologically literate enough to know how to blog publicly about it.

Until my contract with a decidedly not tech job ends, I am meeting my basic needs with food stamps, food banks, dumpster diving, throwing pot lucks for other poor twenty-somethings (it doesn’t work, everyone brings hummus or napkins), trading my housemates extra chores for groceries, getting invited to dinner parties that nobody wants me at, taking more than my fair share of cheese and crackers and box wine at gallery openings, and by tormenting myself over every dollar that I spend.

The last food I bought in a restaurant was a three dollar breakfast sandwich on a brunch date at Cafe Vega at 18th and Yesler, and I spent the rest of the afternoon telling myself that toast or coffee would have been enough. The few times I’ve been convinced to splurge on dinner, I’ve agonized about where to go and what to order and leaving enough on my plate to get a second meal out of it and how nutritious of a leftover will it be and how much do i have to tip… almost effortlessly, I have become the biggest, cheapest, most annoying pain in the ass that has ever existed.

This would eventually be soul crushing enough on its own, but I also happen to work for a non-profit that is food-based, and everyone in my office is an aspiring foodie (most importantly: they are aspiring foodies who make more money than I do). Our water cooler chatter is about Tom Douglas, not Britney, and how nobody really gives a fuck that the Globe closed (liars), and why I just need to go to Brasa even though I don’t eat meat or drink wine. And I do care a lot about food as well: I teach vegetable gardening for a living and I was raised by a bunch of Jewish women whose life’s work was to keep me perpetually full. But I could make a list longer than Santa’s naughty names of restaurants I’ve been urged to try or obscure mushrooms I’ve been told to purchase at the Ballard farmer’s market by my coworkers. Every day I hear a little more about the world of overpriced Seattle restaurants I will never have the good fortune of patronizing.

So it is a Friday night and I am eating my housemates’ leftovers for the third night in a row while they’re out sampling the offering at Crush. My food stamp money ran out almost two weeks before its rollover date. I am exhausted, sad, and frustrated. I fantasized about going out to a restaurant, any restaurant (except sushi, which I will never get behind) and ordering whatever I wanted, without freaking out about how full it would make me feel or its nutritional content or its ability to become a leftover. I wanted to eat a meal and leave, maybe writing a little review on yelp.com after discussing the quality of the food for awhile with my co-eater, nothing more. This does not happen for people in my salary bracket. I asked for help the only way a shameless person without rich friends can ask for help.

I posted an ad.

I posted an ad asking for NSA (no strings attached) dinner. One night of conversation and good food in a restaurant, with not much in return. I offered to listen to women bitch about their exes/mothers/lives/wives and I said I would offer my thanks, but that I didn’t have anything else to give, that I would not fuck them out of guilt, and that I did not want to date. I thought it was a clever take on NSA sex, and I did not expect anyone to write me back.

In the past week, I’ve gotten more responses to that ad than I’ve ever gotten to any other ad that I’ve ever written. I haven’t had an avalanche of mail by any means, but more than one person has offered to help me out. Someone suggested I blog to the rest of the world about it. …so here I am.