NSA Dinner

This entry was hard to write because it is about food but it is also about being momentarily infatuated with someone who looks a lot like an ex of mine.

It is harder than one might imagine to seamlessly connect the descriptions of meeting a stranger who looks like someone I used to know to the description of a $3 plate of almonds.

On Monday night (this is now Monday night over a month ago) I arranged to go out for tapas with a girl who had stood me up once already.

I had had a premonition that she would stand me up (because the dates had been going so well up to that point, it felt like something had to go horribly awry). She was the youngest of anyone who responded to my ad (23), which clearly made her a prime target for making plans with me and then losing track of time while practicing kegstands (or something like that).

Her response to my craigslist ad said she would only take me out because she loved the joke I made about my budget being ‘tighter than condi’s asshole’ (I only use the classiest metaphors). She said she was looking for awesome friends and thinks “that i might be one”. Ignoring the poor choice of qualifier, I was insantly excited over the prospect of going out with someone close to my age; I shrugged off the fact that the language she used in her e-mail made me die a little on the inside.

I wrote her back, suggesting a time, and she wrote me back with a place, Kwanjai Thai in Fremont. She did not write back with a photo, causing a close personal aide to disclose that she was “probably ugly, a lot older than 23, fat, and possibly a man”. If she had shown up, she would have been my third dinner date, but she didn’t. I waited outside of Kwanjai Thai for a half hour, earnestly staring into the eyes of anyone who walked by the restaurant, hoping that they would be this mysterious girl. Nobody was, but two people asked me for directions.

After a half hour, I finally drove home. I blasted Queen’s greatest hits on the drive back, I guess thinking that doing my Freddy Mercury imitation would make me feel better (only a temporary fix). When I got home I sent her a one line e-mail “It was not very nice of you to stand me up. You should not do that to anyone ever again”. I figured she had flaked and I would never hear from her, but within twenty minutes I got a response: she said she had messed up, that she had meant to tell me Kaosamai Thai (across the street from Kwanjai Thai) and that she had stood outside there for a half hour too. She offered to take me out somewhere the next week, anywhere I wanted.

I didn’t want to be a jackass and suggest that she take me to Canlis, but I didn’t want to suggest The Old Spaghetti Factory either. It took me over an hour of scanning restaurant reviews on yelp.com to find something affordable, good, and not pho or chain restaurant food: Ocho, a new tapas bar that recently opened in Ballard. It had a half dozen five star reviews, and tapas are (deceptively) affordable. She agreed, set a new date and time with me, and I spent the rest of the week trying to figure out how I managed to arrive at this particular point in my life.

That night I drove down Market in Ballard and went past Ocho twice before I found it, in a tiny corner with no signage, looking conspicuously up and coming. No one was waiting outside. I stood there for a minute, then poked my head in the door. The restaurant was smaller than my living room, about the size of an ample galley kitchen, with an imposing, sexy bar taking up half of the restaurant. There was a menu on a chalkboard bolted to one wall. There were three people inside sitting down: two people getting smoochy and sloppy at the bar, and one young woman clutching a glass of white wine, sitting uncomfortably by herself. I hesitated before walking in, and almost went back outside to wait. The woman sitting alone was attractive and well dressed and did not resemble any of the other kind souls who had recently taken me out. She was too pretty to be my date. There was no unkempt ponytail in sight.

“Are you Marne?” she asked, not getting up.

If I was a Christian, at this moment I probably would have crossed myself or said some ridiculous religious type thing like ‘thank you jesus’, but I settled on a very deep breath and then I walked over to her table.

I smiled, mumbled something about being Marne, and sat down. She didn’t smile. She had another sip of wine and widened her eyes a little to acknowledge that she was actually my date and not some psychic who could divine names on cue. She didn’t seem excited to meet me, or even happy to be in a tapas bar with a possible ‘awesome new friend’ but I was giddy and didn’t care. I was at a tapas bar with a girl in my age bracket who was not just pretty, but who bore an uncanny resemblance to one of my exes that I had been somewhat entranced with earlier in my lifetime.

…This was like finding an unopened candy bar wrapped in hundred dollar bills lying in the sreet. Except for her seeming a little disinterested and morose (which I was happily willing to overlook), this was like Christmas.

It is probably definitely not in my best interest to post photos of people I have dated on the internet without their permission, but to prove that I do not have bad taste (and to break up all this text with a pretty pretty picture), here is an elusive, artsy photograph of the ex in question:

This is who I thought about when I sat down to eat with this stranger. The ex had a face that was very nice to look at. She had round, serious eyes, a round, button nose, and a round mouth. She had rosy cheeks, a bashful smile, and she laughed a lot. She was kind. You know how a patch of sunlight will mosy across your bedroom or your living room, and you can stretch out in it for awhile and soak up the sun’s warmth? Being around her was a lot like that. The split was amicable and without drama, thus it was exciting, rather than gut-wrenching, to meet her doppleganger. My mind took off in a hundred directions at once. I felt like a pinball machine. For a few minutes, I felt like I had found the last golden ticket. I think this is what everyone feels like when they go out on a blind date with someone cute, though, so maybe this wasn’t anything special.

I was thinking how similar my date resembled this woman while we went through the get to know you routine:

I asked “What’s your job like?” as I examined her hair: the texture, the cut, the way the uber-slutty lighting cast shadows across her face.

I told her “My other dates have been…interesting” as I studied her face, how her features were more angular, the skin lighter, her smile wider (she did eventually smile).

While we ordered (patatas bravas, almendras, an egg/potato tortilla, and beets with bleu cheese and nuts), I stared at her red coat, the same one my ex used to wear, the one in the blurry photo.

Her mood improved, or she wasn’t negative at all and I just thought she was, because we ended up happily eating together for well over two hours. We started at Ocho and worked our way through four tapas, all of which ranged from average to almost lovely. I think tapas are slowly becoming my favorite food because you can graze on a million different things and I have an obsession with tiny versions of life-sized objects (a love of dollhouses was irrevocably beaten into me at an early age, and i’ve spiraled downward ever since). Also, my favorite cookbook has a recipe for cherry tomatoes stuffed with warm tuna salad; if I were food, this would be it, and I am forever indebted to the inventors of the concept of tapas for creating a cuisine that would encourage folks to stuff cherry tomatoes with anything.

My date could not eat wheat-gluten and I do not eat meat, but we still found a bunch of dishes on Ocho’s tiny, (tiny!) menu that catered to both of our needs. We both liked the patatas bravas the best. They were fancy homefries in essence, but they well-spiced and not too salty. If I had been able to order any of there toasts or she had ordered a meaty thing, it probably would have felt like the perfect accompaniment. There was spiced mayo (I think? In restaurants this fancy I probably have to call it aioli) on the side that was excellent, and we devoured the little portion quickly.

I hate beets and bleu cheese more than I hate any other foods (besides olives; I’ve reserved a special place in my own fantasy hell for olives), but I put on a happy face and choked them down so my date wouldn’t feel like she had ordered the dish for herself, and I didn’t gag or throw up, so I guess they were alright. The beet itself was massive, and there were candied nuts sprinkled on the plate that I liked a lot, for whatever garnish is worth. The egg/potato tart was nothing special. I liked it, but I don’t discriminate against starch. My date thought it was weird, and it was lukewarm. The almonds, which at $3 were one of the cheapest things there (nothing over $6), were fine, but there were roughly twenty almonds in the dish, which made us both laugh and shake our heads. You can sell people in Ballard anything. What did we think we were getting? I have no idea. They were a lot like the seasoned nuts that plantar’s sells in big plastic tubs. I wonder if they had msg on them. I wonder if I paid $3 for a portion of 10 almonds seasoned with msg?

Oh, right. I didn’t pay.

Throughout the conversation I kept noticing things that were different from my ex, like this woman’s personality, life experiences, her preferred alcoholic beverage, etc. The feelings of elation and lust were brief, and by the time the first round of dinner was over, I was feeling happy and grateful rather than psychotic. I came down from my little cloud and I slowly stopped fantasizing about this woman being ‘everything my ex wasn’t and more’ and realized that she was not my missing piece. My stomach growled; I was still hungry. Sometimes I love my bodily functions.

There wasn’t anything else on the menu we could both eat, but I guess I appeared despondent enough, because my date suggested we go find some place that had nachos. I thought this sounded excellent, so we paid our tab and left. We wandered/crawled over to the Matador and ordered some nachos, which were exactly the same as the ones you’d get at a Ruby Tuesday, except they didn’t have as much cheese or other toppings and they cost twice as much. However, Matador has a gigantic fireplace and makes you feel very special and beautiful when you are there, so it was okay. Plus, I didn’t pay.

While we ate the nachos we talked about our families and college and any other random topics we could come up. It felt like we just wanted to keep talking to stay in one another’s presence. I started to say weird, random things and laugh anxiously and uncomfortably at my own jokes– it felt like a date. I picked at the nachos until I was sick because I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t think I had a whole ton of chemistry with this woman, and she wasn’t much like my ex at all, save for looking young and female really, but she was interesting, fun to talk to, and possibly an awesome friend.

What was to follow that paragraph here was a whole long bit about realizing how few of these women I wanted to be my friend and how I realized I wanted to hang out with this woman again (in a friendly way, not in a “come over and watch a movie in my bed with the lights off” kind of way). Then I was going to write about how it felt almost nice to think upon my ex fondly and briefly and think about the things I liked about her. I was going to write about hungering for familiarity, genuine appreciation, and love in a cold, wet, unfamiliar town. Then I was going to talk about all of those minute reactions that I felt and why I chose to write about them and not, say, the ambiance of the Matador and how my editorial choices reveal how fucked up I am in general. THEN I was going to write about wrestling with wanting to see someone who reminded me of past lives led and what did THAT all MEAN, but none of that is really important. This is a blog about food with strangers, not my failed relationships and future exes.

The food was good and different and cheap. The company was good and different and fun. I felt like I had made a friend and come full circle with the dinner date.  I had possibly made one new friend who might want to see me again at a later date (providing she could through all that NSA stuff out the window). I had something to show for all of my erratic and sometimes painful dinnertime conversations with strangers. At the end of the date I felt ready to be done with the whole thing. I realized I was dinnerslutted out.

When the nachos were finally gone, I bade this woman goodnight, hoping for the first time that I might see her again, and I went home to gear up for one last dinner date.