NSA Dinner

Early on in the whole dinnerslut thing, I set up a date for nearly a month later with a woman who offered to take me anywhere I want. Because my favorite restaurants are based solely on name and branding, we set up a date to go to Coastal Kitchen. The date was for almost a month later, and I forgot about it.

After the date with the woman who looked like my ex (and all the dates that came before that), I was tired. I was tired of sending strangers my contact info and e-mail address, wondering if they would show up on my porch wearing a corset and holding a flogger and a steak knife in each hand. I was tired of finding random restaurants and showing up a half hour early and having weirdly boring conversations with lonely women. I was tired of feeling poor and pathetic. I was tired of eating restaurant food and having to explain each and every date to my coworkers as they watched my reheat my evidence leftovers. I was going on “real” dates (read: more than one date with the same person) and at first I was ashamed to tell the real dates about the dinner thing and then I was pissed off that I was ridiculously overscheduled. I actually told a pretty girl who wanted to go out on a Monday night that I wasn’t free until a week from Thursday. If anyone ever did this to me, I would tell them to suck my grits. If you can’t free up one night in a week for me and we’re still in the exciting and fun stage of the possible relationship, then go away. I wanted my food stamps to roll over, and I wanted to cook myself a meal. I didn’t want to be a dinnerslut anymore.

Even though I was positively buoyant over the prospect of eating at Coastal Kitchen, I still felt gross all over about the prospect of having another get to know you talk. I almost canceled the date outright; however, Coastal Kitchen was the one restaurant I remembered reading about in my parents’ house at home long before I moved to Seattle while I pawed through a Frommer’s Guidebook, trying to get even a vague idea of what I was getting myself into. When I finally moved to Seattle I forgot about it, but a few months after my arrival I moved to the Central District, and one evening I walked by Coastal Kitchen with a housemate, who was understandably confused by my giddy reaction. I made her cross the street with me so we could go stare in the windows and look at the menu when I realized everything was way out of my range (like, er, all of the restaurants in the greater Seattle area). I sadly wrote it off until the dinnerslut thing began, when it was my secret goal to have someone take me there.

The food did not disappoint, although I had expected it to. A friend had told me that only a few select items are alright, and most of the dishes are hit and miss. I was prepared. They were featuring food from the Peruvian coast (Coastal Kitchen has a set menu and a quarterly menu that features a coastal cuisine from around the world). I ate grilled mahi mahi in this avocado butter cheese sauce called huancaina sauce. The fish was salty, crisp, and buttery. I threw the few table manners I usually employ right out the window: I felt only mildly slutty as I licked the grease off of my fingers one by one. It came with roasted purple peruvian potatoes and grilled corn on the cob. I hadn’t seen that variety of potatoes in over a year, when I worked on a farm that grew them, and I hadn’t eaten grilled corn on the cob since July. If the actual cob had been edible, I would have sucked that down, and as it was, I ripped off the handle on the ear so I could get my mouth around the few kernels on the end. I may or may not have snorted like a piggie during the consumption of the corn.

My last date was kind of batty, regrettably in a cuckoo for cocoa puffs kind of way. She worked for Microsoft; it didn’t seem like she got a whole lot of sun or social interaction. She talked a lot about children’s television and I did a lot of nodding. I’m actually terrible at small talk, and on this date I made no effort to make things any less awkward. I talked about whatever I felt like talking about; I made rude observations about the waiter and the couple sitting next to us. I burped. I snorted while I ate the corn on the cob; I acted like myself, mostly.

For the wonderfulness that was my actual meal, I was still hungry when everything was gone (if the plate had been made out of corn plastic, i probably would have tried to eat that as well). My date noticed and suggested we eat dessert.

Until this point, I had always said no to drinks, appetizers, or desserts. I don’t know why; everyone I went out with would probably have been happy to order anything I liked, but I felt uncomfortable. Even when I really wanted spring rolls at the third thai restaurant or when I wanted a beer at the tapas bar, I held back. I told the waiter that we would love to see a dessert menu.

I ordered this fancy concoction that came in an oversized martini glass: dulce de leche layered with blackberries, with fresh whipped cream on top. Holy hotdog. For a few minutes, I was the happiest little girl in the world. I licked the glass. I did not share. It was very, very good. I like desserts that have fruit but that aren’t just fruit; it’s like having anonymous sex with a condom. Slutty, but health conscious. Yum.

The meal cost twice as much as any other meal I had during the entire dinnerslut experience. I didn’t care. I didn’t feel guilty or wrestle with feeling like a welfare queen. I was done. I hugged my date goodbye as she stammered something about wanting to see me again and I uttered an mmkaysure and was gone in a flash. It was over.

Dinnerslutting has been over for me for over a month now. Shortly after the last dinner I spent a long while scourging craigslist for a babysitting job and found one that works with my schedule for an amicable family with stable children that make it worth my while. I still can’t go out without freaking out about paying my rent, but I have the tiniest bit more leeway that allows me to do so every once in awhile. In the past month I have gone back to cooking a lot at home, walking into coffee shops as they close to inquire about where the stale pastries will go, and convincing my friends that it’s “take a poor friend to dinner” night again.

I am especially grateful to all of the people who took me out, especially the folks to whom I was unnecessarily rude. Thanks for feeding me. I never sent any of you a thank-you, but you affected my life in a big way.

I feel like I’ve written a lot about what I learned from all of this, but I’ll try to sum it up here. I’m not really in a mood to write, but I want to get this down and have it all be over, so here we go:

All restaurant food eventually tastes the same, no matter where it’s from. First conversations are almost always the same; if they aren’t (in a good way), get this person’s phone number. If you can’t make fun of the waiter in front of your date, they’re not worth your time. Don’t second-guess yourself in front of others; you’re probably right. You know yourself better than anyone else; fuck anyone else who disagrees. Don’t be a half hour early to anything. Smile more; it puts people at ease (unless you don’t want them to be). Everyone loves to talk about themselves; this puts people at ease. Dinner is the longest meal of the day. It’s okay to ask for help. Sometimes I think the only people interested in helping other people are people who are lonely, people who are looking for something. I don’t really think it matters if someone helps for altruistic reasons or not. Altruisim is a fucked up concept anyway. Facial expressions give away a lot. Craigslist is the best website ever. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay if you don’t want to be friends. If you can’t eat a corn on the cob the way you want to in front of someone without feeling bad, they aren’t worth your time. It’s impossible to tell who’s most in need of charity. Vegan food is good. Good service makes the food taste better. Yellow curry is yellow curry is yellow curry. It is really okay to ask for help. No, really.

No one ever asks me if I would do it again (and I talk to people about dinnerslutting fairly often). I guess people assume that I would do it again because I did it the first time, and that makes me seem like enough of an ingratiating douchebag so people guess I would do it twice.

Of course, I would totally do it again if I felt like I needed to. For the first time in my life I created something that was my own sick, unique vision. I got fed a lot. I made some memorable connections with the most random people that I never would have met otherwise. I ate pumpkin curry and mahi mahi.

I don’t know if there’s anything else to say on this blog, because I don’t anticipate dinnerslutting again in the near future. Maybe I’ll write about other adventures that pertain to being broke and hungry, but maybe not.

warm regards,

your dinnerslut