The Joy of Dining Alone in Chic Restaurants
...surrounded by glamorous young couples who occasionally glance over pityingly
It’s perfectly peachy for them to eat and drink by yourself at Starbucks or fast fooderies, but our reaction dining alone in a restaurant with tablecloths and menus they’re handed by servers who introduce themselves is typically pity, revulsion, or discomfort, or all three at once. Newl moved out of the family home and into a de(fo)rmitory at college, I was the shy, socially inept loser I remain to this day, and would always be the first person in the dinner line because I dreaded someone in front of me turning around and starting a conversation, and was intent on bolting the delicious cuisine on offer very quickly so that I could rush out of the dining room before my fellow residents could see me eating alone.
Since Mrs. Mendelsohn (she prefers the original, legal spelling) ran off with the hair and makeup person for a Welsh glam revival group in February, I have come to prefer dining alone. After a few weeks of eating in the tiny love cottage she and I shared for so many years, salting my victuals with my tears, I began having the occasional lunch at one of southwest London’s many pre-packaged sushi chains, and then, having been neither jeered at nor patronized by any of them, summoned the chutzpah to take myself to The Ivy in Richmond, where the borough’s deepest-pocketed and most glamorous like to tie on the feedbag, that charming expression’s little-heardness here notwithstanding.
At first, because I very much wanted not to see fellow diners’ pitying or disapproving expressions, I would always pretend to be engrossed in a book or magazine while eating. From there, I moved on to chatting with the vase full of pretty flowers with which the Ivy adorns every table. This gave other diners the impression that I was a lunatic, and most people want no more to do with someone with mental health issue than with a homeless person. But then my confidence burgeoned, and I would smile or even wink at other diners. Many quickly looked away in embarrassment, but no few insisted that I join them and their lover or escort (not that the two are always mutually exclusive).
Many of those whose invitations I accepted were of course boorish or boring, or both, as are most members of the general population, but a few were erudite and wry, and several sexually voracious, like the first couple I joined, Tarquin and his trophy girlfriend Penelope. Tarquin wrote for television. I’d watched a couple of his things with Mrs. Mendelsohn before her withdrawal from our marriage, and found them very predictable, but of course I didn’t say so, and at meal’s end, Tarq, as I was to call him, asked if I’d come back to their river view penthouse flat for a look at Penelope’s etchings.
They were considerably more accomplished than I’d expected, but it turned out that she and Tarq had other plans for me — namely, Tarq wanted to watch me and Penny, as I was to address her, have sex. Given that she was both gorgeous and talented, It wasn’t the least appealing idea ever presented to me — not by a long shot! Pen, as Tarq called her, and I turned out to resonate to the same pitch, if you will, and a great time was had by all three of us.
Since then, I’ve gone by myself four or five times per week to one of Richmond’s or Twickenham’s popular bistros, and rarely wound up eating dessert alone. As a painfully shy teenager, I’d never have dared dream that I’d be doing the rumpy-pumpy with so many beautiful women, but there seemed to be something about my lovemaking style that their voyeur husbands, boyfriends, and sugar daddies really liked.
“Table for One” ©2018 by John Mendelsohn. All rights reserved.
There were some awkward moments, of course. One geezer (Wikipedia: “In the UK and Ireland, it is used most often to refer simply to a man, e.g. "some geezer was here earlier”), Colin, a barrister, was so enflamed by my interaction with his wife Fiona, that he wanted to take her place. He didn’t have a tantrum when I explained that, right or wrong, I cherished my history of unwavering heterosexuality, and wanted to preserve it, but he and Fi took pains not to notice me (though of course they did) the next time all three of us happened to be in Chez Lindsay. I wound up going home that evening with a pair of MILF-ish widows who said they found my accent “adorable”, One turned out to be a high-powered literary agent who, hearing post-coitally that I am the author of nine unpublished novels and five short story collections, rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t go there.”
Ever the gentleman, I did not.
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