Eating Out

This move I’ve just made, this giving up the place I’ve called home for such a long time, it has had an interesting effect on me. After leaving behind 13 years of sanctuary and comfort (wait, scratch that…after leaving behind mostly 11 years of contented living, then almost 2 years of life-interrupted by assholes), and then moving to a place that is not a home, but a stop on the way, I am finding that I am not as comfortable in this transitional place.

I know that’s a big DUH! These things take time, settling in, making a new place a home. Do they not? But, for many reasons that I won’t get into now, I won’t be settling into this new place. (I’ll wait until I’ve moved to give the list of my discomforts in its entirety.) Okay, I’ll reveal one reason now. Can you say: black widows, roaches, and mosquitoes? Me too, but I don’t want to. Can you say standing water on a golf course brings a variety of bugs one never knew existed? (Okay, we’re done. I know you can say all of that as well as I can.)

Alright, alright, since I am so good at complaining to get things off my chest, and because I wouldn't want you to think I stopped lying about things, about writing one thing then admitting I'm full of it in the next sentence, I'll let loose a couple more complaints. First, I am a little miffed at the fact that an errant golf ball blew a hole in the seat of one of the four Adirondack chairs I have on the back cement deck. Also, where at first I was ready to meet some golfer who was going to show up at my back sliding-glass door looking for his golf ball (a ball which I would have told him rolled under my bed), now I'm actually kinda creeped out about having golfers and strange neighbors walking their dogs milling about 5 feet from the living /dining room where I am doing my living and dining. I think both my needs for privacy and the need to feel safe are being a bit over challenged.

Anyway, with the bug reason mentioned, among others reasons not, I find I don’t want to be home much. And that’s okay! It’s actually been fun.

Here’s the deal. Because I was so comfortable in my old place, I did stay home a lot. But now that I am not wanting to be at home, more accurately not wanting to be at “my transitional spot” I have been out and about more and I seem to be asking, “How do you do?”, and saying, “My name is Leven. What’s yours?” more.

I am turning back into the girl I was when I was traveling (all over the United States) for the mortgage company I used to work for. This was one of the few jobs in my life I have LOVED and back then, not so many years ago (about 3-4), I was the girl who, by the default of the traveling, ate out at least two meals a day most days of the month.

Of course my pocket book, nor my waistline, can afford two meals out a day now. But my budget can totally handle a glass of vino at a wine bar on a lazy Sunday evening, a cup of oatmeal at a breakfast counter on a post-run Saturday morning, and a side of beans and a salad at a Mexican restaurant for a between-errands afternoon lunch.

In case you were so inclined, it should be noted that all singles, eating alones, or dining for ones will find themselves pretty dang comfortable at a breakfast counter or a bar ledge for lunch, that is if they are comfortable with the concept of eating alone in public in the first place. Now on a Friday/Saturday night, when people are on the prowl, I am not that comfortable going it alone (though I’ve done it, many a time, at home and on travel).

The thing with eating out/having a drink alone on a Friday/Saturday night is that while times may have changed, perceptions, bad or good, remain. It’s sad, and maybe not even true, but this opinion is coming from a girl who has seen more movies alone than with people, and who has probably eaten more than 300 meals alone in her work travels. So, while I can’t explain it, exactly, there’s just something that feels distinctly different to me about being alone in a bar or restaurant after the sun has gone down or the lights in the establishment have gone dim.

Again, I could be imagining it, but once it’s past 6/7:00 o-clock-ish, I’ve felt an energy coming from others, on many occasions, ranging from pity to jealousy. Whether people are feeling sorry for me that I am alone on a Saturday night or impressed that I could enjoy my skin flying it solo for a Friday evening, I can feel them trying to figure me out, trying to come up with what my story is and why no one has accompanied with me.

I’ve even been told, also more than once, by both men and women (especially when I traveled), that they were, in fact, wondering: Is she waiting for someone? Is she looking for someone? Either way, will someone come to join her? Yup. Once the conversation is afoot, and the comfort of five minutes or my open personality has pervaded the air, many a friendly stranger I’ve met in my eating out travels has told me they’d been curious about my situation.

And, the relief on people’s faces, when they’ve learned that I was eating alone because I was traveling for work… whoa. Interesting. Curiously interesting. It has appeared to me, time after time, that a woman eating alone while traveling for work is so much better compared to an alternative reason for her eating alone. The alternative in my case has always been that I’ve just wanted to get the hell out of the house (now, more than ever), regardless if any of my friends can join me or not. Bottom line…people don’t notice, wonder about, or worry for the guy sitting alone at the bar on a Friday/Saturday night as they do for the girl sitting alone.

But, I digress. The point is, because I have been eating out a lot lately, I have been talking to a lot more strangers than usual, which I LOVE! No joke. Because I just love people—all the customary characters and the odd balls—I’ve been chatting up strangers my whole life (I get it from my dad). I’m such a stranger engager that I had an ex-boyfriend who once asked me to scale back on my friendly when we went out. This, because I was chatting up a cute old man who was waiting for his bathroom-tripped wife at the hostess stand of the place me and said ex were about to eat dinner at.

What nerve the ex had. But there was no stopping me. He had no choice but to grow accustom to my ways. Just as you can’t tell the wind to stop blowing or the sun to stop shining, because it’s in their nature to do so, you can’t tell an extrovert to go inward.

Being forever outward bound, last Sunday, over a glass of vino at one of my favorite wine bars, this sociable sister met the cutest mid-twenties married couple, her 26, him 24, who were both worried about getting laid off because of the way the current economy has affected their industry. Their work is what brought the two of them together, as they met on the job and still work together. However, the possibility of losing their careers wasn’t the main topic of conversation. How trouble, specifically bar fights, seems to find the husband volleyed most of the conversational ball.

I liked the husband’s stories, and the wife’s chiming in, about how many of his bar fights or public altercations have started. I think I believed him when he said he’d never started anything. I definitely believed him when he said he just wasn’t going to let someone else finish it. I could tell he was a scrapper, that one.

The couple reminded me of Chad and Heather. Their stories were limited, though. They never mentioned anything like chasing down a car full of people with a big truck or getting out a baseball bat to make sure the conversation went their way. I am not saying Chad and Heather have ever done that, but this couple being young-ish, in love, and, if challenged, full of just as much spit and fists as Cheather, definitely made me nostalgic for the late Friday/Saturday drink-at-home nights with Chad and Heather when they’d fondly remember some altercation that they’d had with someone, just a week ago or the night previous.

I recently met another guy, not-so-youngish (he just turned 30), who was just as full of piss and vinegar as the husband of the mid-twenties married couple, but who was also just as sweet. Mr. 30 had just gotten back from Vegas where his cousin's wedding had taken place, only he didn't attend the ceremony. When I asked Mr. 30 why not, he said, "Because it's bullshit."

“What’s bullshit?” I asked him. “Weddings? Your cousin’s wedding? Love? Relationships? What?”

Man, I had to know. What if this guy was about to give me insight into the male psyche? But, he had a hard time answering me. “I don’t know,” he said. And when I turned into 20-questions girl, and prodded further, to find out what had soured his heart and why he didn’t think his cousin’s wedding was worth attending, I realized he didn’t know himself enough to answer.

Well, he apparently knew he was an asshole. He said as much when explaining that he’d had a longtime relationship (from age 22-28), but that he didn’t think he was cut out for relationships. “I’m just an asshole,” he said, “I need my space and I can be a real dick about it.” I couldn’t get it out of him how that long-term relationship had ended, but this gal, who he appeared to have really been in love with, seemed to have his number. He said she was the only one who could deal with his moods, on and off ill-tempered swings that he said have been going on since childhood.

The end of their relationship really seemed to have also done a number on him. This guy? He was in no shape and in no way ready for someone. But I was utterly intrigued by him, and surprised that I was able to get so much information out of him. I found myself wondering if he’d ever been that open to a stranger before. Probably not.

Anyway, I'm just finding it pretty cool that as the story of my life has totally changed, and will probably continue to change a lot in the next coming year, I'm enjoying getting to hear so many other people's stories. I enjoyed being asked out by a busboy two weeks ago. It was a pleasure going to a movie and to lunch with the girl Chloe and I met on our last girl’s outing. I was impressed by another girl’s story of picking up her whole life and moving on her own from a small Georgia town to Long Beach, California, where she knows no one.

I loved being educated on the face of music today by three young, hip Eastern Indian guys. They were all sure that the recent Top 40 songs of all time, according to Rolling Stone magazine, were not only an inaccurate representation of the current popular culture’s favorite all-time songs, but that the list, which in their minds was heavily 60s laden, was played ridiculously safe.

I can’t wait to take myself to lunch this weekend to see who I’m going to meet and to see what stories I’ll get to hear. Or, maybe, I'll do a Seal Beach repeat. But, instead of going with my sister and nephew again, like I did last weekend to watch the kite surfers catch air, I might just ride my bike to the beach on my own with my back-pack beach chair chair strapped to my back. Then I'll sit in that chair and watch the kit surfers and smile at the breeze while I crunch and fan my toes into the sand.

Fun.