October 30, 2004

Table for One

Today, for the first time ever, I ate in a restaurant alone. I'm not going to count eating at a bar, which I have done a number of times and never considered it that much of a big deal. But for some reason, actually going into a retaurant and being seated at a table alone made me hyper-aware.

Even up to a couple weeks ago I was telling a friend that the idea of dining alone made me uncomfortable. Just the thought of sitting there... eating... alone ... seems so odd. But I found myself coming back into Manhattan around lunch time, and I had some errand to run so it would probably be awhile before I got back to Brooklyn, and I had just picked up a couple of magazines, so I thought, what the hell.

Like most things that freak me out, once it's happening it's never as unusual or dramatic as I worked it up to inside my head. I fact, while I was there four other people came in and took tables alone. Maybe I just picked the right place.

I read a short article on The Mountain Goats in some acoustic guitar magazine, flipped through a Rolling Stone (which I despise but bought because of the interview with John Kerry and an article by Hunter Thompson), had a few beers and scanned the room for amusement.