Eating Alone
The Specific Heartache of Homecoming
Before the festivities of Saturday night, I took myself out for sushi at one of my old favorite restaurants, Dragon King’s Daughter. It’s a secret tradition of mine. Any number of people would have joined me, but I told no one. I don’t know exactly why I go alone, but I know the solitude is important. They seated me at a two-top by the large windows that face the street. A pair of old, slow flies buzzed helplessly against the glass. I remembered a date I had gone on at this exact table years ago. The memory stirred up nothing worth reminiscing, so I came back into the present. With my attention focused on the immediacy of my surroundings, it took a few moments to settle into the uncomfortable chair at the too-small, ever-so-slightly sticky table.
My curiosity expanded beyond me like a fog, taking in every detail of the place I knew—seeing all the way down to the bones this establishment was built on before it was in this building at all. I remembered one time when I was 17, out with my high school sweetheart on New Years Eve when they refused to serve us this signature bourbon tiramisu I loved so much because we were underage. They took it off the menu a few months later and never brought it back. I smiled to myself as the ghost of a child’s indignation flashed through me, muscle memory pulling in the muscles of my chest and rushing blood to my cheeks. It all mattered so much then.
My phone kept nagging at me, insistent as a housecat at dinner time. I ignored it staunchly, taking care instead to notice the man in washed out black skinny jean capris eating dinner with a girl who seemed a little too old and too young to be pressed so tightly to him. Neither appropriately daughter or girlfriend age. Realizing with a start that he had been my server last time I ate here alone, and that I had been sure he was gay. I noticed the Indian mother at a table of her children, drinking a glass of red wine with her sushi. The neatly folded straw paper on the windowsill beside me; How the window and the twilight sky contrived a reflection of the giant, hanging rice paper lamp that looked as big as the moon beside my table. My attention hung on it, rolling over the beauty of such a simple illusion. I watched as reflections and pedestrians disturbed the surface of the glass like stones in a still pool. A boy walking with his father, passed through by a translucent old man on his way to the bathroom. Life and death and love and death and life and love.
My server, a man with a dark brown low ponytail and sad, searching eyes approached cautiously. I ordered their signature coconut milk miso soup and a few sushi rolls. Having been cold all day on a boat in the rain, I ordered a hot tea, too. He brought me a plastic pot and bad news. They were out of Sencha.
“I made you matcha. Hope that’s okay—but we have a few others back there, too.” We both looked at the pot and I silently noted the lack of a cup to pour it in. He explained, “And we’re out of mugs. I’m running the dishwasher now.” I nodded and thanked him. He came back ten minutes later with a fresh cup and I forced myself to ask him to bring me a different pot of tea, shame snatching at my tongue.
“Sorry, it’s just that green tea gets kind of gross when it sits.” I said, ready to explain tannins if need be. He said it was no problem and disappeared again.
My measly order dripped out of the kitchen one small plate at a time. I ate tidily, as I always do, trying to give myself time to feel the food hit my stomach before taking my next bite. My dad’s side of the family took me out on my birthday and it was impossible to ignore how we all ate in each other’s company—scarfing down the food, sharing bites and nodding in appreciation, but, above all, stuffing ourselves to the point of discomfort. I hadn’t realized that, in our time apart, I had stopped doing it. The pain in my stomach was a harsh reminder of the fear I had forgotten; that another meal wouldn’t come easily or soon. That waste would be punished or shamed. That hunger would corner me later and that I would be helpless to fend it off. I tried to control the emotions moving my fork to my mouth, but the neuropathway it had activated was an ancient highway by the standards of my mortality. My tiny rebellion was leaving a single piece of sushi on the plate. Not much, but far harder a sacrifice than it seemed. To a life continually and increasingly estranged from fear.
After I finished my meal, I texted my friends my whereabouts. Dragon King’s Daughter is right beside a liquor store, so I offered to pick anything up. Two requests came in quick succession: a sugar-free red bull and a to-go order. The impossibly magnetic pull of the screen threatened to consume me the moment I opened it, ripping at my carefully attended to reality like a tiller into freshly-planted flower garden. Dropping it, I flagged my sad server dude down to order. A tall boy brought me another check moments later. As I tipped, I noticed they don’t have a silly question of the day on the bottom of the receipt anymore. It was such a tiny thing, but I always enjoyed answering them. What was the motivation for taking them off? Saving on ink? I felt my lips thin.
Why must everything be chipped away in my absence?
With the plastic bag of sushi and soup clutched in my left hand, I pushed into the liquor store and made a beeline for the counter. A man wearing a backwards hat, dark rimmed glasses, and shoulder length hair watched me approach with an attentive expression.
“Where would I find a sugar-free Red Bull?” I asked, getting straight to business. He sprang into action without a word, gesturing for me to follow him into a far off corner. His gate was interesting—somewhere between a bounce and a lope. It reminded me of an old friend of mine and I felt myself trust him immediately. He waved his hand at a refrigerated door with the grandeur of a king showing me the masterpiece he had commissioned. Finding the correct aluminum can chilling exactly where he pointed, I smiled at him and said “I’m glad I asked.” He went back to the register and I perused the selection, finding cream soda and grabbing two on a whim.
“Do you have any Bourbon shooters?” I asked, setting my clutch of chilled potions down.
“Yes! We have $1 fireball shots” Watching my face carefully, he immediately added, “and some more expensive stuff up there.” He pointed to a shelf, high on the wall behind him. He walked me through the name and price of every option before landing on Old Forrester. “These are probably what you want.”
“Sounds perfect. I’ll take two.”
As he rang me up, I said “I told my friends I was close by, so now I’m on a little mission.” He nodded knowingly.
“You’re flying, they’re buying, huh?” It charmed me immediately.
“Mhm.” Straightening the cans of cream soda, I confided “I was excited to find these.”
“Oh, yeah!” he said “They’re a New York thing.”
“Really?” He nodded, murmuring out the lyrics to the classic rock song playing over the speakers as he rang me up. “The more you know.” I said, shoving my card in the machine while he placed the drinks carefully in a thick, brown paper bag.
“Thank ya, sir!” I let my southern accent slip out, accepting the bag from him.
“Take care.” He said with such an unexpected and sincere intensity, it rattled me. I flashed him a grateful smile and slipped out the door, cradling the bag against my chest. On the short walk to my car, I found myself blinking back tears. The kindness of the people here is so utterly disarming. It’s something you don’t explicitly notice the absence of in other places until you come back.
I drove the six minutes south to my friend’s apartment and entered, bearing gifts and surprises. We sat around, sipping and munching. I felt myself dissolve into the room, laughing and complaining, recounting our respective days. As if I had not been gone for nine months with barely a word sparred to these people who I love so much. As if the silly questions had never been taken off the receipts. As if the mindless decency of everyone doesn’t take me off guard now. More friends arrived and their momentum swept us up and out into the night, where I continued dissolving and noticing and dissolving until the drinks loosened reality into a blur of music and warm bodies pressing into my bare skin. Life and death and love and death and life and love, and homecoming.
