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by C. Jeanette Tyson
Forget
the elections. If you can. The real test of strategy these days seems to be
in the sexual/culinary politics of dating.
Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve engaged in
that particular contact sport but I remember a time when a date meant
dinner. Of course back then dinner did not also mean seventy dollars for a
sitter, shortchanging the freelance project that would pay the property
taxes, or for-going a cozy evening in pj’s on the sofa with cheerios,
Little Bear and two cuddly kids. Back then even a bad date trumped all the
ways I was wasting my time.
Not so anymore.
The singles game in your forties is a huge psycho-socio -economic drama that
plays out interestingly on the culinary stage. Sabers are drawn on the very
first line.
Consider this:
Phone rings. I answer. I hear an unfamiliar male
voice: Hi Jeanette, this is Fred. You don’t know me but Amy thinks we
ought to get together and I was wondering if you’d like to... have coffee
sometime
Oooh. Translated that means: I owe Amy a favor for
some reason you don’t need to know about but I don’t want to waste a lot
of time because chances are you have thick ankles or some hair thing going
on that I’m not going to like.
Unfamiliar male voice quickly adds: Or lunch, lunch
is okay.
Translated: Hey, I don’t want you to think I’m
a shallow cad. I’m a decent guy, after all, despite the fact my ex-wife
found deeper satisfaction with the pool boy. I’m mature enough to give you
a chance even if you do have thick ankles. Also I make a lot of money, babe,
more than enough to buy you salad and a glass of iced tea.
Gee, how could a girl refuse?
Granted, these days coffee is something of a
financial investment but it’s hardly romantic. Coffee is something you do
with old college professors and other people with whom you have a limited
number of things to talk about. Coffee is finite, what are you going to do,
order another triple whipped soy chai with nutmeg? Isn’t the whole sweet
point of dating to give yourself over to possibility? To let the twin
streams of fate and desire sweep you along (and hopefully not dump you out?)
What about this: guy asks girl for a drink, but he
asks her to a south-of-the-border style hacienda a bit off the beaten path.
The patio, with its tropical plants and ochre and eggplant colors, is lush
and sensual. The wine list is long. Conversation flows, the atmosphere seems
charged, as if lightning is about to strike, thunder about to roll; other
people, other noise fades away. Then he looks at his watch. Not once but
twice.
Woman: Is there somewhere you need to be?
Man: No, no. I made reservations for dinner in the
other room. Would you like to stay?
BINGO! Romantic yet practical or vice versa, who
cares, here we are, back in the clear full-mooned sky of possibility. Here
we are, closing the place down at midnight. Here we are, two people on the
planet who haven’t gone all weird, or if we have, at least we’ve gone
more or less in the same way.
No matter where you started, let’s say you make
it this far, to a full-fledged dinner. Then comes the time when he comes
over to your house to partake of something you’ve created with your own
hands. Maybe it’s set up as a casual thing; he brings a video, you throw
together a salad but call in pizza. Maybe you have on blue jeans or maybe a
sexy dress but no shoes. Maybe you light a few candles or maybe you keep all
lights blazing.
In the dating game, dining in ups the ante because
everyone knows you’re only a room or two away from the bedroom. If this
happens early enough, say the third or fourth date, it could be a big
turning point in the whole drama. If this happens at the third or fourth
date, you’re going to spend the whole next day burning up the email with
your girlfriends because no ballgame anywhere is ever going to come under
more next-day armchair scrutiny. Everyone is going to want to know what you
had for dessert.
Picnics are a wild card. They score high on romance
in an
Three meals a day, snacks, coffee, cocktails,
popcorn; it’s a new and complicated language I’m learning, with
unpredictable tense changes, difficult pronouns, layers of meaning.
At least breakfast still means breakfast.
I hope.
_________
C. Jeanette Tyson is AustinMama.com's beloved Foodie-in-the-Field.
