Solitary Lunch

"Red meat is not bad for you.
 Now blue-green meat,
that’s bad for you!"
~Tommy Smothers~

...."I" as the noun to the adjective, not the lunch....

Reading and eating. I think both soothe me like a babe is soothed by mother's milk. Taking a meal alone is a rarity for me. I'm either at home with my son, with friends, or at work with my colleagues. I share my meal "time" with others, and more often than not, it has become a function, not a joy. This is a great loss for me, one that I want to discover again.

More and more I find myself on the run, with the meal preparation rushed, the eating rushed, and the conversation, if there is any beyond planning the next move, rushed; off to baseball, a meeting, a conference call, the gym.....

I generally only stop to eat if I'm feeling pushed to the limit, as though one more problem, one more request for help, one more crisis at home or work will push me over the edge of sanity and reason. Today was one of those days. I had ensured my schedule allowed enough time for a coffee between  two appointments with clients, and speaking engagement. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the possible 15 minute side trip for an iced latte of some sort turned into 40 minutes, and I thought, "Heck, I may as well take the break and get something to eat."

If you remember my Yorkville deli blog, you'll sense a pattern here with my eating impulses....my cravings usually take place when there is absolutely nothing that I'm craving within a thousand kilometres. Ironically, this very dilemma has sparked some very heated arguments with my partner, that have lead us into some very seriously rough relationship-waters (food is at the essence of what it means to be human...food, sex, shelter and the impulse to sing very loudly in the shower). ANYWAY....

... as I wound my way (air-conditioningless) around the armpit of the airport industrial section of the city, I remembered a new strip mall that opened, and prayed to the culinary gods that there might be some sort of Asian cuisine on offer. Note to self; be much more specific in prayer. For instance that wish may have been more like, "Dear very white Christian God, please let there be a little mom and pop Asian noodle shop around the corner with soup that has a yummy broth, soft noodles and lots of fresh vegetables in it", 'cause that's what I was really craving. Anyway, there was indeed a restaurant of the sort I had prayed for at this particular strip mall. In fact, my very white God had answered my prayer with a very Irish sense of humour, and provided me with nothing less than a restaurant with an express lunch menu of the "Chinese-Indian Fusion" kind. Nice. Interesting was more like it. Or brave, or.......well, let's go in and see what they have, because my 40 minutes has turned into under 30, and my mouth is watering.

I could give you an in depth description of the atmosphere; A high, spray-painted black industrial ceiling gave way to glossy black tables with red leather chairs, blah, blah, blah. But what was most distressingly impressive, and a sure sign of needing a stomach remedy in the near future was that I was the only one there.

The dulcet tones of Burton Cummings seeped through the air, followed by Patsy Cline's "Crazy", and Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight". Tell me ladies, can you think of anything more romantic? Waiting to be served an express lunch as you sit alone in a restaurant listening to love songs for women who surely would not spend most of their waking lives alone.

Anyway, as most of you know, I save my romantic, girly, soft side for the rare, romantic male who manages to make me blush, swoon, or feel feminine and cared for. In other words, that romantic, girly, soft side has basically become extinct. I love Patsy Cline. I love that Eric Clapton song. Am I the only woman out there who hears songs like this and wishes, that just once, she was the woman he was singing about, that just once, her man made her feel like that? No, I know I'm not. I know I'm not because I hear it every day at work, at home, discussed under their breath while out for coffee with their girlfriends....women and men no longer cherish one another and recognize their own natural and unique traits that attracted them to the other in the first place.

Wait. Men no longer open doors, send flowers, write love letters, or realize that their hardworking 9-5 partner actually has the tender heart of a woman, and needs to be treated as such in order not to wither up like a fruit leather and offer nothing but something grisly and unsatisfying. Often, we end up, as one of my good friends says, " A purse or a nurse". I've done the former and am paying dearly for it, and the latter, well, that's just simply too much like work!

As these 'poor me, I'm flip-frigging exhausted" thoughts flew through my head at the speed of Tom Hanks in a space ship (now there's a fall-in-love-with-man-character ladies), my food arrived. As grateful as I was that I had stopped to take a few minutes to myself, the meal was awful. I managed a few bites, but then insisted that I pack up the rest and take it home with me for my loser, lonely dinner at home in my flip flops and underwear. It was so bad I didn't even take it home. It's in the fridge at work - I'm hoping someone might mistake it as a dish for tomorrow's pot luck lunch and we all get to go home early with a bad case of the runs. Keep your fingers crossed.

As I sat there, my mind whirled around about the mystery meat that was supposed to be chicken, and whether my lost sense of smell is psychosomatic, or whether that Manny Paget really burned my sinuses out when he spilled the thirty proof bottle of formaldehyde in the prep room during my first embalming. My little brain also started to think about my friend Lisa who is home enjoying the summer with her husband and her children, my friend Carrie who is expecting her second baby any day now, and my friend Diane who met her soul mate in her late 40's. I've said it over and over...I'm happy as I am, but honestly, some days are lonely as hell. And men can't be all that bad right? We really do love them despite their lack of insight into our emotional needs- right?

Someone has to be the woman those love songs are written about. Tonight, listening to George Straight's, One Step at a Time, I thought that's my song. How depressing. Really shitty food with no one there to share it with-even more Bridget-Jones-ish-depressing. And then I thought....at least I've had the experience of knowing what it's like to care less about the food on the table because the man sitting across from me satisfies me enough.