Appetizer Hopping
how to get really good at being alone
I sat at the bar with an open notebook, my only company. The bartender, a few years older than me and carrying all the ease I lacked, asked where I was from. I answered while fidgeting with my pencil, painfully aware of my solitude, the elephant sitting between us.
“New York,” I squeaked.
It was still early evening. Only one table behind me was full. A group of middle-aged men nursing beers. I felt certain they noticed I was alone. That everyone noticed.
Postgrad was a tough time for me. I had untied all the strings of my old life at once. Friends moved, relationships dissolved, routines disappeared. I imagined adulthood as a grand social rebirth. Instead, I struggled to make new friendships and slowly settled into solitude.
Being alone felt like something I owed the bartender an explanation for.
It was mid-May, the week before Memorial Day weekend, a few years ago. I didn’t even have to ask for time off, my job was only opened on weekends during the off-season. I drove to Burlington, Vermont by myself because I wanted to.
I stayed in a very nice hostel. The bathroom was shared, but I had my own room with a lock on the door, privacy that felt comforting and vaguely sad.
The first day, I went hiking. I love hiking alone. No one to impress with endurance or conversation. I saw a hawk perched high above the trail in her nest, watching everything without concern for being watched back.
Afterward, I got nachos to-go from a vegan place my mom and I had discovered years earlier while touring colleges, back when I was vegan. Eating food attached to an older version of yourself is strange.
The next day, I wandered the city without much agenda. I thrifted clothes and books. I walked slowly past restaurants not yet open, reading menus displayed in dark windows. I bought a coffee and sat outside reading until the wind off Lake Champlain turned cold. I went back to my room to change, but still felt tethered to the city outside.
I threw on a newly thrifted hoodie and walked to Rí Rá, an Irish pub. Earlier that day, I’d noticed poutine on the menu.
By the time my plate arrived, the pub had filled around me. The bartender asked new customers where they were from. The men stood near the television now, louder after a few rounds.
Hot gravy covered the crispy fries like a blanket. They softened beneath it to my gluttonous delight between pockets of cheese curds. Every bite collapsed into a savory, textured mush.
I cleaned the plate and was still hungry.
Maybe it was the wine, but there came a confidence in the pleasure of doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. No compromising on restaurants. No waiting on anyone else’s schedule. No small talk. Just appetite and movement and curiosity.
I had to learn my own rhythms the same way I would learn another person’s in a friendship or relationship. What excites me. What comforts me. How I like to spend a slow afternoon. Which restaurant I circle back to after dark because something on the menu kept lingering in my mind.
I paid my tab and moved on to the next place, appetizer hopping through the city, getting to know a new place and myself.
I love you from my head tomatoes,
Gareth