This conversation has been moved to the trash: notes from an unsuccessful Saturday

Charles Bukowski was on to something when he said “Don’t try.” Don’t, for instance, when trying to be a Conspicuous Solo Diner in Public, rely on a venue situated on South Congress and try to make this happen on Saturday night when street parking is more or less the only option and you never learned how to parallel park. I suppose, given my present schedule, this is a project better realized on a Friday afternoon or Sunday evening. To be continued.

Determined to make something of the evening, I ventured back to Black Star, which was of course mayhem on a Saturday night. I ordered the fish and chips, which were alas burnt, which I blame much less on the kitchen than I do on myself for ordering food when the place was overrun, although I was starving when I optimistically left work with the notion I would find parking in proximity to my originally intended South Congress venue and, an impromptu driving tour of Austin later, the situation had not improved.

I then made my meandering way to the Draught House, where I met Carolyn last Sunday, and found the place transformed for the worse on this Saturday evening: namely, it was so overrun with people that it was a challenge to even open the door, let alone order a drink. Having accomplished the former, I abandoned hope of the latter, used the bathroom, and fled, eventually ending up at Ginny’s Little Longhorn with the notion that I would drink Lone Stars and listen to live music and feel like a Real Live Texan. But it was 8:30 p.m., and the 8:00 show was of course nowhere near beginning, and so I drank a lone Lone Star and listened to Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash croon their contentious discussion about his imminent trip to Jackson. It did help with the whole feeling like a Real Live Texan thing when a man in a cowboy hat who had momentarily left the bar said “Excuse me, Ma’am” when he made his way back to his spot as I was ordering. And the woman who carded me (Ginny’s daughter, I think?) did a kindly theatrical double take when she caught wind of my actual age.

Oh, the onus of a Saturday night: the great, beckoning promise of possibility, the brightly thrown gauntlet to seize the fleeting hours of freedom, to drink in the neon reprieve from the dull light of stale Sunday-Monday-and-so-on afternoons. Can it ever live up to any of this?

No. If you ask me, no it can’t. I will take a page from dear Henry Charles B. when I say: don’t try. Don’t try to live it up on a Saturday night. Hell, don’t even leave the house. There are so many ways for a house to be vulnerable: house of cards, house of straw, house of sticks, house of leaves, house of glass, house of sand and fog. But at least a house (or apartment) is yours (however temporarily). So—if you’re lucky enough to have one—make your bed and lie in it.

It occurs to me that I should back up and offer some scant illumination on my newfound(ish) preoccupation with Conspicuous Solo Dining. Amy recently brought up this topic, on account that she’s been traveling and having her own adventures on this front. It made me think. My own life has been an exceedingly solitary one; I’m no stranger to going places by myself, and I don’t consider myself to be hung up about it. But there’s something about eating alone at a restaurant—some sort of social stigma, real or imagined—that gives even me pause. I don’t like this, especially since it’s kept me from trying restaurants for want of someone to try them with. I want to try new restaurants and I want to be able to do so alone, with ease and ownership, rather than self-consciousness and trepidation. Shock yourself awake, a book I’m reading about writing (courtesy of Carolyn) advises, and I say, yes indeed. The Table for One project is one in a series of strategies I’d like to employ to this end. And also I like eating in restaurants.

My first attempt was unsuccessful, but you know what they say to do when you fall off the horse. On the bright side, I believe I was the only solo diner at Black Star this Saturday evening. So maybe this was the training wheels. It’s also possible that the bike lacks brakes. Regardless, I will document the trials and triumphs of said endeavor here. I’m aiming to do this once a month, since I plan to eat at the nicer sorts of places where people generally don’t dine alone (cafes and the like—and, alas, Black Star—would feel like cheating).

Stay tuned: whether you lean toward pathos or Schadenfreude, there’s liable to be plenty of both on offer.