Dining Alone

This evening I had dinner with Martin. In the restaurant that employs my favorite waiter.

This is not really about this evening.

Even if it is.

Dining alone is a curious experience. I don't mean scoffing supper at the the kitchen table between chores and usenet but going out to eat in a restaurant by one's self. There are various reasons for doing this. Most common for me is that a (drinking) meet of uk.glb has been called and I have to fuel up before allowing alcohol into the system. Too hungry and I faint. Hungry and drunk I vomit and faint. This would not be good form at a meet so I eat. There are other reasons. When shopping and cooking just isn't on the 'can do' list. When one needs a slight extravagance to feed the ego as well as the stomach. Just to flirt with the waiters. Many, many reasons. Just because I want to. That's enough.

So there is the question of where. The logic of where is very different when one is alone than it would be in company. Company requires consideration of the other parties involved. What will or won't they eat. What can they afford. What areas of town make for a convenient rendez-vous. Singletons don't have such concerns. In part the where decision may be informed by cuisine. Do I want Italian or Thai? Is there something I favour on the menu or shall I experiment with something entirely new? Other factors play their part. There's one restaurant that I use for parties: going to dine there from time to time keeps the manager mindful of me and eases negotiations for the big events when I'm considered a regular. That one can flirt with some of the waiters is incidental. Elsewhere the flirting might be the paramount consideration, oh and the good Shriaz.

The thing about dining alone is that one has to make a choice of attitude. There's introspective and curious. Introspective is good for troubled times. Sitting with no external concern except forking food from plate to mouth leaves a lot of mental space for self examination. Curious however is itself an mental exercise: examining ones fellow diners and working them out. Curious is what I want to talk about.

Along one short wall of this strangely shaped room there are three tables set for two people each. Mine is the middle of them, one cover lifted, my back to the wall so most of the establishment is my visual and mental playground. I'm early and when I sit the place is sparsely populated. But this doesn't last for long and soon enough a couple are ushered in to be my neighbours to the right.

An interlude for Shirley Bassey (yes, I filled that lacuna in my collection) then on to Eartha Kitt. Enough with the music.

At least I take them for a couple on first sight. More considered examination suggests that this might not be right. There's a him and a her. The she vigourous but it's soon apparent older than the he. A lady, in that middle class South East England mold, conservatively but smartly dressed in a twin set carefully chosen perhaps but not quite tailored. Court shoes, permed grey white hair. Table manners that are not studied, they just are. She might have been a milkman's daughter or a bank manager's. But she's lived, perhaps worked, been wife and mother. Now husband's dead she's just herself. She responds but doesn't seem to lead the conversation, that's his part in this tableau.

He is in late middle age. When I first took them for a couple I thought him well preserved but in reality he's not as old as she. There's something familiar that takes a while to identify. The superficially conservative dress with a slight touch of the dandy eventually give it away more than his manner. This is a character recently less visible but who would be familiar in London Society any time from the war to a decade ago. The confirmed Bachelor. One of whom one might have whispered "he's homosexual you know" but never called "gay". In short a queen. Once the identification is made further things become clear. There's nothing "obvious" about the mannerisms but none the less they are obvious. The face is too well cared for, the gestures too well calculated. One suspects the hair owes a debt to a bottle discretely hidden at the back of the bathroom cabinet. He might have had a moderately lucrative career in The Coal Board or some ministry. His lovers are a thing of his youth. The books he believes he has in him - and of which he speaks at suburban literary lunches - have never been and never will be written. In his teens, his first pay packets in his pocket, he knew a man who knew NoÎl Coward although he never met the Great Man himself. Later he could have met Joe Orton, but didn't dare. In the subterranean (both literally and figuratively) bars of the sixties he met men who took him to Florence and the Riviera (even if it is a bit passé darling). In the seventies he was too old to attract such offers and puzzled because he didn't understand this. Too young and too poor to entice the younger men gathered between the stairs and the end of the bar. By the time the eighties came along his increased affluence didn't matter: his milieu was disappearing. To replace it were the all male dinner parties at which That Woman was decried by people who resolutely voted Tory.

Now it's the nineties and he's showing both his filial devotion and largess by taking Mother out to dine.

Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. But he no longer does.

Across the room is a circular table for four. To this come not four but three, man, woman and boy of about 13. Twenty years ago the adult pair could have been the mainstay of Soho's local colour. Today, although they are not by any means old, they are past their time. She is too expensively dressed for the place, bleached and coloured to a platinum blond. Make-up too heavy by just a touch, trying to cover a few too many sins. The man is much more casually dressed - she'd complain of this I think were it not that he has the money - and hung with gold. The build of a man who was once active and muscled but gone lax in the years since he last did manual work, not yet run to much fat though. The child is repellant. Puppy fat pushing obesity through too much convenience food. Throughout their meal he wears the headphones of a Walkman and neither addresses nor is addressed by the adults. Perhaps she was a sex worker who, finding herself pregnant, decided it was time to marry her pimp. Ever since they've both been rubbing along on rules that don't significantly differ from those of their professional association. Full of unvoiced regrets and anger they don't understand. Were he wealthier she'd have been a trophy wife: as it is she was the best on offer. They're each other's victims and between them they've bred a potential monster.

Against the far wall two tables for two have been pushed together for a party of four. Two couples in their twenties. They've all come from their respective places of work, perhaps met in a bar along Wardour Street. They might be brokers or bankers or more likely something not too junior in advertising. There's a change more than just a change in style with the slightly younger sets. No longer is it possible to make those fine distinctions and discriminations that place the previous, older people so decidedly. The dynamics of the four do allow some interpretation though. The women know each other well enough to be comfortable together while their partners are near strangers. This makes the conversation curious: for a large part the lines of communication are like three sides of a box. Boy talks to girl who talks to girl who talks to boy. There's more general conversation but nothing is initiated or concluded between the two men. They're even going to split the bill between them so that neither need be beholden to the other. No obligation to carry into an uncertain future. Both the women will protest this but it's only a pro-forma nod to modern mores, they'll allow the men to pay. That being the case it would have been more graceful to say nothing at all. In contrast to this traditional role play today's habits predominate at their leaving. Neither man offers to hold his partner's coat nor does anyone hold open the door for their companions. I wonder if they'll dine this way again and suspect not.

On the other side of the door are two guys. Recognition makes me smile. Tailored suit, still crisp shirt and half Windsor knotted tie on one contrasts with the tight black tee shirt and leather waistcoat of the other but despite this visual disparity they are at ease with each other in a way that suggests considerable familiarity. Sometimes a hand reaches across the table for the partner's: yup, partners is what they are. Tonight is nothing unusual in their lives. They eat in an unhurried but efficient manner undisturbed by any distraction the restaurant might have to offer. They share enough to have things to talk of throughout the meal, but nothing serious, rather frequent smiles such as might be elicited from recounting the foibles of mutual friends. Dinner here is not a treat nor is it unusual for them, just a convenience before going on somewhere, maybe even home. They might work locally or far afield and chosen to meet around the corner in The Yard for no better reason than that this is "gay" London. Here, even in a "strait" restaurant they needn't fear censure for the affectionate touch.

A small victory. The size of the tip brings a genuine (if mercenarilly motivated) smile to the face of the young blond waiter more normally adorned with a surly expression which I suspect is born of a slight nervousness from being too obviously eyed up by a single gay man. See, the waiters will flirt most places: even if one does have to pay them first!

Matthew