4 A Psychological Romance
W
hat’s on your mind as you come to dine?
Dining out brings with it all manner of unconscious feelings. Residue of past evenings, attaching themselves to the now — when we last dined together… when I last dined here… when I once before ordered a dish like that, that very wine… when a Maitre d’s snub last put me in these spirits… when I so badly misread a glance like that, or an accidental touch… when I didn’t…
Finn checks his watch again, the umpteenth time today. Four
hours now until he meets James. He’s phoned to confirm his booking for tonight.
It’s the second time he’s done so, he’d also called a few days back. The
Restaurant is a busy place, he just wants to make sure his reservation hasn’t
been lost. This dinner is too important.
His stomach feels hollow. Even a sip of water makes him a
little nauseous. His hands are slick, the pen feels uncertain as he writes. What
the hell, he’s done little enough work today. How can four hours feel so long?
How can four years feel so short? Four years to the day
today.
He hadn’t gone, that night, for dinner. It had been The
Restaurant’s re-opening bash. He’d been taken by a friend, someone in
hospitality who thought Finn needed to get out more. It seemed an idea at the
time. So he’d found himself alone, balancing a glass and finger food and
jostled for space. That was when James had introduced himself, or more precisely
had fallen into him. Jay had been in expansive spirits that night. He’d been
oblivious to Finn’s reticence, and his ease had drawn Finn out. Reluctantly at
first, just for form’s sake, then gradually he’d let himself relax. He lost all
sense of the whirl of activity about them. The night had shrunk to him and Jay
and nothing, no one else. Never a need to leave each other, drinks appeared as
they were needed. For the first time in a long time Finn found himself the
centre of someone else’s attention. It was intoxicating, and not a thing he
wanted to let go of.
Hard to reconcile the present, and Jay’s withdrawal, with
that night. Now even the small considerations between them are marked most by
what they are not. Spontaneity of affection has passed, natural enough Finn
supposes — but the habit that takes its place is not nearly enough to fill the
hole left there. How good it would be to have the past over. Still, would there
be a point, if this is how things must turn out?
He ached to relive the end of that first night. The music
had stopped and the lights gone up and Jay was well in his cups by then. Finn
had been proud that he’d taken the initiative and taken Jay’s hand. He brought
Jay home and, in that state, was more than content to put him to bed. “Put me
to bed, not took me to bed,” was how Jay liked to joke about it later. He
hasn’t said that in some time.
Finn texts a message to James. To remind him of time and
place and only that. No reminder of occasion. Is it pride or desperation, he
wonders (and which the more pathetic?), this stubborn resolve that he not have
to be the first to say the words — our anniversary.
What wouldn’t we give to experience again one perfect moment? To experience it exactly as before, innocent and unsullied by what’s happened since. In Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Sebastian Flyte muses, in his youthful prime (and primed by a bottle of Chateau Lafaurie-Peyraguey), “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve ever been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.” Wish as we might, can we ever have that moment over in more than memory? That perfect night, that perfect meal, that perfect company, that perfect mix – are they really retrievable? And if so, or we manage to make it so, what must we give up in exchange?
In
her first book, Serve It Forth, M F K Fisher tells the story of an
attempt to recapture, with a lover, the warm memories of her student years in
From this generous beginning the emotional tempo of the evening dips and veers. The initial confidence soon gives way to disappointment, irritation to nagging suspicion (“Charles is drunk. Yes Charles, the perfect waiter…”), then on the edge of disaster the evening steadies, things become just as before, just as she had hoped they would be. There is all the pleasure and joy of a blissful re-visiting shared with another. An evening to remember.
The desire to re-experience in itself taints the memory of what occurred before, and what we would try to recapture once more
But not for these reasons. As they take their leave there is a revelation. Charles had been fired earlier that evening, “a fine waiter once” – he had stayed on this night just to serve her, had even left her a sad bouquet. And now she could see that the place itself was not really as she had thought it. Not as she had wanted and determined herself to experience it. The restaurant had lost its eminence, was sliding into nonentity, the dimness and shabbiness she had taken for charm was decay, a spoiling from within — a victim of the times. There would be no more nostalgic visits. Everything does change. “The same object cannot give us the same sensation over again,” observed William James. The desire to re-experience in itself taints the memory of what occurred before, and what we would try to recapture once more.
How often we go to dine dragging along with us our everyday worries. Then seated at table, with menus and drink in hand, we find that old world retreating as we’re absorbed into a comfortingly smaller one. All the while forgetful of the fact that events in this new world will take on greater significance than the one we left.
We submit ourselves to interesting times when we choose to dine.
Our motives... are as piquant as the perfect sauce for duck, and as bitter-sweet as the best of chocolate
Do we know this when we come? Do we know why we come? Does it even matter? Well, yes… and no. The motives that appear to bring us here will play their part in the evening’s events, though not necessarily as we might have thought. Motives so easily take on a life of their own. They may work on us independently or single-mindedly, or come together in combination and derail one another with their contradictions. Our motives reveal both our good intentions and our vanities. In this they’re as piquant as the perfect sauce for duck, and as bitter-sweet as the best of chocolate.
“You can stick next Wednesday — I’ll see those bloody
proofs Monday and I don’t care if you don’t sleep all week-end. Sure, Ted,
sure… breaking your balls, you’re a good lad, you’ll get it done.”
Bo Levine hangs up the phone, and looks across his desk at
Steve Fisher. Fisher has sat respectfully still while Levine took the call.
“Steve. Right. Now, what have you got for me?”
“
"That’s right —
"Jerry Schneider, Marketing VP.”
“And how are we looking?”
“Well, he hasn’t actually confirmed they’re looking around…”
“But you’ve got something to go on.”
“Well he’s sure dropped a lot of hints ... especially about
meeting you.”
“Course he has. OK, dinner then….We’ll make it The
Restaurant. Ever been there? Well think
tasteful, but not too bloody chi chi. As a choice it doesn’t say you had to consult
the latest frigging Vogue. He’ll know we mean business, and that’s what we want
from the get-go, from the moment he walks in the door…And, I love the food.”
Nobody dines out just to eat — even to eat well
Nobody dines out just to eat — even to eat well (a point that many chefs, understandably enough, are not inclined to acknowledge). “All that we do is done with an eye to something else” observed Aristotle. Like other big thinkers he had a penchant for mixing surface cynicism with a deeper understanding of how things are. Consciously or not we’re all adept at misleading others — and ourselves even more — when it comes to motives.
Peta and her girlfriends had been talking about a dinner
for weeks.
Not just a get-together, a slap-up catch-up, they did that
all the time. Though… not so much these last few months, while she’d been
seeing Carl.
The girls hadn’t given her such a hard time, not actually,
but… it was there in a look or occasional jibe… no time for your friends when
you’re seeing someone.
Plenty of time now…
She hadn’t even told them yet.
Bella could be so cutting, her way of meaning well and
believed it served a purpose, “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”,
(who said that…? well, besides Bella). I-told-you-so would be in her every word
without ever being spoken.
Tori’s concern would be, in its way, even worse. A kind of
mothering that Peta didn’t want to want.
She didn’t like to tell them each on the phone. Then know
that they were, in their own calls to each other, teasing out her third-person
tragedy.
Better in person, with all of them there.
Better at some special place, some place out of their
usual, even Bella’s who had each man of the moment squire her to the anointed
spot of the moment.
She’d pick the place — dressy but elegant. And expensive,
this could be a treat from them all to each other.
Then Vanessa could set it up with the other two. So in her own
world, Vanessa — she wouldn’t ask questions, and her excitement would be
infectious…
Now… what to wear? If Peta’s going to (as she strongly
suspects) end up having some sort of cry on her girlfriends’ shoulders… she
wants to damn well know that she’s made a killer entrance first.
There’s no denying a restaurant dining room is a mixing pot of motives
There’s no denying a restaurant dining room is a mixing pot of motives. Some are dormant, others dominant. But all simmer ready to be served up (or to serve themselves) when circumstances demand. These motives come in a variety of theoretical shapes and sizes. There are…
· primary motives — the most insistent in getting satisfaction (what do I most want?)
· base motives — base in depth, not (necessarily) morally base (what do I really want?)
· ulterior motives — deceiving others, and ourselves (how can I piggy-back what I really want on what I’d like to think I want?)
· preconscious motives — not so much hiding as momentarily out of mind (is there anything else I want?)
· unconscious motives — seething away with everything you’d rather not know about yourself (how low can my motives go?)…
And these aren’t independent, nor are they isolated affairs. Some come with second-order motives as attachments — motives concerning our motives, desires about our desires. So we have a formidable list of influences at work when diners come to dine.
Ben takes his time with his coffee. He loves its smell, the
perfect blend he says to himself. Strong and black, you could walk across the
crema, yet a not overpowering aroma.
No rush to today’s shoot. His photographic
gear is packed and piled neatly by the front door. He looks around his
apartment. Some have called it cold, but only visitors who were never asked
around a second time.
He takes up the job-sheet for today. No problems there — a
piece of piss. He pauses to examine once more the model’s card for today’s
girl. He hasn’t worked with her before. Lips unfashionably thin, smile slightly
crooked. A dusting of freckles. Eyes too widely set apart, but otherworldly
green.
Her expression tells of vulnerability. Nice to meet you.
He always likes to take a new model out to dinner, the first
day they’ve worked together. And The Restaurant’s the perfect place. He loves
the food, loves the room, its feel, its style. He belongs there. Ben never
questions his general sense of entitlement. Not to anything he wants and takes.
This is, he feels, essential to himself, and right.
Will she be surprised when he invites her out? The thought
comes with a shrug. He has no fear
she’ll refuse him. They never do. Reservations for tonight, he made weeks ago. She’ll
be impressed no doubt, but that’s neither here nor there.
Before he leaves he empties the coffee machine, carefully
washes up the cup. Then gathers his papers together, pausing to tap the model’s
card with a knuckle.
The girl I want to be with tonight.
Motives have real significance in the direction of our lives. But they are fragile conveyors of destiny when it comes to dining. Too clumsily drawn to capture the mystique of so rich an experience — let alone explain it. Dining isn’t a fatalistic endeavour. It’s an intricate one. Even as the evening thins, plots will thicken. That’s true for every diner, whatever their motives, whatever their idea of dining.
Which begs the question, whether the emotional outcomes that occur in dining (that will occur this evening) might equally occur in some other social setting? Perhaps there may be vaguely similar outcomes, but these would be thin and pallid by comparison, neither as lush nor eventful as what comes of dining out. (Think of it as trying to re-create perfectly a dish of enormous complexity using only a few of the ingredients.) No, the dining experience adds a dynamic element to human interaction that’s impossible to reproduce outside of it. And it’s an unpredictable dynamism. The best laid intentions of diners have a tendency to be overhauled by events, opening the way for other motives and other elements perhaps not even considered at the evening’s outset.
it’s a delicate illusion, a façade that will fade or be blown away...
So as you contemplate the
atmosphere of stately, sophisticated composure that will grace our dining room,
realize that it’s a delicate illusion, a façade that will fade or be blown away
as the evening wears on — revealing what was there all along, waiting to out,
only to be changed in turn. The poet Longfellow said this of
“Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of what might be, a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen.”
What greater enhancement to an evening’s pleasure than the chance to explore a world of things that might be?
Whether or not we’re of a mind to let them…
(In our next episode – What’ll it be? – we’ll join you at the bar. A fluid place in more ways than one. A different dynamic to the dining room – more in-your-face. But for those who venture there, it initiates the evening’s psychological momentum. Everyone’s making their own statement – what’s yours?)
SOURCES
Evelyn
Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, 1962
M
F K Fisher, The Art of Eating, Wiley,
William
James, The Principles of Psychology,
Aristotle,
The Nicomachean Ethics,
Henry
