Eat Me: Love, Sex and the Art of Eating. Alexandra Antonioni
almost as much as we like kind eyes but not as much as we value that old chestnut Good Manners. We like it when men open doors for us, pay for dinner on a first date and talk to our faces rather than our cleavage. We like it when you have orderly, tidy homes and when you listen, really listen, to what we are saying. If we do tell you our problems we don’t expect you to fix them, just listen.
Gentlemen, it’s better for all concerned that you don’t go on and on about football, your bitch/angel/goddess (whichever fits) ex or drone on and on about work. We know you work hard. We do too.
Oh, I nearly forgot, we love that you can cook but please don’t do it as well as us.
Men don’t live well by themselves. They don’t even live like people. They live like bears with furniture.
RUTH RUDNER
Men are having a hard time these days but, conversely, women have never had it so good. (I think.) Apparently we live in an age where Women Can Have It All. But as much as we do want it all, we don’t want to lose our femininity and we still want our man to be a real man, even if we are earning more than you and are perfectly capable of changing a fan belt whilst knocking up dinner for ten.
But, and there’s always a but, in behaving like the strong, silent, dependable men we yearn for, you must be strong but not too strong. God forbid we should feel patronised or controlled, but there again God help you should you display any sign of weakness. (Understand why I’m feeling a bit sorry for them?)
Gentlemen, we don’t want to wear the trousers but we don’t want you to wear them either, couldn’t we just take a leg each?
Yup, women really can have it all. The job, the kids, the holidays, the money, the perfect relationship, the perfect body, new boobs and smooth botoxed skin that will never age and the most significant validation of all, a trouser leg. It’s just that sometimes it’s exhausting and we just want a cuddle. And a chocolate biscuit.
Intuition is the strange instinct that tells a woman she’s right, whether she is or not.
OSCAR WILDE
First Impressions
Don’t think of him as a Date, Think of him as a Dinner.
LUCILLE BALL
So you’ve finally got a date, but please don’t be tempted to cook, you’ll have plenty of time later to wow him with your culinary expertise if the evening goes well. Go out to a lovely restaurant, relax and find out a little more about each other and see if this is worth pursuing.
A propos of not cooking, do take my advice as I’m talking from bitter experience. Every time I have cooked on a first date it has ended in tears, generally mine. Even if the food was perfect and everything looked fabulous, by the time my date arrived I was frizzy-haired and frazzled from the hours spent in the kitchen and from the cleaning regime required to turn my apartment into something out of Vogue Interiors.
On one occasion when I was asked out, memorable because I really liked this guy and had been trying to get his attention for months, I decided to dazzle him with both my cooking skills and my fabulous 44th-floor apartment overlooking Hong Kong harbour. So I stupidly (with hindsight) invited him to dinner.
I cleaned, shopped and cooked all day, preparing a menu planned with military precision. Parma ham with Chanterelle melon was followed by an inordinately expensive grilled lobster and a mango soufflé finished off the dinner. The whole meal was washed down with several bottles of Veuve Clicquot. I wore my killer little black dress and lit enough candles to illuminate the Vatican. Everything was perfect.
Except … he was Jewish. (Who’s to know?) He didn’t eat Parma ham (pork) and he didn’t eat lobster (shellfish) and hated the perfumed aroma of mangos.
I became increasingly flustered and more than a little resentful that all my hard work had resulted in him nibbling on a breadstick and not much else. Especially not the hostess.
Whilst I’m sure my ill-advised dinner was not solely to blame (I think it was a lot more to do with my evidently increasing displeasure), having eaten the square root of exactly nothing he made his excuses and left. That was the last I heard from him.
Like I said, don’t be tempted to cook. (In a fit of pique I ate everything on the table plus all the after-dinner mints so not only did I feel rejected, I also felt fat. Not a good combination.)
Back to happier things.
It doesn’t matter how many first dates I’ve had or how many restaurants I’ve eaten in, I always get excited about the first time I have dinner with someone new. You never quite know what will happen, there’s always the chance that this could be the one.
The problem is, of course, that first dates don’t always live up to our expectations. I’m sure we all have a Dating Disasters Dossier, filed away in our memory under Not To Be Repeated Under Any Circumstances. Those dates that forced us to question our apparent inability to spot a really bad idea! How in the name of all that is sacred could we possibly have accepted, or worse yet requested, this interminable torture? I have spent far too many first date dinners surreptitiously glancing at my watch, willing the minutes to tick past whilst seated opposite someone with whom I had absolutely nothing in common and, worse, whom I was starting to actively dislike.
It happens.
Far too bloody often, actually.
You know who you are, guys, those of you from my bleak and beleaguered past that caused me to coin the idiom ‘First Date Disorder’. If I looked bored it’s because I was. There, now you know.
The tragic thing was that on these ghastly, coma-inducing, sub-standard debacles I invariably ended up paying the bill, purely to prevent any possibility of having to kiss him through some kind of misplaced guilt. Subsequently, I ended up bored to tears, questioning my judgement and, to add insult to injury, considerably poorer.
Oh, the diabolical ignominy!
So, given that all of us must have truly terrible tales of first date disasters why do we repeatedly put ourselves through the lottery-style risk they entail?
That’s easy, we just keep going back for more (akin to a boxer who won’t stay down), because every now and then we stumble unsuspectingly into first date nirvana, a rare and magical encounter whereby the simple act of having dinner with somebody affords us such exquisite pleasure it erases all memories of the bad dates that have gone before. (I have on occasion experienced this phenomenon and when it’s that good, it’s the best.)
The problem with these fairytale dates is that I am unable to eat a single bite during dinner. However, to conceal this angst I have perfected the art of pushing my food round the plate in such as way as to appear to have eaten quite a lot. Later on at home, after an enchanting evening which has me fantasising about our next date – the sexy way he holds his glass and how much I love his voice – I suddenly find that I am starving and heading for the kitchen to make a bacon sandwich!
I’ve had a wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.
GROUCHO MARX
What people order on a first date can be a bit of a revelation in terms of their personality and their expectations of the evening ahead. Here are some examples from real dates – this stuff really happened to