dining alone
udon and nostalgia in new york - written on my iphone
Heading down Sixth Ave toward SoHo, I still walk briskly and jaywalk boldly, as though there is someone I’m running late to meet. As I walk past the little outdoor dining pavilion and up to the door with the little Japanese sign, the nostalgia hits. Almost exactly a year ago I waited outside this door with six friends. I still remember Kevin came here with Ben and Rachel early; Kyle and I speedwalked to meet them from my Nolita office (back when I still worked in an office!). I remember spotting them on the sidewalk, I remember admiring the silk scarf Isabel was wearing as a one-shoulder top, I remember giggling and asking Rachel if the R on her necklace stood for Rachel (spoiler: it did), I remember grinning at the waiter because I was so excited to sip my cold barley tea.
Now, a year later, Rachel has moved to SF; I’m not close enough to Ben to even know whether he’s moved too; Isabel left my life when she left Kevin’s; Kevin himself is in Austin. I was supposed to be here today with Kyle, but he had to fly out of town on short notice, and the other friends I texted last minute were all busy or out of town too.
So today, seated at the bar, it’s just me. And this other Asian girl who is wearing these gorgeously edgy patchwork jeans. The leather tag on the back says rag & bone so they’re probably out of my budget, but I look them up anyway for my Pinterest board.
Just me… and my insecurities. I’d been trying to finish an essay at home, but I got stuck trying to weave together my anecdotes and figuring out “what’s the point of this essay?” (Do essays need a point? I want to write more “vibes” pieces, like prose poetry, but…) I fell into doomscrolling my substack feed until I developed a slight headache, checked the time, and figured if I was gonna get charged a $20 fee for canceling the reservation while rotting at home, I might as well just go eat some udon alone.
As I scan the menu, I recall that it was Angie who introduced me to Raku. (Of course.) On a rainy winter day almost two years ago, I hurried down the Bowery with her and Nicole, Doc Marten boots stumbling into sidewalk puddles as we juggled two umbrellas among three people, finally ducking into a cramped corner of Raku. Angie had enthusiastically suggested the sesame salad, and we’d delighted in the kabocha squash on top. Today I order the same salad. I really do hate to be cliche, but it actually doesn’t taste as good as it did when we ate it together. Back then, I was the one visiting them from LA. Now I’m here, Nicole’s moved to Austin, and Angie’s back in SF...
Two girls sit down next to me and start having a Very Brooklyn Conversation (though we’re in Manhattan).
“Do you still get crushes on boys anymore?” one of them asks.
“Only occasionally,” says the other, “and only if they don’t have body hair.”
“Oh my God, yeah, hair is such a turn off,” agrees the first girl. “Arm hair especially!”
I think of my friend Rebecca, who also moved to Brooklyn a few years ago, declared she hated men, and wanted to try dating girls. Alas, she is now married (to a man with copious chest hair, no less) and moving back to California.
Joan Didion wrote that New York is a place only for the very young. I’m distinctly not young enough anymore to even contemplate a bisexual phase, or to go out, even on weekend nights, with any degree of regularity, or to ever again consider cramming myself into a roach-infested Nolita walk-up with Nicole and Emma like I did the summer I was 24. (Nicole had wisely suggested a much nicer apartment in Park Slope instead, but Emma and I protested: no, Park Slope is boring.) Come to think about it, I also lived with two girls in Nolita the summer I was 19. Back then I was so enamored with the city that I’d voluntarily go up to Times Square, alone, after work, just to soak in the “ambiance,” or to test out some theory that people are more likely to make way for you if you look just above their eyes. (Joan Didion again: “Was anyone ever so young?”)
On my way home I walk up MacDougal Street. The sky is dark. The sidewalk is packed with little clusters of NYU students and young people, illuminated by fluorescent shop signs and street lights, chatting in line for cheap crepes, smoking joints, stumbling down narrow stairs from the Kati Roll shop. Even as recently as last fall I liked this street, but tonight all I feel is a vague annoyance at the loud loitering crowds and the ugly shop logos screeching for attention. Maybe it’s just as well that I too am heading back to California soon.