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Table for Two? No It’s Just Me.

I rarely see people out individually. If I think back to the events of this weekend, I can’t recall a time where I saw a single person out at a restaurant or bar. Always in groups. Always in twos. The fact that I always get asked, “Are you waiting for someone?” when I stand by myself in front of the host table is further testament to the group norm.

So from here on out, I’ve decided to start taking myself out on dates. Go against the societal norm. And when people ask, “What are you doing this weekend?”

I’ll respond, “I’m going out on a date!” with a big fat grin on my face, just like the Cheshire cat from “Alice in Wonderland.” I’m being reborn as Cheshire Catherine. Happy, smart-alecky, and well-fed.

And when they ask, “Oooh, with who?”

I’ll just grin even more, “Why, Cheshire Catherine, of course. She deserves it and she’s hungry. I’m going to take her out for a nice meal and a bottle of wine. She is going to die when she finds out where I’m taking her!”

OK, that’s a little extreme. But I’m serious. I’m going to start dating myself. Because there’s no one else out there who deserves me more than me. So I might as well spend my hard-earned money on me instead of subsidizing some guy’s meal because he eats more than me and we split the bill down the middle when he’s the one who asked me out and should be paying the whole damn thing but he doesn’t because he’s a waste of a human being!

So I did just that. I took myself out on a Saturday brunch date. I drove through the rolling hills of the Presidio, through the Marina, to the restaurant that makes the best Bloody Marys in town. (If you want to challenge my Bloody Mary recommendation, please comment. I am infatuated with Bloody Marys.) Eastside West on Fillmore serves Bloody Marys with plump green beans and a prawn hanging off the side of the glass. It’s screaming to be inhaled as soon as the waitress sets the drink down on your table. THE BEST BLOODY MARY IN TOWN, I’M TELLING YOU.

I’m sitting there in the warm 11am sun, catching up on some reading, when some guy yells to me, “Love the sunglasses!”

“Thanks,” I murmur as I roll my eyes behind the shades. He’s sitting with a bunch of his frat boy friends, ogling over the big-boobed blondies doing the catwalk down the major thoroughfares of the Marina district.

“Hey, I hope you don’t mind if I join you.” He sits down and I proceed to chide him for drinking beer instead of a Bloody. For the next thirty minutes, we banter about Bloodys, our favorite restaurants in the city, the Marina and how we prefer not to hang out in the Marina, work and work ethic. He was entertaining. Much better than reading my magazines.

After we had talked each others’ ears off, he went for the close. “I want to take you out. I do. Dinner and dancing.” He said it so confidently, I blushed.

And at the end of it all, my ‘dating myself’ process became not a process, but a strategy. Hmmm. Maybe not that. This is what it is: Having fun with or without someone. That’s really what it’s all about. End of story.

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11.13.05

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Welcome to my site, derived from an advice column I wrote while getting my MBA. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I give helpful, opinionated advice based on my own experience and from the expertise of my extensive network. For more, click here.

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