Disclaimer: Some of my insecurities and deep-seated classism will be revealed to you during this read. Tek time wid me!
I am a black woman who knows much about food, cooks well, and eats well at home. When I eat out, I try to have something seasonal and creative that I would not have made at home. One day, while I was packing for a weeks-long trip, agonizing over suitcases and whose gifts to prioritize, I was asked on a third date by a cute, cuddly ginger with the capacity to string two sentences together. I declined because I was to have flown out the following day and was not quite packed yet. The first red flag was when he called back, said he was already on his way to my area because he knew I needed a break, and suggested a restaurant I could walk to. Fair enough. I acquiesced.
The date was going swimmingly, and the menu enticed me. Cuddly Face ordered the halibut, and a dish described as “chicken with wild Oregon mushrooms” caught my eye. I am a forager, and Dallas isn’t the place for that, so whenever I can eat something wild, I leap at the opportunity. I excitedly asked which mushrooms they were, and the server returned from the kitchen bearing glad tidings of morels. I ordered the “chicken with wild Oregon mushrooms.” The date continued well, but the morels were conspicuously absent when the entrees arrived. There were wedges of grocery-store creminis heaped atop a braised chicken thigh. I lifted it with my fork and there was no morel to be found. Of course, I sent the dish back! The chef sent his apologies; they had run out of morels. I ordered something else, and we carried on with the night. Curiously, my date brought up the years he spent working back-of-the-house at Ivar’s and asked whether I had ever worked in a restaurant. I have not, but I was impressed with his experience and had a lot of questions about clams, chowder, and clam chowder. He remarked that my culinary acumen and knowledge of ingredients are impressive and that I eat things he has never heard of. This should have been foreboding, but I didn’t spot the danger ahead, just like I missed the waving red flag of him being already on the way hours after I declined the date.
We shared pleasantries and dessert, and when the server appeared ready to collect with his tiny mobile card reader, my date said, “I would appreciate it if you could pay for your meal.” Flummoxed, I whipped out Mr. Centurion and spared the server the chore of doing any division by paying for the entire meal and promptly walking out. After a month of ignoring voicemails and texts from my date, none of which addressed the weirdness, I finally picked up the phone and let him know why he would never hear from me again. He apologized, explaining that he was raised to be grateful for what he has and was put off by the fact that I wasted “a perfectly good plate of food.”
And this is where the rant begins. Why isn’t it okay for black women to have standards? Would he have had the same energy for a white woman who returned a dish that wasn’t as described? I think not! A fine dining establishment is not a soup kitchen; the bare minimum expectation is that I will get what I ordered, even if it is spit in. I am not your child, and your responsibility is not to discipline me for being a picky(discerning) eater or to teach me lessons about gratitude because there are starving kids in nonspecific Africa. If you cannot handle a woman who knows what she wants to eat, what does that say about your confidence? Doesn’t that impair your ability to navigate life’s challenges as an adult human male? You get to waste ZERO additional minutes of my time.
The confusion I felt in that moment of attempted humbling came up again last night while I was at a neighborhood social hour. We were at a table of black women and two non-black people. The conversation got to wine; my seatmate explained that she didn’t like California Chardonnay and would always favor a white wine from France. Being as countrified as I am, I didn’t know the difference, so I asked her why she didn’t like Napa wine. Before she could explain that Napa whites are generally intensely oaked and that she likes wines from Chablis that are often aged in Stainless Steel, the white man at the table exclaimed, “It just got really bougie in here!”
Which brings me to another rant. Do you, the negroid, often find yourself among white people who seem to choose you because of their low self-esteem, who assume that you might be classified a rung lower than them and therefore have no means to travel, to help a stranger, to relax every once in a while, to shop at The Whole Paycheck, or to enjoy generic nice things? Have you ever befriended a Child of the Chalk only to find out they intended to make you their pet project but are now disappointed that you didn’t need to be rescued? Have you ever had to cut a white woman out of your life because she asks you what everything costs and constantly projects her financial insecurities onto you? Have you ever had a white friend butt into a conversation between you and someone you’re both just meeting to say, “She is too smart for you; that’s why they pay her the big bucks”? Hollywood has taught the white liberals that their duty to the blacks is to save us from any of an assortment of the plights of the underprivileged- illiteracy, poverty, etc. while finding themselves along the way. They don’t know what to do when there’s no messianic role for them in your life.
When I did, in fact, need rescuing, my older siblings helped shoulder the burden my parents were unwilling or ill-equipped to carry. The mainstays in my life have seen me through lack, loss, languor, and lowliness. They are happy that I have managed to be doing as okay as possible with my high-ass ACEs score, and under these (Trumpian) circumstances. They will be there for me when I need them again. They will not require me to perform destitution and will not try to humble me. They will cackle aloud with me when I say, with a mouthful of morels, “Fuck you and your cuddly little face.”
P.S. the pictured mushrooms are chanterelles that I foraged, not morels.