Eat Bar, With Masculine Insights

Apparently all I do is work, eat, and write in this blasted thing. I really don't mind though. Tonight's excursion was to Eat Bar, because my friend from hiking at Old Rag mentioned it, I didn't know it, and I vowed to explore it. I didn't realized I'd been here before but that certainly didn't keep me from enjoying it once I arrived.

I went with a married guy friend and we had a lovely time over Heffewiessens and really delicious food, albeit in small portions. We had fancy macaroni and cheese with pork tasso (I'm too lazy to look it up), black bean hummus, goat cheese with Sopressata (evidently a type of salami) and a fig/cherry compote, half a pound of steamed shrimp, chorizo corn dogs, and frankly the highlight of the meal, a delicious $3.50 baby burger: a medium rare done burger on presumably a brioche-type bun, with caramelized onions saturated in balsamic vinegar. I couldn't help but imagine, though, what $3.50 in burger currency could get me in Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, burgers are an art. They aren't gourmet, hip little snacks one experiments with. They are serious meals, but varied in unique ways, with diverse toppings and meat compositions. I'm going home this weekend, so maybe this will merit a more thorough examination later, but I can't complain much about tonight's delicious--albeit pretentious--burger.

What's more interesting to me is another theme of a discussion I've had a few times in the past few days: do women want good or bad men? I was discussing with my dinner partner this evening that I want someone with an "edge." After looking at me funny, he asked me why, after also saying I sounded like a middle-schooler. And I'm not sure why. It seems that an atypical relationship would be more welcoming than a conventional girlfriendhood for a woman who has been single for so long, but why wouldn't I veer toward the emotionally stable rather than the emotionally confused/unavailable types? Perhaps this is the moment all my favorite heroines have to encounter in their romantic lives: that the hero of their favorite novels and daydreams isn't really a real man at all and that one's ideal may look drastically different than imagined. I suppose the only certainty I can take comfort in this evening is that I know a good burger when I see one.