One of Everything

Excellent. We’ll have ten more orders.

I have to admit, I like to date men who make more money than I do. Mostly, this is because I make so little money that I can barely afford to live in NYC, and making less than I do would mean you are probably homeless. Luckily, I’ve discovered online dating, which I can use to get several free meals per week. I’m only half kidding. The other reason I online date is to fuel this blog, which will hopefully one day make me lots of money. Oh yeah, and to find a boyfriend.

Anyway, I was in search of this boyfriend when I discovered Andrew online. Andrew works in finance, graduated from an Ivy League school and is wearing a suit in almost every one of his dating profile pictures. Cha ching! In other news, our email conversations were great, we came from similar backgrounds, and he was kind of cute. We met at Teqa, my recent favorite bar/restaurant in New York (holy spicy cucumber margarita, Batman!). We’d had a baby shower for a co-worker at the office that day, and I’d eaten a little too much chocolate cake, so wasn’t really feeling like a heavy meal. But stuffing your face on a date isn’t exactly sexy, so I wasn’t too worried about it. That is, until we sat down and Andrew said to the waitress, “We’ll have one of everything.”

What!? Do people actually say things like that in real life? I laughed, thinking he was kidding.

“What?” he asked seriously, “They’re small plates!”

Teqa is a taqueria, and I’ve never seen so many tacos (and kinds of tacos) on one table in my life, let alone tried to fit them all in my stomach. The conversation was decent, but it kept being interrupted by him asking, “Are you going to finish that?”

“Nope,” I always said, happy to add the second half of my taco to his plate. Eventually, I went for one bite of each before handing them over. Andrew was clearly in shape, but watching him eat his weight in meat and tortillas was a bit of a turn off.

By the time he’d practically licked his plate clean, I was feeling sick.

“Did you save room for dessert?” asked the waitress, clearly skeptical as to whether that was even possible. Andrew didn’t hesitate before asking, “What would you recommend?” Watching him devour a chocolate lava cake (I had one bite), was impressive to say the least.

Then, I felt sick all over again when seeing all the zeros on the bill (all the tacos you can eat, a few rounds of margaritas and dessert sure are expensive!). Usually I’ll at least feign an offer to pay. This time I didn’t even bother.

I went out with Andrew one more time. Again, to a nice restaurant. He ordered us four appetizers to share and an entrée each. Then dessert. Despite the fabulous free dinners, I had to break it off—my figure depended on it.

—Raz, 25, NYC