CLUMPS AND VOIDS

RANT DU JOUR


Desserts are grand, as long as I have ordered one. Unsummoned sweets, however, trigger not my salivary glands but rather bile ducts, and have ever since law school.

The precipitating incident occurred as I interviewed with a Chicago firm (send SASE for the name) with a poo-poohed reputation of shunning lady lawyers. During a turgid lunch (itself no advertisement), the male partner haled the dessert cart. Without consultation, he commanded a round of lemon chiffon pie – for everyone.

The female associate, to my horror, acquiesced without comment. I declined. I loathed lemons. (Before each grisly gym dance in high school, I had dabbed a particularly vile citron-scented cologne everywhere but my braces.) The partner insisted. The waiter, a comrade, leered. I thought, “I am a confident, professional woman of the 80’s”, and ordered the always consoling chocolate cake.

The waiter served – lemon chiffon pie.

My anger at this puerile power play was genuine and just as ineffectual. I did not touch the pie, but received an employment offer. I declined the job, alas, politely. What I did gain, however, was the sudden perception of another type of dessert waltz, one so inherent in the restaurant experience as to be imperceptible.

We can call this dance “sweets for the demurring sweet.” Perhaps every woman alive has been dragged by her psychic hoop-skirts through its steps. One: waiter removes entrees. Two: male dining companion (“MDC”) orders caloric dessert resembling the Alien, and Three: woman quite audibly states, “[n]othing for me”. One: waiter tilts head, as if at a dog-whistle. Two: waiter lowers monstrosity to the table, and Three: distributes an extra spoon to the woman.

Over the years, I became increasingly grit-toothed over this practice. I fulminated against uncomprehending service persons. I waved ostentatiously-unused spoons. I inveighed against this obvious conspiracy to drive women insane, one tart at a time.

One evening, my usual MDC extricated himself from his dish’s caramel maws to lob some sticky queries. Had I truly identified a phenomenon? Why did it occur? Was it gender-based, or rather governed by who paid the bill? Even if gender-based, what was the big deal?

My considered response was a sputter. He thus proposed investigation (and hoped for Major Drama).

We proceeded to survey Chicago restaurants along the expense, trend and sanitation spectra. Each, of course, afforded its own special touches. Desserts were placed in different table quadrants, dead-center being most obnoxious. Utensil handling ranged from the tacit, to the murmurous (“…in case you need an extra fork”), to utter smarm (“Oh, honey. Doesn’t someone want to share?”)

But the offending practice was indeed rampant. The sole exceptions were corner coffee shops, which generally allowed each to cleave to his own. (Malts must excite Gombe-like territorial display.)

Further, the potential non-gender factors were demonstrably irrelevant. We enacted a variety of scenes. We alternated who ordered the wine and the meal, proffered plastic payment, or loudly proposed late-night bondage. It mattered not. Specials were litanized and entrees uncovered: he ordered dessert and I received implements. Wham, bam, eat-this-although-you-specifically-declined-it ma’am. Need I add that when my MDC abstained, he never received tools or urgings to share my plate?

As for the reasons whyfor, the nature source of information – the servers themselves – either feared kneecapping or had mislaid their manuals. Not one could explain this stylized override of a customer’s command.

My best guess is this: society weirdly tells us that a woman’s worth adheres in her appearance. She must be attractive, which means (until all shrivel away in anorexic agony) that she must be thin. Although all women do consume more than air, many feel guilty when caught in the act. Many feel that eating constitutes an admission that they aren’t doing their part to achieve the impossible. So the waiter who slides an extra spoon is allowing a woman to talk a good story, to not order cake yet eat it.

So how can I resent what is merely a dance of charity, an allemande-left around confrontations with futility. After all, no one craves titters when mitigating guacamole with diet pop. And aren’t restaurants in the prickly business of pleasing?

I haven’t progressed much beyond my initial sputter. I can suggest only that the practice presumes a woman’s true wish, and then seeks to satisfy it. This is also the accepted manner of dealing with small children and dogs. No wonder that I instinctively revert to the petulant two’s – “Noooo want ice cream!”

Women, however, do not face the linguistic barriers posed by youth or phylum. We are neither sear-suckered toddlers – who silently need to pee, nor beagles – ditto. We are adults, unfortunate beings who bear the burden of articulating our desires. That burden remains even when faced with conflicting choices.

That charity, and mind-reading, are misplaced can be seen if we imagine a world in which waiters did not play both speaking roles. Perhaps women would conform their behavior to their diets. Or perhaps once deprived of surreptitious bites, women would decide that diets, and the warped fiction of female as ornament, are hooey. Perhaps men would finish an entire dessert, and shake the half-a-mint-julep homicidal longing described by Ogden Nash. Perhaps the lemon chiffon would land where it may.