Steph Not Stephanie

If the key to a man’s heart is through his stomach, I might be completely fucked. The Tindude™ has made a reappearance, and last night I taught him how to cook something. No, you have not fallen into an alternate dimension where I’m a kitchen goddess; it was just pan-fried tofu.  I’ve been making strides in the kitchen, and apparently my tolerance for shenanigans patience is a virtue with frying things, because that’s really the only secret (aside from ‘don’t throw the tofu into the pan of hot oil,’ from which I still have scars).

As I’m vegan at home and veg in the streets, there will be no romantic steak and lobster dinners for dudes when I’m cooking. What I can make is a mean ‘Cobb’ salad, mushroom steak, red bean and rice burger, or zucchini alfredo (the noodles ARE zucchini) in cashew cream alfredo. All my food is impersonating other food; I eat drag food. Between this and the cats (and the wine, ALL the wine), is it any wonder I’m single?

I was actually talking to a dude online who could not wrap his mind around the concept. ‘So, uh, you eat, like, chicken?’ No. I don’t eat things with faces or mothers. ‘That must be tough going out, you must have to eat at home all the time.’ No, actually it’s pretty easy. I’ve never been somewhere that had nothing for me to eat. ‘So I have a weird question.’ Those are my favourite. ‘If I had just eaten a bacon sandwich, would you kiss me?’ Since I’ve never dated a vegetarian, kissing meat-eaters isn’t an issue. ‘Oh, so then some meat is okay, just not a lot of it.’ Hold the fuck on. Is he keeping some bacon in his cheeks for later? Or does he plan to feed me like a baby bird, as one friend suggested? No thank you, please.

Aside from being veg-friendly and not afraid of tofu, what I like about Tindude™ is that there isn’t a sense of urgency with a side of panic. With a lot of the others, I was driven by this ‘what if’ anxiety, this need to figure things out rightnow and know exactly where things were going. He’s nice, funny, endearingly awkward at times, a bit of a change of pace, and I’m not freaking out because things are moving slowly. After some of the clusterfucks I’ve dealt with, slow is good. Sure, my drunk friends on the stoop yelled at him to ‘kiss her already,’ (which totally worked, by the way) and after he finally kissed me like he meant it, he proceeded to run out of here like he was on fire, but I find it refreshingly charming. I’m awkward as balls, so I’m sure I have my part to play in this too.

Besides, I have a fuckton of other shit going on (things are happening behind the scenes that I have to actually keep my mouth shut about for a bit longer) to keep me beyond busy. If I sound mysterious and weird (instead of the normal oversharing), don’t worry, it’ll all be exhumed in due time.