L'Espalier-Worthy

Three-and-a-half years ago, I received for my birthday a $150 gift certificate to L’Espalier, arguably the best, most romantic and most expensive restaurant in Boston. Since then, I have been trying to find the right girl to take there. As the days to graduation count down, I still have the elegant slip of paper. Here is my story.

This is going to get me in a lot of trouble, I can tell already. My best girl friends, individuals whom I love and care about deeply, may wonder just why they haven’t been asked to go to L’Espalier.

Wait. I can explain everything. This gift certificate wasn’t meant for a nice dinner with my best-friend-that’s-a-girl where over cocktails we share gossip of each others’ indiscretions. This gift certificate was meant for one of those knock-out romantic evenings where you order the lobster, pop the champagne and finish it off with one dessert and two forks. Ladies, you feel me on this, right?

So I’ve been looking. As a first-year and a sophomore, the bar for a night avec moi à L’Espalier was très, très high. I decided then that I would have to be dating the girl for at least three months and envision a great future ahead before I would even think about taking her out on the gift certificate. My record, however, is that I can’t seem to stay in a relationship for more than, oh, three months. Go figure. Then at one point during the spring of my Junior year, I was ready to use it, until I realized at the last moment my motivations weren’t quite good enough. It has to feel right—isn’t that what they always say?

So I lowered the bar. This can only be done so many times, however. After a while, things just become weird. Look at this rationally: you can’t simply go to L’Espalier on a second date. No matter how ga-ga you are about someone, it just ruins everything to seem so damn serious so soon. Try imagining a more awkward situation than going from a couple of friendly lattes to a dinner that has a dress code. If you were a girl, what would you think? Exactly. This guy I don’t know from a can of paint expects une peu d’action.

I’ve been a bad boy. I accept, therefore, that this may be karma working and that I am being punished appropriately and cosmically. I have lied and exaggerated about my feelings to girls. And while eventually these little deceptions have come to bear in the form of less-than-pleasant endings—including one break-up at a Houston coffeehouse that can only be described as nightmarish—I’ve never been punished for anything. In other words, I’ve never had my heart broken. The one time that I was really betrayed in a relationship, I saw it as a story to tell my best friends and in retrospect the event has become more of a learning experience than an emotional moment of any significance in my life. (Plus, I got back at her a little by cutting off all communication and reading with delight her five e-mails begging and pleading me to respond.)

I’ve also considered the possibility that a dinner at L’Espalier just doesn’t work for me or Harvard for one reason or another. It’s too fancy on a student budget, maybe, or too nice a place to go when the status quo is slamming cups of saccharine punch and freak-nasty dancing ’til 1:00 a.m. before making a beeline to the Kong. That’s a nice thought to have since it shifts the blame squarely off my shoulders. Unfortunately, it’s just not true. Student budgets here are often anything but “student,” and, deep down, we undergraduates are a sophisticated bunch. Truly, if any student body can appreciate the subtle pleasures of fine French cooking, soft interior décor and rich linen napkins, it’s ours.

Finally, I’ve tossed around the possibility that, as one or more events in my Harvard career indicate, I’m simply not relationship-ready (or willing). What kind of events am I talking about? When I put together a list, it includes (among other things) the following: buying a six-foot inflatable penis with my friends and putting it on the design school’s patio (that was freshman year…apparently this isn’t as funny as it used to be); initiating an unknown number of Quad streakings (some solo) and working for Fifteen Minutes (for three long, love-life crippling years). But then, I know many people who have done one or more of these things and some of them have long-term girlfriends and boyfriends. So it can’t be any of these.

Finally, there is the most often-heard and by far the silliest excuse: that Harvard is just not a place to date. Harvard students are too busy overachieving, the story goes, and, for most, finding a special lady is just impossible. If you find yourself stuck in the drink-up-and-hook-up lane, college can be a romantic wasteland. The drunk hook-up, after all, is the poster child of poseur romance. Besides all the obvious token emptiness, there’s the worst poseur romance move of them all: that uncomfortable “post-hook-up” thing, where some people just don’t know when’s when. This is only exacerbated by the fact that you’re sleeping on a Twin XL mattress, and you are all too aware that there is somebody sleeping next to you as you try to drift into sweet dreamland. You’re better off trading in Harvard Square for Kenmore or Davis, or heck, just go to Wellesley. But this misses the point entirely.

First things first: the drunk hook-up can occasionally act as a helpful vetting tool. I’ve decided that if I can enjoy a post-hook-up night, then that girl’s definitely worth calling (read: e-mailing, IMing) again. Second, I believe Harvard is as good a place to date as any, and probably better than a number of colleges. Thinking otherwise merely profanes the gift certificate. This evening at L’Espalier is about the finer pleasures of life, that certain je ne sais quoi, not harping on the negative but remaining hopeful that magic seasoned with a full glass of bordeaux is out there.

* * * *

But I digress. And meanwhile, the gift certificate remains, collecting dust. This whole situation reminds me of the scene in Reality Bites when the disillusioned Troy quips, “I ride my own melt.” Whatever that means, I think it sums up where I am. The days are numbered, optimism is waning, the daydreams fade. Strength and honor, I tell myself, but to be honest, I don’t think that there’s much hope for this thing riding out as expected, no coup de grace. And that’s OK: I’ll take out one of my best friends, and we’ll order the lobster, pop the champagne and gossip—and if we order that second bottle of wine I just might start hacking my way through the French language with our garçon. L’Espalier, here I come…c’est magnifique.

Kenyon S. M. Weaver (kweaver@fas) is a social studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House. He enjoys tennis, inflatable penises and publicizing how he ain’t getting none.