Last week I went to the Queen East restaurant Table 17 for dinner.
The primary appeal of the place isn’t the food, but the ambience. Catering to a primarily almost-middle-aged professional clientele, Table 17 sports an attractive staff and has the look of a place that was designed by somebody who spent a lot of money on their glasses. It has the same kind of vibe that Adult Alternative radio does, and its primary virtue is tribal, allowing the patrons to feel like they’re dining in downtown Toronto with an appropriately sophisticated and urban crowd.
It’s always busy, which probably says more about the people who go there than the restaurant itself.
But no matter, I was there alone as Rachelle was playing floor hockey, and I was restless, not quite sure what to do with myself while I waited for my food. I had my notebook, copy of the New Yorker and Blackberry arrayed on the table before me like the props they were, and I pretended to be engrossed in their possibilities while the world of the restaurant swirled around me.
The conversations at the nearby tables–all seemingly mediated by the streams of information flowing from each person’s iPhone– and conducted by people who essentially looked like me, all circled the same topics: real estate, yoga, biking downtown, winter vacations or alternative schools for their children.
It was at this moment that I was seized with a kind of self-loathing.
For months, perhaps years for all I now know, Rachelle and I have been trying to buy a house in the city, a task in which we’re proving ourselves completely overmatched. It’s entirely preoccupying and when we get together with people– whether we mean to or not– we rattle on about our escapades in the real estate market. It’s like men talking about golf, stories that are so vital and fascinating to the participant, but alienating and boring to everybody else.
This sort of self-involvement, which is all too readily shared, is insidious. At certain times in our lives we become focused, preoccupied by the things we’ve decided we need. In many cases these touchstones, (a house, children and their needs, our placement at work) are broadly shared, and because so many other people around us have similar fixations, we think it’s the connective tissue between us, but it’s not.
It’s just a kind of proximity, and unless we’re attentive to that we lose ourselves into that tribe, or worse into class, and begin to connect with people based on what they’re doing and where they’re culturally situated, rather than who they are. This, of course, is boring, and it was just before my scallops arrived that I realized just how boring I was becoming, too.