Dating lessons for a neurotic
By: Julie Cirelli
Published: January 11, 2008
A man I like is coming to my apartment tonight, to cook dinner
with me. It'll be our first date.
Last night, hopping around the kitchen in my socks, I decided
to redecorate. "A kitchen is not complete without a couch
in it!" I declared to my houseguests, and, sniffing the
air suspiciously, added: "Does this place smell like
cat pee?"
There's nothing I can do about the fact that my kitchen hasn't
been renovated since the '70s. I rent and am responsible for
my own repairs, and I certainly don't intend to pour thousands
of dollars into replacing the gray-brown linoleum with something
less barf-like, only to move out a year later and lose my
investment. So, for now at least, I'm stuck with the tiny
old stove, the ugly floor, and the overhead ceiling fan that's
just waiting to fall off and decapitate someone. I can, however,
control the set-up and, dammit, if I want a couch in my kitchen,
I will have a couch in my kitchen.
"Grab one end of that table," I said, pointing
to my 72" industrial prep table, the centerpiece around
which the rest of my kitchen orbits. My guests, visiting for
two weeks from Vienna with their 4-month-old son, are nothing
if not polite. "In Austria, it's not typical to have
a couch in the kitchen," said Steffan, a sleeping infant
tethered to his chest. He helped me hoist the steel table
into the corner, opening up some "couch space".
This kitchen is a mess and I have a hot cinematographer from
Barcelona coming over in less than 20 hours. I lifted an over-stuffed
chair from the living room over my head and slammed it down
on the kitchen floor, likely to my downstairs neighbor's distress.
"Kitchen couch!"
One of my Austrians, Nina, is a self-proclaimed sensualist
and frank about all things sexy. She beckoned me to sniff
her forearm, a scent, she explained, that contained pheromones
which cause strangers to want to "get closer to her skin."
Smell is the essense of attraction, she said, and right now
my apartment smells like cat toilet.
She sent me to the store with the following shopping list,
which I've annotated with her explanations:
1. Febreze Air Freshener. Nina recommends the "fresh
linen" scent. When I told her I have an aversion to chemicals,
she suggested hanging fresh laundry over the chairs in the
apartment (reminding me to remove them before anyone actually
comes over).
2. Candles. We put natural beeswax tea candles I had leftover
from a party all over the kitchen, in the bathroom and around
the bedroom. "Light these when he gets here. Watch you
don't burn the cats."
3. Basil, rosemary and mint plants, to make the kitchen smell
sweet and fresh, and to give the (false) impression that I
am a gourmet.
4. Lemon leaves, to put in vases and bushels around the house,
also for good-smellingness.
5. Fresh flowers for the kitchen. "Get cheap ones at
the deli."
6. Lemon wedges. If you cook with garlic tomorrow, Nina explained,
keep wiping your fingers on the lemon to get rid of the smell.
No one likes being touched with garlic hands.
7. "Non-sticky" lip gloss and mints. Put these
around the house so they can be casually procured at a moments
notice. Or completely forgotten about.
8. Turn on the oven. "Warmth makes people's muscles
relax," Nina said. And it makes them more inclined to
shed layers of clothing. Remind me to turn it off at the end
of the night (I can just see the headlines, "Girl asphyxiates
in botched seduction attempt.").
9. Clothing. Wear something familiar to him, she said. He's
coming to your place for the first time and you're a little
intimidating. Wear something casual -- one color, so it doesn't
distract from your eyes and lips -- that hopefully falls off
your shoulder from time to time. Or, falls off completely.
10. Make sure there's plenty of toilet paper in the bathroom.
Self-explanatory.
We worked on the kitchen for another hour, and I tucked the
shopping list into my purse. Now, we just wait and pray to
god that my date doesn't Google me and find this article.
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