The man across from me closed his menu. He looked at the dress. He looked at me inside the dress. And then he did something remarkable: he laughed. “Apparently, we are.”
That night, we ate like gods. The dress ordered the duck fat potatoes. The dress demanded the chocolate soufflé at 10:47 PM, long after dessert was “closed.” The dress paid—well, I paid, but the dress took the credit, waving a black card like a tiny surrender flag.
Let me explain.
Last Tuesday, I walked into a restaurant wearing a dress that had no business making decisions. It was sage green, backless, with a skirt that started its sentence somewhere around my ribs and finished with a whisper just above the knee. A frivolous dress. The kind you buy after one glass of Sancerre, thinking, When? and the dress answers, Tonight.
Here is what I learned: A frivolous dress doesn’t just clothe you. It speaks for you. It is the alter ego that doesn’t apologize for wanting the raw scallop, the last pour of wine, the table by the window even though you didn’t reserve it. It understands that ordering a meal is not about food. It is about appetite. And appetite, dressed well, is unstoppable. -I frivolous dress order the meal-
“I think we’re doing the ordering tonight,” the waiter smiled. Not at me. At the dress.
“I frivolous dress order the meal—” is not a broken sentence. It is a confession. The man across from me closed his menu
I sat down across from someone who had already decided what we would eat. He had the menu in his hands—the way men do, as if it were a treasure map and they the only cartographers. “The octopus,” he began, “is excellent here.”