1. Order onions. This is good, because you can make a joke about the onions and how they're making you cry. When you're crying in a restaurant, you badly need a joke, even a crap one, so that you don't have to excavate your murky interior, rooting around for the words to describe all the unarticulated misery of that moment. Instead, when someone says, "Why are you crying?" you can refer to the onions. Or say something like, "It's because I have to kill you tonight."
2. Drink wine. Not so much that you're slurring your words, and your mouth and tongue and teeth have turned purple, and your eyes droop to half-moons, and you accidentally spill on the tablecloth, and say things you only half-mean. But enough wine. If you find this balance, please tell me what it is.
3. Before you start crying, when you first feel the red sting, go to the bathroom. Get ahold of yourself. Sit on the toilet, drop your head into your hands, dig your fingers into your hair. Pee while you're in there, because, well, there you are. Peeing can short-circuit the whole thing. It's like being forced to iron a shirt in the middle of a temper tantrum. Be warned, however, that the bathroom can be a trap, especially if there is a line. (If you are a woman, there will probably be a line.) Then you are not Getting Ahold of Yourself in a private place, you are sniveling in a line of bored women who may try to soothe you, who will ask you what is wrong, honey, who may possibly take your wet face to their large and foreign bosoms. Or else they will just stand there, indifferent and gnawing on their fake nails, and either way, you'll just want to scream.
4. Understand that the man you're with doesn't know what to do. If you come with an instruction manual, please get it out at this time. Know that when you start crying — wherever, but especially in a restaurant, one as posh as this one, with leather banquettes and clean, modern design — he does not know what to do. He grapples for whatever he can get ahold of, like a sailor watching his ship drift from the dock, unable to reach the anchor. Maybe what he says is clever ("Save it for dessert!"). Maybe it is stupid ("Are you having your period?"). But it's all a variant of one critical question, which is, "How can I get you to stop?" Probably the best way he can get you to stop, right now, is to give up his need to fix things. Maybe if he just stayed calm, it would rub off on you. But that is hard for him, because, if he is a sensitive man, he'll think you're crying because of him. As it turns out, this time you are.
5. Try not to involve the waitress. She's had a long night. She's probably a very nice person who would like to do nothing more than kick off her heels, do a bump of coke and lose an hour or four at the bar before going home to her loft and boning her scraggly indie-rock boyfriend. So leave her out of this. But sometimes you mean to, and you can't.
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Crying in restaurants can't always be stopped, but it can be prevented.
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Like when she comes to take your order, and you say, "Do you think I should have the fish or the steak?" and the man you are with says, "Order whatever the fuck you want," and then it's like the air was vaccuumed out of your lungs — why is he talking to you like this? — and the tears gush out before you can even stammer a response. You're just going to have to work the tears; they are no longer optional.
And so you say, looking down at the white linen tablecloth, "I guess I'll take the fish. And some extra napkins." And now she is a part of your fight. See how this happened? She doesn't know what to do. She is now helping to carry the stress and unhappiness that is weighing down your table. Though, frankly, you could use an extra hand these days.
6. Don't exaggerate. Yes, exaggerating is gratifying ("You always do this!"). It feels good ("You never listen!"). But it will get you into all kinds of trouble. It doesn't help this situation, which has become difficult and suddenly weighty. It's not really fair, either. For instance, in that anecdote I just told you? That wasn't exactly what the man said. He said, "Order what you want," which doesn't sound nearly as bad (it sounds, in fact, only logical). Were he to read this story, he would point out that he never had much of a temper, that he never laced his speech with F-bombs meant to wound, and even more damning, that I was the one guilty of such impulse and indiscretion (i.e., "Who the fuck is she?", "Where the fuck have you been?")
But anyway, what I am trying to telegraph to you in the above anecdote is the disdain in his voice, the cruel indifference to the situation — Fish or steak? Restraint or indulgence? Be good or be bad? — and how his words sideswiped me, reminded me of how he regarded all the recurring little dilemmas in my life, or the way I cried in restaurants, which used to unmoor him and now was merely another bump in another night that should have been great but somehow went wrong. And still cost $200.
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