Dining in the Dark

We're arrive to a chichi auberge lobby, accustomed beverages, feel food, and aprons. An accomplished artist plays piano in the background. Lots of flush humans are milling around, waiting, like us. Finally, a chef from California instructs us to band up according to table numbers, and to put our duke on the accept of the being in foreground of us, like in kindergarten.
When our table amount is called, our 10-person conga band approaches the amphitheater door. We accommodated a aphotic man whose job is to yield us to our table. He leads us into a amphitheater that's been adapted into a cave. Absolutely no ablaze of any kind. Totally, completely, angle dark. Absurd to see the being one bottom in foreground of you, let abandoned breadth we're going.
We snake about the ballroom, demography babyish steps, until our aphotic baton tells us we've accustomed at our annular table. One by one he introduces anniversary of us to our chairs. I sit down. It's absurd to see anything. No ablaze of any kind, anywhere.
I put my easily on the bend of the table, move my fingers around. I acquisition some forks, a knife, a spoon. In foreground of me I feel the bend of a baby plate. What's on it? Salad. I lick the bathrobe off my fingers.
To the appropriate and larboard I feel two added plates, smaller. Something bendable and anointed on them. Butter! My butter? Or did I just stick my fingers in anyone else's butter? Well, it was the bowl on the left, so according to my mom (the queen of table manners) it should accept been my butter. But it could accept been the adulate of the above Wall Street broker on my left. Maybe she will not notice.
Gently affective my appropriate duke forward, I acquisition a glass, with some algid aqueous in it. Water? Better aftertaste it and see. Yep. Hope it's my water. I admiration if I can put it aback in the aforementioned abode and not discharge it.
Forks on the left, breadth they should be. I'm hungry. Time to acquisition out what's in this salad. Not bad. Some affectionate of fruity dressing. But bisected that chaw just fell into my lap. Might as able-bodied aces it up and put it breadth it belongs, in my broad mouth. Cipher can see me.
Now that I anticipate about it, why not just eat the accomplished abuse bloom with my fingers? Easier this way. Kinda messy, but efficient. I accept to attending like a caveman, abstraction abounding of decrepit bill into my aliment hole.
What if somebody is filming this with an bittersweet camera? Will I see myself on YouTube tomorrow?
People are laughing, chatting, confessing to bistro with their fingers. Good, I'm not the alone one. My acquaintance Heidi on my right, who arrive me to this, asks me if the adulate amid us is abundance or hers. I acquaint her I threw abundance beyond the room. That gets a laugh.
Really athirst now. Why's the capital advance demography so long? I assumption it could yield a while to serve 200 humans if you can't see anything. The aphotic aide comes about allurement if we wish wine. Not for me, thanks. But the above Wall Street broker on my larboard does, and afterwards the aide leaves she swears he groped her breast.
Heidi's affectionate of freaking out a little. She's captivation my duke a lot. It's so dark. You can apprehend all these voices, but can't see anything. Strange how it feels claustrophobic in this big room. The black is smothering. But it's mostly fun. Because I apperceive it will end.
Finally Heidi decides she has to "go to the bathroom." A aphotic adviser leads her aback to the aperture and out. In reality, she could accept gone anywhere. All I apperceive for abiding is her articulation disappeared. Eventually she comes back, appearing hardly added relaxed.
Finally, the capital course! I let my fingers do the walking. Something bendable and balmy and gooey. Mashed potatoes. This added bendable affair feels like...green beans. Ah, here's something substantial. Some affectionate of meat, probably. I aces up the knife on the appropriate and alpha cutting.
Cutting what I can't see is tricky. How abundant am I cutting? How harder should I press? If I assuredly get it cut, I lift it up to the accepted breadth of my aperture and can acquaint it's a huge bite. Somehow I being it all in. Chicken! But something abroad too. Some affectionate of filling. Creamy and sweet. Somebody says pistachio. Could be. Whatever, it's acceptable and I'm starving.
The above Wall Street broker announces the aide has groped her breast for the 4th time. I ask her out loud if she's abiding it's him. That gets a beam and she asks for my buzz number. Love surfaces in the a lot of abrupt places.
Now I'm aback to application fingers. This knife and angle being just takes too long. And besides, cipher can see me, right? (Unless there absolutely is an bittersweet camera.) I anticipate my accessory is gonna be a asleep giveaway, though. Like a paintball compatible at the end of a battle. This is a blowzy meal and a lot of it is ambagious up abounding places besides my mouth. But it's tasty. Even if it's been in my lap first.
Dessert is some affectionate of cheesecake. I don't wish it so they accompany me the better bake-apple bowl in history. I'm abiding there's no bake-apple larboard in the San Fernando Valley because it's all on my plate. Enough to augment a antecedents of Malayan Flying Bake-apple Bats for a year. Nice variety. Pineapple, grapes, melons, but I'm too abounding now to eat abundant of it.
After two and a bisected hours it's time for coffee. They wisely accept not to cascade hot coffee in the dark, so the dimmest of lights comes on at one end of the room. But it's enough! We can see! Audible sighs of relief. Ah, so that's what everybody looks like! Wow. A lot added humans in actuality than I realized.
A man gets up at a belvedere and tells us about the alignment we're adopting money and acquaintance for. They abetment the aphotic with all kinds of air-conditioned services. Then he announces we're anniversary a aphotic businessman, a man sitting at our table.
This person, a actual acknowledged accumulated adviser who became aphotic as a teenager, gives the best ten minute allocution I've heard in my accomplished life. He says it's accounting that in the alpha God said "Let there be light." But he doesn't anticipate that's absolutely right. Because the aphotic is annihilation to be abashed of. It's the algid that's absolutely terrifying. What we absolutely crave, he said, is warmth.
The amore of anniversary others' hearts.
I anticipate I activate to understand.