Jo vs. Chocolate

I am home from a perfect date. Wait. It’s more like this: I am home after devouring the perfect dessert. Mom and Dad, please turn your heads in shame, as I was not such a lady tonight but more like a rabid rottweiler, attacking a velvety, rich, dark chocolate mess of a dessert, a pot of chocolate at a little Spanish tapas joint off of Santa Monica Blvd, where the legendary run of asphalt meets the ocean.

It was like this. It all started innocent enough. We were staring at the tapas menu. Tortillas Espinola? Patatas Bravas? Whatcha Maccallit? We pointed at sweet-looking delights in the window at the bar and asked, “What’s this? What’s that?” and at the end we ended up inhaling small bites of white asparagus and yellow squash. But when it came to the platos, I hesistated. Not like me to be quiet, so I wasn’t.

“I think…” Pause. “I think we need to leave room for dessert.”

I knew I liked him when he didn’t flinch at this suggestion, didn’t talk about calories or a morning run, oh-so common in Los Angeles. He just said: “Well, why don’t we get two?”

I protested. Weakly. Oh, it was so fake, why am I living in the shadow of Hollywood!? Oh no, I deplored, that’s far too much….okay….alright. Okay, yes. Yes!

The waitress downplayed the whole affair. If she were a cat and I were a cat, I’d take her out to the alley and outright fight her, swipe my paws her way for lying to me about the damn goodness of the thing.

“It’s dark chocolate. It’s rich. It’s good,” she said. Simply. Her voice flat and dull and carrying an air of nonchalance, longing for her shift to be over.

“I’m in, all in,” I said. When did I start playing poker? Wasn’t this a dinner date? We ordered the pot of chocolate and bread pudding.

The desserts came, side by side, passed to us over the food counter by the chef himself. The bread pudding looking more like a tart or crème brulee, square and carmelized and pretty on a little white plate. And the pot of chocolate, it…well, it was just that. It was a sassy chocolate filling, pudding-ish, in a mini mug of sorts with the faintest brush of fresh whipped cream kissing the top.

We dived into the pudding and exchanged pleasantries about the smoothness. He was used to more goo. More pockets of happiness and cream and chunks of bread. I get it, I get it, I shrugged it off. I was thinking….chocolate! Come to me!

I went for it, and it was so thick and stiff that at first I panicked, thinking my spoon wouldn’t return to me. Simply, it didn’t want to come back to me. It was stuck in that velvet ocean, that dark undertow where fat doesn’t exist and you just want to turn over and scream to the whole world that you found it. That you found something exquisite and extraordinary and happy in a tiny little pot.

And then I did it. I groaned in the restaurant and slapped my right hand down on the bar top, accidentally hitting the woman next to me. But all is fair in food and wine and so be it: man down, who gives a shit, because I was in heaven! And then I took another bite, and another, and another, and just ate the entire damn thing. My date gave me looks of surprise. Of delight, the occasional glance of admiration. Like he didn’t think I could do it.

Well, that just goes to show: he doesn’t know me yet.

Because when it comes to me and chocolate, I can always take it down.