I’ve never made a reservation for just “one” before. I’ve made them for awkward numbers like three and seven, but never just for “me”. Not that I’ve never eaten alone before – I have, and like it – but this afternoon I called ahead and asked them to hold a spot for 1.

Rob will be in the studio tonight and I have the evening to myself. I thought about calling friends, making a plan for dinner and movie or something, but then I realized: I just want to be in my own company for a few hours, doing something other than typing or researching.

I’m going to go to one of my favorite restaurants – the kind that doesn’t care if you read and drink wine, alone, at a good table. The kind where idiot hipsters don’t stare when you take not one but two hours to finish your meal. The kind where there are even one or two others, just like you, who take extra. long. sips. of wine as they peer over the rim of the glass to finish off another chapter, without having to put the book down once. A kind of place where oysters are rampant and the tapas menu never disappoints.

Oh yes, tonight I will master the dance of being on my own and, like in Paris, I will take up three seats at the movies – one for me, one for my coat and one for my purse – and not feel the need to move my shit because, for all anyone knows, I’m waiting for my better half to come and join me with a bag of popcorn and a diet coke, “any minute now”. But he never does arrive, does he, because I’m here solo, ladies and gentlemen, and I call all this extra leg room a “perk”.

I refuse to label tonight anything lame, like “dating myself” or “date night with me” and launch into some romantic version of what this really is: a few extra hours to fill. But, by chance, should you find yourself with a few hours to spare on a Friday night some time and you’re not sure how to fill them, I urge you fight the feeling to call someone else and instead just take a night to be alone with you.

Put on some perfume, your good pair of jeans and bother with your eye-liner for a change, because it’ll make you feel pretty when the waiter looks right at you and asks, “red or white tonight, madam?”