Choose Your Own Adventure: Going Out To Eat With Your Long-Term Monogamous Girlfriend

Jan. 24, 2011

By Brandon Scott Gorrell info

I direct editorial here at TC. Email me: brandon@thoughtcatalog.com.

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On your way to the authentic Catalan restaurant, just off Las Ramblas, in the city of Barcelona, one of the premier European destinations to see European-style futbol (“soccer” in American English) in a year-round pleasant Mediterranean climate where the tapas y las cervezas can be enjoyed until well after midnight, served at both the all-night discothecas and late-night tapas bars (according to Time Out’s Guide to Barcelona, “[one of the] most hip and culturally savvy” guidebooks about Barcelona available (New York Times)), on C/l’ Hospital, your girlfriend suddenly stops walking and pulls out Time Out’s Guide to Barcelona.

“Wait,” she says. “I forgot about this one restaurant. There’s this restaurant that has flamenco on Fridays for free, it’s here [she's pointing at an intersection on the map which she has displayed for you]…” You two are now facing each other in the middle of the pedestrian-only street – a narrow, “authentically European” cobblestone corridor lined with colorful apartment buildings whose tenants hang their laundry outside strung on lines across the avenue which indeed give the street an “authentic European feel.” You feel sort of averse to going to flamenco, because you simply feel as if you’ve only “signed up for” going to dinner, not a night of music, flamenco and drinking until 2 a.m. At the same time, you know that you two haven’t yet seen flamenco and that you both have talked about wanting to see flamenco and that to see flamenco would be to have a “traditional and authentic European experience” and naturally you feel a certain pressure to tell your girlfriend that yes, sure, you two should just go to see flamenco. Besides, you know she wants to.

You: say “Yeah, let’s go to see flamenco, that’s actually a perfect idea” or you shake your head and say “I don’t know.”

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  • Jamie

    absolute goldmine

  • Kal

    i tried to do the right thing… this is accurate. i feel like i try to be nice a lot but it just backfires…

  • accordionkeyz

    This was brilliant. Although she was totally being a bitch and I was in no way retarded.

  • http://heystellaaaaahhh.blogspot.com/ matthew

    I actually had a hard time choosing between the flamenco or not.

  • http://twitter.com/t_baugh Travis Baugh

    damn…

  • http://twitter.com/JosephErnest Joseph Ernest Harper

    Nailed it again. Definitely would have gotten laid.

  • http://lazyroar.blogspot.com/ Lazy Roar

    Please do more, this was excellent.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1363230138 Michael Koh

    EVERYTHING IS JUST A GAME

  • http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/ tao

    highly enjoyed this

    felt amused, 'delighted,' emotional

    really sweet…

    felt myself wanting to read a novel like this at times

  • mario

    used 'open link in new tab' to simulate holding the page with my finger like the way i did with choose your own adventure goosebumps.

  • Chelsea

    i won!

  • kids with guns

    “and both of you sit on this bench for over ten minutes of excruciating silence, watching younger, happier couples pass arm-in-arm, until you stand, turn and say that you’re going home and that she can come with you if she wants. “

    every rshippy ive ever been in ugh

  • http://twitter.com/dahveed_miller david miller

    'incalculably authentic' – sweet.

    enjoyed this very much brandon.

    seemed like a kind of travel writing i've never read before.

    also felt like i was in the flow with my choice to 'go flamenco'.

    yes.

  • http://kilakilakila.blogspot.com brittany wallace

    i enjoyed this a lot… good job

    i think i say the sentences “i don't know” and “you decide” 14x the amount of the average human

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=505759069 Julian Tully Alexander

    My friend and I read this out loud as we chose our own adventure. We had a “traditional and authentic European experience”. Really liked this article.

  • http://twitter.com/georgedarroch George Darroch

    I think I enjoyed this. Perhaps this is why I am single and travel alone.

    I never have to choose. Anything.

  • Martha

    This was excellent!

  • Laura S

    wow…i swear this could have easily been about me and my bf of two years….we're always getting into the “you pick” “no you pick” fight over where to go for dinner…advice?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=612928768 Samie Rose

    This was brilliant. I love you (seriously, wanna go get some palak paneer sometime? Or something?)

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