Please don’t interpret this as a cry for help, but: I like to eat alone sometimes. Not always, of course. No one enjoys a convivial dinner with friends and companions as much as I do, but every so often I like to sit at the bar of a local restaurant with a book or the newspaper, a steak, and a glass of red wine. It’s one of the great uncomplicated pleasures of adult life, and like every uncomplicated pleasure, someone is always trying to complicate it.