When I was in my early twenties, eating alone in a restaurant was fraught with anxiety. Walking in by yourself, being led to a table, sitting down across from an empty chair — you might as well wear a sandwich board that reads Nobody wanted to have dinner with me. 

Whenever I did, I always brought a book, thinking it made me look intellectual and self-sufficient, when in fact a young person eating alone with a book looks even more pathetic than a young person eating alone without one. The book says: I have thought about this in advance, and I have brought a prop.