How I Didn't Meet My Boyfriend at The All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi Contest I Won

Twas the night before Halloween and I was in Sargent, preparing my body for the marathon of food it was about to endure. I was hungry. I was single. I was closing in on three hours of shoving scrunched up balls of salami in my mouth. So, yeah, I don’t really get why, but I was quite single. And quite hungry. I wanted to win Todoroki’s free all you can eat sushi for an entire quarter but, more important to me (and my mom), I wanted to win a man’s love.

I’ll always remember my yiayia’s most valuable advice to me: that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Yiayia would be proud, I know it, because I was using my most dangerous sexual tool. What’s better than some man’s stomach? My stomach. I had previously been more single, in like middle school, but I was extremely single at this moment.

“What you’re doing is so freaking cool,” one of my guy friends said to me, just before I sat down to compete. Would he be my boyfriend? Maybe. I think I’d prefer someone taller though. I wasn’t just single, I also had high freaking standards.

I sit down and look at the crowd. I count 13 men in total, only six of whom date women. Six potential boyfriends? Well no, three had girlfriends and one had that weird thing with my friend during welcome week--gross. Two potential boyfriends! I could smell the future of our romance just like the stickiness and saltiness of the rolls headed my way. At least, that’s how it used to smell when I was once very close to not being single.  

I win in a landslide. I look up from my now completely cleared plate that 12 minutes prior had 80 pieces of sushi on it. Only one of my potential suitors remained and, at the exact second he made eye contact with me, turns to another girl and literally falls in love. This moment right here, this was the most single I have ever been.