Wearing leather to a vegan restaurant...kind of a power play

It’s date night and, in an effort to get me away from the books and to actually enjoy some quality time together, my boyfriend has suggested, dinner? He’s done well; it is neither valentine’s day nor our anniversary, and thus far all romantic clichés which I unironically disdain have been avoided. He really is very understanding. 

Knowing I need a good reason to trade fiction for in-person flirtations, he strategically suggests my favourite restaurant in town, a vegan pizzeria called Purezza, despite being himself an anaphylactic shock prone omnivore. 

Making sure to first express my delight at his suggestion, I double check that he is in fact the man I thought he was, namely, one who has on more than one occasion expressed his abhorrence at various forms of vegan cheese. After assuring me that he is more than happy to deal with cooked vegan cheese - wow, it really must be love! - we book a table for later that evening and I use the rest of the afternoon to read and plan my outfit, at the same time delighting in the fact that for once, I won’t be the awkward diner. 

Several outfit changes and an emergency de-stress vodka and coke later, I head over to his flat so we can get a taxi into town together. I sit on his bed and chat away to him and his flatmate whilst he carefully puts the finishing touches to his hair to make it look…carelessly ruffled? However, as he turns from the mirror and reaches for his coat, my compliments on his appearance die on my lips. Instead, I ask, in mock horror:  

You’re joking. You’re not wearing that, are you?! 

What’s wrong with this? He asks me, slightly taken aback before he reads my expression and realises I’m joking. 

Babe, it’s a vegan restaurant, I laugh. 

Oh shit, yeah, he laughs back, draping his leather jacket round his shoulders anyway after I reassure him that I really don’t think anyone will actually mind. 

Besides, it’s from Vinted right? Like at least it’s second hand dead animal skin, I tease him on the way out. 

Regrettably, the jacket does look really good on him.  

Except then he says, It’s kind of a power play if you think about it, turning up to a vegan restaurant in a leather jacket. 

I don’t laugh. 

For payback, I bring his coat choice up again once we get to the doors of the restaurant. 

I can’t believe you’re wearing real leather to a vegan restaurant, I begin loudly as we wait to be seated. 

Annie, would you shut up, he mutters to me, squeezing my hand playfully whilst smiling at the table nearby who have turned at the sound of my accusation. 

This is worse than the time I went to my university’s vegan society wearing a fur coat, I tell him. It was faux fur, but it didn’t look like it unless you were up close. 

Well then that sounds ok? He replies. 

Well it would have been, I continue, except, disgusted by my apparently turning up wearing a dead animal to a vegan meet-up, nobody would come near me so that I could deliver that all important explanation. 

Oh Annie, he groans on my behalf. 

I know right, I grin, it was a total fur paux on my part.