I’ve never dated in the app era. Instead, I met people the old-school way: on the computer, namely through the OkCupid website, where I went by the username “tacobellforever.”
On Tinder, you judge someone first by their name, age, and pictures (right?). But on OkCupid, your username led. And to me “tacobellforever” made the right first impression: I was fun (a Baja Blast, even) and I found pleasure in low-brow things. Anyone who saw themself as above this would self-select out. Also, I was a student with little money and no fake ID; my options were limited. “You have a new message from tacobellforever” — people would like that!
So when Jon, username redacted, slid into my inbox, it was natural that the conversation drifted to Taco Bell. My preference for the quesarito made me a Taco Bell maximalist, on the hunt for the next and best. Jon, meanwhile, was a self-described “Taco Bell fundamentalist,” preferring the frugal, no-nonsense potato soft taco. (If an affinity for Taco Bell says something about you as a person, so does your Taco Bell order.)
Jon was bummed, he wrote, that there wasn’t a Taco Bell nearby. At the time, Boston, where we both lived, famously did not live más. (Does it now? It does at least have more Taco Bells than it did then.) After I broke the news that there was a location tucked into a mall food court in Cambridge, it became clear that instead of meeting for coffee, we had to get Taco Bell. On a cold night in 2013, we met up: I ordered my usual, he ordered his.
A year later, we celebrated our anniversary at the same mall food court, the same Taco Bell. Over the years, we have put away countless Taco Bell potatoes together, sucked down so many shared Baja Blasts, and have often flashed the “marry me” Fire Sauce packets at each other — at first as a joke, then eventually seriously. Ten years after that first date, when we’d moved to a different and more Taco Bell-rich city and had decided, why not get married?, Jon got down on one knee, where else but outside a Taco Bell.
Yet this thing that I once thought made Jon and I so silly and special is, it turns out, not exactly unique. I found out that the Taco Bell where we met closed via Reddit. One of the comments even read, “My wife and I had our first date here in 2013.” Did I just find Jon’s alt? Reading the user history made it clear that this was a totally different couple, who happened to have met in the same place at the same time.
When I recently interviewed couples about their date night habits, two of them brought up Taco Bell without any prompting on my end. “Our first date was at Taco Bell,” one person even noted. Taco Bell weddings are apparently of enough interest that the company offers them as a ready-to-go Las Vegas “experience.” And people have, it seems, indeed used those “marry me” sauce packets seriously. What exactly is it about Taco Bell?
I asked Jon why we met at Taco Bell and not, say, at a McDonald’s. “Taco Bell is delightful,” he said, adding that it’s both delicious and a little tacky. I’ve never really had affection for McDonald’s, but even if I did, I can’t imagine having made my username “mcdonaldsforever,” nor wanting to center a conversation around McDonald’s. That would feel too earnest somehow: McDonald’s just isn’t very funny, nor does it indicate anything interesting, I think, about one’s taste.
There is a reason, after all, that Taco Bell has earned its own literary magazine, the independently run Taco Bell Quarterly, while there is no lovingly joking analog called McDonald’s Monthly. (The first question in Quarterly’s submission guidelines: “Is this a joke?” It’s not; there have been seven volumes so far.)
Taco Bell, unlike many other chains, has always felt a little ironic and in on its own joke. Maybe this is by virtue of its food, which has never been about authenticity but irreverence, the chain inventing its own ridiculous taxonomy of mash-ups (Mexican pizza, quesarito). Taco Bell isn’t “real” Mexican food, but it has always, at least in my lifetime, been knowing about this: A Cheez-It tostada lands at Taco Bell, because its audience is stoners and silly people. Maybe adding to the chain’s cheeky vibe is the fact that for so long, it was promoted by a talking chihuahua.
Either way, Taco Bell has always felt like the shitpost option. To suggest it as the meeting point for a date feels less like being cheap, as I’d feel if a suitor suggested Chick-fil-A or Burger King, and more like sussing out someone else’s taste and whether they too are also a little goofy and fun and not self-serious. They can like the highbrow but they are humble enough to accept that sometimes, nothing hits like gooey, processed cheese. Taco Bell is the Haha, but what if? choice. To love Taco Bell is to also be aware of all the ways maybe you shouldn’t love Taco Bell. And yet, we can’t help what we love.
Times change. The quesarito is no longer officially on the menu board. The mall where we met replaced its chain-filled food court with a food hall of upscaled options. We don’t eat Taco Bell as much anymore. But Jon and me, that’s forever.
