Postres

Years ago, back when I had my old blog, I wrote an essay called Cake. Here’s an excerpt:


“It’s our glass houses, our floor plans, our gods, our cake. It’s our real cake, our metaphorical cake, it’s the vanilla and chocolate and yellow cakes that we have or have not or eat them or discard them. And what the fuck? where is all this goddamned cake and what the fuck does it look like? And why am I constantly longing after the preservative-filled-pre-packaged-twinkie-type cakes offered this world, and why am I satisfied with eating only this one crappy variety? I want Tiramisu. I want German Chocolate. I may not even have to eat it, but one day goddamnit I’ll at least recognize it. May cake help us all.”

 

And look, I’m just saying that maybe somewhere in all the countries between my old apartment in San Francisco and now I’ve just lost that desire to even look for that Cake. You know, like the real kind.


There are two stories here.


One is about how just a few days ago as I wiped the sleep from my eyes I was asked “quieres postres por desayuno?” and I nodded a yes while mumbling “quieres juevos tambien?” And I’m telling you that within a half an hour I was dipping a fork into a gooey, rich slice of artisan chocolate cake and feeling the twinge of my eyes rolling too far into the back of my head as it hit my tongue.


And there’s another story here about how I am absolutely sure that the other cake in this story isn’t even the one I want, but it feels so much like it, and all of my love-starved skin is drinking it in like a drug.


And I don’t even know which story it is, but yesterday was Valentine’s day, and while I was busy posting missives to a woman half-way around the world, I actually fell asleep with my legs entwined between someone’s whom I barely know.


So yes, I am basically telling you that I both ate and have my Cake.


And look, I know that this isn’t real, and I know that I’m not even really entirely comfortable wrapping myself with this man, but I also know that although it’s been 20 years since my time in Trastevere that I have clearly mythologized that time in my head, because here I am just simply fucking melting beneath a few whispered bellas while the skin of my naked neck is pinched ever so slightly between his teeth. It just all comes together into this tapestry that feels so destined, so reminiscent of another time in such a particular way that it makes me feel like I owe my life now to whom I was way back then.


May Cake help us all. 



–M

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