Cupcake Dan I

When Rosa entered the hotel bar, not a single head turned to see her wearing the fur coat over her skimpy dress, tight enough to expose the unflattering sagging of her skin, and the lights dim enough to expose the crease marks from her underbelly all the way to the scars in her cheeks. Outside, it was the five o’clock blueness of a winter evening casted out across cold steel skyscraper windows, into porcelain bedrooms and marble countertops, heated tile bathrooms and stainless steel light fixtures glowing and radiant like glossy magazine covers. The tavern by the lake was just across the lakeshore bridge overlooking the expanse of smog and light pollution over the entertainment district of the dirty, rat infested, city. From the bridge the lake was visible in all its wintery dreariness, with chunks of ice and plastic bobbing along the shoreline. Rosa had felt the gusts from sewer vents and the fumes from subway cars blowing up her tight dress as she crossed the bridge, and the cold wind biting into her cracked ruby lips. The business executives in their trench coats and the scantily clad receptionists all wearing their cemented sole designer shoes clacked on past against the cement without even a glance at Rosa’s painted face. The hours of preparation she had spent cramped in her tiny apartment bathroom attempting the impossible task of trying to hide the weathered age in her eyes and stretched out across the flabby reaches of her skin, trying to perfume away the scent of loneliness of self loathing, had proven to be exactly as she had predicted, impossible. Before leaving the dusty little attic and creaking down the steep wooden staircase that quaked and bent beneath her weight and her wobbly knees, she had made several trips from the bathroom to her full length mirror, back and forth, before resigning to her fate as an ugly, undesirable old maid. 

On every bus and subway car eyes shone through vortexes of melancholy and post-work day remorse, the herds of company executives and accountants resembled great buildings after five alarm fires, lovers after dispassionate, lacklustre attempts at sex, fragmented, empty shells of the glowing promise they had once had. Rosa rode on, wearing her grandmothers fur coat and chewing pink gum, her painted face appearing distorted and ghostly in the windows reflection while she gazed into the blackening atmosphere of buildings and clouds and the smoke and gasoline and minds of all the burnt out Thursday night commuters. Rosa looked ahead at the paint chipping off the bus walls and the map of stops which she had memorized in her outings and the advertisements for fine wine dining and campaigns to promote unemployment insurance. Old Weston was nothing but tire yards and junky old men with fat wives. Caledonia had its share of places to see but the men were oily from working on motors and garlic bread and they were all tied in with the mob and reminded Rosa of her father. She had once picked up a client who worked at a butcher shop there and he had paid her in meat and though his thick arms and hairy hands had known how to satisfy her quite well, she had gained a few pounds only after a few weeks seeing him, and remained no richer than before. Carlo headed to Rosa’s little attic straight after his work shifts on Tuesday nights, stinking from handling raw meat all day, mixed in with the bottle of stale cologne he had kept stowed in the glovebox of his beige Taurus nearly since he bought the old car as a teenager, and he was quick about his business with Rosa. Carlo was an effiecent man, and Rosa was merely one stop on his way home from work, along with the stops he would make picking up milk or the other essentials requested by his wife. 

And then there was Cupcake Dan. The folds of her memory steamed like the sweat and rancid sweet-toothed breath of the belching beluga whale-man, Cupcake Dan. Cupcake Dan had an office in his mother’s basement where he worked remotely doing service calls for a phone company, a perk he had managed from his disability of having broken his ankle years before from stepping off a curb, and the aggravation it had been causing him ever since. Cupcake Dan had glasses which magnified his brownish pea eyes that squinted as he spoke, and erupted as he ate. His cheeks and chin and neck were all flush with his chest, and accentuated his belly which hung off over the edge of his chair. Cupcake Dan had a calm affability to his person in the way he spoke softly and with so much breath, desperately gasping and his nose whistling between words, as though his oxygen were about to run out. As a result of his gentle, breathy voice, and his sheer knack for disarming enraged customers, Cupcake Dan had managed to climb the ranks of the I.T support company he worked for. Often between the phone calls with angry customers, Cupcake Dan stole bites of the chocolate bars and jelly candies and crumbs from the bottom of chip bags or cookie containers laid out and sprawled along his desk of papers and his sticky key board, chewing with more intensity and urgency than any other activity he ever found himself doing. After quick intervals of inhaling as many bites as possible, Cupcake Dan licked his fingers clean from the chocolate smears or the salt and vinegar crumbs and proceeded to take the next customer left on hold. 

The basement had a heavy curtain of foul respiration which caked itself into the peeling wall paper, and the wine shag carpet and the nostrils of anyone breathing in the sweaty, noxious gas. Straight ahead from the creaky wooden steps was where Dan spent most hours of the day, At his sticky and stained, snack wrapper laden desk, which he strictly refused his mother to clean for him, thus leading to grimy spots that had become ancient and deeply engraved into the desk’s design, historic relics from treats past. Above the desk was a two foot wide window exposing the room to a faint glimmer of outside light, and when coupled with the dim orange glow from the ceiling light, it was just enough to illuminate the tapestry of cobwebs and dust constellations hovering through the air. When combined with the obtrusive blue computer light, the room was just illuminated enough to cast Dan's hulking, slouched shadow against the greyish walls. The desk itself was exquisite, a decadent and sturdy walnut with subtle golden drawer handles, a fine and smooth surface with dark lines and engravings which once breathed with the life of the tree and the forest it came from, and now had come to sop with the stale air, and hardened sugar puddles calcified into the paneling. The chair was a specially designed orthopaedic, half reclining desk chair which Belinda has bought for him as a congratulatory gift for him ever receiving the job, and despite Dan’s increasing weight over the years, the chair had remained as sturdy and malleable and as swiveling as it had straight from the box. 

At around 7pm, after hours spent in the kitchen and before her nightly glass of Pinot Grigio to go with whatever sitcom she’s following that given night, Belinda ventured down the creaky basement steps with a trey of Shepard’s pie or maccaroni casserole or general Tao chicken, all of which she began cooking as soon as she had finished Serving Dan his lunches. Dan accepted his meal trays with a grunt and waited for the door at the stop of the stairs to click shut before grunting and burping his way through the army sized portions before him. Belinda blamed herself for Dan's obesity, having served him third helpings as a child for both dinner and dessert, never once refusing him, and continuously stocking the cupboards more and more with worse and worse sugar loaded. trans fat laden, nutritionally devoid snack treats. It didn’t occur to Belinda how the talking shark in the tv commercials could be out to betray her and her child with its gelatinized, fructose injected gummy fish, or how the happy young healthy mother’s marketing single serving chocolate pies, or microwave dinners with twice the sodium and three times the trans fat would ever be the cause of her son’s, and her own bad fortune. by the time Belinda had realized that Dan’s weight, had become an issue, she herself had put in a few pounds, and like prophecy her mind connected all the facts directly to the cupboard just above the sink. The cupboard was just next to the kitchen window, and offered a perfect scenic view of the backyard during periods of mindless munching. As she opened the cupboard with a garbage bag in hand, she stood for a moment contemplating the cookie box in front of her. She took one out from the box, and the crystallized raspberry dopple atop the soft shortbread shone beneath the kitchen light and could almost taste itself onto her tongue. She brought the cookie towards her mouth as one final treat before seeing a faint reflection of herself in the kitchen window, and then as her eyes fell towards the dead early spring grass she heaved the box along with all the other boxes of modified corn starch, hydrogenated palm oil, refined wheat, milk ingredient snacks into the garbage bag. Once Dan made it home from school that day, and as usual, headed directly for the cupboard, he predictably broke into tears. Dan rarely threw tantrums, but when he did, they were good related, and he often became violent enough in his screaming and kicking rage to break whatever object was nearest to him. Belinda, being the sensitive, soft hearted mother she was, got Dan into the car with her, and off they went to John Vince’s, Dan’s haven, the ultimate, boundless, storefront, the orgiastic Eden for all things diabetic. And again, that night Belinda laid awake.

Belinda could remember the only time she had ever refused him, when Dan was still 8 years old. He had cried to her after being called ‘Tubby’ one day by a middle schooler named Greg who stole Dan’s ‘dragon boy’ action figure. As the tears rolled down Dan’s plump cheeks which he narrowed into Belindas purple blouse, she had vowed to herself to do the most motherly good possible and to help Dan become healthy once and for all. Belinda was torn, and she felt cold suspense as she loaded Dan into the car one morning for their grocery run. Grocery shopping was Dan’s second favourite activity aside from eating, and Dan loved to do down at the ‘crisper corner’ which had the best baked goods anyone in town had ever known. The Crisper corner featured Oleg’s pastries, made by a tall and chiseled, silver haired, glass eyed war veteran from Russia whom allegedly could be seen in his bakery working all hours of the night. Oleg, with his veiny muscles throbbing through his thick forearms, his shiny silver crew cut glistening with perspiration, as he rolled and kneaded and ever so softly sprinkled ingredients into his batters, was some type of baking prodigy, a virtuoso of flavour, the likes of attracted not only the locals, but tourists as well, all the way to his brick walled bakery located deep in the slummiest part of town. Oleg’s pastries began simply as a place for junkies to sit and drink coffee and chain smoke and do lines in the bathroom all night since Oleg himself never slept and stayed open baking his creations around the clock while his stony, beauty marked wife and his inviting and attractive young daughter, Kitya, rotated shifts at the cash, filling boxes with doughnuts and cruellers and other assortments by the dozen, filling coffees and of course, boxing up up Oleg’s most famous cupcakes. The flavour list alone often had customers salivating as they stared with indecision and the rows of delectably arranged cupcakes, lined up behind a case window. There were the coconut cream pie cupcakes, the lady finger cupcake, the chocolate mousse,the peanut brittle, the banana split cupcake, the toffee caramel, and others that had names like ‘le creme de la creme’ and ‘the apogee’ and ‘the manna-nana’ 

Customers stood by the display case with a mix of dread, inertia and anticipation, sometimes even anguish, palpating and salivating in a trance like delirium, considering the immense weight of the decision before them.

Meanwhile, Oleg’s stony wife, Olga, tapped her chubby fingers aggressively against the register, making loud thumps, and informing the customers when asked which one was the best that “they’re all good.” Regardless if it was a child celebrating their ninth birthday, or a couple on their first date, Olga received them all with the same unpleasant, ornery, exasperated greeting. 

Each morning, the same delivery boy showed up with his Crisper company van parked outside the store and walked up to the counter with timidity and trepidation before Olga’s heavily protruding brow and her ironclad frown. Even though he appeared every morning for his 5 am delivery, even on weekends, Olga still waited by the register, motionless, and glared while the boy stammered out his request for the order. No matter how much the boy rehearsed that moment on the drive there, or in bed the night before, or as he showered and dressed the very morning, he always drove away dejected by his own lack of assertion, his vile lack of self confidence, his pathetic display of flimsy frail spinelessness. He always imagined Olga booming with spite and glee in between bites from a chicken leg, her heavy breasts bobbing as she heaved with laughter at the young boy. 

And each morning Crispers grocery was stocked with a limited supply of the coveted cupcake assortments in the baking aisle, and were promptly snatched up by the customers lucky and dedicated enough to be among the first in the store. Back when Dan was just a child, his mother used to take him early in the mornings to buy groceries with her before dropping Dan off at school, since Dan had a deep affinity for food shopping. Often, by the time they arrived at the store, Oleg’s cakes had been sold out, but every now and then, they were lucky enough to snag a box, and Dan, like everyone else who had tasted them, developed a type of obsession, an at times insatiable, ravenous, gnawing inclination towards the bliss offered by the cupcakes. 

On the particular morning after Dan had been bullied at school about his weight, there happened to be one last box on the shelf, which Dan lunged for upon first sight. His eyes inflated and hot as balloons, his mouth dripping, Dan held the box to his chest, gazing into its infinite sweetness as though he were clutching a newborn.

In that moment, all the shelves of parenting books Belinda had consumed, all the hours spent watching Dan eat himself into a monstrous condition, all the frustration she felt as a parent, the disgrace of failure at her life's central most purpose kicked in. Belinda felt all her motherly tenderness and devotion, every droplet of warm, sweet, gentle endearment evaporate into clouds of fury.

A drop of sweat formed on her forehead as she tried to stop it. She tried to formulate words like, "But..." or "Well...." or, "Now..." But her lips remained shut against the tightly clenched teeth. Belinda didn't see who was around her, or whether Mrs Patrick from church was making her usual runs at the same time. She couldn't see the handsome young bachelor, Gerald Stevens, who Belinda had assumed she could have a chance with if it wasn't for her obese eyesore of a son. Belinda couldn't see her veins expanding in her wrists and forearms. Her chest tightened as she tried to regain her vision, and fought for her words.

The veins sprung up through her neck and temple. Her eyes bulged and her nostrils flared and she was blind to everything except the beacon of light in her Child's eyes. A burning rush of blood streamed down from her brain to her hand, which spread wide open before autonomously flinging itself against Dan's pudgy cheek, causing the box of cupcakes to drop, crashing to the floor like a holy idol.

"Enough!" She said, her taught neck causing her voice to crack as it shrieked through the echoing aisles of the store.

"Enough!" She said once more, beaming into the shocked and teary eyes of Dan, one hand to his cheek, glancing rapidly from the floor to his suddenly transfigured mother, enraptured with both terror and disappointment at his forsaken treasure.

The consensus later became that Belinda had failed Dan by allowing him to develop his horrible condition, enabling him with rewards of decadent desserts without doing anything to deserve them. And while it was clearly Dan who was the cause of his mother's lapse of sanity that day in the grocery store, Belinda was to blame for the inciting incident, and therefore the onus for the entire predicament of her outburst belonged to her and her alone. Eventually, the news travelled to Oleg and his wife and their daughter Kitya, and over shots of vodka and cabbage borsht they shared in rejoice and laughter over the shocking success of their cupcakes.

Panting, Belinda gripped Dan by the arm, her nails digging into his padded skin, and pulled him towards the door, still oblivious to the eyes and heads and murmurs coming directly towards her from every angle inside the Crisper Corner. As his mother hauled him out of the door, Dan felt neither the sharpness of her nails, nor the sting against his cheek from the blow he had received, but the pangs of grief as he turned for one last look at the destroyed cupcakes spread facedown upon the waxen bakery aisle floor.