Between failure and glee

Fondant can, and this is critical, get fucked. Disgusting overly sweet playdough that you can only ‘play with’ if your idea of creativity is roll it flat and drape it over things?

Wanna make a delicious cake? We can ruin that for you, just add the devil’s spackle. There were three other people in the cooking class, a couple who were clearly using this class as a glue to keep their relationship together (unsuccessfully), and a little old lady is (conservatively) 1,200 years old.

Why am I here? Because I am, arguably, the worst baker or cook has ever been anywhere near an oven. There is no cake, cupcake, crumble, or muffin or any other baked good which I haven’t burned, underbaked or accidentally used expired ingredients in. The best thing I can do to food, is order it as takeout through a professional.

The old lady was making a three-tiered cake that looked like a wave crashing up against the beach. It was beautiful, impressive and the most irritating thing in the room. Happily, the cake that the soon-to-be-divorcees were making was supposed to be a romantic heart. It was lopsided, clearly burnt and they hadn’t cooled it before applying the buttercream, I pay attention sometimes, so it looked like a sodden mess. 

‘Now what you want to do is make sure that you roll out the fondant nice and thin, but not too thin or it’ll break and you don’t want that’. The instructor was as skilled at baking as she was terrible at teaching. She spent the class on her phone, reading instructions from a wikiHow page and texting her boyfriend. Basically, it was a disaster.

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They say that the fastest way to a man’s heat is between the fourth and fifth ribs, that or through his stomach. My boyfriend, the supposed love of my life, was sat at the other end of the table working his way through what was admittedly a deeply disappointing meatloaf. Hearing him chew with his mouth halfway open, his sighs between each bite. In that instant, I understood why women leave their husbands. At that moment I understood why women murder their husbands.

The audacity of complaining about a homecooked meal when you couldn’t even make the effort to close your goddamn mouth. I slammed the fridge door closed, tossing the bottle of orange juice on the bench. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him freeze mid-bite. Is that more or less satisfying? That he was afraid of my reaction or was I annoyed that he was afraid of my reaction.

This isn’t right, or normal. We’re supposed to love each other, you’re not supposed to make your soul mate eat bad meatloaf. What happened to us that watching him eat that disaster made me so angry, but if he stopped I’d be even angrier. This was a mistake. This was a disaster.

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I have spent the last forty years hiding who I am, and I’m not doing it anymore. Everyone who ever loved me, hated me, knew me is dead save one person and I’m tired of hiding from them. 

You see, back in my day, manners were paramount. It was how you showed respect and it was just plain common decency. My mama used to say, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ and I never forgot that. 

I remember going to church every Sunday, listening to the preacher go on and on about the will of God and the importance of doing right. But I never listened beyond that first piece of advice, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. It covers everything you need to know. He used to say that God was like the ocean, like waves on the beach. Inevitable and just as likely to bring life as death. 

I didn’t learn about the love of God at church. The preacher mostly covered his wrath, the danger of sin, the importance of clean living and respect. Funny how most of those lessons were more about what me and the other girls could do with our lives than anything else. It was a hot summer day when I first met her, she was a niece of the preacher and she was beautiful and dumb as hell. 

I fell in love instantly.

I like to think that if the world had been a different place, a kinder place than maybe things would have rolled out different. The problem with falling in love with a woman who doesn’t believe in dinosaurs is expressing upon her the importance of keeping a secret. Her uncle found out in less than a month about our deviant ways and I was cast out of the congregation for ‘infecting her with my deviant ways’. 

I like to think that it was a blessing, it showed me who really had my back and it taught me to never fall in love with someone who can’t keep secrets. The world is a bit kinder nowadays, or at least it pretends better to be, and I have a beautiful grandson who doesn’t give two shits about what gender he is or what he wears. I don’t fully understand it but by God I respect it. 

The last person alive, and it must be spite keeping that piece of work going, is that old bastard. I looked him up on Facebook, my grandson helped, and I’m ‘mending fences’. It’s the good Christian thing to do, I hope he likes Ipecac syrup and vanilla cake. 

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I have never seen so much glee in the face of an old lady before, whoever she was giving that cake too must be a very important person to her. Meanwhile, over in soon-to-be-divorced town, the woman is just eating handfuls of fondant and icing which I mean relatable, but also super gross. 

At the end of this slow-motion car crash, after 2.5 hours and $150 dollars I have made, and don’t you all applaud at once, brownies! I mean they’re mostly misshapen and I think I used a little bit too much dark chocolate. But icing covers all sins, so I mean at least I achieved something today. 

Maybe what I needed was the right learning environment, unqualified failure to the left of me, terrifying glee to the right of me.