Apron Anxiety (27 page)

Straight from the shower, I scurry down the street to my sister’s closet. No one is home. I quickly snag a soft, white peasant shirt that she bought a few years ago in Italy, and squeeze myself into a pair of her light blue jeans with a slight bell-bottom flair. I swap my sneakers for her alligator-skin wedges, and I bangle up my right wrist with a dozen wiry bracelets. Pulling up my hair all messy and morning-after, I’ve transformed myself from pissed-off to pretty. It’s cold in mid-November, so I reluctantly take a nubby peacoat from the closet and duck out the front door.
Let’s do this
.

I’ve never been nervous for first dates and this one is no different, even though it
is
my first one in a while. Excitedly, I walk to Henry St. Ale House, where I’m blown in the door by the wind. I immediately notice Benjy. He’s
very
good looking, with a big head of floppy, light brown hair, beautiful olive skin, and a cool corduroy blazer. I quickly ditch the unflattering coat
and say hello. We kiss on the cheek, but before I even sit down, I excuse myself to the ladies’ room. My eyes are watering badly from the wind, and my mascara has run. When I come back to the bar, I overexplain the fact that I’m “totally not crying.” He says I can calm down, but nicely.

I order a beer and urge myself to shut up about the tears already. He’s a mellow guy, who preempts the conversation by saying that the reason he subscribes to online dating is because he thinks he might be a little socially awkward. He also says that he’s looking for a serious relationship because he’s “very lonely.” It’s endearing to meet someone who puts it all out there up front, and who isn’t embarrassed to admit that being alone can be rough. I’ve always gravitated to open people like myself, but I am not sure how to respond to his utter lack of ego. So I shift the conversation to the ultimate neutralizer: food.

Much more of an eccentric creature than I am, Benjy is on a mission to try every roller coaster in the country to combat a childhood fear, he collects fading photography from weddings of the 1950s, and he considers himself New York’s most eminent coleslaw aficionado—oh, and he is also an expert on the underground food scene. I’ve never heard of
any
of the cheap and chic dives he swears by. A true nonconformist, almost to the point of being a buzzkill, he couldn’t care less about my secret phone number for all of Keith McNally’s restaurants, or that Emeril Lagasse once fed me banana cream pie on national television, or how many people follow me and my blog on Twitter. But that’s okay. This odd duck is attractive and intriguing.

I would be lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge the one thing about Benito Bagel that really blows my mind: he is Chef’s raging opposite. Where Chef was luminous, Benjy is dimly lit. He’s appalled by anything involving consumerism or celebrity, without an iota of interest in being popular, or even
well liked, by anyone other than himself. And because he works from home and isn’t all that engaged by his career choice in “helping the rich get richer,” Benjy has
a lot
of free time on his hands. Even though I don’t feel love at first sight, I’m pleased about spending time with such a fundamentally different type of man.

A few days after our first date, I go home with my family to one of my aunts’ houses in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. Benjy leaves me a message wishing all the Shelaskys a happy holiday. I am moved by his thoughtfulness, which doesn’t preclude me from missing Chef, who still calls me almost every day, pleading to get back together every time I apprehensively pick up. Yet he
obviously
forgets to call or write on Thanksgiving. In fact, I wait for Chef to contact me all afternoon, giving my relatives only a fraction of my attention, while worrying if he’s okay, asleep, in jail, or just over me.

That night at a bar outside Longmeadow, I meet up with Anzo, Kates, and Court who have all moved to their own nooks of New England and are home visiting family like me. The girls are planning a big fund-raiser in Boston to commemorate ten years since September 11, raise money for the Jean D. Rogér memorial fund, and celebrate her life with as many good people as possible. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. My circle of friends is still so transparently wounded by her death.

There’s not much I can do to help since I live farthest from Boston geographically, and in another orbit all together from most of our married-with-children classmates, but I mention that maybe Chef will cook for the event, especially if it will help raise money. The girls get a little excited, but I emphasize that there’s no guarantee—there were never any guarantees with him, even when we were together.

Of course, the next morning, he calls the second he wakes
up, singing our favorite song into the receiver and suggesting that we watch the season’s premiere of one of our TV shows together via the telephone that night, as if we didn’t break off our engagement two months ago, as if he didn’t forget Thanksgiving, and as if he’s done absolutely nothing wrong. The call reflects so much about him—a two-part recipe of love and pain. I tell myself that this is why I need to keep dating decent, if less magnetic, men like Benjy.

Actually, the hour I come back to town, Benjy is waiting to take me to some carpet-stained, second-floor Peruvian restaurant to divvy up skewers of succulent lamb and what I think might be veal hearts. (I tell him I don’t want to know.) We gulp down a couple pisco sours, exchange dating catastrophes, and then outside the restaurant, share a funky-tasting, but nonetheless enjoyable, first kiss. No electrical current runs through my veins, but it’s fun kissing in the street after eating exotic foods in a city where anything is possible.

The next night, we trek to Flushing to traipse around a “Chinese food” strip mall, spilling over in food stations decorated in hung meat, serving fishy broths, duck buns, mystery dumplings, and various fatally spicy shit. All the forceful smells and sounds are considered paradise to many, but it’s an excursion I personally never need to make again. Still, with that being our third date, we go from soy sauce in Queens to sex in Brooklyn.

Almost every other night, we start bouncing around affordable and eclectic spots that are usually a little too down and dirty for me, but absolute nirvana to Benjy. As far as he’s concerned, the dodgier, the better. Our bills are
always
under thirty bucks; I am
always
too scared to use the bathroom. Whenever I shiver over a location or a certain cut of meat, he jokingly calls me a diva or a snob. “So be it!” I say, inspecting my alley-cat
surroundings. There is always a tinge of hostility between us at these often-delicious shitholes. He quips that I can’t call myself a food writer if I don’t even have a little interest in trying, for example, hot pockets of lamb placenta. Perhaps he has a point, but it only makes me think about Chef, who thought I was Ernest Hemingway just because I could describe the crunch of a celery stick.

Benjy and I don’t see eye to eye on much, but he’s an interesting companion, and is opening my eyes to several secret gems. The ultimate treasure he introduces me to is a tiny, BYOB West African hideout called Abistro in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. The food is so incredible, and the place is such a find, that I overlook the four-dollar bottle of white wine he buys around the corner. When we don’t finish the bottle (the wine is so sugary that I can barely swallow it), we offer it to the kitchen staff, who peruse the label and pass.

After a few weeks of dating, I’ve had enough fifty-cent banh mis for one lifetime, and am ready to have Benjy over for a cooked meal. He met my family briefly, when we all bumped into each other on the street, and my mom is definitely encouraging me to see what happens.

“What an interesting guy,” she kept repeating.

“Not too weird, Mom?”

“Who wants a dullard?!”

In light of her endorsement, I’m hoping that a full night at home will soften our edges as a new couple, and potentially transcend us into
lovers
, instead of eating buddies who sometimes screw. I’m still not drawn to him the way I have been with others, but perhaps our relationship is that of a slow boil. An intimate night in my lovely, though loud and marginally vibrating, apartment will be good for us.

Frugal as he may be, Benjy has a voracious appetite and an extremely discerning palate. He typically eats slowly and abundantly, sometimes analyzing flavors for hours at a time, gushing over good, balanced bites and brooding over bad ones. I already know he’ll approach my meal intellectually and articulately. In other words, my rebound is bound to hate anything I make.

A woman can always count on a roast chicken, as all home cooks know, so I thaw a frozen bird the night before Benjy comes over. I still haven’t found my signature method for roasting, and I ask Gael Greene via Twitter which recipe I should use. Who can speak better to food
and
romance? After all, she wrote my favorite food memoir
and
shagged Elvis. I am at her culinary command. She tweets back that I should look up Judy Rodgers’s Zuni Café recipe and I loyally follow—even though it’s a little more laborious than I’d like!

Making dinner for Benjy in my sexy, industrial kitchen, I am calm and content. We’ve been dating for about six weeks now, it’s officially the dead of winter, and I’m happy to have someone to hibernate with. A slight terror hits when I realize I’ve screwed up the Zuni chicken before I even start—you’re supposed to salt and season it at least one day in advance. Oh well. I think I’ll be okay. I’ll let it sit, all nice and seasoned, in the fridge for a few hours. The good news is: no trussing! Trussing has always seemed superfluous to me, even though the majority of home cooks would fight me on that.

As the cold morning turns into late afternoon, I take the chicken out of the fridge, pan roasting it exactly per the instructions. Then I roast it inside the oven, with heaps of carrots and potatoes all tucked in like naptime. As night falls, I take the entire dish out and let it rest. It’s time for the chicken and vegetables to suck up those juices while I wait for Benjy. Just
when I’m about to light a few cucumber-scented candles, I stop myself. The apartment couldn’t possibly smell any better.

Right on time, he knocks on my door, bundled up head to toe. I tell him to get comfortable, so he strips down to his long underwear (which doesn’t really work for
my
juices). I’m surprised he doesn’t bring any wine, but luckily I have an Argentinean Malbec, a red that was recommended by an
Apron Anxiety
reader, and cost a respectable twenty-six smackers.

We both agree that the chicken comes out close to perfect. Benjy points out a few minor things he would have done differently—like trussing, for one, and slipping some lemons into the cavity, but I don’t really listen. By now, I’ve accepted that Benjy is a contrarian.

After dinner, we climb into bed with a bowl of homemade strawberry mousse (luscious and sensual, even if we are not) and bicker, not for the first time, over which movie to watch. Everything I like is too “commoditized” for him, so we agree to watch something with subtitles and I fall asleep being held in my own onion-scented hands. I wonder what Gael Greene would say if she knew the warm Zuni Café chicken led to ice between the sheets.

I’m not sure if I should release Benjy back to the world of
Match.com
, where many girls would want to marry him tomorrow, or keep working on it. I like how good he is to me—he’s dependable, reliable, and always available—which makes me incredibly calm. There is a comforting dreariness to our relationship, in the way of a long walk through an afternoon fog, or a peasant soup on a raw day. So instead of making a rash decision that I might regret, I keep things going, but dial it back a bit. I tell him I need to focus on my writing and that we should only hang out once or twice a week for the rest of the winter.
Really, I’m home alone, playing classical music and making bone-warming dishes like meat and plantain casseroles and caramel apple pies, which I delightfully savage alone in my long fleece nighties. I am more relaxed than I’ve been in a very long time. Between the ownership of my resplendent kitchen, the drama-free fling, and Beethoven’s Fifth, I am officially defused.

As the duration of our casual relationship grows, even though the emotional connection really does not, I have to tell Chef—who’s in town for a new monthly TV segment—about Benjy. This brings me no secret satisfaction. We have a somber dinner over soggy nachos and salty margaritas at Pedro’s in DUMBO. During our hyperemotional meal, he tries to convince us both that his career doesn’t control him anymore,
that everything has changed
. Then he takes a disturbing call from his partners in which he nervously fibs by saying he’s on the train, heading home.

“What?” he says, reacting to my dirty stare. “Some cook just quit and everyone is freaking out!”

“Don’t you see?” I ask, shaking my head. “All you had to say was, ‘I’m with Alyssa, this is important. I will deal with the situation later but I cannot talk right now,’ and I’d start believing in us again.”

He still doesn’t get it.

By the time the partners call again, we agree (for the umpteenth time) that we are
still
atrocious as a couple, but forever unstoppable as friends. It’s probably unhealthy for me, and a little unfair to Benjy (who thinks Chef is sealed airtight,
sous vide
, in the past), but no matter how much he drives me crazy, we just can’t put each other away. I ask him to keep visiting, and he implores me to end it with Benjy because “I took you to the Greek Islands; he took you to fucking Flushing.” We erupt in
laughter, as we always do. And share an incredible kiss, as we always have.

“You know, there’s nothing I won’t do for you,” I say, as he gets into a cab.

“Besides moving back to Washington,” he adds, closing the car door.