Sweet (5 page)

He had, he thought, started
something.

*

Pastry-Whipped: Adventures in Sugar by a Dedicated Crumpet Strumpet

by Chef Jules Burns of Buttermilk Bakery

March 29: As Long as He Kneads Me

I’ve been unfaithful. I’ve strayed. I’ve done things I never thought I’d do. I’ve temporarily flown the pastry coop. And boy, are my arms tired.

I’ve been baking bread, which is quite outside the realm of my pastry training
—
usually, one spends a lot of time thinking about how to keep everything tender, how not to develop the gluten. But I’ve been antsy lately. I’ve been kneady. I’ve been longing for a firmer touch, longing to roll against something alive and resilient and fleshy and warm, to press against a little resistance, to watch it rise and grow under my hand. It is spring, after all.

Bread baking is a special art. It’s all about give and take, about receptivity and being attuned to the needs of another living being. You
are,
after all, working with a living thing (yeast), nurturing it and encouraging it to grow. Good kneading is essential to good bread
—
by kneading the dough, you’re gently stretching the fibers, developing the gluten, bringing forth that texture of only the most terrific loaves, equal parts chewy and tender. There is nothing like the feeling of a good kneading session: It works out the muscles across your back and all through your arms, right down to your wrists. If you do it right, it even makes your thighs and glutes ache, which I can only assume means they’re getting prettier and stronger as you work. You must be energetic, but in a languid, fluid way. You must be strong, but in a manner that yields, that entices and encourages rather than forces.

A good session with your dough will leave you sweaty, a little sore and spent.

When I first started dating (which was not until college, years later than most of my peers, mostly because
I seemed to be the only gay teenager in all of Indiana), I had to learn to seduce. I’d waited so long for someone to want me that, when the chance finally came, I jumped in with both feet and a frightening amount of desperate enthusiasm and need, and wound up scaring off more than one initially interested suitor. The problem, I finally figured out, was that I was focusing entirely on myself. Once I let go of that, once I began to trust that my suitor would do that for me, I was free to focus on
him
and
his
needs. Instead of desperately worrying whether a man would kiss me, and then, once he did, whether he would kiss me again, I began instead to notice the subtle ways in which his body pulled toward me or pushed me away, depending upon where I let my hand or mouth stray. More pressure or less, a touch here, a lick there, a small sound I might let escape into his ear
—
I could learn the effects of these things on his body, I could map his sweet spots by his whimpers, chart his desires and know him better than he might know himself. And in this way, I could kiss him into anything.

It was a matter of being receptive, being responsive, but in a very different way from how one usually imagines it. Responsiveness isn’t about you, isn’t about your reaction to another body, isn’t really about what you
do at all. It’s about being completely tuned in to that other body, its possibilities and its desires, and giving yourself over to it entirely.

It’s like that with kneading bread. It’s not about what I may do
—
not about, in the end, a kneading technique or a formula for rising times. Instead, it’s about being aware of the dough as a separate, living being, knowing what it wants and what it might ask of me next.

Now my kitchens, both at home and at Buttermilk, are filled with fresh bread, dozens of beautiful, golden loaves, crusty on the outside, tender inside (as am I, I can assure you), and in the sheer volume of what I’ve produced, I am confronted by the evidence of the passionate single-mindedness with which I’ve recently approached my spring friskiness. I suppose a healthier and less carb-laden alternative would be to channel all of this energy into a new beau, but not a soul has been knocking down my door, so I’m left with the task of finding a use for all this glorious, yeasty, chewy bread.

I’ve made quite a bit of French toast for friends, and chocolate bread (fry a thick slice of good bread in some butter, melting a handful of bittersweet chocolate into the bread’s pores as you do
—
you’ll thank me once your knees stop shaking), and my assistant ‘Trice and I have eaten more than our share of simple, warm slabs of bread slathered in good butter this week. But I’ve settled on bread pudding as the place to put most of it. It’s a simple enough dish on the surface,
whose flavors can be made quite complex and layered by pairing it with the right sauce. It’s unpretentious. It’s honest. It’s got substance.

So this week, I’m playing around with bread puddings of all kinds. And I’m still baking bread. Because it’s still spring, and I’m still feeling strong and energetic and, well, just a bit frisky. So, bread it is. At least until the right fellow starts knocking on my door. Maybe you know him. He’s unpretentious, and honest and he’s got substance. Simple on the outside, but complex underneath. And just a little saucy.

*

anonymous:
Grasshopper here. I tried the cookies… success! Or, at least, not hockey pucks! I was even able to eat a few of the less burned ones! You are my baking Jedi master. (I know I’m mixing my cultural references. Go with it.) And since I’m unpretentious and complex and honest and very willing, I’m going to be your best student ever. I’m ready for my next assignment. Bread baking? You make it sound really hot. (This is me being a little saucy.)

Andy
’
s chin was whiskery and warm against Jules’s bare knee. He had drifted into his evening nap in his usual place, with Jules’s left hand scrubbing idly at the back of his neck. Though Jules had not been wild about a dog when he’d first met Andy, he’d grown to love these quiet times at night, just the two of them on the couch, with Andy’s head growing heavier against him as he drowsed and the little humid puffs of breath slowing and deepening. He loved the little whimpers and kicks that indicated Andy must be dreaming, though of what Jules couldn’t imagine, since Andy had never chased a rabbit or swum in a stream or run in a field and, at this point, he was kind of a codger and preferred a nap on the couch over most any other activity except eating. But Jules loved the little body near him, its warmth and weight and need; he loved the already-knowing between them, the routine of their lives together, the expectation each had built around the other. Evenings with Andy were peaceful and lamplit and private.

But this was knocking him sideways a bit. Though his laptop burned against the tops of his thighs, he neither wanted to shut it off (because he could not stop rereading the comment) nor move it (because he would disturb Andy), so he simply let it burn there. He had to reply. The little backflips his stomach was doing told him that. But he’d already made several false starts, all of which ended in erasure, and he just couldn’t think. So he dove.

BBChef:
Not bread, young Grasshopper. Eagerness is endearing, but you’re moving a bit too fast, and that will ruin your reputation. Didn’t your mother warn you about moving too fast? The recipe for Sticky Date Bread Pudding is a good start. It’s hard to go wrong, it uses simple ingredients, and you can get your hands dirty in some very delicious ways. Try the recipe I posted, with the bourbon sauce. Use a good bourbon. Taste it first, to be sure. Taste it again to be really sure. At least, that’s what I do. One needs to be very sure before diving in. I like a man who’s very sure. Or, at least, a man who’s very drunk. (I’ve never had a student before, but I’m picking up the gauntlet you’ve thrown. I think I have a matching gauntlet somewhere. Gauntlets must be worn as a set, or they are ridiculous. Otherwise, I’ll have to wear oven mitts, and those are decidedly less fashionable.)

He, Grasshopper, must have been sitting by his computer, too, because a few minutes later, he replied.

anonymous
:
Sticky Date? Really? There are so many things I could say to that, but I’m restraining myself and leaving right now to get bread and a bunch of the other stuff, which, being your humble student, I do not have on hand in my kitchen the way I imagine you probably do. I have salami and a half-eaten container of Chinese takeout and probably
a very old jar of mustard. The yellow kind. But I can’t imagine even you, with your magic baking skills, could do much with that combination. If I knew where you lived, I’d come relieve you of some of your sex-bread. (Did I really just type that out loud? I apologize. Sort of. But, because I am honest and unpretentious, I’ll admit that I’m also sort of serious. Your bread sounds amazing.) I do, however, have a good bourbon on hand, which I’ve tested before, but will test again, just to be both very sure and very drunk. Because you asked. But I notice that you simply assume I’m a man… how daring and saucy of you. Oh, and the fashionableness of the oven mitts depends on what you are wearing with them, of course. But I won’t ask
, “What are you wearing?” because I am a gentleman and this is a public forum.

BBChef:
I did assume you were a man. I apologize. But the contents of your kitchen as you’ve listed them indicate you are either a man or a four-year-old with a drinking problem. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. At least, I hope you are not a four-year-old alcoholic. Besides, you just called yourself a gentleman. And for your information, I am wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, oven mitts and a very sleepy dachshund. Which is what I wear at the bakery, too.

anonymous:
Oh, Cruella, no wonder everything at your bakery tastes so amazing, if that’s your uniform. Do you allow kitchen visits? I’d like to see this.

BBChef:
The dachshund is very much alive, although the dedication with which he’s approached the project of sleep would lead one to assume otherwise. So you don’t get to call me Cruella. At least, not for that. Wait. You’ve been to my bakery?

anonymous:
Frequently. I’m your biggest flan.

BBChef:
You stole that joke.

anonymous:
I want to take you into custardy.

BBChef:
Right. Cute. You’re a hack. Go buy your bread and get cooking.

anonymous:
I thought I was cooking.

BBChef:
Very funny. Go.

Five

In this world Jules Burns
valued five things beyond all else. First was his father, Ray, whom he loved more than any person who’d ever lived, whose ability to see clean through him was knife-sharp and whose reaction to Jules’s decision to leave college in his junior year (because, as he told Ray, he felt as if he were broken into disparate pieces, as if he were located only in his head, with a ridiculous and passive body dangling below it, and he missed doing things with his hands, missed the scents and the textures and the tastes of the real world, missed making something solid. Nobody, it seemed, in college was
real
in that way. Everything was performance, was distance. When he reached out, in his loneliest or happiest moments, there was nothing to touch, and he felt, as a result, dried up and gone, papery as an old leaf, easily crumbled into nothing) was to sigh and say,
Okay, kid, what is it that’s really going to make you happy?
Jules had cried, as much in relief at his father’s acceptance as in grief at the thought of finally giving up everything by which he’d defined himself for so many years, and Ray had simply whispered into the phone,
hey, hey, now,
and somehow in that moment all had begun to feel mended.

Ray was the first. The second was the rest of his family, Annette and Nathan and Zack, who cared for his father and cared for him, who hugged him like wild bears when they saw him on the holidays and gave him gifts that were at once entirely wrong for him (Nathan’s gifts of overly musky cologne,
Annette’s rococo faux gold floral centerpiece, Zack’s mix-tapes of heavy metal or boy band pop) and yet so painstakingly chosen and laden with the intensity of their wishes for him that he could do nothing but love the gifts and their givers with unreasonable joy.

The third was Andy the dachshund: who was small and always shivering or snoring; who needed him completely and without question; who, despite his great age, romped to the door and bounced in circles every time Jules came through it at the end of his long day; whose bark was hoarse and high-pitched and mousy and frightened absolutely no one; on whose collar Jules had hung a small silver locket with a picture of Andy the man tucked inside; and whose name, each time Jules called him for a meal or a scolding or a walk, pushed up an aching lump in the back of Jules’s throat that he knew was a memory, a hard, compact lump that would take hours to melt away, no matter how much Jules stroked the soft fur of Andy’s muzzle and whispered and whispered into his neck.

The fourth and fifth were memories: the dimmed and softly polished image of his grandmother and the still-stark, steel-sharp thought of Andy.

There were exactly five things which Jules valued beyond all else, and these were they, and in the quiet interstices of his day, he brought them out, careful treasures, and held them up to the light like glittering things, and let them do their work on him, making him feel loved and loving, and twisted with not-enough, and empty, and so full of the world that he would start, every time, quietly to cry.

In that hour without conversation, still on his couch, Andy still snoring against his thigh, his laptop still burning there as he waited for the notes from Grasshopper to begin again (
go buy your bread and get cooking,
he’d written, without considering the long emptiness that might ensue), he was surprised to find that he could not make his thoughts stick for long to any of those five favorite things.

Instead, he thought about how his insides had begun—in a way that felt both gradual and sudden, sea-change and earthquake—to feel like springtime, awake and open and full of an about-to-bloomness. He thought about the fact that when ice melted, the water it became went running past its own former
containment, took up more space in the world,
moved itself.
He thought about hands: Andy’s long-fingered, muscled, brown hands spread across his hips, yes, but other hands, too, hands that were olive and nimble and well-manicured and small and square; and though he didn’t know whose hands they were (and, though he felt rather stupid admitting it, he allowed himself alternately to imagine they were the hands of the fumbling, gentle-looking man in his bakery and the sure, suave hands of Grasshopper himself, and sometimes other hands, stranger hands, unclaimed hands, hands wandering across his pale skin because they wanted to map him by feel, simply and beautifully to locate him in the world through their touch—and
oh,
how he missed being touched), he wanted to fold his own hands inside them and feel warm. He thought that maybe he had begun, in little ways, to thaw.

BBChef:
I imagine that at the moment you are still on your trek for bread and almonds, but just in case you read this in time, I forgot to mention that you should buy real, unprocessed Medjool dates and pit and chop them yourself. There is a difference. And if you can appreciate dates, you’ll discover that nothing compares to Medjool—so much meatier and mildly sweeter and more meltingly tender. And don’t forget to take the pits out before you chop them, or you’re in for a horrible experience. And maybe even some danger.

He tried to stop himself from writing first, tried to ask himself to wait with some dignity, as if he didn’t care, as if he weren’t bent over his laptop, wild-eyed as a lunatic, refreshing the screen and chanting under his breath something that sounded an awful lot like
come on, come on, Grasshopper, come back.
And when he felt his reserve failing, he had, at least, tried to sound as if he were speaking as a chef, as if his investment was in ensuring that the food was as glorious as it could be.

It was clear to Jules, however, that maintaining this version of himself—a little cool, in control, professional and decidedly
not
desperate—was not in the cards.

Moments later, when Grasshopper replied (as if he were lurking there, too, waiting for Jules to speak first; as if the two were waging a game of double-dare and Jules had simply folded first),
cool
and
in control
seemed to sail permanently beyond his reach.

Grasshopper:
We are psychically connected. Because standing in the market, faced with the choice between a plastic tub of pitted, chopped dates or a bin of pick-your-own whole Medjool dates, I was sorely tempted by the tub, then thought to myself that if you were standing next to me, as my own official Date Guy for the evening, you might have literally smacked the back of my head if I’d even looked in the plastic tub’s direction. So I did what I thought you’d not-so-gently encourage me to do and bought the fresher, whole Medjools.

BBChef:
You did the right thing. I really would have smacked you.
And “Date Guy”? Really? (Nice screen name, by the way. Don’t think I didn’t notice that.)

Grasshopper:
Date Guy, sure. Because you strike me as an expert, and I am an innocent. I’m young and fresh-faced and I want to learn all about this big, new World of Dates. And I imagine you would corrupt me with your extensive Date Experience and impart to me your vast Date Knowledge, and we would have a stormy, passionate affair during which we did unspeakably sexy
things with date paste and built monuments to our love out of date pits and baked a lot of scones or something. And then one day, you’d meet a younger, fresher-faced fellow who didn’t know anything about dates, and you’d leave me for him, and the two of you would abscond to Medjool together, leaving me alone. And dateless.

BBChef:
That’s quite a story. And I don’t think Medjool is actually a place.

Grasshopper:
I was thinking Medjool was a verb. And I’m not speaking to you. I’m still angry about the absconding and the Medjooling
. You’re going to have to make this up to me. I was really hurt.

BBChef:
How can I make this up to you, this wrong I did in your weird imagination?

Grasshopper:
Make up for leaving me for a younger, fresher cream puff? I can think of some things you can do. Sticky dates, for instance. ;)

BBChef:
Did you just virtually wink at me? That is so virtually tacky.

Grasshopper:
Well, I
am
tacky. Because of your dates. I’m pitting and chopping the dates and typing one-handed so I don’t get my keyboard sticky, too. But I’m very, very sticky right now.

BBChef:
No comment. There’s enough comment in your comment for the both of us.

Grasshopper:
It seems inevitable. I’ve been following your instructions and somehow ended up all dirty. And I might have tested quite a bit of the bourbon this evening. Just to be sure. But you told me to do that, too.

BBChef:
So your sticky drunkenness is my responsibility?

Grasshopper:
Absolutely. Every time I get sticky and drunk, I say to myself, “This is all the fault of that amazing, deliciously sexy pastry chef I’ve never met. But would like to. Meet, that is.” That’s what I say. Did I just say that out loud?

BBChef:
I think you did type that, yes. Deliciously sexy?

Grasshopper:
I imagine so. I’ve eaten your cupcakes on at least two occasions. Your cupcakes are deliciously sexy. They achieved things.
For me.

BBChef:
Then it appears we already know each other very well. I don’t let just any man eat my cupcakes.

Grasshopper:
You run a bakery. I hardly believe that. But since I’ve currently got a privilege you don’t afford to other men, if I come to the bakery tomorrow, will you come out to meet me?

BBChef:
How will I know it’s you and not just some crazed interloper?

Grasshopper:
I’ll be the one wearing the red carnation.

BBChef:
Carnations are
so
high school prom, Grasshopper. You’ll have to do better than that.

Grasshopper:
I’ll be the one with the red rose in my teeth? Do you tango?

Grasshopper:
I’ll be the one carrying the fluffy red puppy?

Grasshopper:
I’ll be the superfine one? (Get it? It’s a sugar joke.)

BBChef:
Stop now, you monster, before you destroy Tokyo.

Grasshopper:
But I was just getting to the part about the sticky buns.

BBChef:
Exactly.

Grasshopper:
I’m putting this in the oven now. But this isn’t over. You haven’t heard the last of me yet. I’m going to be in your bakery every day until I get to meet you.

BBChef:
You’ve crossed the line from Confident and Forward and into Slightly Frightening.

Grasshopper:
I’ll be the one with the sticky buns.

BBChef:
You just couldn’t stop yourself, could you?

Grasshopper:
No. No, I could not. I’m licking the date mush off my fingers and I’ve lost all self-control.

BBChef:
Put. The bourbon. Down.

*

“I
saw
you,” ‘Trice said, tossing a paper cup at Jules’s back as he pulled himself a double shot.

“Saw me what?” Jules said.

“Gettin’ your
flirt
on,” ‘Trice crooned, and Jules went red, though he had no idea to what she could be referring. He’d spent most of his weekend in the back of the bakery or curled up on his couch with Andy. He’d not even ventured to the market, opting instead for cobbling together his evening meals from the motley collection of dried grains and beans he always kept on hand and the measly, wilting vegetables left in his refrigerator. The world seemed, that weekend, just a little too overbearingly present.

“
Online,” she added in response to his puzzled look.

“I wasn’t—” he tried to say, but ‘Trice threw another cup in his direction.

“Don’t you
even
try to tell me you weren’t trying to flirt, Mister I-Don’t-Let-Just-Anyone-Eat-My-Cupcakes. Really smooth, BB.”

“Stop wasting cups,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. ‘Trice saw him, as she usually did, with complete clarity. “I can’t believe you still read the blog and all the comments.”

“I need a source of ammunition, since you won’t let me use the cups,” she said, shrugging.

***

Teddy carried the foil-wrapped hunk gingerly in front of him like a ring-bearer, imperial and full of importance, when he pushed his way into the bakery—now quiet, now dim, now empty of crowds, now
home
again, he thought—and met ‘Trice at the counter.

“Lady, am I glad to see you,” he said, without the least bit of irony. “Weekends here? Let’s just say I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.”

‘Trice snorted and turned toward the espresso machine, already starting something on his behalf. “Oh, Dorothy, I take it you met Avon, who lacks a brain, and the members of the stroller brigade, who all lack hearts.”