23 July 2004

I have a friend with a birthday coming up. Only, I don't know her well enough to know what I should get her for a present. So, in a moment of inspiration, I decided that I ought to cook something for her for a birthday dinner. Only, I still don't know her well enough to know what she likes. But I do know one food item that I've never seen ANYBODY pass up. (And I've seen people pass up some seriously good food...) So, I was looking up recipes for this particular dish, trying to decide which ones I can fuck with enough to make them taste good... And I found one with the following inscription in the substitutions list: Those who do not wish to smell like the north side of Endicott the next day may cut the garlic in half.

Heh!

Okay, okay, well, it amused ME...

* * * * * * * * * * *

I've been cooking like crazy for a week or so, and I don't know why. I made a lasagna the other day, and a dish called mischtelfa a few days before that. Mischtelfa -- that's mostly a phonetic spelling -- is German, or my family's variation of German, for "a mixed-up mess." Its Danish name is lopskose, or something sort of similar. It is made of chunks of heavily seasoned pork roast, gravy, and corn. Potatoes are good, too, but if you use mashed ones, it's not very visually pleasing. Basically, you put all of those things on a plate and stir. Use lots and lots of gravy.

Last night, I was going to make a blackberry pie, but somebody had eaten all the damned Crisco. I would love to know how, in like, a month, somebody managed to eat an ENTIRE TUB of Crisco.

It WASN'T me...

I eat weird crap, but I cannot go through a tub of Crisco in a month. Maybe somebody used it instead of mayonnaise? Ugh.

Anyway.

I really like cooking sometimes. It feels nice and homey. There's also a feeling of control that goes with it. I get to throw everybody else out of the kitchen and make all kinds of weird demands on the non-cooking people. Like: "hand me the can opener NOW." I don't even have to be polite about it. Generally, it seems that most people don't understand that cooking isn't this super-delicate operation -- and that any mess can be repaired with some water, flour, or garlic. Generally, most people don't know that Marie Callender's IS NOT FOOD. So if I make something from "scratch" (is there seriously any other way to make lasagna?!), there's a group of awed people standing around me, wondering what sort of witchery I'm up to. They are more than willing to assist in fetching can openers and so forth.

At first, I thought this was a guy-thing. I thought: maybe nobody teaches their sons to cook, and so men grow up relying on Jack-in-the-Box, Chef Boyardee, and Little Debbie for sustenance. (If I have a son, he's going to be doing omelettes by four and pies by seven. He will also know how to sew, crochet, and do ALL of those "women's work" things that are secretly sort of fun...) But I kept seeing a substantial number of women who couldn't cook either. So I thought that maybe it's got something to do with a lack of time or something. Maybe people just don't have time to make good meals? Except... to get to a fast-food place from where I'm staying, it's about fifteen minutes in a car, give or take. Then you have to wait in line, etc. And then drive home. All told, you spend at least half an hour getting food. In a half-hour, I've made tacos, spaghetti with meatballs, tuna casserole, sub sandwiches, or basically any cream soup. It takes longer to make a Marie Callender TV dinner -- the southwest chicken thing actually isn't bad -- than it would take to make FOUR Santa Fe wraps, which are basically the same thing, only they taste way better, and they're in a red tortilla thing.

Then I thought it was a West Coast thing, but Norman was from the West Coast, and he could cook. He didn't DO it very often, but he could do it quite well, and he didn't get that astonished look on his face when I'd make fried chicken instead of buying it at KFC.

I can't explain it. It's just weird. I don't know anybody in my present environment who can cook.

But... if that's the case... and it IS the case... then... I cannot imagine WHERE THE HELL A WHOLE TUB OF CRISCO WENT.

Fucking gross.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I was feeling pretty pissed off the other day for various reasons. I felt like kicking somebody's ass. I felt like kicking a wall. Except, when one kicks a wall, all one really achieves is a stubbed toe or two, and a fucked-up wall. I'm a smart girl, I thought; I can come up with something more constructive than that.

I searched through the CDs in my backpack looking for the angriest, loudest, most obnoxious music I could find. Unfortunately, most of my musical tastes don't involve angry, loud, and obnoxious. Cat Power just doesn't satisfy an urge to kick a wall or somebody's ass.

The angriest, loudest, most obnoxious CD in my possession at that moment was a mix-CD labelled "GRUNGE." I played that one.

...Except, that got me thinking about this girl I used to know a LONG time ago... Let's call her Christie, since I'm too lazy to think up a pseudonym.

Every afternoon in the summer of 1994, Christie and I waited in the parking lot of Centenary Methodist Church, for our parents to pick us up. We were always the last ones left waiting. And there was always music playing from the apartments across the street. And ALWAYS, it was either "Black-Hole Sun," by Soundgarden, or "No Excuses" by Alice in Chains. I don't know why.

Christie was totally beautiful, if you happened to catch her at a moment when she wasn't speaking. She had perfect skin (she was fourteen, for crying out loud, and not a pimple on her...), and she was thin but not gangly like me. She had these gorgeous blue eyes. She had blonde hair and always wore a Nirvana t'shirt. She smoked, and had this sexy smoker's voice. I still can't figure that one out; I smoked for six and a half years and never got a sexy voice like that. Christie managed it at fourteen with like, five cigarettes a week. Bitch.

First, I hated her because she was beautiful and I wasn't.

(No, really, I wasn't. I was an ugly teenaged duckling.)

Christie wasn't pretty any deeper than the surface, though. She was whiny and demanding. She knew she was pretty, and she knew how to command people to do things for her. Christie got backrubs, cigarettes, coffee, you name it, on demand. When it looked like she might not get what she wanted, she whined. She ALWAYS got what she wanted.

She had a boyfriend, and I didn't. I wanted a boyfriend, I supposed, but I couldn't really talk to boys. But Christie wasn't happy with just HER boyfriend. She wanted to date this guy who was like, seven years older than her (at fourteen, that's a big deal, remember...), and it actually looked like he was paying her some real attention, until he found out how old she was. As a favor to me, Christie decided to set me up with one of the guys she smoked with. His name was Nick, and he was... well, he was okay. But Nick didn't want to go out with me. One day, he approached me and muttered, "I know Christie like, tried to set us up and stuff, but um... I don't really want to go out with you. Because, like, I really like this other girl... I mean, no offense..."

The "other girl" that Nick liked was Christie.

Of course.

One day, I went to Christie's house to practice this dance we were supposed to learn. It was off in Endwell someplace -- this tiny little shithole with no ventilation and a sink full of rotting dishes. They were literally growing stuff on them. So we decided to practice in her driveway. As we practiced, Christie told me all about her week. She'd gone to a party and gotten drunk on a bottle of tequila. She'd been walking with some friend of hers, near some train tracks, and some guy had paid them twenty bucks apiece (I think that's what she said) to lift their shirts for him. She'd had some guy buy her two whole packs of cigarettes with the money, and she was going to save the rest of the money because she'd heard that Hole was coming out with a new album, but she wasn't sure.

I was so scandalized by this girl.

I know, I know... I was a really naive kid and all... But I was sure that I'd befriended some sort of hooker.

(As an aside, I should mention that most hookers I've met are less manipulative than Christie... Not by much, but as a general rule...)

(And besides, she fucking liked HOLE...! Courtney Love was her personal idol. Even in '94, that was kind of a warning sign...)

After Christie and I had practiced our little dance for awhile, she went into her rotten, stinky little house, and called her boyfriend. The boyfriend came over. The two of them sat there in the driveway, making out, for about two hours. When they'd pause for air, he'd tell me some drug story. It took him two pauses to tell me about his latest acid trip. Christie joined him in telling me about the time they'd put "sherms" in Christie's younger brother's meat loaf and laughed at him while he got all kinds of fucked up.

Sherms, I'm pretty sure, is the same thing as phenylcyclohexyl piperidine: PCP.

The little brother was, like, nine years old.

That's just fucked up.

I didn't go over to Christie's house again. I told my dad she was a very nice girl and that we'd learned our dance perfectly, and I didn't need to go there anymore.

I saw Christie about three years later... She'd dyed her hair black and was getting a backrub from some guy she'd met a few minutes earlier. She was completely wasted on something. She was talking about an orgy. She was pretty sure she'd been in one, but she couldn't remember the details. I bought her a cup of coffee to go. I never saw her again after that.

Yeah, yeah, so lifting your shirt for twenty bucks is really pretty tame, and smoking at fourteen isn't that big of a deal... But there was something about her... Something about how she didn't give a shit about anyone or anything...

I wonder whatever happened to Christie.

Probably, she overdosed a few years back, and is haunting me via Alice in Chains songs...

* * * * * * * * * * *

I'm going to the store now to get some fucking Crisco...

~Helena*