Love Street

by Leah Rachel

  6 cloves garlic, crushed

  Directions:

  Project your ex’s face onto the store-bought dough and beat the living shit out of it. Form dough and set aside to rest as you make the fresh pesto.

  Make pesto by combining the pine nuts, basil, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil in a blender and blend until smooth.

  Spread a thin layer of pesto over the beaten pizza dough.

  Top with cherry tomatoes and add lots of garlic, because the only thing you’re going to be kissing tonight is the bottom of a chemical-laden Halo Top Creamery ice-cream container.

  Bake for 13 minutes at 350˚F.

  Take out of the oven, prematurely dive into the only thing that’s going to make you feel good right now, and burn the roof of your mouth.

  Food for the Newly in Love

  Twirled Spaghetti Carbonara

  One of the perks of being in love, ah! You can at last make pasta without the fear of caving in to oblivion and eating the whole thing by midnight! You finally feel satisfied by a small portion of a fatty food. If only for a moment, you’re eating like the fucking French! So go for the gluttonous dishes, including this creamy, fatty, not-nutrient-filled pasta that will satisfy you just enough, because your new lover is your second helping. And that love-juice has all the nutrients your body really needs.

  Ingredients:

  1 pound spaghetti

  3 eggs

  A shitload of grated Pecorino cheese

  ½ pound bacon or pancetta, cooked—but fuck it, just use bacon

  Directions:

  Heat pasta water. Fuck while water comes to a boil. Spill ingredients all over the floor. Sweep them up. Use what you can salvage as you continue.

  Cook the spaghetti. Try for al dente, but then get distracted counting the freckles on your lover’s back.

  While the spaghetti cooks, make the sauce. Whisk the eggs, beat in the cheese, and set aside.

  Strain the pasta, giving yourself a pasta-water steam facial as you pour it out, saving some of the water for thinning out the sauce.

  Add the cooked bacon to the drained, overcooked spaghetti. Pour the sauce mixture over the pasta while it’s still hot and toss to coat, adding the reserved water a little at a time until the sauce is smooth and creamy. Serve. Eat slowly, drink a lot, let your tummy be as nourished as your heart, and remember this moment of soul satisfaction, because this is literally what it means to truly be alive.

  Food for the Busy

  Slow the Fuck Down Chicken Soup

  I know you think you don’t have time to cook, but the best thing busy girls can do is stop moving so fast and revel in something simple. Regarding consistently busy people, there is usually something missing. So this time, instead of filling that emotional hole with useless emails and never-ending to-do lists, fill that hole with SLOW THE FUCK DOWN CHICKEN SOUP! If you’re lucky, while creating said soup, you might even have an emotional or career revelation that would have otherwise not come to you.

  Ingredients:

  3 medium carrots

  2 stalks celery

  ½ onion

  1 chicken breast

  1 quart chicken stock

  A lot of salt

  A lot of pepper

  Directions:

  Chop the carrots and celery slowly, remembering forgotten moments from your childhood with each progressive carrot and celery stalk.

  Chop the onion, remembering how good it feels to take a moment to cry.

  Boil the chicken breast in the chicken stock for 20 minutes. Remove the chicken breast and tear slowly.

  Add vegetables, torn-up chicken, salt, and pepper to the stock and simmer for 45 minutes. Sit on the floor of the kitchen and count your blessings, or if that’s too hard, just count. To like 500. Breathe in and out. Ahhh . . .

  Does running away burn calories?

  Food for the Lost

  Rainbow Cereal with a Side of Kettle Chips and Hummus

  You never know what you want to eat, just like you never knew what you wanted to be when you grew up. You prefer couch-surfing to subletting, and subletting to leasing, and leasing to owning. Nothing scares you more than routine or becoming a straight, monogamous, crispy-brussels-sprouts-eating bitch. Let your food match your peacocking spirit. This quick-to-please combination will surprise you and your guests but will also leave them hungry for something more substantial and subconsciously unsatisfied.

  Ingredients:

  1 cup Fruity Pebbles (dry, because milk smells like settling down)

  ½ cup crusty garlic hummus

  5 servings Kettle chips (one small bag)

  Directions:

  Eat all items out of order, while watching or doing something else.

  Trash the evidence of the meal, wake up, do yoga, go backpack through Europe, find yourself, then lose yourself again.

  “Cover up!”

  “Dress for success!”

  Oh, you mean cover my boobs, wear something looser, and hide the fact that I’m a woman so people will take me seriously?

  The size of my boobs does not determine my consent.

  1.Trying on clothes in a fluorescent-lit fitting room in a store whose sizes run small. (After you ran into your ex-boyfriend’s new hot girlfriend and then binge ate alone at Charley’s Steakery.)

  2.Going under anesthesia to get your wisdom teeth taken out by a 54-year-old man you met only 10 minutes ago.

  3.Horseback riding with no bra and DDs.

  4.Hiding Plan B underneath a basketful of unneeded items, only to get the cashier with the Jesus necklace.

  5.Twelve-hour flight, foreign country, one tampon.

  6.Accidentally releasing a small bit of air from your lady triangle in yoga class, only to unsuccessfully battle the breeze and have that brief opening turn into a full-out wind tunnel, so that by the end of the 90-minute kundalini class your vagina is straight-up breathing.

  7.Leaving for your lunch break and ending up in Italy.

  8.Getting pulled into an impulsive swim party without proper warning and exposing your fur bikini.

  I wish everything were as easy as staying in on a Friday night, drinking two bottles of lukewarm Chardonnay, sending 25 text messages, and spiraling out of control to the point of no return.

  Image sourced from Pixabay

  1.My little cousin Alyssa told me I looked pretty when I came down the stairs. Even though more than ten years had passed since the senior prom, and my cousin Alyssa wasn’t a she now but a they, the look in their eyes felt similar to the way they looked at me when I came down the stairs all those years before. I looked like shit then (too tan, overly tweezed eyebrows, cheap chiffon dress), but in my cousin’s eyes, I was a cool older-girl goddess who—if they had wanted to grow up to be a girl—they would have wanted to be just like.

  2.I liked the blue color against my olive skin. I felt like a really pretty, unpretentious big-city Jew.

  3.The other dress I was thinking about wearing looked like a sari, and I was scared I would offend my high school friend Priya, who I hadn’t seen in eight years but who, according to her Facebook, would banish my cultural-appropriating ass for so much as buying samosas from Trader Joe’s.

  4.It was flowy and swishy and patterned in the stomach area, where I have always been insecure.

  5.It was 50 percent off, so I justified spending the 75 dollars I saved on buying fancy panties that I promptly stuck in my glove compartment for “just in case.”

  6.The Tuesday I went to buy the dress, I decided to fuck the rest of the workday, have a “me day,” and go see a movie. I had to be at the theater in 20 minutes if I wanted to get to my showing in time, so I couldn’t try on any more dresses. This one would have to do.

  Shopping? She loves it. Especially in little offbeat places.

  Her clothes? Anything goes. In a smashing size 7.

  Her cigarette? Nothing short of Viceroy Longs. She won’t settle for less.

  Viceroy Longs give you all the taste, all the time.

>   7.My high school crush was going to be at the event where I would be wearing said dress. Most of his memories of me probably involve me in some Hot Topic tube dress or crushed-velvet romper from Delia’s. I thought this dress looked mature, and I wanted him to see that I had, in fact, somewhere between then and now, become a woman. That I was whole without him. That after eight years (four during high school and four after) my crush had finally gone away.

  8.The last wedding I went to, I wore red and realized that wearing red to a wedding gets you seriously scrutinized and mean mugged. Like you’re trying to take attention away from the bride or something. (I was on my period, actually, and feared bleeding through. But obviously wearing black wasn’t an option, so I opted for red. Whoops.) Anywho, to avoid unwanted stares at this wedding, this time I opted for blue.

  Image sourced from Unsplash

  “I wore this sexy outfit with one thing in mind: to get sexually assaulted!” —no woman ever

  9.My grandma Laurie, who had a stroke when I was 11 and lost feeling in the left side of her body, had to spend the last few years of her life in a nursing home that I frequently visited with my mother. When we cleaned out her house in preparation for the move, I remember stripping her blue flowered sheets from her bed and smelling them. I would miss this house, and I would miss this bed, and I would miss my old grammy. This dress reminded me of those sheets.

  10.The dress was a size 4, when I was sure I was a size 6 or 8. It made me feel skinny. And I wouldn’t even have to cut out the tag to hide the truth!

  11.All the women from my childhood clique were invited to be bridesmaids at the wedding, minus me and one other girl who jumped ship and moved to New York the minute we turned 18. For a few years after I left, ye old clique still tried to include me. To keep me in the group. I think they thought I’d move back home after getting the “big-city life” out of my system. But I never did. To be truthful, I could have tried harder to stay in touch with them as the years went on. But every time I went back home, we had less and less to talk about, and I found myself pounding two-dollar Fireball shots to trick myself into thinking I still had an identity among these girls, for an hour or four. Either way, the past two years or so had been quite radio silent on both ends, and I wasn’t invited to be a bridesmaid. I think the bride and the other girls I grew up with felt more guilty than I did for being so fucking relieved. Being a bridesmaid gives me anxiety. It feels ancient and cliquey, and like performing with a girl band you know will eventually break up when Cindy finally goes to rehab and Susie decides to go solo. Anyway, long story long, my old friends, the girls I got my period with and went to homecoming with . . . were all wearing green dresses. A green army of perfectly tailored, moss-colored bridesmaid dresses. And so I decided blue would be emotionally correct. Not too far off, not pink or purple or something too opposite. But blue. Just one color next door on the color wheel. Like maybe I used to be green, but I drifted.

  12.I remember seeing a photograph of myself at the last wedding I attended and thinking how bloody dead in the eyes I looked. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the alcoholic Australian I’d brought as my date, but I can’t help thinking a little bit of it had to do with the fact that I hadn’t felt pretty. Inside or out. That I’d thrown on some wrinkled dress I’d owned for five years and hadn’t been able to find any of the right jewelry. That my soul had sort of felt the same way. Disregarded and poorly attended to. Anyway, this time would be different! My dress would be perfect, the man on my arm would be different, and my soul would be a little more fed.

  13.I looked so put together in it. It looked like things were finally all right in my chaotic, rumor-swirled-about life. Like I had finally grown up and become okay with being an adult. This is not, however, and will never be, the case. But it is fun to play dress up and occasionally pretend.

  14.My ex-boyfriend was bringing his pregnant girlfriend to the reception. She seemed like the type of girl who writes Christmas cards and maintains a steady weight, so I wanted to seem like a cool, confident, artsy ex who wasn’t necessarily dressing for attention but who also knows how to enjoy life and indulge, because I LOVE MYSELF WITHOUT HIM. So I got this long dress, painted my nails black, and ravenously ate steak dipped in the aioli that was meant for the fries, while smiling across the table at the happy twosome.

  15.Most fancy fabrics make me break out in hives. This fabric didn’t. I now realize oh yeah, dumbass, that’s because it was synthetic as fuck. I think it’s funny that expensive things give me a rash. You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl!

  16.To get sexually harassed by one of my best friends’ fathers. To grant him permission to drunkenly whisper into my ear that he’s wanted to fuck me since I was in high school. To subtly send the message that I’m a slut, who, because of my God-given DDs, is totally open to the idea of fucking her childhood friend’s married 50-year-old dad. To make sure that I would finish the night in tears, after finding out someone I had trusted since childhood was “getting hard just looking at me.” To make me feel stupid and embarrassed for feeling so safe and pretty and confident earlier in the night. To make me love my boobs and then hate them. To ensure that I would feel dirty and gross and cheap when I pushed him away and told him I didn’t want shit to do with him as he sloppily whispered in my ear, “Oh yeah? Then why did you wear a dress like that?”

  1.Go to Italy together.

  2.Eat breakfast together.

  3.Love each other’s feet and ears.

  4.Get chubby and don’t care.

  5.Wear fancy underwear.

  6.Put on lotion.

  7.Run away together.

  8.Call “going to the grocery store” an adventure.

  9.Flake on all their friends.

  10.Fuck after lunch.

  11.Watch each other sleep.

  Image sourced from Unsplash

  Image sourced from Unsplash

  For gals who break down, are unreliable, and occasionally smoke

  He looked so good in sunlight; he looked so good in taillights.

  What is it about girls and cars? The phallic gear stick? The comforting tick-tick-tick of the turn signal? The total control?

  I always fancied myself a Prius girl. You know the type. Reliable RSVPers, socially conscious, always getting grilled chicken wraps and neutral manicures. All the women I ever met who drove a Prius had their lives together. They didn’t let guys treat them like shit. They paid their parking tickets on time and got yearly checkups at the doctor’s. They saved their money and made smart decisions for not only themselves but also the world around them. When I finally saved (made 8,000 dollars, which I decided to immediately spend) enough to buy a new car, I knew it was time to grow up and get a Prius. If I got a Prius, I would become a real put-together type of gal, right?

  WRONG!

  But I didn’t realize how wrong I was until Ruby.

  I saw the beat-up old beauty on the side of the road on my way to the Toyota dealership, and suddenly the thought of getting a stupid soulless Prius made my skin itch. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t one of those girls! I didn’t want to be one of those girls! I was a tits-out, top-down type of gal, and this 1985 soft-top Mercedes was just the vehicular boyfriend I was looking for!

  And boy, oh boy, was my baby beautiful. Ruby-red outside and brown leather inside. Sure, the paint was a little scratched and the cloth roof was a little torn, but these were just life’s scars, you see! This car had a soul and a story, and it didn’t matter that the air-conditioning didn’t work or that it had more than 100,000 miles, because WE WERE IN LOVE.

  I could save Ruby. And Ruby could save me.

  All my friends tried to talk me out of it, of course. “It’ll break down on you!” “It’s a piece of shit!” “I’m not coming to pick you up when you forget to renew your AAA!” Everybody gave me every reason why I shouldn’t buy the car, which, if you knew me, you would know only made me want it more.

&nbs
p; I paid cash to the seller and didn’t even bother having a mechanic look at it. I needed to snap it up fast before someone else bought it! And plus, whatever “issues” the car had would be fine. Who cares if it took premium gas and failed the smog check? You can’t put a price on cruising down Sunset Boulevard listening to Tina Turner in your dream car, can you? Of course you can’t! Freedom hath no worries!

  The truth is, nobody could truly understand the love I had for Ruby. Not even me. Because unlike a reliable Prius or a cost-conscious lease, Ruby provided me with the one thing I couldn’t love someone without—adrenaline.

  Ruby was my Prince Charming. My Romeo. My knight in rusting armor.

  Every time I entered that little tin can of freedom, our journey was an adventure. I was never truly sure if I’d make it where I was going on time, but time is no object when you’re in love. Strangers loved to gawk at us and wave as we cruised by. Only a few radio stations ever worked, but somehow, they were always playing the best songs.

  We couldn’t go long distances together, but that didn’t matter! I didn’t really need to visit my brother in San Francisco, and plus, it wasn’t my fault—my car just couldn’t make it.

  As time went on, Ruby started not being able to . . . make it to a lot of places with me.