Apron Anxiety
Page 5
I then moved in with my parents, who just bought a luxury loft in a more enviable Brooklyn enclave called DUMBO (which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Now, I listlessly inhabit a spare, windowless, prison-white room meant to be an office (the only option besides bunking up in my parents’ bedroom, which, disturbingly, they probably would have loved). On one hand, living at home was a smart, economical decision so I could figure out the next steps in my housing situation. On the other hand, I’m about to turn thirty-one, and I feel a little foolish being a single, stay-at-home daughter with all her money tied up in an apartment that other people live in and that most taxi drivers can’t find.
I’m still meeting guys everywhere I go—at Citibank, before a Shakespeare in the Park play, while doing crosswords on the subway—and even though many men have that je ne sais quoi, no one has been quite right for me. The problem is I need to be with an alluring, off-the-grid kind of guy, otherwise I lose interest. But it seems like all the dazzling men have such dark problems: impending divorces, sex addictions, secret debt. I go to art shows and housewarming parties with no shortage of fetching, successful, normal bachelors who just want to love and be loved like the rest of us, yet I end up embarrassed for their unoriginality and unable to bear a conversation with them about work or the weather. So instead, I wind up in the arms of guys like the hot, Hungarian bike messenger who was at a book reading (on a drug deal) and put me in his phone as “Alyssa Sexy Jew.” Bad judgment, exceptional hands. Such lousy, lust-driven decisions are why Dr. Pappa, who I’m still seeing, has me committed to a summer of no dating, no drama, and no strings attached.
Then I get a press release.…
Bravo’s A-List Awards are happening tonight and the lineup includes Top Chef’s current season of cheftestants. While I have zero interest in cooking, something catches my eye. In my wholesome, post-Californian-life, I’ve started to watch Top Chef from time to time because even as a noncook, the show relaxes me. So much so that I’ve written about a few of the winners and the master chefs who have influenced them. But what really hooked me this season was a crush I developed on the token bestubbled bad boy, who I cleverly nicknamed “Chef.” Chef looks like James Dean, says he’s Greek and Jewish, and totally turns me on. I even forced my family to watch an episode, because as I tell them, “I’m pretty sure the one making blood sausage is my soul mate …” Only they would see that as a perfectly logical thing to say.
Today, like a paper airplane sent from Aphrodite, Chef is on the tip sheet thrown on top of the New York Times and next to yesterday’s coffee. Usually I’d go to something like this myself, but I’ve just sworn off men, I’m living out of boxes in my parents’ apartment, and I just don’t look or feel my best; I’m even wearing one of my mother’s muumuus—which is not as Sienna Miller as it sounds.
So in my place, I send a pretty, blond freelance reporter named Stephanie to the Bravo party with simple instructions: “Do not leave until you find out if Chef has a girlfriend. And ask him what he looks for in a woman. Get specifics!” Professionalism has never been my strength.
I head home, take a sunset jog, eat a few bowls of cereal and an entire carton of strawberries, floss my teeth, put on a nightgown, and crawl into bed feeling slightly pitiful, not that I’d ever say so. Just before midnight, my phone vibrates as I’m tossing and turning. Apparently, professionalism isn’t Stephanie’s thing either. She’s e-mailed me her transcript from the Bravo event, along with a note: “Chef is very nice and very single. Thanks for the assignment!! P.S. I know you’re not looking or anything, but here’s his phone number.… Just in case.” Screw journalistic integrity. Give the girl a raise.
While tucked under the covers in fuzzy socks and shea butter cream, I reach for the light on the bedside table and start to read the two-page interview on my BlackBerry. I am prepared for a slight rush, a raise of the brow, and then hopefully, a better night’s sleep. But as I read his responses—part juvenile delinquent, part plain ole Joe—my eyes, freshly dotted in cucumber serum, start to widen. He talks about his family’s villa in Greece, and how he dreams of taking a girl there and making her a peasant dish called reginatta, which he describes as stale bread sprinkled with ocean water, covered with bright red tomatoes and crumbled fresh feta. As for the girl, she should be funny, down-to-earth, and extremely family-oriented. He says he’s been a “kitchen-rat” his whole life and that it’s starting to get quite lonely. He’s happy to have been on Top Chef, but he might just become a marine biologist in Florida or a fisherman in the South of France.
Wow. He’s just what I thought he’d be like: creative, carefree, and vulnerable. As I read his answers, I am struck by how unaffected he is. How can he be lonely? He’s such a rock star in my eyes. And the perfect woman he described? She sounds a little familiar. I mostly love that he’s a dreamer but doesn’t sound totally dysfunctional. That’s exactly what I want, exactly what I need. A flash goes off, and suddenly, I know without any hesitation, that Chef is more than just a TV fantasy. He is my next boyfriend.
Let me explain. There are three things I know about my biological self:
1. If I walk into a McDonald’s, even just to use the bathroom, I will get a glistening red zit on the left side of my cheek that will terrorize my life for ten days straight.
2. If I combine alcohol with pot, in any quality or quantity, I’ll convince myself that I’m paralyzed from the neck down, pee in my pants, and then puke.
3. When the future-boyfriend flash goes off, though it’s always primal and never practical, the world better buckle up, because we’re all in for a ride.
The next day at work, I immediately e-mail the special projects editor at People, asking if I can interview Chef for our annual bachelor issue, explaining that a freelancer had revealed his single status and that he’s definitely an up-and-coming heartthrob. It honestly doesn’t matter if she gives me the green light or not. I have to meet him. I then go to my weekly therapy session with Dr. Pappa, who, just one week ago, made me promise to not date this summer. At the time, I was totally on board, but who would have thought Chef would be right around the corner?
“I am going to contact him and who knows what will happen,” I say, after quoting verbatim the cute, off-the-cuff answers he gave to Stephanie. I include the reginatta bit, hoping the Greek nostalgia will perhaps soften her.
“Don’t do it, Alyssa. Please …” says the shrink. “It’s not a good idea.… You really need to be single.”
“Don’t worry, Dr. P.,” I say, writing a check. “I’ll proceed with caution.”
Who knows why I’m so self-assured when it comes to pursuing guys, and in this case, an almost-famous guy. Some people might say that I’m a hot girl; others might go with a hot mess. I think it’s somewhere in between. I can be beautiful or I can be busted, but I can’t get by on my looks alone, even if I tried. Whether it’s my inherited confidence, or an inner cool when it comes to the opposite sex, or some life-less-ordinary-aura, getting guys has always been easy, and getting Chef should be cake.
Despite Dr. Pappa’s warnings and my editor’s impending e-mail saying that Chef isn’t famous enough for the magazine, I leave a message on his cell, in my deepest Demi Moore voice possible, that I want to do an in-person interview with him for People magazine’s bachelor issue. Screw it. I can get him on the pages if I really need to. If not, this could be worth getting fired for. He returns my message in a few minutes, sounding dead tired and terribly adorable. He’s excited about the interview, which I feel a little guilty about (but not really). We start to e-mail and text, comparing our schedules, warming things up. He says he lives in Brooklyn but is in the process of moving somewhere else. I write him that the sauce he made on last week’s episode looked so good that “I wanted to take a bath in it!” He writes back four seconds later: “That could be arranged.” This is my kind of guy. Eventually, we agree to meet at a corner café in Williamsburg called Fabiane’s. Even over the phone, we are on fire.
<
br /> Hours before our interview, I am searching online for something food-savvy to say. At this point, the only thing I really know about the culinary scene is that white wine goes in the fridge, guacamole makes you fat, and Tom Colicchio is bald. The more I think about how little we could have in common, the more nervous I get, so I leave early and order a tequila shot at DUMBO General Store, my neighborhood hang. I ask to speak with the restaurant’s chef, who is “preparing for the dinner rush,” not that I understand what that means. “Hey … um … what’s like a hot topic in the chef scene right now?” I ask. He speaks broken English, is sweating his ass off, and tells me he’s totally slammed. “No problemo,” I say, pounding the shot and heading to the F train.
On the subway, I remind myself that our get-together is a “business meeting,” so I put on my reporter’s hat and fool myself into forgetting about any romantic anticipation. I brush into Fabiane’s with the look of an unflappable journalist, in a very flappable short skirt, who’s done this hundreds of times. Chef is there already, waiting for me by the dessert display, now walking toward me to say hello. He’s long, ruddy, and crazy cute. Before I can reach out my hand, there’s a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug hello. This doesn’t happen with Justin Timberlake.
We arrange a table for two outside, while I take out my tape recorder, which I won’t be turning on, and my list of fake questions, which I won’t be flipping through. I try to stay in character, but the way he looks, the way he speaks, the way he dresses, how our knees touch … I’m trembling. I’m not sure what one orders on a bogus interview that’s turning into a first date, with a French-trained chef and me, a kitchen-phobe, so I fumble through the menu and somehow come up with chicken curry salad. He gets a tomato and mozzarella tartine. We agree on a round of Stella Artois. When the waitress walks away, we waste no time getting to know each other.
“So, what’s your story?” I ask, with a beer bottle to my mouth, half reporter, half temptress.
“I’ll tell you about me, if you promise to tell me about you?” He smiles.
“Fair enough.” I smirk, locking my eyes onto his for a beat too long.
He swiftly shares fascinating stories about his past, really personal things, and I assure him that everything’s off the record. (If he only knew how off the record!) We are so instantaneously comfortable around each other that when his Greek and Jewish heritage comes up, I tell him that a Greek man once broke my heart. Our food comes and I make the long story short. My eyes well up when talking about John, as they always do, and he asks if it still hurts. I say that I’m doing fine, that it’s all part of my fiber now, and that I’ve never believed we get only one great love anyway. I realize that I’m committing a faux pas by bringing up old boyfriends, but this is not the kind of guy who plays by the rules. He doesn’t even know they exist.
“Go on a date with me,” he interrupts.
“Why should I?!” I say teasingly, wanting to kiss him, seduce him, marry him.
“Just be my girl,” he says, with a naïveté I have never seen in a man. “I won’t hurt you.”
I tell him I’ll consider it, and we share an excellent piece of lemon cake, taking turns with one fork. It’s tangy and light, with a generous rich glaze, the perfect way to end an early summer night. I’m hungry and I hog it because I barely touched my chicken curry, which looked like bad news in school-bus yellow. “Who orders chicken curry from a little French bistro?” he jokes, as we walk away from the restaurant, nudging me playfully on my side. Without a moment of self-consciousness, I confess that I know nothing about food. He doesn’t so much as flinch. He just wants to know when he can see me again. “Let me think about it.” I wink, waving down a cab.
He kisses me good-bye, on the cheek again, but more affectionately this time, brushing back my hair. We play it cool for about two days or two hours. I can’t remember. But I do remember not being able to sleep or stop smiling. I also refuse to acknowledge that this is his last week in New York. He is moving to Washington, D.C., to open a casual neighborhood restaurant in Capitol Hill with a few partners. Caught up in the fervor of it all, this strikes me as a minor detail, as if D.C. is just down the street, somewhere in between Westchester and love-comes-first. He seems to share my geographical haze.
We text every few hours, figuring out our next plans, and the following night he calls just to see how I’m doing. Midconversation, I fess up about the bachelor issue hoax: “You really think I’d share you?” I tease, hoping it doesn’t come across as too forward. He had totally forgotten about that which predicated our entire interaction, the actual “interview,” and replies that he doesn’t want to be shared anyway. “You’re the one for me,” he says without any pretense. I have no idea how to respond, so I say, “Thank you.”
There is something so innocent, so coltlike, about him. He still has an old, cracked flip phone; he doesn’t have a Facebook account. His favorite restaurants are diners and his dream vacation is fishing on a lake with rolling papers, a transistor radio, and a few cans of cold Coca-Cola. When I tell him a long-winded story about Winona Ryder, which he follows carefully, he says at the end, “I love that. But who is she?” He’s a simple guy, who works really hard, rewarding himself by putting his toes in the sand and his hands on a woman, and I’m mesmerized by the authenticity of it all.
Not long after he moves to D.C., Chef takes a train back to New York for a proper first date. He finds his way to DUMBO, where I am counting down the seconds. It’s a hot, humid night in late June and just as he rings the bell downstairs in my parents’ lobby, a summer thunderstorm hits hard. I take a deep breath, check my outfit, smooth down my frizz, and head to the lobby. My heart pounds as I spot him waiting outside in the rain with ripped jeans and amber eyes. Before I can ask if he wants Italian or Thai, he kisses my lips, wraps his tender arms around my waist, and walks us down the cobblestone street, under the Manhattan Bridge and the splitting skies. Our bodies are sticky; our hair is wild. We don’t care where we’re going. It is the love affair I never want to end, the perfect storm.
After that night, which rocked both my body and mind, Chef starts buying me train tickets to visit him every weekend in D.C. He’s renting a three-bedroom house with “the Boys,” his tireless and tattooed sous-chefs. I like the Boys a lot; they’re real teddy bears, but the house is situated in a dangerous neighborhood, and ironically, their kitchen is infested with bugs and beyond. In the morning, before he heads to the restaurant, Chef always manages to make me strong coffee and cheese toast, which is basically cheese melted on bread in the toaster oven, but constructed with such confidence and so perfectly crispy. I eat with my feet elevated, petrified of any critters that may whiz by.
It breaks my heart that in building and launching the restaurant all summer, Chef and his roommates haven’t had any time to clean up this run-down Capitol Hill clunker. It also breaks my back—Chef essentially sleeps on a cot. So the first present I ever buy him is a nice and comfortable “W Hotel” mattress, which I purchase with my press discount. It’s the least I can do—for both of us. He beams over the bed, saying it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for him.
We like all things hotel-related. After making such a splash on Top Chef, my guy is now invited to do a lot of cooking events around the country. He includes me in everything, as if we’re a package deal, and I am tickled pink to tag along. I sit in the audience as he does his food demos, oblivious to his knife skills but obsessed with his aura. When it’s time for the Q&A portion of the event, I wait for some smitten soccer mom to ask if he’s single, and for him to blush and brag about me. “Actually, that’s my girl over there.… She’s the best writer in the world.…” I swoon when he says this, especially because all he’s read are my love letters to him.
When we go to a celebrity poker tournament at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, we skip most of the festivities and stay in our suite, with the room-service menu and The Hangover on demand. No one wins bigger than we do that night.
We have so much fun traveling in our pack of two, checking into hotels, hiding out, watching movie marathons, and tying and untying our terry-cloth robes. He always orders a couple club sandwiches for us to share throughout the night. Chef is a club sandwich aficionado. It personifies his style—simple without being bland, layered without being complicated, and ever so slightly retro. The sandwich has two things I’ve always abhorred, mayonnaise and bacon, but I quickly get over that and fall in love with everything about our toasted, toothpicked ritual, the first of many.
He never has much time to enjoy New York with me now that his restaurant is officially open, but when he comes in for meetings, he tries to make a full day of it. I find us cool things to do, like abstract one-act plays and raunchy underground comedy clubs. Since he’s been living behind a stove for most of his life, he’s self-admittedly clueless when it comes to most things nonkitchen. We see an outdoor production of Hair, just like I did when I was little, and have such a wild time it’s as if we’re the ones hallucinating. Despite his first-class cooking pedigree, fine dining isn’t really our thing. After a movie or concert, if we end up somewhere fancy, he does the ordering and I enthusiastically oblige. But normally, we have picnics in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and eat at laid-back bistros. We could both exist on cheese and bread, though he’d definitely prefer prosciutto with his.