bringing home the bacon

"his name," she said with a slight curl in her voice,"is jeremiah bacon."

how oddly fitting, i thought, considering his line of work. i was googling the name of the man who is nat's latest interest, who also happened to be the executive chef at the new restaurant she'll be working with. in an effort to save money for our newfound desire to conquer new york city, the restaurant industry was once again the only sure bet for a good payout at the end of the day. it's funny, she has a degree from one of the biggest universitys of the south and a new certificate as an estetician, and she is still going back to serving. which is equivalent to what i'm doing, which is making a living off of go go dancing in clubs. this is what our lives have come to.

ugh. back to the bacon. i was presented with a picture of a man surrounded by a halo of pots, with "don'f fuck with me or i'll cleaver your skull" eyes, looking into the camera lens with not so much as a gleam of interest in what the viewer thinks of him. very intense. and very familiar. "you make sure he's not a virgo yet?" i asked.

"not yet. but if he is, there's no way in hell." if you like crazy, you'd like a chef. if you like crazy with a side of neurosis, you would LOVE a virgo chef. *ding* orders up!

i had a series of virgo chefs in my past. the first one, and most integral, was one i'll call the 4th. he was the catalyst of the chefs that would follow... portland, the best friend, mohawk, mooseface. all culinary artists; all virgos. i was sixteen when i met (well, re-met, but that's a different story) the 4th, a line cook at (ironically enough) the same restaurant i met mooseface at six years and one state later. it was my very first job as a hostess and he was perfection to me... quiet, brooding, and beautiful... and being sixteen, i thought it would last forever. "forever" lasted on and off over the following six years, until it finally occurred to me that he was extremely possessive slash controlling, not to mention BAT-SHIT CRAZY. i blame not knowing this important observation on the fact that we were long-distance the entire relationship, not my fukkin thick-ass head.


i digress. during those six years, during the off seasons of our long tirade, i met and wooed all the rest. no one really stuck, because as it turns out, they were all either possessive or not that interested. with the exception of mooseface.

mooseface was everything that my boyfriend before him was not. he was tall and hadsome and he made money. he made a lot of money, actually, and at twenty-one i was working five jobs to support the unpaid ballet company i was working for in south atlanta; i wasn't aware of the concept of having money in excess to spend. before that, i had dated a guy who treated me horribly and fucked with my mind so that i thought he treated me fair. he should have been in school for law, if it wouldn't have interrupted his plans to be a schmuck dropout pothead. so coming off this relationship, money and nice dinners and gifts were all the more attractive, as one could imagine. mooseface expressed his attraction to me as a friend first, but soon the friendly glasses of wine turned into flowers and romantical dinners.

this is the catch. he was sleeping with natalie, and i knew that she liked him. we found out later that he was also sleeping or had slept with the other half of the attractive female servers at or around that time, so it makes me feel a little better, but i was still a dick and karma has since never stopped reminding me. long story short, she eventually gave us her consent, and mooseface and i embarked on a year long journey that i like to refer to as, my medevial period.

mooseface and i had things in common. we both liked to smoke pot and drink wine. we both liked good food and pretending like we were wealthy. what else...hmmm... we both liked sex. that's five things in common. what else should i have looked for? what he lacked in conversation he made up for in dick, and i was okay with that. i was a rebound for him, and he was a rebound for me. we decided after much deliberation that i would move in with him the following year, and at that point is when things really started to sour. he was depressed with his life, and he had gotten back into doing cocaine, and gotten me to start doing it more that what i condider to be a healthy vice, even now. you know, given the warning signs... the unpredictable mood swings, the restless nights in bed, the frequent nose bleeds... i should have probably guessed that he was doing something that was detrimental to his health. but la la la i just went about my life, wrapped up in how i was going to make it as a ballet dancer, how i wanted to be thinner, how i wanted to get famous so i could have money to spend instead of just pretending like i had all the money in the world, that i really had no idea that he was coked out of his mind every day.

note to self: two selfish people in a relationship will never work out.

we fought constantly. if we weren't fighting, we were in silence. i would get so bored next to him. it turned out that everything i initially liked about him i hated towards the end. i hated how he chewed his food. i hated how he shaved his body hair. how he laughed, how his mouth opened up wide with his tongue hanging out. how he belittled me in front of other people. on that last morning of us living together, it was not even ten o'clock before the fights began. and i told him i wanted out. i packed a bag and my cat and left down the street to live with sarah and natalie, my ever saving graces. that's right. nat took me in after i stole her thunder. i was a total douche and she acted as if it were all his fault for fukkin me up. that's a true friend.

a week later i got a text from mooseface thanking me, that i had showed him that he had a substance abuse problem. i had no idea what he was talking about. when i called him he confessed that he was dealing with an addiction to cocaine and that he had told the restaurant, and that they were paying his way for a thirty day stint in rehab. the substance abuse center was located in miami, and he would be leaving in four days to recover from what he called his "last chance at sobriety". he asked me to stay with him, as i was the only thing that would get him through, that i was his guiding light and the single thing in his life that he felt he had done right... and of course, i did what any girlfriend with a heart would do.

i said i absolutely would not be there for him, and for him to go fukk himself.

i was pissed. i couldn't belieive he didn't tell me about his problem. and still, because i never really noticed for whatever reason, i'm not quite conviced he ever had one. i have this theory in the back of my mind that it was an elaborate ploy for me to stay with him. it was all too convenient; the move out, the impending break up, the habit that i never saw. like rehab was the only dire circumstance that would judge how much i loved him and was willing to fight for the relationship's survival. but really, for a couple who's relationship is based on little more than how you want to decorate your future kitchen and different sexual positions a female partner can climax in, it was probably pushing it to say i was going to stand by him due to the strength and nature of our love.

i felt foolish and naive. how could i have trusted this was going to work out again? none of the virgo chefs beforehand ever did. the 4th was all over the map, moving from possessive to cold in under 60 seconds, and then there was portland, who wanted me to move to oregon to be with him, and the best friend, with whom i had no desire to begin a relationship though he called me for about a month in hopes thats where things would go... it was a rise and fall with the virgos, like the tides. it's funny, i have always prided myself on the ability to look at someone and feel whether or not they are good for me as a friend. well, i either am severely disillusioned, or that ability only extends to plain friends, because my history of men has been way over par.

we get lost in projection, i think it's a problem that we all have a tendency towards. the person that you choose to be with has been that person their entire lives. of course, the beginning of a relationship does bring about change in both people. but it's mostly temporary and once it dissipates a little, begins to manifest projection. this is where the phrase, "i don't even know you anymore" comes from. what you actually mean is, "this is totally not who i thought you were and it's your fault for making me think you were the way i wanted you to be". think about it, especially if you have ever said that before or had it said to you. it's infuriating... if you say it, you feel as if you had been fooled. if it's being said to you, it's a direct blow to your character and/or personality.

the human mind will complete certain things if they are missing. there were a whole series of tests we had to do in one of my psych classes in college in which we looked at cards and said a word that was on the card. in most instances, we would say the word and upon closer evaluation, would realize half of the lines on the letters were missing. it was an excercise in understanding that the mind projects what the image really should be so that it's host won't become confused and disoriented with the patchy information the mind is receiving. like this:


Olny  srmat poelpe can raed tihs.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod  aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of  the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde  Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a  wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat  ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and  you can sitll raed it wouthit a  porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef,  but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot  slpeling was ipmorantt!
  

this paragraph defines what i've done in every single relationship i have ever been in.

the truth is, if i find something i want, something i have wanted for years with ALMOST all the parameters necessary to be a "dream come true", i complete the lines so that it fits inside nice and neat, even if the framework is loose and slack-strung. it seems that if i believe hard enough, things actually are what i want them to be, even though in the end, it is not something i ever would have desired. i have been left with a trail of disappointment, a string of lovers that i believed were everything i wanted in life, and only because i wanted that life so bad i could taste success in the food they fed me.

sometimes, the only thing we have is desire, and sometimes, that desire overcomes our reality. it's about as healthy as gourmet food every night for dinner, and that kind of gluttony is only useful if you want one thing; to be fat.

and so it was. natalie called me a few days after working with jeremiah bacon and told me it was over. "he's a total douchebag. his name isn't even jeremiah; it's jerry martin bacon. i fell for a man who uses a stage name in the kitchen because his isn't 'marketable' enough. how could i ever be so stupid?" and all i could do, was lower my head in shame.

i know how she did it. i fell in love with my chefs like that too. and even though mine didn't use a stage name like old jerry martin, they didn't ever have to. i might as well have made up one for them. they were never real to begin with anyway.


k.