The Reluctant Receptionist

things seem to have settled down after the craziness of august/lucretia. i cooked myself dinner for the first time in probably seven weeks (because i don’t count heating up jarred tomato sauce or tyson chicken nuggets—bought in a moment of nostalgic weakness and eaten with bbq sauce made in ponca city—as cooking) on monday. what’s strange about cooking for yourself—and only yourself—is that you have leftovers for days. i seem to keep cooking like i’m doing it for an army, as i did when i was cooking for phong and i because, well, we ate like an army. it’s easier to cook a full recipe than cut it down and it means that i have to buy fewer groceries which, during weeks when i’m living on $12 (no, seriously), makes a big difference. and so i cook these potfuls of food in my gorgeous le creuset pot that i got for my birthday from amanda and phong, something that turned out to be something like a parting gift, a consolation prize. i might’ve had to move out and find my own apartment and learn how to live alone again, but at least i got to carry this gorgeous bright orange le creuset pot with me to my new hovel. after i’ve made these potfuls of food, i then eat them all week long, until friday comes and i feel like i have tomato, white bean, and bacon soup coming out of every pore. then i move on to the next thing. i will say this: i never want to see another salmon cake, ever. not even the ina garten ones.

speaking of our girl ina garten, i’ve been watching her show again, usually during lunch. i haven’t opened my head to sing since lucretia finished, telling myself that i’m resting my voice when the truth is that i’m being lazy, so i’ve been eating lunch at 1 and chilling with ina. i watch her fattily bouncing around her gorgeous kitchen, smothering her dorky husband, picking fresh herbs from her huge backyard garden and imploring us to only use “good olive oil” and “good vanilla extract” while asking “i mean, how bad could that be?” and oh my god i want her life so badly. i want to cook all day long and have my professor husband come home from his job at yale to find four different kinds of pasta waiting for him in the fridge. i want to tool around east hampton in my ridiculous black bmw convertible and have the farmstand woman know me by name. this doesn’t make me unique. i think that most fags in new york city, after they shed all of their taken-on new york city attitudes and punk haircuts and posturing, would tell you the same thing if you could ever get them to admit it. they want to be finally and permanently whisked away from this place, taken out of the trenches. but maybe i’m projecting.