Pity party of one: Eating solo.

Isn’t a meal cooked with butter and love, the best? Caramelized onions, creamy béchamel, on a bed of fusilli al dente. Sprinkle with bacon. Come on, a bit more. Let’s go for the “triple bypass.” Add a glass of wine and, there you have it, a romantic dinner for one.

To me, this is completely new, baking without thinking of the other. Before, his tastes became mine and his dislikes deprived me of Parmesan cheese. My son doesn’t like mushrooms? No more mushrooms! My boyfriend finds ham boring? We’ll have roasted dead chicken, then! Understand that I was not imposed anything, it is I who’s a fool for sacrificing my fork.

A little more than two years ago, because life is what it is: a bipolar bitch, I suffered from a hard reboot and landed in a furnished one bedroom flat. Alone. Absolutely alone. And free. Absolutely free.

I could eat anything I wanted, but I wasn’t hungry. I was hurt. I was scared. The only food I was nibbling on was my nails and the skin of my lips. My protruding ribs were invited to my pity party.

Thank God, I have the resilience of a super ball and I’m a natural glutton. My appetite grew back, as did my buzz cut. Of course, I launched myself on the other side of famine, emulating a Jabba the Hutt with low self-esteem. I was licking, disillusioned, the plastic wraps from my pre-packaged snacks, wiping my chin and my Cheetos coloured fingers, on the giant napkin that was once my bathrobe.

Fortunately, I slowly felt the hunger to feed me some love. To invite myself for a swanky feast. As I would have done if I had been my girlfriend. I wanted to seduce my taste buds and savour some flavour. So I went grocery shopping.

You should have seen me, swaying in the fruits and vegetables isle, with total amnesia. Do I like fennel? Well, yes, I like it, I think… In a salad? With salmon? Yes! I like salmon! I was running around like a miraculously healed. Yes! I remember! Fennel has a black liquorice taste! I love fennel!! I was out to lunch, going nuts, bananas, stir-fry crazy, and three fries short of a happy meal.

Today, my morale is sizzling, grilling and all around sautéed. It smells good up in here. I yell in British that my risotto is bleeping amazing and I answer back “Thank you, Chef!!” before adding a lump of stinky cheese. I try stuff. Sometimes it fails, it turns, it yucks, it burns or it coughs too much Scottish peppers. But I don’t give a flying fig rolled up in prosciutto, there’s no one to diss my dish.

I love my company. I like living alone and deciding what I’ll eat and when. Even if the man I date complains that he doesn’t like capers, I tell him to push them on the side of the plate without apologizing or changing my recipe. I offer him to take a look in the fridge. I have tofu, basil, almond butter… You don’t like any of that? Well, let’s take this with a grain of salt, shall we, apple of my eye?

Then, with a moaning mouthful, I get a culinary climax, before handing my sweetie pie a delivery menu.

Spring to life.

At last! I don’t have to leave the heated cocoon of my bed to wrap myself in goose bumps anymore. My feet have stopped sending me the icy echo of the ruthless bathroom tiles. The shower curtain has ceased from sticking to my body in an unbearable physics principal. Spring has finally started to sprout!

I open the window and let in the damp warmth and smells announcing a long-awaited renaissance. The winter was hard, despite the milder caress of that child from the equator. I slowly groundhog my nose against the screen. Future buds, small dry grains, appear here and there on anorexic branches. A bird dares to tu-whit tu-who some kind of joy. I grin, greet the feathered friend by imitating him with an accent. He buries his head into his shoulders, finding me a bit quick to roll in vernal delight. The wind is still quite chilly in the morning.

But snow plates have lost the battle, vanishing on the hepatic and sickly grass. The wet soils have put on their bodices a crocus corsage to brighten up their mud and dog feces dresses. Though that old abandoned bicycle still remains with its crooked wheel stuck in a rare and stubborn ice, clinging to the rusty fence.

I can hear the moaning of winter who would rather stay a while, like an unwanted guest that sticks after eleven. In the sky, there is a great battle between lead and gold. You’ve lost, old man, even if you’ve left your devastation all around me. A great spring cleaning is coming that will sweep all sadness and shudders with a zephyr breeze.

I can see soccer balls and short skirts are blooming. It’s too early, but who cares, we will play summer under Jack Frost’s nose. The Easter Eggs have hatched into small bawdy swallows and loons have punctured the clouds with great blows of V’s.

Dust swirls up, salts my lips and stings my eyes with calcium residue. I squint before such sudden clarity. The light enters the retinas but the breasts stay covered and fearful. Although, smiles are now easier because we are hot blooded people in a Nordic country.

Gorge with sap, the maple trees and then, the sexes. Thus begins the parade of strollers and beautiful people on the streets. The boldest terrace themselves with a beer, ending an interminable hibernation.

Like grunting zombies out of their graves, we’ll take possessions of parks and sidewalks. It will be the resurrection of the lust for life. Our collars will blossom, gaping wide, to warm our still shivering torsos.

For tomorrow, we will be on the eve of torrid happiness. Tomorrow will be almost the beginning of the awakening. Tomorrow will be soon incessantly summer.

And then, I’ll be with you again, pale troglodyte, sangria in hand, teeth out and heart in full efflorescence.

A breakup: exercises in style.

 

It takes place in a bar. A woman breaks up with a man. He wants to know why. The woman refuses to tell him the truth, not to hurt him. She hands him a book he had lent her. She then gives him a kiss and leaves.

Synonyms:

In a tavern, a drinkery, a pub, a lady, a female, a chick rejects, parts, splits with a gentleman, a male, a guy. He wonders, questions, inquires as to why. She remains elusive, ambiguous, vague. She hands him a book, a novel, a best-seller. Then she gives him a kiss, a smack, a peck and exits, flees, takes off.

Metaphorical:

In a place where ethyl souls wither, a wild cat wants to start from scratch. The abandoned juggles with question marks. She hands him the words and decides it’s time to book this joint. Farewell has never been this cold. The cruel kitty becomes Griffon and flies away, free at last.

Haiku:

Bright summer and dark bar

A silence a book a kiss

Crack! A broken heart

BDSM:

In a dark dungeon, a mistress breaks the bonds that held her slave. He begs her to stop the torture. But the sadist gags her own mouth. She whips out some vanilla hardcover and bites him one last time before she decides to beat it.

Bombastic:

The events take place in a grogshop. An inamorata fractures a relationship. Dismayed, the spurned one demands justification for his demotion. The damsel is evasive and abstruse. She gives him a published document he once owned. Then, she arises from her posterior, gives him a brief canoodle and decamps.

Vulgar:

In a foul and stinking bar, a whore breaks the heart of a spineless pussy who doesn’t have enough brains to understand why the fuck she’s dumping his sorry ass. She keeps mute as a carp with Down syndrome and hands him back his lame book. The slot gives Mister No Balls a disgusting herpes ridden snog and pisses off.

Paranoid:

In a nebulous place, a suspicious woman seems to conspire to out a strange man. He is curious. He smells a rat. Especially since the evasive lady remains ambiguous. Oh, she’s up to no good. She slips him a mysterious book, gives him the kiss of Judas and evaporates in thin air. Real dodgy…

Homeoteleuton:

In an ale house, a spouse loses a louse. He rouses and tries to douse his doubts. She plays mouse with his highbrows. The fouce gives the clouse a book and a chause on the mouth. Then, she bows and goes for a sprouse.

Interjections:

Hi! Hello! So long! Uh! No! Whoa! Wait! Here! Smack! Bye!

Frenchisms:

In a chic bistro, a belle bids adieu to her fiancé. As he loses his joie de vivre, she plays some jeu d’esprit and goes «C’est la vie! ». The coquette gives the ingénu his grimoire back and, as a coup de grâce, a blasé bisou on the cheek.  Zut alors! Cherchez la femme fatale!

Speculative:

It happened in a bar or some kind of restaurant. Maybe she gave him an appointment to be in a neutral location. Or maybe he wanted to be in the place where they first met. In short, the girl breaks up with the guy. Surely they didn’t click or he was a crappy lover. The guy doesn’t understand why. Or doesn’t grasp her innuendos. Or maybe the girl is just a player. She hands him a book that looks long and boring. No doubt that another guy is waiting outside because she gives him a quick kiss and runs away.

But perhaps she turned the corner of the alley and stated crying. Who knows?

Reversed:

It takes place at his apartment. The woman says she is in love with him. The man does not want to hear that. He explains why he feels nothing for her more than friendship. The woman wants to get back her love letters. He has thrown them away. In tears, she holds on to him.

And she refuses to leave…

Covering that grey area.

I’ve been coloring my hair forever. Shades of red, brown, gold and even green, once, thanks to a freakishly chlorinated pool…

At one point, I realized that I couldn’t remember my original hue. So I skipped a painting session and, eeek!, a skunk came out from behind my follicles! Ô surprise! Ô almost embarrassment! Grey hair is like your PIN number, you mustn’t show it to anyone. So I continued with the chemical spill every three weeks.

But one day, I had it up to the foil with all these costly coatings. I convinced myself that I was at the age where the claw marks of father Chronos could no longer be hidden under a dry mop without pigment that absorbs the dyes as well as pressed wood and gives me the choice between three tones: “Shoe polish brownish-black “,”Auburn, don’t kid me, it’s magenta” or ” Little old lady mousy blonde.”

So I opened up the pearly gates and went the Milky Way. I was full of the great white hope for a beautiful snowy top.

At the news that I was letting my roots be eaten up by calcium, people congratulated me, but grimaced while doing so. They talked to me about courage. They talked about feminism. Yes, I was told how brave I was to show my signs of erosion.

I went «Hi ho Silver! » and got platinum strands to match the salty locks that were oozing out of my scalp with the speed of a Monday morning. It’s wrong to think that your true colors come shining through. They gloom and murk slowly with amazing laziness. It was long, it was ugly, but one day, at last, I was Christine the Grey.

And…?

And my metallic side didn’t attract and magnetize.

I hardly landed any gigs (I’m an actress) and the fire in men’s eyes was reduced to medium-low. In return, the women found me less threatening. So there was that. I was told that I was «aging» myself and from what I understood, that was not a good thing at all.

Why?

Because looking old reminds us that, next stop, is Rigor Mortis station. And we don’t want that in our planet profiteer’s minds. Plus, looking old is not exciting. We fornicate when we are young, in our planet inseminator’s minds.

Well! I refuse to believe that I won’t get down and dirty because my curtains have bleach stains!  Rock and roll is all about the rhythm, not the tones. The whites can dance. I will bang regardless of the tint of my bangs!

Whether the piano of my life falls from the eleventh floor on my Nice and Easy freshly frosted skull or sinks directly into my grey matter, I expect that I will have copulated ’till the last drop!

I’m aware that the poking of my log will slack. I’ve read about hormones that leave us with their libido between the legs. But I count on generating sex as a sexagenarian and being a jubilant jubilee! Heck! I want to throw the sponge in the throes of passion, my alabaster sweaty mane stuck on my wrinkled forehead! Snap goes my heart, while I ride my grateful shriveled mate!

All this to say that, alas, I fell off the wagon and started to hit the bottle again. I now adorn the colors of the day. No kidding, it seems that it takes off me at least six or seven years.

And looking younger is what we’re all dyeing for, isn’t it?