Cakes
>>The prompt: Compulsions
I had a breakdown once. Years ago — when my wife and I were hooked on heroin. My mom would call once a week to check in, and I’d tell her these stupid lies about how the experimental stream-of-conscious novel I was working on was generating a lot of interest. She’d ask how I was doing with dad’s death, and I’d say I was dealing with it, which was the biggest lie of all. She’d say, “OK. Love you,” and hang up. I’d shoot up to forget the conversation.
Our new friends were second-shelf slime-balls that lied to us and stole from us because they were drug addicts, but we’d lost most of our old top-shelf friends because we started lying to them and stealing from them. You know how it is. You’ve seen the public service announcements… the after school specials. And in the midst of all that I had this breakdown.
I started baking cakes. Constantly. Five, six sometimes seven or eight cakes a day. Coffee cakes, cakes with orange or lemon zest, upside down cakes, right side up cakes, bunt cakes, burnt cakes, spice cakes, space cakes… whatever. I sifted flour endlessly and chopped walnuts and sliced almonds paper thin, and I melted sour cream and chocolate and brown sugar and peanut butter for glazes and sunken glazes and marble tops while my wife shot up, listened to the Pixies and masturbated upstairs. I’d leave the house twice a day to pick up and drop off heroin and shower once or twice a week, but other than that I spent my time in the kitchen. Our crappy new friends would stop by and eat cake on a pretty regular basis, but it was never enough and I’d always end up running out to the dumpster to throw away a bunch of cakes I’d baked only hours before. I don’t remember anyone ever asking, “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Maybe someone did but if so, I don’t remember it. I’m sure our new friends didn’t want to risk interrupting their supply of cake.
One day at the height of the whole cake thing my front door opened and my mother and brother walked in. My mom looked around and immediately began to cry. She said, “My god, what are you doing?”
“Baking a cake,” I said and held up the bowl of batter as proof.
-Jason
Age 32
New York City
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