Wine with a stripper & God is an 80 quart kitchen mixer

  I sat for wine with a stripper last night. They’re  my neighbor actually, very interesting person. We have a bit of religious trauma in common. They’ve been flirting with me pretty heavily but I hesitate to reciprocate. It’s not wise to mix your affairs like this. What happens if something goes wrong and you have to do your best to awkwardly avoid each other in the backyard or the hallway? This sort of thing. 

  We talked about a lot of things, including the idea of punishment and desiring it. We were both subjected to catholic school after all. How my mentality has become “whatever the kitchen demands of me” If the kitchen needs a blood sacrifice and I get cut, so be it. If the kitchen needs me to start seeing dark spots to get things done, so be it. Sprained my finger as the medium sized mixing bowl slammed it onto the edge of the sink. 

If that’s what the kitchen wanted, I’ll never complain. 

We also talked about how both of our jobs have ruined our stomachs, going such long periods doing intense physical labor sort of makes eating inconvenient. Sometimes you just don’t have time, sometimes you simply forget. 

  Today I didn’t have time. I had to make almost two hundred loaves of mini irish soda bread in an hour. It involves a massive 80. quart mixer that I had to lug upstairs after shoveling around fifty pounds of ingredients into it to make the dough. 

  I was lining the portions on to the sheet pan when I was struck with a sudden realization. 

Your phone still receives voice mails from phone numbers you’ve blocked. What if one of my parents had left me a voice message? If I listened to it, I would be broken, I was certain it would send me on an emotional spiral that could be catastrophic for my current life. I was thoroughly petrified. There I stood with a lump of dough in my hand, I could feel my heartbeat in my eyeballs, I stared at my phone. 

I couldn’t just not look however. I opened up the voice mail section in the app and couldn’t figure out how to get to the part where the messages from blocked numbers are stored. I knew it exists because once an ex had called and left a tearful, sorrowful message begging for another chance. I hadn’t heard it until weeks after she sent it. 

  I fiddled around with the phone a bit more until just googling it. 

  I learned that if you couldn’t see the section labeled for messages from blocked numbers, then you simply didn’t have any. Suddenly my terror had transformed into sadness. 

They didn’t even try to leave me a message when I made my dramatic exit from the family group chat? not once to check up on me, say they miss me, yell at me, anything? Nothing? 

I put my head down and got back to work. The last hundred loaves were portioned in half the time. 

Clean now. Dust, wipe, sanitize, sweep. There’s some dough and raisins underneath the table, Im already at the wall to put away the broom

and dustpan, no one would notice that anyways 

“but you are going to walk back over there, and do the right thing” said a voice in my head. I obliged. 

I kneeled and swept under the table. Kneeling, bowing, doing the right thing. This isn’t who I am. 

Head downstairs 

“I need you to make batter for the banana walnut muffins there isn’t any in the freezer” 

I look at the clock, I’ve got 45 minutes at best. 

“Yes chef” 

“Also, the 80 quart won’t fit in the dish washer so I need you to wash that by hand as well. 

“Yes chef”

9 pounds of gluten free flour , 4 pounds of butter. Wait I have some butter in the cooler. “It has all purpose flour on it though, maybe I can just rub it off instead of having to open a whole new case of butter and use 4 brand new blocks. It’s such a tiny amount of flour anyways” 

“You have to do this with integrity” 

There is the voice again. Okay. 

New case, new blocks of batter. Move as fast as you possibly can. Be exact and precise with the measurements. 

Heave, lift, pour, mix. Batter is done. 

“Don’t forget to clean the heavy mixer, use the green scrub” 

“Yes chef.”

I kneel in front of the mixer, it’s as tall as some of the kitchen staff. I bow my head to make sure I can clean underneath the bowl cover. I clean diligently. I’m kneeling and bowing and doing the right thing. 

Suddenly I realized that I’m worshiping. I couldn’t escape god after all, this time he came in the form of a giant kitchen mixer with the brand name HOBART across its face in big metal letters. 

I wake up at 2:40am everyday for the kitchen. I get home 2 hours later than I should, I boil in the sun walking to the bus station. My finger nails  are cracked, the skin around my cuticles is peeling down my fingers. It hurts the same way splinters do. 

There I was, thirty minutes past when I was supposed to close, scrubbing this mixing bowl I could comfortably sleep inside of and what was going through my head? 

“I love my fucking job” 

I love the soreness, I love the pain, I love being too tired to respond to texts or care about views. It’s isolating me, I’m too tired to hang out with anyone and I really, thoroughly love it. 

I’m a chef in chicago, watching a tv show about a chef in chicago. It’s a funny experience, that slips into surreality when I realize the main character and I share some identical traumas. Apparently a lot of chefs do. What drives someone to commit to service as a job? It’s a sort of martyrdom, my neighbor and I talked about that last night too. I’m being punished, Im being abused, by the kitchen. I’ve personified it, I hear it’s voice in my head, it controls my life and my behavior. It’s what I’ve always wanted. I can’t wait to wake up at 2am, I can’t wait to suffer, my parents are gone but I have the kitchen now, I’m happy to be kindling. Truly I understand religion now. 

The void is being filled. I can sacrifice everything else in my life, it can take everything away from me. I don’t deserve much else anyway, 

This entry didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, Im far too drained. Must have been what the kitchen wanted.