I’m baking myself a boyfriend, kneading him out with my hands, my elbows, my shoulders. I sprinkle flour over his shape: the knotted challah of his arms, the pretzel roll of his molded hairline, his back freckled like olive loaf, his pasty legs and the curl of dough resting across his belly. I grunt as I bend over him, bring him into shape, into life.
Love takes work, it takes sweat.
My sweat drips from my brow, onto the dough.
His lips will taste like tears.
Sure, I’ve seen the pre-made and store-bought doughboys: only 30 minutes in the microwave, but they never come out right. The store-bought stuff ends over- or under-cooked in spots, and I want him to be complete all through.
This is the first doughboy I’m making from scratch, an old recipe my grandmother received from her mother: a legacy, an heirloom. She joked the recipe was handed down from mother to daughter since wheat was first ground into flour.
Grandma told me she’d made a doughboy to keep her company when Grandpa was away on business. I remember postcards on the refrigerator: St. Louis, Jacksonville, San Diego. My first recollection of Grandpa was the perfume of baking bread–perhaps my memories are getting confused, and it’s Grandma’s doughboy I’m remembering.
Career, going back to school, friends all are a blur. Dating a series of ritualized coin tosses, each bet placed giving a diminishing return as I got older. Why settle for someone who would only intersect with my life at bed-time and at some meals?
He will be my own protector, my partner, and support me in all things. My smile widens into a low laugh as the ache in my shoulders speaks of the work I am doing. He is almost done, and sweat pours off my brow, seasoning the dough. The oven is ready, as hot as needs to be to help him rise and be golden.
When I open my eyes, I am on a slab, on the kitchen table.
I look at you, eyes shining, and wonder if this is my wake, or my birth. I am hot, and the cool surface of the stone slab steals away the heat until I feel better.
“Am I–?”
“Mine? Yes,” you say, and lick your lips. “All mine.”
I wonder if the taste in my mouth–mint and rum–when I woke was your breath. The heat of the oven slips away like a dream of warm sheets after a night’s sleep.
He is golden, and I am so very happy with him.
When he is near, the high, sweet smell of baking bread fills me. Memories of eating apple popovers fill my mind. Momma and Poppa bought them to reward me for sitting still and quiet through church services. Mister Anderson, the owner of the bakery we visited after church had gray, crooked teeth, and his paper hat was always sweated through, but Momma said he was one of the small gods of the kitchen.
The smell of baked bread–his smell, my doughboy’s smell–coaxes a garden of memories to bloom in my mind, and I cannot help but be happy when he’s near.
Your words sweeten the curl of my ears like rum soaking a bread pudding. Listening to you makes me drunk with joy–my head filled with amber light. I am what I am only under the weight of your hand.
What could I possibly say to keep you interested?
What is important enough to interrupt you?
He frustrates me.
My chest feels full of embers–he just sits there, watching me, with the same half-smile on his face and nodding at everything I say. He asks nothing of me–no questions, he only wants what I want.
I want to make him angry.
I tell him I am a long-lost sister to royalty, and he only smiles and asks me to tell him more; he always suspected I was a princess. I leave the house only to return in the small hours of the night, drunk, disheveled. A small crease forms on the round loaf of his brow. His voice is as placid and level as lake water: how was my day?
I snarl, gestures sloshing over my edges, tell him I’ve been with other men all night, one after another. Lies, words to hew him open, to wound him, to make him push against me. I tell him to get out of my way I want to wash them off of me.
He is gentle, leads me to the bathroom, runs the shower until the water is steaming and leaves a towel on the toilet seat.
My tears mix with the water, and I curl up against the curve of the tub, eating the hot sobs retched up from my gut.
Why can’t he be angry?
Your eyes gaze out the window, your hand worrying at the crust of my forearm. You nibble at the crumbs when you think I’m not watching, but my eyes seek yours, and yours are turned away, outward.
Am I not what you made, what you wanted?
I don’t understand.
It–it’s over. I can’t stand him, I can’t stand him being near me, the wounded look in his eyes when I tell him to give me space. No, it can’t go on like this, I can’t help what I feel.
I made him for me, but I no longer want him.
I tried, but kissing him is like kissing my own hand.
He just lies there, under me, leaving crumbs all over the sheets. I just want to slap him, hurt him, and I don’t want to be like this anymore.
Would it be fair to force him out, drive him away when he’s been made only for me? What would he do? Is forcing him away cruel, or the only right way?
No, I couldn’t do that to him, couldn’t send him out into the wider, colder world to fend for himself–he’ll only try to find his way back to me, scratching at the door in the dead of night.
In the small hours of the night, the sheets clinging to me like an unwanted embrace, I know what I can do, what is the best way.
His tears taste like butter.
His lips taste like tears.