My sister called yesterday from Boise. She wanted to know why, in a new apartment, 700 miles from just about everyone I know, I'm spending my pandemic baking bagels and twisting babkas. Curating croissants.
"Who's gonna to eat all that stuff, Kat?" she wanted to know.
And it's a reasonable question. If I ate a tenth of what I bake, I wouldn't fit out the door. Most of it goes to the shelter. A bit goes to the cute grad student downstairs. But that's a different story.
For me, baking isn't about production or consumption. I mean, sure, I enjoy a baguette as much as anyone. But for me, it's a way to remember.
****
In '98, I'd taken a gap semester and moved to London. I still can't believe my mom let me move there, she'd always been so protective. I was sharing a tiny flat with a girl I'd known in school, and worked at the Waterstones by Covent Garden underground. London was a lot - scary big. Our family wasn't rural, but we were pretty suburban. And in this strange city I generally stuck close to home. Directly across from the tube station, just down from the book store, is a café. Aroma now, I think. But back then it was called Matisse.
On my time off, I liked to sit at the café. They had two tables outside. I'd sip a foamy coffee to escape the stuffy flat and try to feel more like an adult -- looking back, I guess the three sugars probably gave it away that I was 19, a bit lonely, and feeling very far from home. This was the London before Oyster cards. The new Tate had just opened. The chunnel was long done, but the Jubilee extension was still under construction.
It was a late Sunday that summer. I was sipping my coffee when a fare card literally floated into my lap. I'd been caught up reading -- and the paper slip caught my attention. That is how I met Henri. Henri was a baker's apprentice, at Matisse, no less. Twenty-two and from Lyon. He was spending six months in London and sharing a flat above the shop with two others. But one had been called back to Montpelier by emergency, and his replacement was months away. The other stayed out as much as humanly possible. The stuffy flat was too much for a boy used to rural Bordeaux. The flat did have one redeeming feature though -- the kitchen could fit a table and had a sizable oven. And it was in that kitchen that I became Henri's apprentice -- in baking and in love. Not one then the other, but both at the same time.
I asked Henri the next day, how they got the brioche so light. He invited me up to learn that evening. "Brioche wants time", he'd said. He always talked about what doughs wanted or needed like they were alive. And in a way, it's true. "You make it at night and bake the next day." he'd said.
Brioche is enriched, so eventually the dough becomes very soft. But when you start to mix, and we always mixed by hand, it's sticky as hell. So there wasn't much I could do, with my hands stuck to the dough, when Henri kissed me that first time.
Asking permission wasn't as much of a thing then. So as he stood behind me, his arms over mine, showing me how to knead the dough, he leaned in and kissed my neck. I was suddenly aware of him, of the heat of his body, which a moment before had just been two hands teaching. I noticed the way his baker's biceps pressed on my shoulder. His chest pushing up against my back. His hips, lightly grazing near the small of my back. I think I let out a gasp, and he quickly backed off, thinking, I imagine, that his kiss wasn't welcome. I turned. My hands came away from the table, still holding the sticky mess. I looked in his eyes, which had gone... not wary, but cautious. And I tilted my head up and kissed his mouth.
Now, I'm not 19. I'm not a virgin. So it may be hard for you to imagine, how daring, just how bold that was for me. Never-been-kissed wouldn't be quite accurate, but never-been-loved, most certainly never-been-fucked. So I'm sure I surprised him as much as I surprised myself, because it took him a moment to relax into the kiss.
I've always loved that moment of falling. The first moment of contact, when it feels like you shouldn't and it feels like you have to and you, I don't know, surrender. But I'd never felt it before like I did now. Henri's arms around me were a tunnel who's lights I couldn't see at the end. And I went and I went and I went. In some ways, I'm still driving now.
From that point forward, it was romance and baking. We would stretch out the baklava dough and then kiss in the corner. He would teach me to knead by softly cradling my breasts. His only rule was, clothes on in the kitchen, unless the dough was away -- rising or baking. Really, he was pretty serious about safety, which I guess a real baker has to be. But that never stopped him from sliding a hand up my skirt, or advancing a hand up my shirt, pressed against my back, as I dusted the sandwich loaf. He loved to pull on my nipples, bra-less under my tank top, and whisper in my ear "Softly, softly let the dough stretch on its own." He'd talk about the way the proteins stretched in the dough. And I would demonstrate by pulling on his cock in his pants.
