Day Three hundred and fifty two - It wasn't meant to end this way

The last girl I ever dated could seriously cook. Like really cook, cook, but her heart wasn't in it, it wasn't her passion. It was something she was born with, for some reason, everything about how food works and how it works together with different ingredients just made sense to her, innately, and once I asked her how she came up with these dishes, always on the fly, and she'd produce these masterchef quality dishes that always amazed me, but that she always felt were subpar for whatever reason. And she told me that as soon as she looks at an ingredient, a picture forms in her mind, and just like that she knows which flavour profile will match with another, it's like a whole complex equation being calculated in picoseconds, and she starts assembling everything, tossing this in the frying pan, cooking that in the pot, while a sauce is whisked into existence, and something the gods would kill for is brought forth ex nihilo. She was, naturally, shocked when I said I couldn't cook for the life of me, and nothing in how she created her dishes actually made any sort of sense to me, but for me that was ok, I don't need to eat something with a ganache every day, nor have I a desire for things that are drizzled in olive oil, or marinated or cooked sous vide. I like things simple, I said, but she didn't really understand what I meant.

One day I decided to surprise her, and said that I was going to cook for her. I'd actually prepare dinner, I'd sort of learned a recipe from a TV celebrity chef, thought I could pull it off, but her reaction was one of utmost reluctance. I said I really wanted to do it, she asked me not to, I insisted, and oh boy. Fine, she said, I'll be around if you need any help. I told her I didn't, gave her a kiss, and told her to go away, I'd perfectly fine. I wasn't, of course, I fucked up big time because I thought I'd memorized the recipe and the steps required for the preparation, but I hadn't. And even the most basic of tasks proved to be a dire challenge : I was dicing an onion, and exactly at that moment she was coming back from the shower, took a look at me, and asked me what I was doing. I very politely replied I was dicing an onion, and she looked at me as if I'd said the craziest thing ever muttered by anyone. That way, she asked, and I said yes, and she rolled her eyes and called me crazy under her breath. I'm fine, I'm fine, everything's fine. The recipe ought to have taken some twenty minutes or so from start to finish, it took me like an hour and a half. By the time I'd clumsily plated the thing up, and laid them on the table for us to eat, I was already dreading what came next. We sat opposite one another, and she looked at it with an expression that said do I have to eat this, and I encouraged her by taking the first bite, and yeah, it wasn't great but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting either. She took a fork and prodded the fish I'd prepared en papillote, covered with green things - which ones they were god only knows - and was it properly cooked, was it not, who could say? Well, she could, and she took one tentative bite, chewed it, begrudgingly swallowed it, and turned into Gordon fucking Ramsay in front of me. Yeah, bland, the fish is overcooked, and the vegetables are under seasoned. Well, I learned my lesson that day. 

Some weeks after that we are out for a walk, and though it's still early winter, it was like a perfect spring day, and we sit in the sloping lawn of a public park, warm under that cerulean sky. She places her head in my lap, and lies crosswise, looking up at me. We're both smiling, and everything's great, and she says she thinks we should break up. What, I ask, and she says she's not feeling it, what, I ask, hey, tell you what, she says, let's just quit while we're ahead, she says, what, I ask, and I'll give you a lift so you catch the bus home, isn't that nice, she says, what, I ask, and just like that I'm off home without ever quite getting what had just happened. What?

[This is the playlist for July.]