WAM Entry: May 12, 2023
On feeling like maybe you've been doing something wrong this whole time
In case you missed it, I’m hosting an annual challenge called Write Across May (WAM). The goal is to write 200 words every day for the whole month of May, and this year lots of new people joined in, which is wonderful and thrilling. (Check out my Substack Notes for daily prompts if you’d like to participate!)
May has been a particularly grueling month for me. Maybe it’s been the perpetual Bay Area gloom, or maybe it’s that I haven’t run in weeks because of a knee injury. Whatever the case may be, my recent writing has been a little melancholy, which is reflected in this post. But I’m sharing it anyway, if not just to serve as a reminder: we don’t always have to have it all figured out.
Anyway—I feel like I spend a lot of time online begging people to share their writing with me, but I haven’t actually shared any of my own. So, here it goes: my entry on May 12.
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When I arrive at your doorstep I am carrying heaps and heaps of tomatoes, soft and plump and bulbous and red. They are not so fresh but they are still on the vine, ready to be sacrificed to the paring knife to become what will be a cold caprese salad. I put on a big smile and slice them on the kitchen island as the air hums to life around me. Almost all of us have gathered now; we are saying happy birthday and it smells amazing in here and I’m so glad you could make it. I graciously turn down a glass of wine your partner has offered me; I’m trying this new thing called being reasonable with my alcohol consumption, which is something you have never needed to tell yourself to do.
I watch your skirt flutter around your ankles as you breeze effortlessly through the kitchen. All of us marvel at the masterpiece you’ve set down in front of us: Linzertorte, sculpted so perfectly one could argue it was the work of a benevolent god. You made the Linzertorte (you made two, even) because you know he loves it and so you spent hours in the kitchen today, grinding hazelnuts by hand, cutting dough into pristine shapes for the topping, tasting all the different kinds of jam and fussing over their sweetness. I am picking apart the ciliegine mozzarella and placing the milky white shreds on top of the tomatoes. I make caprese because I like it, and nobody has ever really asked me to make this, but I like it enough so I guess that’s what matters and it’s what I can offer.
When we finally sit down to eat I am taken, as always, by the warmth that saturates the room. I realize I was shivering until the very moment I sat down. I then realize that I have very little to add to the conversation rippling across the table—I am not engaged, I am not about to be engaged, I haven’t just finished my final exams at UC Berkeley, I am not buying a house, I am not even working on anything great or important. I opt for silence. The tomatoes are largely flavorless. We move onto the pasta course without ceremony.
When it’s time for dessert everybody gushes over the Linzertorte once again: its stunning balance of sweet and savory, the oily richness of the crust. He says it’s the best one you’ve ever made. I watch from across the table as you lean over and give him a kiss on the cheek, your smile broad and beautiful. I feel the warmth pass through me, as if my body has become a tunnel, like one of those tunnels that passes through the mountains overlooking the sea. You and I have been joking about this for a while now: When we were kids, we never would have guessed we’d grow up how we did.
Nobody offers to keep the leftover caprese so I take it home. As I drive down the dark, pothole-riddled street the plate rattles uneasily on the front seat. There is plastic wrap stretched over the top of the plate but the mixture of oil and tomato juice and vinegar and salt oozes out onto the pleather upholstery anyway. I think about how I could have just put the caprese in tupperware. I think about how I could have bought the more expensive, more flavorful campari tomatoes, not these cheap vine tomatoes. I think about how I could have ended up more like you had I maybe tried a little harder when I was younger, maybe drank a little less in college, picked a more lucrative career, tried more seriously to find someone to fall in love with. When I pull into my garage I leave the plate and the tomatoes on the oil-sodden seat and walk into my apartment. I keep the lights off and slip soundlessly into bed, feeling the grip of the cold wrap around me again as I wait for sleep to take me.