Sorry, did I say dick? That was supposed to say duck. How’s your duck?
Chef has one distinguishing feature that could potentially help identify his body in case of kidnapping or murder by a super fan (not me, of course… I probably couldn’t lift his arm, much less his entire corpse). It’s an interesting tattoo on his left pec—a pink hallucinatory duck head with a surprised look on its face. The duck’s bill is open in an ‘o’ shape. It dons a tiny chef hat and inexplicably has eyebrows, both of which are raised high. Right now, the duck is also kind of splotchy and red.
From: [email protected]
Overcooked
I smile, and then my fingers go flying.
From: [email protected]
Might need a taste test to confirm
I tune back into our group chat, where they’re currently debating how much this naked chef can deadlift “with an ass like that.”
“Me on one side of the bar and Fernanda on the other,” Betty is saying.
“I think he could manage me in the middle, too,” Izzy adds on, “because that is one strong-looking ass.”
“You could bounce a damn coin off it.”
“—whole piggy bank.”
“Chip a tooth, probably.”
The thirsty commentary eventually ends, and after everyone hangs up, I pull up my email again.
From: [email protected]
Don’t answer that. I’ve surpassed my flirting quota for the day. But here’s today’s Two Truths and a Lie.
1. I’m deathly afraid of flying.
2. I haven’t drunk alcohol, done drugs, or had sex in almost a year.
3. I love my job.
At the beginning of our working relationship, I’d just been watching his videos and typing up standard recipes with some basic descriptions. He didn’t like it. He wanted it to feel like more of a meaningful, personal story, he’d said, not so much just a collection of recipes. May and I used to play Two Truths and a Lie as kids to practice our twin telepathy, so I started playing it with Chef after flirting him out of his shell so we could get to know one another better, so I could get a better sense of his voice. For some reason, we just started putting the lies at the end. They’ve gotten pretty personal, and now, even worse than flirting with an adult content creator over email?
I may or may not have a crush on one.
I’ve gotten bits and pieces of his voice, his attitude, his humor, and what I’ve found underneath it all is warmth and kindness. Empathy.
I like him.
I finish taking notes on what Chef’s saying about the French fries, but it’s not at all what I want to write about. I’m dying to write poems about the man himself.
His thick hands twist and pluck, pinch and scoop, a rhythm of motion in the cramped space of his tiny kitchen. Massive thighs shift, moving him up and down the narrow aisle. The kitchen is sleek—modern and polished, the kind you find in any city apartment where square footage is sacrificed for skyline views. I don’t recognize any of the buildings out the window. He could be anywhere. Chicago, maybe. Boston, Miami. Even Tokyo.
But here, in this sliver of space, his presence is overwhelming.
a quiet choreography?—
