tricia

Wake up.

Go on Twitter and see a post from L. She’s in Buenos Aires right now, getting ready for a surgery. She has to fast before the surgery, but she made her mom a Western omelet and posted a picture. She posts pictures of omelets a lot, little one-egg omelets that she makes with a special tiny pan and a tiny whisk. The Internet loves the tiny whisk.

L’s the one who cracked your egg. That’s what they call it online, cracking your egg. You don’t know her, really, but she’s the one who answered your questions and told you that people who aren’t trans don’t usually have those questions, and basically gave you the permission you were looking for to start thinking of yourself as trans. Because you always thought that was for other people, that you didn’t count. There was always an excuse.

You should eat something. It’s been a while since you’ve cooked at home. It’s been a while since you’ve eaten a real meal. The informed-consent clinic doubled your dose of hormones yesterday and if you don’t eat something before you take them they make you feel sick to your stomach. You hate throwing up after you take the pills, it seems like such a waste. They’re not that expensive, but a lot of people go through a lot more than you did to get them.

Think about omelets. You’ve never been much of a cook, but you’ve been on a French omelet kick lately. It’s not that you’re all that good at it yet, but there’s some finesse to it that you’re starting to get the hang of, and you’re pretty proud of it. A plain French omelet is one of the simple joys in this world – two or three eggs, butter, salt. Lots of butter. Crepe thin, not in a half-moon shape but a delicate little roll that you have to tease out of the tilted pan onto the plate just so. And it doesn’t take many ingredients to make.

Which is good, because you don’t have many. You’ve got two eggs in the fridge, plenty of butter, some onions you can sauté. Take the egg carton out of the fridge and check the expiration date. Try to remember today’s date without looking it up. Whatever, it sounds right. Leave the eggs on the counter for a while. You read somewhere—Lucky Peach?—that it’s better to let eggs get to room temperature before you cook them. You used to read a lot about cooking, even if you didn’t do it a lot. You used to read. What do you even do with your time anymore? Where does it go?

Chop up half a small white onion into small little square guys. Diced? You don’t exactly know the words.

Realize your house is a mess. You’ve been drinking more again lately. Stumbling home drunk after hours at the bar next to work, staying at the bar long after the conversation stopped being interesting, eating chicharrones and fried pies from the gas station. Gather up the clothes off the floor and throw a load in the wash. The last time you had anybody over, she said your house was, like, obsessively clean. The last time you had anybody over was a long time ago.

(The last time you had anybody over, you still thought you were a boy.)

(Man.)

Throw the last of the olive oil into the nonstick pan you bought at Walgreens last winter, back when you had a better job and twenty bucks for an as-seen-on-TV nonstick pan was an impulse buy that wouldn’t have you kicking yourself for a week. The pan’s one of those “red copper” nonsticks. It works differently than the other nonstick pans with the circle in the middle that glows red, the ones you finally talked your ex into throwing out because the nonstick layer was peeling up and you were sure you could taste it in the food. It’s actually well designed for such a cheap piece of shit, with a handle that looks like an Italian skillet and a lip that’s perfectly shaped for sautéing.

Add a little canola oil to stretch the olive oil out. Tell yourself it’s to raise the smoke point. Since leaving home, you’ve never lived somewhere with a real vent fan in the kitchen, just those shitty hoods that recirculate the air in the kitchen, so every time you cook you’re afraid it’s going to set off the smoke detector. One apartment you lived in had a smoke detector that automatically called the fire department one time. You ate a lot of cereal and take-out in that apartment.

Turn on the gas stove, to somewhere around medium. This stove runs hot on three out of the four burners. Or eyes, as the guys in the kitchen at work call them. The fourth one is piddly and unfortunately it’s on the front left, which for some reason is the corner you always try first. Move the pan to the front right, turn the burner on for real this time. Wait for the oil to heat up. While you wait, wash some of the dishes that have been sitting around the house, waiting for you to have the energy to wash them.

You can tell the oil’s ready to go when the surface just starts to shimmer, or when you can wet your fingers with water, flick them at the pan like a witch dispersing a magical powder, and watch the water skip over the surface and sizzle away. There’s probably a little too much oil in the pan. Oh well. Tilt the cutting board and scrape the onions into the pan with the edge of the knife. Shake the pan a little to get the onions to spread out. Turn the heat down just a touch.

Remember you should get the eggs ready. Get your mixing bowl and your whisk. Open the egg carton and realize the only two eggs left are both cracked. Toss them out, after debating for longer than you’d like to admit whether you ought to give them a shot anyway.

Shit.

Shake the pan again to loosen the onions up. Here’s the part you love, the only flashy cooking skill you ever picked up. The word sauté is French for “to jump,” and you’ve finally got the three-part motion down: tilt the pan forward and down, to send the ingredients coursing toward the lip of the pan, then when the wave is just about to crest the lip, abruptly tip the pan up and back, to send the swarm of onions in a graceful arc back toward you, then center the pan under the mass and gently bring it down to soften the landing, like the motion of a catcher’s mitt. Think about the sous chef at your last job who took the time to explain it to you, who told you to practice flipping just a single slice of bread, then uncooked beans, before moving on to real food. He used to hang out with you guys, drinking beer after you’d shut the place down, smoking cigarettes and talking about his days as a young punk in Atlanta in the 90s. Wonder what he’s up to these days, after the hotel restaurant he left that job to run folded.

If you had fresh garlic, you’d add that to the pan, too, but you don’t, so add a couple dashes of garlic powder. Because it’s powdered, and it won’t really mix well with the onions and the oil, and the comparatively large surface area of the powder grains means it’ll burn faster, you’ll add it a lot later than if you had fresh garlic. Toss in some herbes de Provence, why not? You read somewhere that in Provençal cooking, they don’t really use lavender, that’s a gauche American addition. Feel ashamed for a second, then smell the jar again and feel bad for anyone who cares so much about authenticity that they wouldn’t use this jar if it was in front of them. Lavender’s cool. Shake the pan again and lower the heat to buy yourself a little time to think.

Look in the fridge. Got some condiments, some butter and the other half of the onion. In the pantry there’s some rice, some spaghetti, and some oatmeal. You were really in the mood for breakfast. Well, hell with it, savory oatmeal’s a thing, right? Get the oatmeal out and set your kettle to boil. It’s the copper kettle with the gooseneck spout that you bought at the little used kitchenware store that used to be in your neighborhood before it moved uptown last year, over next to the wine shop the size of a supermarket.

A lot of the stuff in your kitchen is from there. A lot of it was left behind by old roommates and ex-girlfriends. You’re 31 and never married, so none of it is from the Macy’s housewares department. None of it is from Williams-Sonoma. You remember cutting your last classes on Fridays your senior year of high school, taking the city bus with your friends to the fancy downtown mall with the Barnes & Noble in the basement and the movie theater on top and a Williams-Sonoma in the middle. You spent a lot of time trying free samples and admiring the copper pans and dreaming about having the kitchen in the pictures of their catalog.

Of course, as an adult, you’re more practical. You’d rather have your cast-iron skillet, your cheap Walgreens nonstick, and one good chef’s knife, than all the gimmicky fancy stuff. But you still know that you’ll probably never get anything from Williams-Sonoma, never be given a Margaritaville blender by a rich spendthrift uncle on your wedding day. Your family will have died or abandoned you by the time you find someone who could love you for who you are now.

Pour the hot water over the oatmeal. Leave it covered for about five minutes.

You’re going to be cooking for one for a long time.

Add the onions. Stir. Give it a taste.

This is all right, you guess.