Episode 77: The Kitchen Counter

UNDER MY SKIN!!! IT’S GONNA BE GREAT. THEY’RE GONNA LOVE IT!!! THE ONE (yes, like that)!!! Everything is on fire, and there are 10 tickets on the line!!! A PILE OF BRICKS FROM THE HEAVENS!! THE CRACKS IN MY PSYCHE!! THE SAME LINOLEUM FLOORS!!! NIGHTS SOAKED IN WHISKY & AMARO!!! & she did something to me…. I was young, ravenous, insatiable, consumed.

Excerpt from the show:

“AHHHHHHHHH SO, I’ve been in the kitchen cooking all night, and I wasn’t even sure I would make it to recording the show this week, but hey, here we are. And as they say in the kitchen, it’s gonna be great,. They’re gonna love it. Which is a throwback to someone I haven’t thought about in a long , long time. A woman so unusual, so enthralling, I never could get her out from under my skin. One of the only people I ever thought was “the one” thought I would marry someday, thought I would maybe even raise children with. A woman who made me question everything in my life. For better or for worse. And up until tonight, this week was work, just me doing my job for hours on end. And I have to say, y’all, my job does not feel like work. It feels easy, gentle, and nourishing. Unlike everything being on fire and 10 tickets up on the line. But hey, you gotta have some contrast right? So sitting in my wwoe-is-me on Friday night (me and my current partner are taking a break from seeing each other this month, and doing all the driving back and forth, to get a little more settled and on top of our lives)… And I was just sitting and playing video games and doing nothing, and feeling like wow since I got sober, there’s not a hack of a lot to do anymore. Even though the socializing I used to do mostly wasn’t that fulfilling, there were times in my life when everything was magic — everything was alive, everything was colorful and brilliant and sexy — and right now is just not one of those times. But with her, it always was. So yesterday, I got a call to come into an old kitchen I used to know like the back of my hand, like the cracks in my psyche. And this week, I almost collided with my ex, working a day apart from each other in the same kitchen. And not only did we miss each other by a hair’s breadth, it was the same kitchen we fell in love in, the same kitchen she lifted me onto the counter of, the same kitchen I used to sit and stare into from the bar every night watching her cook. The same linoleum floors, the same stove, and all of it came crashing back like a pile of bricks from the heavens. The days filled with sunlight and coffee, the nights soaked in whisky and amaro, those nights, oh those nights. I don’t think I had really lived until I met her. I had loved. I had thought I was alive. But I was wrong. She did something to me. She set me on fire. She flooded me with something I could never quite describe. And her scent, the smell of her, rests as vividly in my mind as if it were yesterday.

So what did I do? Well….”