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Shaun Levin
lives in London where his short stories appear in Does the Sun Rise Over Dagenham?,
The Slow Mirror: New Fiction by Jewish Writers, The Gay Times Book of Short Stories,
and in the journals Stand and Kunapipi. In the U.S. and Canada,
his work can be found in the Queer View Mirror anthologies, Bad Jobs,
Quickies 2, Best Gay Erotica 2000, Slow Grind, and in Mach,
Indulge, The Evergreen Chronicles, Venue, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly,
and Amelia. He also has a story at
When My Love Goes
This evening, when my love went back to his
girlfriend, and I forgot how much he loves me and that
I still love him, I comforted myself with the making
of a chocolate and coconut cake. This is not the first
time; I have learnt to feed myself in his absence.
Books, open green spaces, of which there are many in
London, and cooking keep me from starving. Diotima, in
Plato’s Symposium, tells Socrates that Love is the son
of Poverty and Resource. Poverty, despairing she’ll be
stuck in a rut for the rest of her life, creeps up on
Resource and fucks him while he sleeps. As for me, to
even out the barrenness that threatens to overwhelm me
when my love is away, I find ways to feel resourceful.
Once I used to run for miles then come home and binge
for hours, vacuuming my way through the fridge and the
kitchen cupboards. I’ve changed. Well, sort of. Though I
still fall in love with men who are unable to give me what I
need and want.
Six months on and we have a ritual: he leaves at
5:30, I stay at home. Our love is a daytime love;
there is none of night’s secrecy when we’re together.
Nothing is in the dark; yet everything has a shadow. I
have learnt to write at night since meeting him. I
have come to like the night, for the quiet it offers,
for the silenced calls of the outside. But this
evening I haven’t been able to write. There is only this constant
state of need, and the swiftness with which beauty
disappears - him in me and my own. So I turn elsewhere
for creation. A cake that is as soothing to make as
bread; I have made it often, it’s ease acquired from
years of selling it at craft fairs, and making it for
the kids at the nursery school where I once worked as a
cook.
This is alchemy. Take 200g of butter or margarine and
cream it with two cups of granulated sugar. Add two
teaspoons of vanilla essence and two large eggs. Now
add two teaspoons baking powder and, slowly, a cup of
flour. This is my favourite bit, when the
curdled-looking liquid turns into a batter. Add half a
cup of milk and keep stirring. Now is a good time to
add the coconut, half a cup, not too finely
desiccated, and two-thirds of a cup of cocoa powder,
which will darken as you mix it into the batter. Then
add another cup of flour, another quarter cup of milk,
and a quarter cup of rum. Keep stirring until you have
a smooth batter with flecks of coconut in it.
It’s at this point, when I’ve created something for
myself, been generous to myself, that my love for him
grows and my disappointment and anger begin to subside
again. Now I remember why I love you, I think, as I
slide the baking tray into the middle of the oven
(350/170, gas mark 4). These are some of the reasons I
come up with during the hour that it takes for the cake to
bake: I love you because you tell me I’m beautiful;
you touch me more tenderly than any other man ever
has; you suck my nipples like you trust me to heal
you of the mother who gave you up for adoption; you
tell me never to doubt myself; you say you miss me so
much you cry; you say you’re not sure whether the look
on your face when I fuck you is one of joy or sadness,
and I wonder if what you’re seeing is what it feels
like to be inside you.
Take the cake out gently. Let it cool for a bit
while, in a saucepan, you mix a quarter cup of rum,
two teaspoons of butter, and half a cup of sugar. Boil
this up for a couple of minutes until the sugar has
melted, then brush the syrup over the top of the cake.
You can have a slice soon after this, or you can keep
it all for the next day, as I often do. For once I’ve
created my cake, I feel resourceful, hopeful; to
remove a fragment would detract from the whole I so
badly need to hold onto.
Copyright ©
2000 Shaun Levin. All rights reserved.
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