(Rumbling sounds as a microphone is adjusted)
Polity: Like this? Is it working?
Oscar: “Yeah, yeah, no, you’re looking good.”
Polity: Are you sure? Not to be a shit about it-
Oscar: “You say, fully intending to be a shit.”
Polity: But I’m sort of the tech person around here.
Oscar: “Oh, excuse me then, Polity Yellow, technomancer supreme, heir to the Sol Torus, let me just… genuflect out of the room.”
(A pause)
Polity: Are my levels right?
Oscar: “Your levels are fine, just give it a go, you’ll do great,”
Polity: Okay. Thanks Oscar.
Oscar: “You’re welcome, Polity.”
(Sound of a door latch as Oscar leaves)
Polity: So… mm… how does Oscar do these? Yeah, that’s right.
I’m Polity Yellow, formerly a tour guide in the Pacheco Blue Zone, currently a fugitive guerilla artist, and you’re listening to Gastronaut.
Hey there… uh… people. Oscar brought me on to his podcast to talk about my favorite food, but he isn’t here right now, so I’m just going to toss his thesis out on its ass. Sorry Oscar, but nobody cares about what my favorite food is.
Today we’re going to talk about the food that made me homeless--opera cake.
If you’ve never eaten one, then it’s like… like a little pile. Buttercream and ganache is sandwiched between layers of joconde cake, which they make out of a paste of almond substitute. Everything’s soaked in coffee, or ganache, or sometimes gold leaf. And you have these little chocolate shapes they’ll put on the top for decoration, and so you can bite through ‘em. Opera cake is a dockworker’s right hook in a frilly dress.
But Polity! It’s French! Yeah, I know. It’s Parisian too, which makes it about as French as a baguette or the eiffel tower or a dirty bomb. But France isn’t all bread and pastry cream. It’s bricks and sinkholes. It’s catacombs that are filled with radioactive skeletons and salt water. It’s… it suckers you in with the pretty lights, and then kicks you in the neck for your troubles. It sucks there.
Right, opera cake. I warned Oscar I was gonna to ramble. If I dip his viewers or whatever, it isn’t my fault.
Anyway, I learned what opera cake was about… maybe four years before I tried it. I was in my teens, working the tour circuit in the Blot, what Oscar calls “the Pacheco City Blue Zone,” killing my quads hauling a mostly empty cyclotaxi around. Between the lack of people who actually want to see Therevatti and all the fistfights I lost over tourist turf, I had a lot of time to just… look at the skyline.
Pacheco has these big screens on all the buildings. Oscar didn’t mention them because he was busy measuring how wide the roads are, but they’re everywhere. They would play ads all the time when I was young. Shilling Sol products, or interpreter work for Brightsail translator algorithms. They don’t run them as much these days. Angry people, like me, like to hack them to gungepost. Angrier people than me use them as target markers for rocket barrages. But back when they were running, they had this commercial for a period romance film. In that film was a scene they’d play on loop where the lead actress ate an opera cake, and uh, that commercial fried my puberty shaken brain.
There was this actress who didn’t look like anybody on either side of the construction projects, between what would become the Blot, the “Blue Zone,” and the Skirts. I missed the memo that I was supposed to hate that about her, like, she was obviously a spacer which wasn’t great even then, but I was actually kinda into that. Again, I was in my teens, and besides, she was an actress and also four stories tall. I’d watch her eat like, fifty opera cakes a day. She’d lift one up from a plate that some set designer had drenched in fleur de lises, and she’d sink her perfect teeth through the decorative chocolate musical note. Just a bit of pressure, and the little ornament would snap right in two. The way she held that block of cake in her hand, the way her eyes held the gaze of the viewer, laughing. Her lips pushing gently against the pastry’s top, leaving the ghosts of their passing imprinted on the surface. The way she brought a pink knuckle up afterwards to cover her mouth. She didn’t get any chocolate on it, because c'mon, like hell that would ever happen, but she covered it anyway. As if to imply that those lips could be stained by anything--that she wasn’t just straight up perfect.
Actress. Four stories. Foreign mystery cake. I was done, man. Terminal crush syndrome, like those Jupiter divers that got squished, I was a little bloody ball in a crumpled up metal shell. I skimmed her films off the buffer, promising that I’d buy them legit just as soon as they were out locally, or as soon as I had the money, or as soon as I’d reached some flimsy personal milestone. Hmph.
Didn’t matter that I couldn’t really understand them. They were originally in Solar, but all the subs and dubs were just some variant of spacer talk. My Solar wasn’t good enough to follow the plots she was in. I had more luck with the dubs, Vietnamese and French were easiest, since they were Thetti’s meemaws.
Never loved doing it. Wasn’t “her” voice. Between cultural barriers and distance barriers and class barriers and age barriers, language just seemed like another wrinkle in my stupid sappy dream of smooching some purple eyed Miss Perfect from out beyond the Lea te Suldan Rail Station.
(laughs) Yikes, Polity. Baby Polity. Whatever.
I I looked at her face so much that my mirror neurons went berserk. And since that commercial was running on loop, I became convinced that opera cake had to be the greatest thing mankind had ever created, right? If Miss Bounce Curls Chloe up there was plowing through six dozen of the things daily, with that little lash flutter, elegant fingers dimpling the ganache, then they had to be the best thing since interstellar travel. And here I was, pedaling, my legs rubbery, settling with corner store candies like cola Bottles and planetangs.
I loved planetangs and cola bottles. I still love em, even after doing a lot of growing up. But with a four story babe smiling down on you, everything you do, everything you like, everything you are feels fucking stupid. I couldn’t get what I really wanted, so opera cake slid into view as the new hotness. Aim for your dreams, instead of your dream’s dreams, right?
Never have dreams, kids. They’re terrible for you. Don’t self actualize, either. Self-actualize your ass into a bed and stay there.
Because those dreams tore me up. As the years of my teens crept on, as I became aware that the only college I’d ever see was a Brightsail Colonial Support School where I’d learn how to be a better service worker; as I dropped out of school and realized that my parents would grow old and I’d be trapped as a provider for them--If I had met a revolutionary cell back then… if they had clapped me on the shoulder and told me that I could change my future with a bit of heroic violence. Glory Ten, Shasho, The Violet Embassy, Grac Au Mao… I would have jumped in with anyone, so long as they promised I’d be free of that… that gravity well. That awful certain spiral.
Frischez adollasun, em đẹp! (kiss noise).
Note to Oscar, that doesn’t need a rerecord, I’ll tell you what it means later, okay?
But nobody approached me. Nothing changed. I just fumed and pedaled my bike around the Pacheco Blue Zone. Same old loop as always, through the tour areas and the checkpoints. Past the screens that blasted advertisements to a city built on the whispered promise of a real estate boom.
So, I’m taking a break on the roadside, watching a drone bus do my job freecheap for about thirty people, when someone hopped in the back of my cyclo. The best kind of customer, slight build, not too heavy, total lack of understanding of local pricing structures.
“Oh, how much is a ride in these things?” She said in Sol Standard, and with a French accent which I can’t do, “two hundred Nu?”
“Uhhh, close,” I said, working the controls at my dashboard as fast as my fingers allowed, “two hundred fifteen,” I said, just as I finished updating the price.
“Lovely,” she said, and swiped her chit, fast as could be, “go, please.”
Between the scams--and later, the roadside bombs, it’s no wonder Brightsail got hostile towards cyclotourism. But Saints, what a time to be alive, yeah? Selling 20 Nu rides at a helluva markup.
“Where, ma’am,” I said.
“Somewhere pretty and real,” she responded, twisting her hair dry, letting it spring back into bouncing blonde ringlets.
“Of course, ma’am,” I said, rolling my eyes, and pedaled away from the curb, round the slug bodies of drone buses, past buildings of glittering reinforced glass, and over the rain slick roads that held our doubles in puddles and pools. We got about four blocks from where we started, when my passenger pulled a headset from her ear and tossed it into a passing alleyway, where it clattered, indicator light spinning, beneath a waste container.
“I’m having a fit,” the woman said, blithely, “and being very unreasonable.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, suddenly aware of my heartbeat. I knew her voice, I realized. I knew those gravity defying ringlets. Through my rearview, I became very aware of the shape of her body. The familiarity of it.
She was looking out the window, past the droplets of rain that pattered on the side of my cyclo. She was gazing up at one of the nearby displays, where a giant replica of herself in a ballgown snacked on an opera cake.
“Hm,” she said, watching the ad. She looked as if the images held no special significance for her. But she was an actress, right? Maybe she was just manifesting ambivalence. I followed her gaze, lingered too long on how, in the film, the chocolate stained her front teeth after she bit down.
“Do you…” I forced out. All of a sudden, it had become real hard to talk. “(voice cracking) do you like, opera cake?”
“Sometimes,” she said, “(laugh) but I like to eat other things too,”
“Cool,” I managed, “like what?”
“Well…” she began, meeting my eyes in the mirror, “I very much adore anything with chocolate.”
We talked about chocolate a lot. So much so that I didn’t really take her, the actress of my dreams, my teenage obsession, anywhere in particular. Certainly not somewhere “pretty and real.” And then we talked about her career, and, as much as I tried to avoid it, my career. I spent the entire conversation terrified about how normal everything I said sounded, always trying to puff myself up, how I won fights I lost, how I earned Nu that never touched a chit. The kind of bullshit that comes up and out of you when you’re talking to someone hot. No matter if they’re an interstellar movie star or some wierdo with a podcast.
I pedaled till my legs were screaming, until I would have to pause to grunt and moan about my shins, my ankles, my feet. She stayed relaxed the entire time, face like a star in a corona of curls. I think, eventually, she told me to just pull over. Spared me from myself.
She said my name, she said “Bleep, you are an incredibly bright, incredibly interesting young woman,” I shit you not, she said that to little larval, sopping wet Polity Yellow. Cool people thought I was cool before I was cool. It’s a gift. I didn’t even comment on the misgendering.
And she says, “You are so interesting, if we ever meet again, I would be happy to give you a tour of my own hometown,” she said that thinking I lived in the Blue Zone, which was y’know, wrong, but are you ever really wrong when you have hair that good?
And I said, “Where is that?” and she laughed and said “It is Paris, France, Earth. Where the first opera cake was made by… some man, hundreds of years ago. It is where I like to eat them, sometimes.”
And I said, trying not to throw up from nerves, “Okay, sounds great, I’ll see you there,” and she laughed louder than she ever did the entire ride.
“Thank you for the tour,” the actress said, “it was exactly what I wanted.”
( Polity sighs and groans)
Yeah.
So. What does any of this have to do with opera cake? Like, yeah, we get it, Polity, you’re gay and destined to meet famous people. Big deal. Tell us about the cake.
So a few years later, I got to Earth. I don’t need to tell any of you how. Maybe I stowed away, or mugged somebody for their ticket, or built a rocket ship or flapped my fucking arms over to Sol like a kaja bird, it doesn’t matter.
And I get there and everything I said above about Paris applies. All the bricks are crumbling and the city is falling into holes. And around the holes, there are pastry shops, and dance halls, and domestic terrorists that will teach homeless kids art theory and how to get real mad. Among other things.
I looked for her in the city. Took me a week, between the language barrier, my lack of budget, and not knowing where anybody lived on an alien world, despite the bombings and everyone’s memory of the bombings. There were still wealthy districts here and there--as far away from the sinkholes as anyone could manage.
I thought she’d live in some palace, but all the palaces were historical or something, nobody really lived there. I thought she’d live in some mansion, but nah, as much as it peeved my crush addled brain, she wasn’t nearly as famous as I imagined. It sort of made sense why she was touring Therevatti, right?
And I found her and… I mean… fuck. What do I even say here? We talked, and she was very surprised and… a little scared. And her parlor was… probably the most beautiful and interesting place I had ever seen in my life. Earthlings get to see their sun all the time, and she had these big windows that cupped that sun like it was water and sank the entire parlor into liquid orange gold.
She was shockingly tall, standing in her parlor, and still very beautiful. I felt tiny, even if she only had a handful of inches on me. She took a steadying breath, gripped an end table, knuckles still pink, and she told me, “I never meant for you to come out here. I didn’t even think any of you could, I just wanted you to dream. I just thought that it would be better if you had something to dream about.”
(Polity makes a sound of disgust)
I remember her fretting at her hair as she spoke, but her eyes kept darting to the door, unconsciously willing me through it. She wanted to help, I think, despite herself. But she never really extended a hand to me. I wasn’t something terrible, I was something shameful. It was as if her lack of charity had sprouted legs and banged on her front door.
And like… that really sucked. To be told that an offer of support was just some idiot dream. That my crush was neither as successful or as saintly as I had built her up in my head. I sort of just… left after that. I didn’t want to get tears over her sunset dappled plush carpeting.
And I did the second thing. See, when I left she said that she couldn’t really do anything to help me. She had another tour coming up, of course, and… y’know. But she did give me the address to a patisserie, La Coeur. A place on Saint Marcel where I sat on wooden chairs at a wooden table bathed in an impossibly bright sun. And they had opera cakes that cost more than entrees did back home. And they were… really, really good. Soft and sweet and delicious, like… coffee and chocolate and almond, which I had never had before. And I was so homeless and helpless and sunburned and stupid.
And I loved ‘em. Because at that point, I had to love something, right?
Yeah.
Thanks for listening.
(Polity stands and opens a door)
What? Don’t look so sad, Oscar, these days I’m living the dream! Cmon.
(Polity moves over to the computer and ends the recording)