confessional 1.0

being as how it is sunday, granted it is late sunday, and most of the world is already into monday., but i digress, it is sunday right here, right this moment, and since orange.paper.bike is most pious and reverent, i figured i'd start a new habit of making confessionals on sunday. every sunday.

as many of you know, and when i say "many," i mean the only known reader of my musings and ramblings, i attended a very prestigious and famous pastry school last year. i'd always loved baking and pastry, and since i'd been looking for a change, AND since i was also unemployed, i decided why not?! so i packed up and moved to chicago to go to the Very Prestigious and Famous Pastry School. it was a short six-month program, but it was intense and we learned incredible things in it's kitchens. one of the incredible things i learned, which i never imagined i'd learn is how to make chocolates. i'm talking honest-to-goodness french faw-faw chocolates: truffles, rochers, bonbons... you get the idea:

i said they were faw-faw didn't i?! okay, those were rejects, but stay with me...

fast forward to february, two-thousand eleven: orange.paper.bike met a fella. he was nice, funny, sexy, a texas-transplant, and my age-ish. his name is was S, the marketer. our first date was on a cold, snowy friday night. being as how it was two days before valentine's day, and it had been years since i had had a valentine of my own, i decided to make him some chocolates. not many, because you really don't need much of anything french: a little goes a long way.

we decided to meet for a few drinks at a trendy bar then head over to a tony little italian place in the swedish quarter. i was thrilled that the chocolates i'd made, tucked discretely inside my jacket pocket, were going to a very sexy guy. we sipped on moscow mules and made small talk. he was charming and had a little smirk when he smiled. when it was time to leave, we paid our tab and wandered down the street in the cold to make our dinner reservation.

once inside the restaurant i excused myself and went to the washroom to relieve myself of the moscow mules. when i reached down to lift the seat of the toilet, those chocolates fell out of the lapel pocket of my jacket, and in slow-motion, [just like that movie christmas story where the kid was helping his dad change a flat tire alongside a dark road and accidentally hits the hubcap and all the lug-nuts go flying], the package of chocolates tumbled down slowly, slowly... into the toilet. "ooooohhh, fffuuuuuuddddgggggge!" only i didn't say "fudge."

i quickly reached in and grabbed the plastic sleeve that held the chocolates, hoping i was quick enough before any of the water seeped in. if it's any consolation, the toilet water was clean! i took each chocolate out and inspected it closely. a few of them had drops of water on them, so i dried them off, re-packaged the chocolates and slipped them back into my lapel pocket, and went out to find our table.

at a moment just after we finished dinner, S, the marketer, excused himself to go to the washroom, and i slipped the chocolates out and put them on the table in front of his seat. when he got back and saw the chocolates he lit up and gushed that it was the sweetest thing anybody had ever done for him. thanks to the moscow mules and the two bottles of wine at dinner, i didn't feel one bit of guilt.

when it was time to close out the tab, S, the marketer, asked if i'd like to have a nightcap at his place. i accepted the invite and off we went. of course, dear reader, i'm sure i'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but "a nightcap" is a euphemism for "making out, and possibly, getting naked." which we did. and we did.

in the end, when i was searching in the dark for my socks and shoes [and the rest of my clothing] i noticed part of the plastic sleeve from the chocolates i'd given him lying on the floor. i asked him where he'd placed them and he said they were in his jacket. he looked under the bed and found the other half of the package still being chewed by J, the miniature schnauzer. he'd already eaten all the chocolates and was starting in on the plastic.

i freaked out that the dog had just consumed seven chocolate bonbons; he was pissed the dog had just consumed seven chocolate bonbons and didn't get to try even one of them. so in the end, J, the miniature schnauzer was fine and S, the marketer didn't eat any of the eau de toilette bonbons.

i now know that the chocolates falling into the toilet was very symbolic and a foreshadowing of how suddenly, unexpectedly our relationship would fall into the toilet. only when that happened, i didn't reach in to save it. i flushed.

in the background::freedy johnston:gone like the water