Dough and longing in San Francisco

She shovelled the doughnut into her mouth. Its flesh: bouncy and light, with a whiff of decadent indulgence. Its frosting: some sort of crusted, sugary glaze stuff that sweetened the dough to poofy perfection.

But there was an emptiness beside her, a ghost of a lover, a hot and trusty phantom she had longed would materialize since she was 14. As yet, he hadn’t. And on a quiet San Franciscan street, she had an urge to turn to this absent person next to her and tell him that, “Thi-th e’th faw-ing del-lith-or-th”. It would be difficult to annunciate with a mouthful of dough.

The mouthful soon disappeared; a chew, maybe two, and the poofy dough evaporated.

Another bite.

Shit she wanted to inhale this thing. She wanted to lay herself down on a bed of doughnuts and wake up, naked and lazy, and nibble gently on the ear of a doughnut. She wanted to awaken slowly and to have distracted petting escalate into full-blown hungry munching. Clammy morning skin and dough, squishy and malleable, sweet with a sugary film that blistered and glistened in the dimly lit dawn.

She was a bit drunk.

An oversized glass of white wine at dinner and a double G+T at a bar where a wobbly nugget of man was on the decks. His cap turned sideways and a thick silver chain bounced against his trampoline of chest. He was wearing the requisite XXX-large t-shirt with matching-sized jeans that hung below any agreeable pantline as he bobbed emphatically pumping some oversized phat beats.

Here, everything was oversized. In the United States of America, the take-away coffee cups, the thundering cars, the mountains, coastlines… the pastry goods; they were all slightly cartoonish in their largeness. But this was San Francisco and for now she wanted to fill herself up with it.

Or at least to fill the absence that she felt next to her.

A blinking red LED lighted ‘open’ sign caught her attention on her way back to her downtown hotel. But it was the lifeless snack food in the display cases that drew her in. The whiteness of the florescent lights inside store made for a clinical observation as she perused the specimens: glazed, chocolate, sprinkled or pineapple doughnuts.

One. Last. Bite. And it was gone. Farewell to a phat, ephemeral friend. Nothing left but a sticky residue on her fingertips remained. Even the ghost had left, and was replaced by a sweaty, short man, “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be walking the streets alone at this time of night.”  

“Thank you…” she said. “I think.”

He walked on with, what she could only assume, were doughnut-like thoughts of his own.

She threw her wrapper in a nearby trash can. The street lamps laying shadows on the empty streets. The click of her heels echoed as they hit the sidewalk.

She was alone.

But the doughnut was fucking delicious.