2
It’s been two days since the pop-up and I’m meeting my girlfriends, Jazzy and Maya, for a very belated birthday celebration they arranged at Tavern on Rush, a glitzy Gold Coast eatery whose only meal I can afford is this one: Sunday brunch.
I’ve known Jazzy and Maya since high school. We ended up going our separate ways for college, but stayed in touch through thousands of group texts and visits home over the holidays. The four years flew by and it was no surprise that we would all wind up back in the city after graduation. The two of them live together in a cute two-bed-plus-den walk-up in Bucktown. They asked me if I wanted in on the lease but the could-be third bedroom was more like a Harry Potter closet and by that point I had determined my days of trying to hook up with a guy on a twin-size mattress ended the moment I was handed my bachelor’s degree. So that’s how I wound up solo in a studio in Lincoln Park, but it’s all good—especially given how things shook out with Benji.
Admittedly, it’s taken longer than it should for our little friend group to get together and celebrate my big quarter-of-a-century milestone, but I’ve been...well, I’ve been with Benji. Regardless, today we’ve got reserved patio seats looking out onto an area of town called “The Viagra Triangle” and the change of scenery, no matter how perverse, is welcome.
There’s no direct route from Lincoln Park to this part of town, but the people-watching is worth the public transportation shortcomings. Everywhere we look, there are men sixty years and older valeting drop-top Bentley convertibles and ushering around girls my age with tight bodycon dresses and fake tits. What these ladies will do for a Chanel purse the size of a dog crate is...well, come to think of it, pretty similar to what people do to get near Benji. I just hope no one petitions us for a foursome while we’re sitting out here.
“Thanks for putting this together, you guys,” I say as a montage of mimosa flutes and Bloody Mary tumblers connect in the center of our table.
“Cheers to twenty-five!!” they harmonize back.
“Oh, wait. Keep your glasses like that,” I say. “This is a great Instagram.”
I pull out my phone to get the bird’s-eye shot: Jazzy’s champagne flute angled slightly toward Maya’s Bloody Mary tumbler. Fresh pastel-colored gel manicures and just a hint of the robust bread basket overflowing in the lower left corner. It’s perfect for my Sunday morning social streams.
Too bad I’m not actually taking the picture. I’m really just checking my phone to see if Benji has tried to reach me. I know if I pull it out at the table and start texting, the girls will give me major shit about the fact I can’t go two hours without looking at it.
But what they don’t understand is how tough it really is to leave Benji alone knowing he doesn’t have a pop-up to prepare for this week or a bank of trustworthy friends of his own to hang with at the moment. I worry that the boredom may lead to something more sinister. Alas, there are no new messages from him, which could actually mean he’s at an NA meeting. I take a calming breath at the thought and strive to be a little more present at my special birthday brunch.
“Did you get it? My arm’s getting tired,” Maya says.
“Oh, damn, my storage is full. Let me delete some photos and we’ll try again when our food comes.”
The three-egg veggie omelet on the menu catches my eye. Sometimes, the simpler the dish, the better when Benji isn’t around. Because when he is, it’s always something like evaporated pancake mix with bacon jam. Delicious? Yes. Swoon-worthy? Totally. But filling? Hardly. And even though gourmet is my new normal, I enjoy the simple throwbacks, especially when they come with a side of home-style hash browns. When it’s time to order, I make a game-time decision to go sweet instead of savory, locking in the cinnamon brioche French toast and a promise to go for a jog by the lake later.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” Jazzy says as she hands her menu back to the server, who trots off to put in our orders. I can’t tell if she’s peeved that I’ve dropped off the radar a bit, or just stating a fact. “I have bangs now.”
I love how Jazzy is using her bold hair choices as a milestone for our hangouts. From now on, I wouldn’t be surprised if we refer to things as “BB”—Before Bangs—and “AB”—After Bangs—which coincidentally aligns with Before Benji and After Benji. Either way, they suit her well. But when you look like Padma Lakshmi’s little sister and work as a buyer for Nordstrom, how could a trendy haircut betray your already perfect sense of style?
I think back on when the last time we all got together actually was and realize it was for our book club meeting a few months ago. It was my turn to host and Benji was only about a week sober at that point. I hadn’t yet told the girls he was living with me, nor had I filled them in on any of the gory details about his addiction, but I couldn’t cancel on them the day of. I also couldn’t tell Benji to get lost for a couple hours while we girls drank half a crate of wine and discussed periods, recent blow-job mishaps and a little bit about the book Gone Girl. So I explained that I was having friends over to talk about a book we were all reading and would try to hurry it up.
“You don’t have to rush because of me,” he immediately said. “If these girls are important to you, they’re important to me.”
“I know, but there will be wine. A lot of wine.”
“There will always be wine, babe. It doesn’t tempt me anymore, though. So why don’t you just sit down, relax and let me make you ladies some canapés.”
Before I had a chance to answer, my doorman was calling up to my unit to let me know my first guests had arrived.
As they filed in, I glossed over the introduction and explanation of Benji. He waved and smiled and looked hot in his apron while whipping up some hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen. The girls took their seats around the coffee table in my living room as I fetched a wine key from the utensil drawer.
“Sorry, babe,” I whispered as I grabbed the bottle opener from the drawer next to him.
“Stop apologizing, Al. Enjoy yourself. Please.”
On my tippy toes, I reached up to plant a kiss on his lips. That’s the first moment I realized I had it all.
A half hour later, Benji walked into the room with a tray of snacks. I know the girls were expecting some crackers and brie, but when he placed the canapés that could be on the cover of Plate magazine in front of us on the coffee table, everyone took their phones out and started Snapchatting like crazy.
“Holy shit. Does he cook like this all the time?”
“Oh my god, is this for real?”
“Did he just whip this up for us?”
Yes, yes and yes.
As the night went on, so did the culinary surprises from Benji. Deconstructed elotes featuring yellow corn, homemade mayo and parmesan cheese. Crispy cucumber slices with fresh-made garlic hummus and dehydrated cranberries. Mini toast points with guacamole made from avocadoes that were sitting on my countertop earlier that day. All of these treats came from ordinary groceries I happened to have in my fridge and pantry.
I soon recognized the infamous Benji Zane food coma coming over my girlfriends. At that, a few excused themselves by way of an Uber, leaving Jazzy, Maya and me to sit and chat while Benji cleaned up the kitchen and fixed himself dinner with the leftovers. That’s when I decided to tell them about my new living arrangement. I figured doing so after they’d experienced the Benji Effect firsthand would lessen the judgmental blowback that comes with telling people you’ve reached a major relationship milestone seemingly overnight.
Jazzy: “He’s living here now? God, you’re so lucky.”
Maya: “Agree. Maybe book club should morph into supper club, and permanently be at your place.”
Me: Mission accomplished.
“Sorry, it’s been crazy,” I say, returning to our brunch conversation. It’s minimal, but true.
“Speaking of crazy, can we talk about this?” Maya flips her wavy red hair over her shoulder and holds her phone my way. Her gap-toothed smile gets bigger by the second. I squint to see what’s lit up on her screen but before I can make it out, Jazzy grabs it from across the table for a better look of her own.
“‘Hot in the Kitchen,’” she reads. “‘Zane Stuns at North Side Pop-up.’”
“No way,” I say. “Gimme that.”
“Oh yeah, your face is all over FoodFeed,” Maya confirms, spiraling a curl around her pointer finger.
She’s right. FoodFeed—the quintessential dining-out blog of Chicago—has posted their review of Friday’s pop-up and chosen a photo of Benji holding my hand and bowing as the article’s hero image. Damn, we look good together.
Skimming the post, I see that FoodFeed approves of everything from the courtship to the courses. I scroll down to the comments and aside from one that says, “The fuck is she wearing?” in what I assume is in regards to my romper, it all seems positive. I text myself the link from Maya’s phone before giving it back to her.
I never used to care what FoodFeed had to say, mostly because I never knew what FoodFeed was. But since Benji’s name is as common on there as a photo of a doughnut on Instagram, I figured I had better familiarize myself. Not to mention, they’re the ones who broke the news we were dating in the first place.
When I hear the ding from inside my bag, the link to the article isn’t the only new message I’ve received. I’ve somehow missed five texts from Benji in the last few minutes.
Hi.
How’s brunch?
When R U coming home?
How do I go from TV to DVD with this remote?
Hello???
I picture him on the couch struggling to figure out how to put on Little Miss Sunshine but the directions are too much to type without being rude to Jazzy and Maya. So I quickly forward him the article in hopes that it distracts him long enough to realize he can probably just find the flick for free OnDemand.
Moments later, our brunch order arrives. The food runner places my French toast in front of me and our server follows behind him with a plate of ricotta pancakes.
“You’re Allie Simon, right?” he asks.
“Yes, why?”
“I knew it.” He puts the plate down and smiles proudly.
None of us ordered the short stack, but the fluffy pillows of perfection with their golden-blond hue look and smell delicious.
“I had the kitchen make these for you as a thank-you. I was at the pop-up Friday. My girlfriend got us tickets for my birthday.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Did I? Pardon my French, but holy shit, your boyfriend can cook. I mean, seriously, I have been dreaming about those squash blossoms ever since our Uber ride home. Do you know when his next dinner will be?”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. It all depends on securing a venue. But if you follow him on Twitter, he usually announces them there.”
“Oh, I already do. And on Instagram. And on Facebook. And I follow you, too, actually,” he says, completely fangirling out.
“Wow, thank you for...all your support. And for the pancakes.”
I can feel my face turn as red as Maya’s hair. I’m used to attention when out with him, but the fact I’m now being recognized on my own takes the reality of this high-profile relationship up a notch.
The server scampers away, looking like he just got laid. I’ve completely made this guy’s day and I’m not really sure how.
“Unreal,” Jazzy says.
“You literally have the craziest life,” Maya echoes.
Yeah, I guess this ain’t too shabby, I think to myself as I forklift the top pancake and plop it onto my plate.
* * *
So how does a girl like me wind up even crossing paths with a guy like Benji? We don’t hang with the same people. We don’t like the same things. Before him, the hardest drug I’d ever been around was pot smoked out of a water bottle at a frat party. On the food side of things, I never knew what a Michelin star was, nor could I fathom a world in which people paid $400 for a single meal. Before Benji, I could be found shopping the Nordstrom anniversary sale with Jazzy’s discount, hanging at some lawyer-laden soiree with some of Maya’s coworkers or out fulfilling my quest to collect as many punches as possible on my frozen yogurt loyalty card. None of that lent itself to meeting a guy like Benji.
Well, as it happens, while manning the social streams for Daxa-related news one day, I saw a chef tweet a video of plating a really beautiful dish of food using tweezers and our very own cotton swabs. I clicked on the guy’s profile and realized he was someone with some social media worth, 16,000+ followers. According to his bio, he was the executive chef of a restaurant I hadn’t heard of in the heart of downtown Chicago and seemed to enjoy chronicling his every moment in the kitchen online.
So I did what Daxa pays me to do: I “at-replied” him and retweeted his picture with a cheeky caption. Cleans your ears, cleans your eats.
In the moments that followed, my professional responsibilities combined with my personal curiosity and down the Google rabbit hole I went. I punched his name into a blank search bar and was blown away by what I found next.
One of the first hits back was a YouTube video of him sitting in front of a computer with his feet up on a desk looking remarkably cool. The cameraman sneaks up behind him to catch a glimpse of what Benji’s watching on the screen. Surprise! It’s a porno. “So what’s on the menu tonight, Chef Zane?” says the person filming. “Cream pie?” Benji jumps, lets out a loud “Fuck you...” and the room explodes in cackles. Thank god I had my headphones on.
I then clicked over to the Images tab and saw no shortage of eye candy there. Hell, there were entire Pinterest boards dedicated to his glorious man-bun. Most of the pictures were candid ones of him cooking, but there were definitely quite a few—some in color, some in black-and-white—of him hamming it up for the camera.
I got stuck on one photo in particular. It was connected to a write-up in GQ titled “Knife Fight.” He was pictured standing with his shirt off holding a butcher’s knife that was covered in red pepper puree meant to look like blood dripping off the blade. He was tatted up to his chin with everything from olive tree branches to a pig being roasted over an open flame. Over his left knuckles, the word RARE. Over his right, WELL. Kudos for having a theme, I thought. His face had a wicked, smug stare on it as if he was thinking, “You can’t tell because the photo is cropped, but I’m getting an awesome blow job right now.”
He was hot—at least, I guessed that’s the word you’d use to describe someone who’s both intimidating and alluring all at the same time. Even though he wasn’t my usual type, a small part of me wondered right then what it would be like to walk into his restaurant, sit alone at the bar with a view into the open kitchen and wait to see if a girl like me could catch the attention of a guy like him as I sipped on a glass of wine.
I hit on a few more links that day and caught myself reading what others were saying about him in the comments section of some blog.
“Just what the city needs. Another druggie chef.”
“He’s not on drugs, you idiot.”
“Doesn’t he only cook while super high?”
“He’s been clean for years. Get your facts straight.”
“I heard he powders their doughnut holes with cocaine.”
“I’d let him powder my doughnut hole with cocaine.”
Okay, so he may or may not be the Charlie Sheen of the culinary world, I thought to myself. But despite his sordid past, he clearly was a fan favorite. Whether people were loving or hating on him, the one thing that was inarguable across the board was that Benji Zane came with an obsessive following.
But at the first mention of a drug problem, I tightly closed the lid on my digital crush. There’s always a catch with guys in Chicago, right? Just as I finished x-ing out of all the tabs I had opened about him, he tweeted back at me—well, Daxa I mean.
See America? Even @DaxaSwabs knows I’m clean LOL
Yes, he went there. #Awkward.
I wanted to say I was shocked, but something about the frequency at which he was firing off random thoughts of 280 characters or less told me he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d ignore attention from a major brand—be it America’s favorite cotton swab or Calphalon—when he could spin it in his favor.
It was never my intention to allude to his could-be sobriety in a tweet, a subject that was well over my head for sure, but according to my job description I needed to continue to engage with him. Daxa’s social media policy states that when engaging with an influencer, we should never be the ones to drop the conversation—let them tire, get distracted or sign off. So I cracked my knuckles and got down to business trying to steer this conversation into more neutral territory.
Hey @BJZane, we got your back. But mostly your ears.
@DaxaSwabs if I can get your tongue, U R welcome 4 dinner at my resto anytime. #NotAPervyTweet #JustTryingToBeNice
As we bantered back and forth behind the safety of our respective avatars, I began to find him palatable. Where was the big, scary addict dude that everyone was gossiping about on the blogs?
That’s when the fantasy I had of meeting him got the best of me and I did something typically frowned upon in the Daxa social media handbook. I reached out to him from my personal account, introducing myself as the voice behind the cotton swab conversation.
He replied right away and said I was really funny. And hot. Funny and hot? I’ll take it.
We spent the rest of the day exchanging DMs. I even forwent a company lunch outing to stay back at my desk and keep the flirt fest going, telling everyone I had a mini crisis with a user who had a swab stuck in his ear. A couple hours later, he had to leave for a restaurant meeting. But not before he publicly tweeted, Everyone go follow my new friend @AllieSimon—she’s a real cool chick.
Wait. Really?
A few days later, Benji sent me a direct message. He said he had only one night off from the restaurant and if I wanted to meet him, now would be the time and a little dive bar in the Logan Square neighborhood would be the place.
I didn’t respond right away.
Did I want to meet him?
It’s not that I had other plans. It’s just that I hadn’t actually thought about crossing the IRL threshold with him. It’s a lot easier to converse with a tattooed guy who may or may not be addicted to drugs when you have the luxury of thinking about what you’ll say next as you hide behind your double monitors from the comfort of a cubicle.
So, for the time being, I resolved I’d table the in-person option and just ignore his ask.
Thirty minutes later, he sent another DM, one that couldn’t be ignored: It’s now or never. Are you meeting me tonight or not?
On one hand, he seemed aggressive. A little too intense for me. On the other, it was intoxicating that this quasi-celebrity chef dude wanted to hang out with me so badly, he had to wave a limited-time-only offer in front of my face to get me to act.
Another fact about me: I’m not one to pass up a good deal.
Yeah, I’m in, I coyly responded back, even though I was terrified at the thought of stepping out of my comfort zone.
Good choice, he typed back.
A few hours later, I put on some eyeliner and walked over to the meeting place with zero expectations. When I saw this rough and tough hottie sitting at the counter drinking a generous serving of neat whiskey, I knew I was in for more than I bargained for. I probably should have run before he had a chance to see me. I could have easily DM’d him, said my bus broke down or I got stuck at work. But I just couldn’t turn away.
“There she is, Miss Allie Simon, everybody,” he said along with a slow clap.
I looked around and there was no one else in the bar, which made his intro of me both silly and sweet. I could feel my nerves dialing down a notch.
“Hello, Benji,” I said, putting out my hand for a shake. He grabbed it, flipped it and kissed the top of my hand.
“Hi, Allie.”
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, putting a cocktail napkin down in front of me.
“Uh, how about a sauv blanc?”
“You’re at a whiskey and burger bar, babe,” the condescending bartender said back. “We don’t have sauv blanc.”
“The fuck you don’t.” Benji stepped in. “Go ask your chef what he puts in the mustard glaze. And bring an empty glass back there while you’re at it.”
The bartender gave us side-eye, realized it was Benji Zane shouting that order and grabbed a tumbler as he departed to the kitchen.
“Fucking idiots,” Benji whispered to himself as he took a sip of his drink. “So, how are you?”
He put his hand on my thigh as he asked the question—an action I would normally reject from a guy who wasn’t physically my type. After all, I was drawn to dudes who looked like they were sent home the first night on The Bachelorette. Clean-cut, maybe wearing a little concealer, just trying to be nice until we took things to the Fantasy Suite.
Like I said, walking, talking cliché.
Before I could answer, the bartender came back.
“Sorry, we don’t have wineglasses. But here’s your sauv blanc.”
“Well, cheers,” said Benji.
“How did you know...”
“It’s a burger place. They have mustard.”
“So?”
“I assume if they’re charging $15 for a basic hamburger, they probably make the mustard in-house, meaning there’s got to be a crisp white wine in the walk-in cooler back there or they wouldn’t be able to get the recipe right. He knew they had sauv blanc. He was just being a douchebag who was too lazy to walk ten feet and get it.”
I had been out with straitlaced stockbrokers sporting impeccably tousled hair who had held doors for me, brought me flowers for a first date and pushed in my chair for me at dinner. But no one in the last two months had ramped up my mojo as much as Benji had in that first five minutes. He stuck up for me—and my girlie drink order—all while showing off his culinary chops just a little bit.
From that point on, I knew he was going to be trouble. But I never imagined he’d become my trouble. Big difference.
Throughout the night, Benji excused himself a handful of times to go to the bathroom. Sure, a part of me wondered if he was doing coke in there, but I had to remember we both were drinking. I, too, would be in and out of the bathroom all night had I broken the seal earlier. Also, I had never done coke, nor did I know anyone in my social circle who had, so what was I looking for anyway? White powder to be coating his nostrils? A nagging itch at his nose? For what it was worth, neither of those things were happening, so I shrugged it off and stopped counting his trips to the bathroom. After all, I wasn’t in this for the long run, so what the guy did in the men’s room was none of my business. All that mattered was that he kept rejoining me back at the bar and picking up right where our scintillating conversation left off.
A one-night stand was inevitable. But by the time I realized the drug thing was real, and it was serious, we were way past just one night.