there is no cake

I feel I must share with you the appalling circumstance of this morning.

Fairly early into it, that feet-to-floor, brushing of teeth, handful of pills, navigating of pre-dawn dogs near empty food bowls, the scratching of things in need of scratching, I came to the hard realization that there was, simply, no cake.

And wouldn’t that all have been enough, really? Yet I had also ground the bejaysus out of my chompers during what passed for my night’s rest, awaking to a jaw complaining, the tell-tale ache of abraded enamel. I suspect the source of this teeth-gnashing was that, even deep in my sleep-state subconscious, I was somehow aware there was to be, upon my exhausted rising, no cake. No cake.

Please don’t misunderstand the fundamental problem here. There is, of course, nearly always the possibility of going to get cake from some cake-getting place, and even to make cake, from scratch or pre-measured store-bought mix. Possibilities exist, yes. But, oh.

Because all of this is really not the point. Let us not forget the point.

The point being that, at that moment in question, with the pills, the dogs, the itches, there was no cake.

Let me repeat that: There was no cake.

Now, it is hardly that I need cake, in the sense that I would physically fail to persevere in its continued absence. One has only to look at me to witness what can go wrong in the presence of this pinnacle dessert. I am no tiny rascal, you see.

So there is need, and I do not need cake. But then there is want.

And I do want, in a most fundamental of wants. A terrible yen. A wild yearning. A culinary carnal desire. Which really confuses things further, because now, in that more colloquial of senses, we are back again to need, the crushing psychology of want outpacing reason. I am, you should understand, but a plump prop for tastebuds roused into interminable craving, a craven soul unmoored in a frosted sea of baked confection’s insistent beckoning. So it is more than just want, this want; I actually do need cake, in a most elemental of needs.

Except that, for heaven’s sake, do not give me any cake! Because I will eat it. Oh, I will eat it! With a vengeance, I will eat it. And no good can come of that.

I am Hannibal crossing the Alps, horses and armed legions and elephants and all, for cake. Could you somehow ask those bygone besieged Romans, they would surely tell of those vengeful Carthaginians devouring every toothsome morsel of sweet honey cake to be found. Hannibal’s boys also killed a few folks, yes. Upwards of 50,000, history has it, but then, who’s counting? Because, fuck counting! Let us, once again, not lose sight of what is important here. Cake. It’s cake.

In the end, it as that old chestnut has it, that all is justified in war, and cake. In love, too, they at times assert. But as the great Hunter Thompson often posited, so what? We are talking here of cake. Cake.

I want it. I should not have it. No good can come of it. Give me some! You fool, don’t put that in front of me! Remove it, immediately, away, away! But, wait, do wait! Because where are you going? You ghoul, you golem, you are leaving with my cake! Come back here, you bastard, with my goddamn cake!

There is probably some hoary old European philosopher whose work embraces this wretched disparity, the persistent desire for the sweet particles of one’s own eventual demise. But I’m not sure I want to know his name, because fuck that guy.

Because let us also dispense with the fanciful, the cake of the mind, if you will, that postulated Schrödinger cake, or lack thereof – oh absence of cake, oh horror! Let us proffer a little specificity instead; specificity is important, as Yogi Bera perhaps once said. It is what separates us from the professedly devout, and from devoted Trump voters, who are somehow often the same thing. And do any of them know cake? They do not know cake. Not in the way of truly knowing cake.

I know cake, children. I have known many cakes. There is always the danger that I will know more.

Yellow. Red-velvet. Chocolate. Butter, or chiffon. A proud pineapple upside-down, or a humble birthday offering, be it even a common Walmart sheet cake, typically right-side-up. Devil’s food, and to a lesser extent, angel food, as the feathers from the wings stick in my teeth. Sponge, crumb or pound; cheesecake, cupcakes, tea cake, coffee cake. Banana or lemon – I’m down even for the whole holiday fruitcake, the more brandy-soaked the better.

As for tiramisu, or Boston cream pie, which is actually a cake – don’t ask me why, but it’s a goddamn, cake, OK? – I am willing to be buried in either. Buried alive, please note. I will eat to my contented demise.

But in most cases, I default, simply, to that joy that is available, the trusty vanilla stuff, a moist yellow cake. Top it with anything sweet, but not too; my teeth already hurt, remember. Regardless, if I can’t abide the topping, I’ll just scrape it away. Because there is still the cake. Oh, the cake.

I refrain only from carrot. It is an abomination. You may disagree, but why would I listen? You eat carrot in a cake, after all. Even God hates you.

It should be noted, if only as mere aside, that there is no historical record of Marie Antoinette ever actually declaiming, “Let them eat cake!” This omission on her part I can say for me was a mistake, especially given she was doomed regardless. Because, Your Royal Beheadedness, I want not for absent bread that left you dead; I would indeed have eaten cake.

I would have. I do, in fact. I did. I would. I will. I will eat it in the rain! I will eat it on a train! In the dark! In a tree! I will eat the crumbs then off my knee!

I will, you see, always eat cake. Which is why I cannot have cake.

Yet life is short, isn’t it? Just ask poor Marie. It can be a grueling, awful, nasty business, peppered with misery and mayhem and cross-stitched homilies, of Nickelback cover bands and murder hornets, SAD short afternoons and weak-ass java, poorly fitting shoes and guillotines, Proud Boys with Hitler fetishes and blue cartoon bears hawking toilet tissue.

I mean, fuck that noise, amirite? Cuz life is ultimately that forever monster lurking beneath the bed, that furtive fiend that somehow eats us all from within. Though perhaps even that unseen beastie is merely seeking its own lovely bit o’ cake as well.

Which, sadly, brings me back to where this all started. There is no cake.

The sun rises. The sun, it falls. The horizon closes like a great, dark curtain upon us all.

And there is no cake. No cake.