Let Them Eat Cake

Editor’s Note: We want to thank our writers for contributing unique, moving, and personal stories related to the new reality of a world besieged by the virulent coronavirus. We will be sharing those stories with you, along with our usual articles. We hope they bring you comfort, camaraderie, and company during difficult times.

By Cliff Simon

A friend of mine in San Francisco once told me that a panhandler approached him on the street and said Could you spare some change? And my friend looked at him and said, Change comes from within. When I think of my friend, cynical though he was, he had a point. I didn’t realize that truth until a lot later though.

In my youth, I was the kid that mothers in my Bronx neighborhood always loved, but would never want as their son: chubby, angelic-looking, bright, shy, scared, with pure blue eyes. I never played ball unless I was forced to (which I was), I was unusually comfortable around old women who cook, I was an artist and often annoyingly demonstrative. And gay. Needless to say, I had few friends. 

I spent my childhood thinking exclusively about myself and how I could survive in what I felt was a foreign and hostile environment. My family loved me but had no idea of my suffering. I considered myself abnormal compared to other kids my age. I was certain they knew it too, and in my mind I was shunned by my peers before I even met them. I observed everyone and everything around me and hid who I was, both physically and psychologically. I became adept at covering my weight with large clothes, which never works except on skinny people. I put in great effort to be inconspicuous, hoping my actions belied my weird persona non grata. I knew everything was going to get worse, and throughout my teenage years it did. As my life regressed, my emotions eviscerated any tools of self-preservation that might have helped. And I knew I couldn’t change because I believed I was screwed. I felt so sorry for myself, why did this happen to me, just kill me, god, please, I can’t take this anymore. My kvetch aria, in Italiano, BOO-ah-HOO, Aye-ATE-Maya-selph. But somewhere along the previously dramatic timeline of my shabby existence, I began to realize my prison cell was not locked.

I am not a religious man, but I have to say I feel something has always taken care of me. I neither know nor want to learn more about what it is or how it works, if it’s male, female, gender fluid, or alien. I don’t care. All that’s important to me is that I feel protected. This has happened over a period of time, a long time, during which I experienced three positively seismic events in my life. One, when I was 22, I came out and found self-acceptance; the second, at 34, I met my husband Julian and absolutely fell in love; and the last, after turning 46, I joined AA and started to learn how to live a good life. None of these seminal experiences were of my own making, and they each happened so naturally that I was quite taken by surprise. I could not have written a better script, and though it lacks the drama of tragedy, it has all the makings of a very sweet Hallmark Card, and frankly, that is good enough for me.

My English friend John often said you have to take the bitter with the batter, the Queen’s version, I guess, of Baby, the rain must fall. Something vital I learned in those three decades is that a contented life does not mean one without challenges. Coming out I accepted totally, but all my other problems were still there. When I met Julian, yes I had found the man I would love my whole life and I thought everything was perfect, but for the 35 years we’ve been together I’ve learned that to sustain love it takes daily work to keep accepting another person for who they are and to persistently work on accepting myself.  

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as I sit sequestered in my house because COVID-19 has changed our lives, with increasing numbers of people getting sick and dying all over the world. Quarantined at home with Julian and teaching my university class online, I am cut off from the physical presence of anybody else except the checkout people at Trader Joe’s. My life has suddenly been simplified, stripped of the daily detritus and I find it invigorating. I spend much time thinking and being thankful, so this mandatory house arrest has become an opportunity to learn, with less distractions. A few weeks back though, I realized that I needed to take the focus off myself. I needed to start baking.

Baking and painting cakes have been a large part of my life, from my twenties until I started teaching at 51. It provided many things for me like making a living, national visibility, actually teaching me how to paint. But what was, and still is most important, is how it connected me to humanity, and for the first time provided an outlet for me to actually do something that could change someone’s life, if just in a small way. What I didn’t realize was that it was doing the same thing for me. In 1986 I got a call from a cake client whose dear friend, Raymond, was dying of AIDS. She said he had just a few days left,  it was near his birthday, and could I make a pretty cake for him. They needed it as soon as possible. I started baking when I got off of the phone and had decorated it by the next day, at which time I delivered it to the AIDS Hospice where he lay wasting away. All the time I was preparing it, baking it, painting it, I kept thinking of this young man and whatever good feelings I could put into this cake for him. Nothing else existed but that purpose. In my mind’s eye now, as I write this, I can see myself crying as I mixed the batter and know exactly why:  I was finally being of service to someone other than me. There is a magic about cakes. I know this is true. A few days later, after Raymond died, his friend called me and said that when he saw the cake, his eyes opened wide with amazement. And then it hit me that for my whole life, all I wanted was to be normal. I just looked up that word, normal, and it means usual, typical, expected. Well, who wants to be that? Imagine, I spent a life longing to be something that serves no purpose. It’s like Diet Water. What made me happy was not being normal: it was doing something for someone other than myself.

And so now, during this virus era, I’ve been baking and delivering cakes to various acquaintances: my doctor, some friends, neighbors, students who cannot have a real graduation. I won’t ever have that feeling I had about Raymond again. But each time I deliver a cake, I am grateful that I can do something for someone else, and focus on their happiness rather than my own. That’s what makes me happy.

I think of that panhandler in San Francisco too. I hope that he also understood what my friend said about change, and for the past 35 years has worked on himself, and had a magical transformation! Wouldn’t that be something? If he did, I would definitely give that guy a cake.

Cliff Simon has designed hand-painted cakes since the late '70's, in New York, San Francisco, Austin and Santa Fe. Presently he teaches Scenic Design at UAB, designs at regional theatres and continues to bake, paint and write about his cakes, the medium that has always helped him better understand life. Learn more at http://www.cliffcakes.com