Cheesecake
Comments: 0 - Date: August 27th, 2006 - Categories: Classics
[This Not A Blog™ article was originally published on September 14, 2004.]
This has been a long time coming, but I can’t deny it anymore. Despite the risks involved with posting this to my blog, I must tell someone. I can no longer deny what I know is true. It is time I ‘come out of the closet’ so to speak, and finally admit to what I have been trying to avoid for all these years.
Despite what I may have said in the past, the truth is: I hate cheesecake.
Yes, cheesecake; quite possibly the most vile dessert mankind has ever created. I don’t understand why people like it as much as they do. Actually, “like” is much too soft of a word here. It’s more like a love affair. Mention that so-and-so brought cheesecake to a family reunion, and suddenly aunts you’ve never heard of are practically fainting each time they hear the word. Your balding second cousin with the large mustache starts making jokes about his weight while that really hot chick over there (wait, you’re related, remember?) begins swooning over the dessert tray.
Why?
The dish, while deceptively sweet at first, has the tang and aftertaste of sour milk. It is made with the heaviest batter possible and after you eat it, it just lays around in your stomach like some sort of confectionary wad. It’s like yogurt, but without the health benefits. It smells like old milk and, to top it all off, it’s absurdly expensive.
Nevertheless, whenever there is a party of minor importance – promotions, baby showers, weddings, your boss’s boss’s birthday – someone always goes out of their way to bring in a cheesecake they thoughtfully didn’t make.
That’s right, nobody makes their own cheesecake. They buy it. And this is part of the problem. It’s one thing to refuse a dessert that someone bought at the gas station two minutes before coming in to work. It’s a slightly more touchy subject to refuse a dessert that was hand made, although with practice and tact it can be done. Refusing a cheesecake, however. Well!
Since your coworker spent upwards of eleventy hundrillion dollars on the thing, you’re expected not only to eat it, but swoon as well. Cheesecake! you must squeal, while helping yourself to the thinnest possible slice that will still stand on its own. Don’t take too much; it was expensive, you’ll recall, and you wouldn’t want to look like a cheesecake fiend.
But, alas, this is only half the problem. The other half is that, according to my calculations, I am the only person in the solar system that doesn’t like cheesecake. I cannot possibly believe this is true, but other anti-cheesecake-ists must have been driven underground as I have, forced to endure the cheesecake ritual at countless celebrations. I tried to tell others once, oh yes. I tried to tell people, after the initial requisite surprise died down, that I don’t like cheesecake.
No sooner had the words issued forth than all commotion stopped. The stylus skipped across the record before falling off. Someone dropped their martini glass. In the distance, a cricket chirped.
“Really,” I said.
After a suitable silence, then next phrase uttered was an astonished, “You don’t like cheesecake?”
Apparently I had violated some unwritten, yet fully understood, sacred code. I committed the ultimate heresy; blaspheming the sacramental dessert eating; excoriating the sacrosanct baked good. I had strayed from the straight and narrow. But there was one last ray of hope. I could be redeemed. If only I would accept Cheesecake back into my life, I would understand my place on this Earth. I would once again be on the road to endless joy, destined to spend eternity with Cheesecake.
“Heh,” I nervously laughed. “Just kidding.”
Immediately the record spun back up amidst spotty tension-releasing giggles, more drinks were served, and the day was saved. This time.
But this is a plea to others out there. If you also do not like cheesecake, but have been hiding it because of the oppression of dessert fundamentalists, I say it is our time to unite! Stand up for your rights. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who first said, “the right of the people to choose or reject dishes based on their prepossession of what is good and true, shall not be infringed.” Contrary to popular belief, this country was not founded on a love of cheesecake, and I, for one, want to see this tyranny ended.
So the next time someone presents me with a squat, square box with promises of tongue nirvana, I shall do what I usually do. I’ll pretend to grin and eat it, all the while suppressing the gag reflex, because deep down inside I know that I’ll never be able to stand up to a hoard of cheesecake evangelists on my own.
-Ted