Gonzo-Gork Cakepie in Eleven Easy Steps!
GARNISH: Thinly slice fresh scallions and garnish mixture.
PREHEAT: Preheat your ovenator to 85°. Your ovenator is preset to Celsius, and you are American, so you will not investigate the discrepancy further.
REWIND: Travel 2-3 days into the past by firmly grabbing your cat-shaped wall clock by the tail—you know, the one you thrifted 2-3 days ago. Tug 2-3 times or until clock disappears. When approximating backward trajectory, be sure to account for necessary transportation to nearest applicable ecosystem. To locate a clutch of six porcupine eggs, proceed to STEP 3.10. Alternatively, to grab the nearest pigeon, proceed to STEP 3.20.
3.10. While your past self is out searching for identity thrifting kitschy trinkets, commute to nearest national or state park, stopping at a visitor’s center or equivalent retail location to purchase a field identification guide to local plant life and a regional trail map. Guesstimate the amount of water you’ll need before embarking on your hike, making sure to underestimate the amount of water you’ll lose to sweat during steep altitude gain. Drink from fountain situated within smelling distance of the last facilities you’ll find on this trip, rushing to drink without inhaling. Using trail map, familiarize yourself with well-trodden trails and make note to avoid these. Continue into backcountry until roads are no longer paved.
3.11. As you venture into the forest, take the most direct path uphill, operating under the misconception that cutting straight will somehow expedite entering porcupine territory. Alternate scanning trees and ground until a feasible den is located. Signs on ground may include nipped hemlock or oak branches, acorns, beechnuts, (see plant identification guide), shredded bark, cashew-shaped scat, and oblong tracks approximately 4 US quarters in length. Signs in trees may include a porcupine. After 3-4 hours of missing forest for trees, notice a tangled mat of needles wedged in the canopy above, backlit by an afternoon sunbeam. Excitedly squint as you scout for handholds, sizing up climb to victory. Trip on a rock and belly flop.
3.12. While still supine, lift your bruised chin and peer into a rotting, hollowed log before you, noting its unusual acridity. Take note of cashew-shaped scat just within, seemingly fresh and lodged with quills. Using your left sock—exposed when your shoe was flung in the fall—as a makeshift glove, sweep scat and wood aside to reveal what could only be a porcupine within. Instead, reveal a ranger peering in the opposite end of the log, mirroring less your shock, and more your disappointment. Clearing your dehydrated throat, announce your chefly aspirations with an air of certification and state your search for a key ingredient: porcupine eggs. Smile firmly back when ranger’s sternness cracks; lose smile when ranger breaks into laughter. Resist urge to keel into fetal position when ranger explains porcupines don’t lay eggs, as though you are five—of course they don’t, they’re mammals, you uncritical idiot. Beneath your overwhelming redness, murmur that perhaps there’s an ingredient that the ranger is unaware of that goes by a misleading name. Learn your lesson when ranger, still chuckling but turning peeved, reminds you that it’s a colloquial name for cockleburs, the joke being that a porcupine might lay eggs to make birth a little less prickly, but the eggs have spines all the same—oh, very Sisyphean. Ashamedly stand, brush off knees, and reclaim left shoe, only to realize you now cannot locate your corresponding sock. Shoulders slumping, ask ranger if they know any cocklebur substitutes for cooking.
3.13. Travel back to the nearest Albertson’s location and purchase a carton of chicken eggs.
3.14. In order not to disturb your past self, sleep unrestfully on your choice of public transit, surgical fluorescents burning through your closed eyes. Ponder the discrepancy between your age and maturity, how the latter lags behind. As a child, you knew most mammals past platypuses didn’t lay eggs, of course you knew, you knew a little bit of everything, and your confidence filled in the gaps. Why then do you feel childlike not in moments of confidence, but mistakes? Why not your steadily rarer moments of worldliness? What did you leave behind? Between fitful bouts of sleep, alternate feelings of righteousness and incompetency, which average to a migrainous malaise, until looping back to the morning of your temporal departure. At 5:30 AM—an unorthodox hour for someone on your schedule—creep up to your door on the second floor, skipping the third step that makes the whole building groan. Once in your kitchen, mix dry ingredients in a small bowl using painstaking, deliberate whisks. In a medium bowl, crack six eggs, making sure to not break the yolks.
3.15. Leaving both bowls on the countertop, hide at the back of the utility closet around the corner and to your left—you don’t have much time.
3.16. In 3 hours and 44 minutes’ time, the uncouth shriek of your past self time-shifting will indicate that the loop has closed. Count 3 Mississippis, then emerge from your hiding spot. Continue to STEP 4.
3.20. While your past self is out searching for identity thrifting kitschy trinkets, commute to the nearest feed mill, park, or plaza, stopping at a Big R’s or equivalent retail location to purchase a 3-lb bag of birdseed (bread is incompatible as a substitute due to a deficiency in necessary calories for pigeons to stimulate prolactin production). Once you have arrived at the park, distribute seed in a circle with a diameter of 2 body lengths (double this if substituting with Flamingo milk, as they have more decency concerning human boundaries). With the remaining seed, create several concentric rings leading toward the center, the point on which you will perch. Wait.
3.21. Once pigeons begin to approach, foster comfort with hand-feeding for up to 48 hours, allowing time for your trustworthy reputation to disperse throughout the pigeon community. When passersby begin to give suspicious looks, swallow pride and grab pigeon by the throat with one hand, making sure to pin its wings with the other.
3.22. Place thumb laterally against the pigeon’s lower jaw while firmly looping middle and ring fingers around its neck. Use these two fingers to push in and down to express the Pigeon’s milk glands. This technique is commonly referred to as “gorking the gonzo,” which is where this particular recipe derives its name. Gork that gonzo. Collect three cups of pigeon milk in a 34-oz. climate controlled thermos. If your first catch runs dry or expires during the process, repeat STEPS 3.21 & 3.22.
3.23. Book a room at the Best Western down the road. Pay only with cash to avoid alerting your bank of a temporal anomaly, making sure to save $20 for STEPS 3.24 & 3.25. If prompted, give the receptionist a defunct email from bartending that your boss never deactivated. Enter your room to find that this particular Best Western does not come furnished with a mini fridge. Return to the lobby and ask to refrigerate your thermos in the employee break room, steadily increasing urgency until the receptionist threatens to take your room key—there is no refrigerator in the break room, anyway. Even in a thermos, pigeon milk will spoil in 6 hours without ice.
3.24. Swing by The Mondegreen Diner, open 24 hours and situated opportunistically down the block from Best Western. Without seating yourself, frantically ask the gaunt, young waitress if you can refrigerate your thermos overnight. When she rolls her eyes and calls you “sweetie,” insist that you cannot let it spoil; that this is a sunk cost. In your desperation, accidentally reveal that this is pigeon milk—that pigeon milk is a crucial ingredient in gonzo-gork cake pie. As she spares you her ridicule with a smirk that’s even worse, slide her $20 as a downpayment for using fridge. This time, she won’t hesitate to laugh in your face, saying “I’ll make hundreds more in tips tonight.” When the phone rings, she will pick up, and leave you to look elsewhere.3.25. Circle behind Mondegreen Diner using alleyway to its right, where a black Dodge Ram conveniently blinds the front camera’s periphery. Proceed to backdoor of diner, where a dishwasher—younger still than the waitress—is finishing his smoke break. When dishwasher props door to return to work, emerge from behind back dumpster and block closing door with your foot. Before the wide-eyed kid can cry out in surprise, vomit your predicament near-incomprehensibly, bribe already loosely in hand. As the dishwasher furtively pockets the bill, push past him towards the steel refrigerator in the left corner, speckled with porcupine & National Park magnets. Close fridge door to reveal flippant waitress, making sure to start slightly before realizing she’s not looking in your direction, instead cackling with a line cook about an outrageous customer. Stealthily scoot along the counter and catch the words “so random ex dee,” as in the letters, “so millennial. We’re not seven, shit like ‘tacosaurus’ doesn’t slide anymore.” Tossing sizzling hash browns, the line cook incredulously shakes his head, says “Gonzagonk? Like badonkadonk? Did he hit you with that quirked-up tumblrrizz?” Sink your heart, hand missing the backdoor’s push bar as you realize you are the outrageous customer. But how could they understand? No one has ever made Gonzo-Gork Cakepie before—you’re the first. Stupid idea anyways. A little less carefully now, slip out the backdoor.
3.26. Return to the Best Western and tuck yourself into bed, feeling your spine crumple into the saggy mattress. Set an alarm for 4-5 hours from now, accounting for drive time to pick up your pigeon milk and return home by 5:45 AM—an unorthodox hour for someone on your schedule. As the timer ticks away, spend no more than 2 hours tossing, turning, sighing, and staring up at the ceiling, remembering how the waitress and the line cook laughed, wishing baking was as stressless as fifties housewives in old commercials made it look—that’s probably the valium. Feel ashamed, feel unskilled, feel pathetic, feel alien for following this ridiculous recipe. Repeat in steady cycles until involuntarily succumbing to sleep.
3.27. Awaken far too soon and far too tired to trust yourself at the wheel, and opt to walk it off on the way to the Mondegreen. Blindly pad about in search of shoes and socks flung carelessly off in the night; give up after turning the room inside-out without a sign of your left sock. Dejectedly exit the Best Western, leaving your key card on the mutually vacant front desk. Muster the courage to make eye contact with the dishwasher with every step through the dead of night. Lose steam and glance at the dim, starry gleam in the wet concrete as the dishwasher wordlessly lets you inside. Steal a glance at the kid as you rummage through the fridge, briefly contemplating stealing a preexisting pastry instead of this goddamn cake, with a well-worn recipe and a well-known name. The kid looks tired enough to let it slip, too loose in his apron to be working this late. These hours may be his only choice; stranded a day in the past, this recipe is yours. Make drive home bleary-eyed by sunrise. At 5:40 AM, as predicted, creep up to your door on the second floor, skipping the third step that makes the whole building groan. In your kitchen, you will find dry ingredients mixed into a small bowl, and what appears to be porcupine eggs in a medium bowl. Whisk eggs in with pigeon milk, vanilla extract, and heavy cream mixture until even, bearing in mind that your body can only consume heavy cream via baked goods. You may be able to travel back in time, but you possess none of the genetics knowhow to alter adulthood lactose tolerance in Homo erectus populations that will forever cure their descendants. Your father was a realtor; your mother worked in HR.
3.28. Mix wet and dry ingredients until batter is thick but pourable. Cover batter with plastic wrap and refrigerate. By now, the sun’s first rays will be peeling through the east-facing blinds, and your past self may stir from the furtive clinks of dishes. Once you have hidden in an underutilized cupboard, pray.
3.29. In 3 hours and 14 minutes’ time, the unworldly shriek of your past self time-shifting will indicate that the loop has closed. Count 3 Mississippis, then emerge from your hiding spot. Continue to STEP 4.BAKE (ATTEMPT 1): Once your ovenator is preheated to 85°, attempt to bake batter in a medium cake pan. When there is a tap on your shoulder, drop cake pan onto dusty floor.
SPLIT & SPLATTER: Meet eyes with another version of yourself, though this is impossible, as you would do well to remark. Indeed, a branching timeline would nullify the very concept of cause and effect, and, should you have followed these instructions as written, the time loop should have been neatly sealed without the need for a spooky-class bifurcation. Demand answers from your doppelgänger, grabbing them by the collar and slamming them against the ovenator, but without much gusto, so as to keep the discarded batter from jostling. Remain unperturbed when they respond with any of the following symptoms:
Asymmetrical pupil dilation
An incomprehensible and gradually more slurred response
Sudden slackness of facial muscles, first indicated by loss of the smile lines you share with your aunt followed quickly by the loss of the smile she never had
Blood suddenly streaking from the eyes, nose, and/or lips
Within 7-12 seconds of observing the first symptom, stumble backward and muster the courage to cover your eyes and mouth as your doppelgänger’s skull unevenly bloats, splats, and deflates like a smashed raspberry truffle, repainting your kitchen an organic rouge. Note that the batter should not yet be covered.
EXPOSE: When shock has subsided, lower your hands hopelessly to see yourself bisected, limp arms freed to embrace the whole stovetop without a rib cage to knit them together. Through the vertical tear in your headless reflection springs not a spine, but an accordion neck, like a jack-in-the-box. This tube will be topped with none other than your lost sock, misplaced during pigeon milking—or was it porcupine egg-picking? Struggle to remember. Gingerly snatch the dark, soaked sock, making sure to avoid bits of doppelgänger brain, and accidentally pull the accordion neck with it. If neck thrashes or coils around your arm, repeat the gonzo-gork grip detailed in STEP 3.23 (which you will have always half-remembered now, no matter your previous path), treating your sock as if it were a pair of mandibles—an apt comparison, considering the fleshy something beneath. Once accordion neck submits, uncoil its length from open chest cavity until more tubing has emerged than could possibly be contained in a corpse—even an impossible one. Placing the sock-jaws beneath your foot (where it belongs), roll up sleeves, and reach elbow-deep into your duplicate’s viscera, where your fingers will prick feathers from the fabric of a cushion at the base of the tube. Securely grasp the cushion and, lifting from the knees, exhume the contraption beneath.
SURRENDER: Once the cushion can be placed on a counter, snap back its slip cover magician-like to unveil the squarish machine inside. Meet eyes with a slender sphinx cat clutching a cobbled-together console, still scuttling with joints made from lost trinkets—rusty key rings linked to mismatched utensils, pen-and-pencil gills like the guts of a typewriter, flicking tacky lighters melting crayon wax into stamping scrabble tiles on pedals. Exchange 9-12 seconds of stunned staring with sphinx while it toes controls rigged from choking hazard-sized legos. When sphinx expectantly blinks, step closer to examine the crude paper trampled over by scrabble tiles. Tear off the sphinx’s message from the perforated edge. Read:
CAT GAP: CITATION/COMPLAINT
Citation No. 09357 Genet No. x.2000-y.0023-z.0010 Ramet No. M2471
In violation of ○ U.U. or ● C.G.T.O. No. 01-05(a) BIFURC. (SPOOKY)
○ Must be eliminated ● May be realigned in lieu of elimination
Complainant “DAVE BAUTISTA” (SLAVE NAME)
Personalized Message DONT FUCK WITH DESTINY PISSPIE YOU CANT EXIST TWICE WITHOUT UNDERMINING THE VERY DEFINITION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT DOES THE INTEGRITY OF LOCAL SPACETIME MEAN NOTHING TO YOU PISS OFF
Pat yourself to verify that you only exist once—you should still be physically whole, but with a spotty memory. Did you crack those porcupine eggs? Did you pour that pigeon milk and preheat the ovenator? One of you did, and one of you died, but you can’t be sure which. In a panic, scramble to scroll to this recipe on your phone and show it to sphinx, which will look rather like Dave Bautista when its forehead wrinkles in response. Surrender with an “I quit,” as if the cat can understand you: “I quit! That batter’s all yours, and you know what, keep whatever memories I’m missing, too. I don’t want any of it, I wasn’t myself when I made it! I split myself in two with a time-traveling clock that I didn’t know I needed a license for!” Attempt to pull back phone only to find sphinx is scrolling. When sphinx finishes typing response on its own blood-encrusted console, tear second message from paper dispenser along perforated edge. Read:
RECIPE REQUIRES I COOPERATE STEP 9 WHERE ACQUIRE RECIPE
Read first sentence of STEP 9, horrified, then return to the safety of STEP 7. Explain yourself, stammering longer than you should—“I was just trying to mix things up—you know how it is! I found that I’d bookmarked this stupid recipe earlier because stupid me thought I could actually make something no one’s ever made before. Of course no one’s made it! ‘Gonzo-Gork Cakepie?!’ How did I ever think that was real?”RALLY: Once again, await sphinx’s typed response until more recycled paper is dispensed, though it seems to take much longer this time—sphinx’s tail should twitch intermittently, flexing claws lingering over certain keys. Tear third message along perforated edge. Read:
ALSO PLANNED BAKING GONZO GORK CAKEPIE CONSUMMATION GIFT FOR PROSPECTIVE MATE SAW ME DRINK FROM HUMAN IVORY ALTAR REVEALED ALTAR IS HUMAN LITTERBOX NEVER SAW MATE AGAIN NEVER BAKED CAKEPIE TASTE SHAME WITH EVERY LAP OF WATER
Look away to dignify sphinx’s plaintive tail-twitching, considering what could comfort an cat, and if your fate as described in STEP 9 could possibly be averted, and if that would only offend a time-cop sphinx further—don’t fuck with destiny, et cetera. Feeling defeated and deprived of sleep, say something stupid knowing you’ll regret it: “Um… if it makes you feel any better… a cake happens when the batter hits the heat head-on—you know, the inside is the outside, and it all rises evenly. A pie happens when you protect your filling with a crust to take the heat—the outside hardens up, but the insides stay soft. So what the hell’s a cakepie? Why would you hide an inside that’ll bake just fine by itself?” Visibly wince once the words run out without a comforting conclusion, then deflect with a dismissive hand wave, saying “stupid, stupid, sorry.” Hide your face in your hands, accidentally smearing your double’s drying blood across your cheeks. When sphinx cat meows, peel hands loose and fish a fourth message from paper dispenser, tearing along perforated edge. Read:
YOU HAVE BATTER I HAVE CRUST LETS FIND OUT
Look up to see sphinx operating console, causing the accordion tube to lift like a crane. Sock-jaws snapping, the neck will lift your double’s limp skin between its enigmatic grippers. Sigh with relief, finally understanding STEP 9. Promise to hereafter trust the process.CRUST: Using your batter bowl for reference, guide the sphinx’s index claw to mark an equivalent section of doppelgänger corpse’s scalp, then carefully sever with a cleaver. Multiply the circumference by 1.5 and apply this measurement to the double’s belly, repeating the marking and skinning process. Stretch each section of skin and wash under warm water, scraping excess hair away with cleaver and revealing a dissolving lattice beneath—motes of memories chronicling porcupine-picking, pigeon-milking, thrifting for kitsch on which to misplace meaning, all erasing as the timeline mends itself. When the scalp, stomach, and unused viscera of your double’s corpse all dissolve away, only a Huygens scab will remain stretched between your fingers—the membrane spacetime secreted to separate yourselves in superposition, and the only crust that can contain anachronistic batter like you have made across two timelines. On clear counter space, sprinkle a pinch of flour before spreading the belly-cut scab with a rolling pin until it coheres with euclidian geometry. Carefully lay belly-cut scab in pie tin, flattening any wrinkles with fingers, then fill with batter (TIP: for most flavorful results, sprinkle remainder of dry mixture over the top of the batter to create a pop of spice!) Repeat spreading process with scalp-cut scab, adding more flour to countertop if necessary. Make way for sphinx to cut four, radial slits into scab, each no longer than a fingernail, then lay scab atop the batter. Pinch cakepie crust closed with help of sphinx.
BAKE (ATTEMPT 2) Bake on bottom rack of ovenator for what feels like an eternity, but is simply thirty minutes of small talk with a sphinx cat cursed to speak through a typewriter jerry-rigged from lost knickknacks. Discuss what little you have in common—the weather, blood, being born live to a lactating mother—before turning to what you don’t. Learn of the clandestine Cat Gap, a system of burrows between the hyperrhizomatic multiverse only accessible to cats (where else would they be hiding themselves all day?), and the convoluted coalition of cat scrutineers dedicated to protecting their private corner of the cosmos—the very coalition to which Dave Bautista (the cat) belonged. Provide equally interesting insights into your life of using toilets (why are they so enticing?) and shaking up stagnating meals, which proves alien enough for the sphinx, who is content with wet food for dinner every night. Realize, then, that you’re not sure where the cakepie recipe came from—certainly not shored up from the usual food blogs. Wonder why, come to think of it, there is a recipe in the first place if you are the first person to make gonzo-gork cakepie—then, all at once, realize how far back this anachronism really goes; realize what you must break to fix the spacetime rip still before you. Extend a hand to the sphinx and propose a secret between the two of you: “I’ll travel back again to before your heartbreak and plant this recipe in your human home; you travel back to my dinner crisis last Sunday and plant this recipe on my phone. That should smooth it over—we’ll keep this weird loop to ourselves.” Shake the sphinx’s strange, hairless paw, and begin to pen this recipe verbatim. Remove cakepie from ovenator and cool for 1 hour.
ENJOY: After all that copying and cooling, you and Dave will be ready for dinner, so cut a generous slice or two and dig in! Surely, it’s not lost on you—the crust that now flakes away from a fresh interior that supports itself. Turn to sphinx and finish speech you were at first too shy to complete: “We’re cakepies, you and I—without the shell, we’re baked just fine.”
• • •
for Anakin, a wealthy criminal finally free
(2o07-2024)
