No. Sorry... that was the Cake with an Emery Board.

Perhaps the most harrowing of realities comes when you know something could have worked, but didn’t. It is the similar feeling you might have received after attempting to bake a birthday cake from scratch for your best friend, using the last of your rations and forgetting a step or worse an ingredient. There is nothing like a pound cake without sugar. Relationships are similar to this in that, what is a “Better than Sex Cake” without the sex to compare it? If one truly believes there is a purpose or more to life than what is experienced in daily routines, than how can we continue to convince ourselves and each other we have created everything appropriately when there are still struggles. I do not mean the eventually overcome difficulties like lost jobs or raising kids. I mean the stipulations of relationships involving love and the pillories defining those relationships involving the court systems.

It seems, let's say Mr. X, has found himself in a situation where every turn presents a presumably dangerous outcome, where if Mr. X makes any sort of natural reaction he is distinguished as an offender, be it in love or with the law. It is a rather unfortunate conundrum which can only be solved by deciding which of the social stigmas Mr. X would prefer to have on his permanent conscience record. Does he sacrifice the potential love that is a bitter pound cake with the usefulness of a doorstop or proliferate the path of risky behaviors that proclamate the validity of previous offenses?

He should of course choose the lesser of two evils. To do this requires research and time Mr. X does not, to remain in the barriers of his social boundaries, have. Seemingly it is that as predecessors have done or failed to do. There is something to be said for learning from other people’s mistakes and he has yet to find an example of one who has “done the right thing”. Therefore in a Republican, non-feminist state, “Mr. X must do what must be done”. He could forgive himself and allow future metaphoric birthdays to be more successful or he must scrap the whole project before it becomes unbearably embarrassing and just make a different gift. Either way finding himself at a horrifying loss of something necessary for the existence of life as it is known, a cake that functions as a cake and not a fashionable paperweight or now even the rations to support a healthy lifestyle.

My father used to say “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”, which was usually followed by “someday you’re going to have to shit or get off the pot.” Of course my father had his own idioms for getting his point across. I do not have a lot of damning or constipation stories, or at least ones that fulfill the allusion to love and law that I feel apropos for Mr. X. I have, however, attempted to bake a cake and failed. Also I have tried to love and found myself repudiated for lovelessness and the lack of authority. In any case, not enough can be said for situations where one must shit hearts or remove their arse from the fraudulent pretense of shitting hearts, thus risk soiling the fabrics of life. Just don't frost a cake with it.