I almost fucked Lena Dunham's muse

This story is a recession indicator.

As I’ve probably mentioned, when I was younger I did almost everything for the story. From ignoring red flags to taking home more than a couple clowns, my experiences were collateral for a future life of normalcy. Stories that would make me go viral on XO Jane or ridiculed in Modern Love – once I got the chance to write them down, of course. I’ve hoarded my embarrassing memoir fodder for the right time, and now, almost 15 years later, after years of rewriting, retelling, and feeling it was just not right yet: it’s time to tell my Lena Dunham story.

There were many moments (or triggers) this month that brought me here. Dunham’s recent New Yorker essay about leaving New York got us all wondering if the pain of the city was actually worth it. Then this New York Times’ timeline of 25 years of dining in NYC had me reminiscing about my days and nights working at some of the restaurants that built the city’s foodie industrial complex in the early aughts. Between 2006-2015 I lived through iconic New York food moments that shaped my entire personality: enduring the toxic kitchen environment before the #meetoo shut down at The Spotted Pig, working at the GoogaMooga food festival as it literally sunk in Prospect Park, lording my Momofuko connection over my non-waiter friends. We were all broke but we ate well, drank and smoked without worrying about consequences or regrets. And now, years later, the world is nostalgic of that time too, when restaurants were free of TikTok influencers and you could actually bribe a hostess to get you a table because apps like Resy and Dorsia didn’t exist. If that’s not a recession indicator, I don’t know what is.

The NYC moments that made me a textbook Millenial foodie, courtesy of the New York Times

So, enjoy this pivotal moment in 2010 when I realized my actions actually had consequences and that New York will always make you feel one fuck away from a celebrity. And please submit your own anonymous relationship questions to be answered with food and hopefully stories that have just gotten better with age.

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I keep going after the wrong guys. Situationships, fuck bois, just guys who can’t commit - I tell myself I’m done and then when the next one comes along, I get sucked right back to my kryptonite aka hot assholes. How do I quit the dicks?

- adDICKted

Dearest AdDICKted

The first first step to recovery is knowing you have a problem. The second is realizing that you, and only you, can stop your pattern. It sounds like you are ready to go dick-free, once and for all. So here’s where it gets hard… and not in the fun way: If you or someone you know is dickmatized, the only way to break the cycle is to become a dick yourself. Let me explain with a little trip down memory lane.

Back when I was a no good, dirty, lying cheater, my kryptonite was danger (I’m reformed now, you can read about that here). I don’t know if it was having the comfort and banality of a failing relationship at home, but I was addicted to the danger of not technically cheating but definitely still cheating. Mutual masturbation with a guy I didn’t care about at all? Give it to me. Heavily and publicly flirting with the very mean chef I worked with? Loves it. The danger of almost fucking Lena Dunham’s muse? Absolutely. Just like Dunham, I often did it all for the story, but in this case, I ended up the biggest dick of all.

The year was 2010. The set was a hip Brooklyn farm-to-table restaurant in the height of flannel hipsterdom, and I was the hostess - simultaneously the most powerful 20-something woman in the borough and also an absolutely nobody with a dismal paycheck. Between 5:30pm and 11pm, I was the most confident version of myself I’ve ever been: making hungry hopefuls grovel for a table at the Eater-approved, walk-in only establishment; turning away Tyra Banks with a 2-hour wait time; strutting my stuff with hot waiter-slash-actor-model-singer-writers. I was also casting eyes and NSFW innuendos at the red-bearded chef with anger issues in the open kitchen for all to see.

During the day I was the opposite: An english major in a failing relationship that I didn’t know how to get out of. A writer with no applicable experience to get hired in a recession. A boring girl in a city of standouts.

I worked during the day at the restaurant answering phones and explaining our no-reservation policy, updating the website with witty blurbs I hoped I could use as writing clips, printing menus, and trying to spell haricots verts correctly, so the same chef I flirted with at night wouldn’t call me a fucking idiot in front of the whole staff. Our game was a classic power play - top chef and idiot hostess, younger woman holding clipboard and older man covered in grease who could easily get in the weeds if I sat too many tables at once.

The way we flirted was often with undertones of violence. I’d comment on his big, sharp knife; he’d tell me it was perfect for clean-cutting arteries. I’d trace a thumb along my neck with a wink; he’d cook me something special after my shift, something hard to eat like pommes aligot, a.k.a, mashed potatoes with added stringy cheese that would stretch so far on a fork that I’d have to slurp it up shamefully, obediently. I’d take a big bite and never break eye contact with him from the bar, licking my lips like a good girl. The game was mutual, but in an industry where tales of Mario Batali’s closet groping were still shrugged off as “chefs being chefs,” our relationship wasn’t on an even playing field.

The murder/victim role play drove me crazy. Was this man going to kill me or fuck me or all of the above? Should I blow up my relationship to satisfy my addiction to danger, to get a story for the nonexistent memoir? One afternoon, to take my mind off things before working the Friday night shift, I went to a matinee at IFC of a new movie from a writer I liked: Lena Dunham. At the time, Dunham had mostly made funny YouTube videos about a writer and her friends living in NYC; navigating dating, work, and life as a Millenial. Tiny Furniture was her first feature: an indie film about a 20-something writer who works as a hostess at a hip restaurant, gets into a complicated relationship with an asshole chef, and ultimately gets left in a construction site after he fucks her, then spots his girlfriend and runs away.

A scene from Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (2010)

I knew that art imitates life, but how did Lena Dunham know my life so well? It’s like she had written the movie just for me, a cautionary tale of what could happen if I continued this thing with the psychopath Chef. I left the theater and headed to my shift, kicking myself that this archetype of the asshole Chef was so obvious that it had already made itself into the collective hipster unconscious. If this story was already told, could I really justify cheating on my boyfriend just for the story?

At the restaurant I casually brought up the film with my co-workers. A waiter-slash-actor chimed in. He had recently auditioned for a Lena Dunham’s upcoming HBO show about a bunch of girls living in Brooklyn, and I reiterated how I felt she was stealing my life and capitalizing on it without my consent. The GM, who had been at the restaurant the longest, scoffed: “Wouldn’t put it past her. She basically stole Chef’s life for Tiny Furniture, and he didn’t get a dime.”

I stood there, frozen doing silverware rollups with my mouth full of day-old staff bread. “What do you mean, stole his life?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” the GM whispered, “Lena and Chef used to work together at Allen & Delancey. She wrote that whole character directly based on him. He’s basically her muse. If you can hate your muse.”

I kept my eyes down through the shift and avoided Chef in the pass, skipping my tempting staff meal to rush home to my desktop computer. There was this new thing called Twitter where you could read what celebrities were thinking right in the moment! You could even personally message them, a direct line to power. I crafted my DM Tweet, knowing it had to be under 150 characters and intriguing enough for Lena Dunham to see it and want to be best friends and hire me as a writer on her new HBO show.

“@lenadunham I think we both have the same bad taste in red-bearded chefs. thanks for making that mistake so I didn’t have to!”

The next day I had a new lease on life. I didn’t need to fuck a toxic man for the story, Lena already had and now we were going to be cosmically linked forever! I’d be her muse in no time, out of my dead-end restaurant job and writing for the big screen. I came to work feeling hot and powerful, ready to crush people’s dreams of getting a table in any reasonable amount of time.

“Hey me-the-messinger,” Chef’s low voice was like a dagger in my flannel back. I whipped towards the kitchen wondering how he knew my Twitter handle. “Just so you know, you’re really not my type. And please, never talk about me on the Internet again.”

I ran to the bathroom and opened my phone. There it was: a Tweet I though was private, glaring on the public timeline with zero likes but obviously some very real eyeballs. Apparently, to send a DM you need to put a period in front of the “@” symbol. Apparently, Lena Dunham was Chef’s type, but I definitely was not. Apparently, I was the dick all along.

Chef and I went on to work together for over a year, avoiding each other at all costs before I quit to work as an intern at a lady-blog writing riveting articles such as Which GIRLS character are you? On my last day at the restaurant, saying my goodbyes, Chef made eye contact with me through the pass. I realized that without that power dynamic between us, we were just two regular people with our own shit, just trying to get through the shift. “Hey me-the-messinger,” he said, his voice playful now, back to our old flirty ways. “Good luck out there.” He smiled. “Don’t write about me, ok?”

…

So, AdDICKted, it may feel like the dicks are finding you no matter where you go, but unfortunately, it takes one to know one. You are the common denominator here. But that also means you have the power to choose who becomes your muse. Will it be an asshole? A psychopath? Or someone that matches your freak without taking away your power? Turn that fuck boi kryptonite around and only let the real ones penetrate your forcefield. Be a dick, don’t take the bait, and write the story - your own way.

And while you do, here is a recipe for string cheese mash potatoes to cook with vigor and eat shamelessly.

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Fuck Boi Pommes Aligot

According to this Food52 recipe, “the consistency of these potatoes is exceptionally fun—when they're ready to serve, the aligot should stretch and pull almost like melted mozzarella cheese.” Highly suggest using this to your advantage… whatever that may be.

Ingredients

• 4 medium Idaho potatoes

• 4 tablespoons butter

• ³/₄ cup heavy cream

• ¹/₂ cup Comté cheese

• ¹/₂ cup Emmental cheese

Directions

1. Peel the potatoes and cut them into 2-inch pieces. Add them to a large pot and add room temperature water to cover the potatoes. Add a few pinches of salt to the water, and then gently simmer the potatoes over medium high heat until they are fork tender, about 30 minutes.

2. When the potatoes are tender, remove them from the simmering water and mash them using either a ricer, food mill, or tamis. Discard the water but save the pot, you'll use it again. If you use a masher or a fork, the pommes aligot will not have the correct texture. A ricer, food mill, or tamis is important here.

3. Add the butter and cream to the pot. Use medium heat to melt the butter and warm the cream. Add the mashed potatoes and whisk until smooth. Taste the mashed potatoes. Add salt as necessary, remembering that you're about to add a lot of cheese, so your mashed potatoes shouldn't be too salty at this point.

4. Reduce the heat to low, and add the cheese in three batches. Stir using a wooden spoon. When one batch of cheese is fully melted, add the next batch. When all the cheese is added, taste the pommes aligot. Add salt as necessary. Serve immediately. Enjoy!

Recipe Via Food52