To Impress a Boy: Rhubarb Polenta Cake

-The things we do to impress someone...-

The first time I did ecstasy I did it because a boy I liked gave me a tab of it. Being just recently twenty-one and, obviously, immortal in the sense that newly minted twenty-one year olds think they are I slipped it down my throat with a shot of whisky and thought how damn cool I must have looked, how effortlessly nonchalant I must have seemed, and that surely this boy would like me. I effused coolness as I nursed a neat glass of brown liquor – nursed it as if it were a dying patient as I had yet to actually develop a taste for whisky. It took every drop of willpower not to cringe from every sip as the booze burned my flesh lips to stomach.

But the boy seemed worth it. He was my height – that is to say six feet, give or take – with jet hair, full eyebrows, and eyes the color of robins’ eggs. He was a philosophy major, I think, or some degree that was largely inconsequential to the real world job market but that was cool to talk about on the quad with people who usually wore sandals all year regardless of season. He was cordial; the type of person you can’t help but be enamoured with for their compassionate demeanor. He wasn’t the smartest boy – he would eventually be kicked out of the university for failing too many classes and how one fails in philosophy is still a mystery; or is it? – but he was intelligent when it came to matters of finding a way to be happy with his life in that it seemed he had no regrets.

(This would prove untrue after his dismissal from the university.)

-His original major was biological chemistry. You can imagine how well that worked out.-

By the end of the night I realized I liked the ecstasy more than the boy who within the hour was tweaking harder than a computer tech and manwhoring himself out so hard I’d expect to find a hole in a bathroom stall proudly named after him.

Needless to say that jealousy had weaned me off him rather quickly, but the ecstacy helped quicker as I forgot all about him and gleefully melted into the bass pounding out two story tall speaker sets mounted around the dance floor like thumping obelisks.

Later, at the bar, I met another nice boy with whom I floated off the ground with. He got me safely home (nothing happened) and he would eventually become a good friend for the next many years until contact dwindled after he moved away to attend law school at Harvard after scoring an impressive and near-legendary perfect LSAT score.

-He was another crush later, but totally not boyfriend material on account of the ego the size of his pecs, which were awesome.-

I spent the next day collapsed on the couch in a lugubrious heap with my arms shackled in so many now-deceased glow bracelets and chugging a gallon of red Gatorade that my new friend had given me (he was right that I would need it).

I told him later about why I had been there and done the drug to begin with. He said he understood and that what I went through was a rite of gay passage.

"Of course," he said, "it's a fucking stupid one. But a few years from now you'll realize it was an experience worth living." Years later, I can say he was right. Everyone should try it at least once.

Was it foolish to do a drug for a boy? Absolutely. Insanely so. But, then again, we all do things to impress someone we’re smitten with. Some of them rather brilliant and other times we throw down drugs with copious amounts of alcohol. C’est la vie.

There is one feat we do out of infatuation that we all regret doing and that we're all guilty of. An act we all come to regret...

Comforting our crush while he or she is in a break-up, hoping they’ll understand that our compassion for them is a veil for something so much more intense. That's when you gently, so gently, place your hand on their shoulder they’ll put their hand over it before looking up at you. Then it’ll come... that spark of realization like the universe just came together before their eyes and they realize that you, YES YOU! are the one! You’ll embrace passionately. Kisses as tender as an egg yolk quivering in your hand. Dizzy with glee. The crush hops you on his moped (my fantasy, so shush it, he drives a moped) and you scoot down the street in eternal, undying bliss.

Or some bullshit that never works out before they go and date another idiot just like the last because, like the rest of us, we’re all kind of stupid like that.

-Like that plan has ever worked for anyone in the history of ever.-

We all remember it and it sucks to run through that emotional apocalypse.

There was the boy I went whitewater rafting with and where I suffered the sunburn that resulted in a full body peel of skin that I could have sewn a suit out of. The one in gymnastics club who I tried to impress with a standing pike – something I could not at all whatsoever do, let alone actually ever tried – and almost killed myself for. I spent the next few days with a bruise the size of a grapefruit on my ass, making sitting through two hour seminars a true pain in the butt.

Then there was that cute Asian boy in fencing club whom I almost killed because nothing says I fancy you like a thorough ass kicking and inflicting a wound that needed four stitches. It was the equivalent of pulling a girl's ponytail on the playground, only with a hospital visit and swords.

With fiancé there wasn’t ever a need to impress, really. A few tricks here and there, the kinds of things we all do like whip up a classy meal or dress as sharp and comely as the gentleman prey in a Jane Austen novel. We had been friends for about 10 years before we started dating so by then he kind of new past all my tricks and knew just me for me. I didn’t have to jump through any hoops as he had seen me jump them for others. He had had my cooking, knew my faults, my ego, and understood my addiction to historical dramas and my need to have both summer and winter sheet sets for the bed. He knew the real me so no mask or painted smile was ever worn. He knew the actual me – not the one I has presented to other hopeful callers in the past.

He was – by all confounding evidence to me – already impressed.

Still, it’s good to have a new hat to throw on to re-dazzle the one you’re smitten with now and again. For example, this simple cornmeal cake. This is a recipe from the waxing poetic cook and author Nigel Slater, whose floral prose brings about this: my second most favorite cake of all time (my first being a brown sugar cake). The cake is simple to make and presses together quickly. The texture is sweet, aromatic, and the large grain polenta gives it an engagingly gritty texture. The inside is filled with baked rhubarb, but any roasted fruit from apples to boysenberries would be lovely.

If you feel like gaining the attention of your boy, girl, partner, whomever you seem to be chasing at the moment I encourage this cake. It'll do the job and then some. It's swoon inducing and first kiss encouraging.

Just the the thing to impress...

Rhubarb Polenta Cake

Adapted from Nigel Slater's Ripe


1 pound rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces
3/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons water
3/4 cup coarse polenta
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
dash of ground cinnamon
zest of 1 orange
1/4 cup brown sugar
10 tablespoons butter, cold and diced
1 egg
2-4 tablespoons whole milk
a few dashes of your favorite bitters
sugar for sprinkling

1. Lightly butter an 8-inch spring-form pan and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350F. Place the rhubarb, 1/4 cup of the sugar, and the water in the baking dish and toss. Bake for thirty minutes, and then place the rhubarb in a mesh colander to drain; reserve the juices to serve with the cake.

2. Put the polenta, flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, orange zest, brown sugar, and remaining sugar in a food processor and blitz a few times. Add the butter and blitz a few more times until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Mix the egg, bitters, and 2 tablespoons of the milk into a bowl and blend into the mixture with the food processor. Take care not to overmix. The mixture should be sticky and soft. If it isn't add another tablespoon of milk.

3. Press two thirds of the dough into the cake pan and push it 1/4-inch up the sides. (You'll probably need to flour your fingers a bit to keep it from sticking from you.) Be sure there are no cracks or holes. Place the rhubarb over the surface. Crumble the remaining dough over the top. Scatter a bit more sugar over the top and bake for 45-50 minutes. Allow to cool a few minutes, and serve with the juices from the rhubarb.