The Baker's Apprentice, BJ Lessons

My sister called yesterday from Boise. She wanted to know why, in a new apartment, 700 miles from just about everyone I know, I'm spending my pandemic baking bagels and twisting babkas. Curating croissants.

"Who's gonna to eat all that stuff, Kat?" she wanted to know.

And it's a reasonable question. If I ate a tenth of what I bake, I wouldn't fit out the door. Most of it goes to the shelter. A bit goes to the cute grad student downstairs. But that's a different story.

For me, baking isn't about production or consumption. I mean, sure, I enjoy a baguette as much as anyone. But for me, it's a way to remember.

****

In '98, I'd taken a gap semester and moved to London. I still can't believe my mom let me move there, she'd always been so protective. I was sharing a tiny flat with a girl I'd known in school, and worked at the Waterstones by Covent Garden underground. London was a lot - scary big. Our family wasn't rural, but we were pretty suburban. And in this strange city I generally stuck close to home. Directly across from the tube station, just down from the book store, is a café. Aroma now, I think. But back then it was called Matisse.

On my time off, I liked to sit at the café. They had two tables outside. I'd sip a foamy coffee to escape the stuffy flat and try to feel more like an adult -- looking back, I guess the three sugars probably gave it away that I was 19, a bit lonely, and feeling very far from home. This was the London before Oyster cards. The new Tate had just opened. The chunnel was long done, but the Jubilee extension was still under construction.

It was a late Sunday that summer. I was sipping my coffee when a fare card literally floated into my lap. I'd been caught up reading -- and the paper slip caught my attention. That is how I met Henri. Henri was a baker's apprentice, at Matisse, no less. Twenty-two and from Lyon. He was spending six months in London and sharing a flat above the shop with two others. But one had been called back to Montpelier by emergency, and his replacement was months away. The other stayed out as much as humanly possible. The stuffy flat was too much for a boy used to rural Bordeaux. The flat did have one redeeming feature though -- the kitchen could fit a table and had a sizable oven. And it was in that kitchen that I became Henri's apprentice -- in baking and in love. Not one then the other, but both at the same time.

I asked Henri the next day, how they got the brioche so light. He invited me up to learn that evening. "Brioche wants time", he'd said. He always talked about what doughs wanted or needed like they were alive. And in a way, it's true. "You make it at night and bake the next day." he'd said.

Brioche is enriched, so eventually the dough becomes very soft. But when you start to mix, and we always mixed by hand, it's sticky as hell. So there wasn't much I could do, with my hands stuck to the dough, when Henri kissed me that first time.

Asking permission wasn't as much of a thing then. So as he stood behind me, his arms over mine, showing me how to knead the dough, he leaned in and kissed my neck. I was suddenly aware of him, of the heat of his body, which a moment before had just been two hands teaching. I noticed the way his baker's biceps pressed on my shoulder. His chest pushing up against my back. His hips, lightly grazing near the small of my back. I think I let out a gasp, and he quickly backed off, thinking, I imagine, that his kiss wasn't welcome. I turned. My hands came away from the table, still holding the sticky mess. I looked in his eyes, which had gone... not wary, but cautious. And I tilted my head up and kissed his mouth.

Now, I'm not 19. I'm not a virgin. So it may be hard for you to imagine, how daring, just how bold that was for me. Never-been-kissed wouldn't be quite accurate, but never-been-loved, most certainly never-been-fucked. So I'm sure I surprised him as much as I surprised myself, because it took him a moment to relax into the kiss.

I've always loved that moment of falling. The first moment of contact, when it feels like you shouldn't and it feels like you have to and you, I don't know, surrender. But I'd never felt it before like I did now. Henri's arms around me were a tunnel who's lights I couldn't see at the end. And I went and I went and I went. In some ways, I'm still driving now.

From that point forward, it was romance and baking. We would stretch out the baklava dough and then kiss in the corner. He would teach me to knead by softly cradling my breasts. His only rule was, clothes on in the kitchen, unless the dough was away -- rising or baking. Really, he was pretty serious about safety, which I guess a real baker has to be. But that never stopped him from sliding a hand up my skirt, or advancing a hand up my shirt, pressed against my back, as I dusted the sandwich loaf. He loved to pull on my nipples, bra-less under my tank top, and whisper in my ear "Softly, softly let the dough stretch on its own." He'd talk about the way the proteins stretched in the dough. And I would demonstrate by pulling on his cock in his pants.

You know me today. I'm experienced. I can articulate sex words. I can say "cunt" or talk about cum without blushing. But then, I lacked the confidence and the vocabulary. Even so, I knew what I wanted, even if I couldn't put a name to it. Henri taught me to own it.

We'd been baking and gently making out for a week the first time... The first time I was brave enough to look him in the eye, standing there with his back against the edge of the sink in his tight pants, and tell him: "I want to see it." I gestured at the bulge I'd been rubbing. I knew its outline, its form. But I wanted its texture, and honestly its taste.

I'm quite sure he knew what I meant. I'd had my hands on his cock a moment before. But he drew it out. "It?" he asked. "My... wallet? My... fare card?" But his smile was wide. "It," I said, reaching a hand back to his jeans. He smiled again, checked that the pumpernickel was covered, and pulled me close. "Here?" he asked, and I nodded.

He allowed it, of course. I mean, he was still a guy. But first he held me at arm's length and looked me in the eye. He said: "name it"... "It," I ventured, "your... your penis."

His head shook, but with a smile. "A boy has a penis, a lover has a cock." I trembled slightly, I was a bit out of my depth. But I nodded and took a deep breath. "Can I see your cock?" I asked straight and clear. Henri's smile broadened. "But of course." I knelt there at his feet in the kitchen. As I settled, I looked up waiting. But he waited too.

"Well, come on," I protested. I'm sure my face started to flush.

"Lesson one," he told me, "if you want to see the cock, you take it out." I raised up on my knees and reached for his belt. "Ah ah ah... slowly" he said. He took off his apron as I unbuckled his belt. Maybe not as suave or smooth as these days, but I did alright. The fly on his jeans was all buttons. Still to this day, the sound of a button fly opening gives me a glow. "You can take out my cock" he permitted, and I saw he was bare under the jeans.

He'd showered when we came in and I could smell the soap and rye together. I reached in and, as gently as possible, I removed him from his jeans. I had seen a boy's penis, once or twice before my trip, but it was nothing like this. I know now, of course that Henri wasn't giant, that his cock was maybe just above average at best. But to me it was massive as I held it up in the flat of my hand. He wasn't circumcised. And that was new to me too. I placed a hand on top, like a sandwich and let it sit, pulsing and jumping, hot and hard in my hands. I remember noticing that it throbbed with his pulse.

"If you take your lover's cock," he said, "you don't just hold it in your palm, you caress it; you stroke it". I had been toying with his cock all evening through his pants, and he was already erect. The head was half way out of its foreskin. I angled it up, holding the base. As I ran my hand lightly from the base to the tip and then back, the skin moved up and then back down revealing the head.

"Kiss it" he instructed. And I did

"Lick it, from bottom to top." And I licked

"Suck the head. But gently." I sucked

Henri showed me how to handle him. Soon his balls were in my hand. He taught me to cradle them, to ever so gently pull them, to hold them up as I sucked. And later, to pull them away from his body as he came.

He showed me the spot just under the head of his cock. On an uncircumcised guy it's even more sensitive, if that's possible. He had me lick and kiss and suck there. He once got me to just lick that one little spot, for the twenty-five minutes it took cheddar muffins to bake. And when he came over my face, it was an incredible fountain. So little tongue action creating such an amazing effect.

But that time, that first time, when I was new to his cock, he kept it simple. He had me sucking and stroking together, one hand on his shaft, the other on his balls, kneeling on the kitchen floor.

He was my teacher, but he wasn't a stone. He gasped and sighed and moaned. I've met even more responsive men in my life -- my grad student neighbor for one -- but, given my inexperience, he was very expressive.

I didn't urge him on, like I know to do now. To ask for the cum, to beg, to whisper: "Relax. Let go. Release. Release. Release..." But I don't think that mattered to my Baker's apprentice.

He had his hands on the sides of my head, but not to control me -- he caressed my hair as I caressed his cock with my tongue. Some weeks later he would lay me on my back on the table, my head hanging over, and show me just how far I could take him. But for this time, this first time, it was as sweet and as gentle as I can imagine.

I'd like to say the same for his cum, but in reality, when he came in my mouth, and Henri always came in my mouth if he could, I hated the taste. Like a mouthful of marmite, but worse.

Even so, just like he told me, I waited. I showed him the cum. And I swallowed. He named me "good girl," then. And to this day, twenty-odd years later, my pussy tingles when I hear someone say it.

Then I was allowed up, to wipe my mouth, to rinse. "Next time," said Henri, "you clean me first, with your tongue. You kiss my cock, you put it away. Then you get up." And I did. Every time. Except once in the back alley of the Waterstones when the patrolling bobby would have caught us and we had to hastily reorganize our own clothes.

There were more lessons to follow. Henri was demanding, but giving too. He taught me the pleasures of having my pussy licked -- something he could do for as long as it took a loaf to rise. Once he had me cumming and cumming in the kitchen. His roommate was home in his room for a change and I had to keep a kitchen towel stuffed in my mouth, slouched in the wood chair, Henri between my legs.

And, of course, he fucked me. We made love.

It's amazing I wasn't pregnant, when my mom met me at O'hare later that Winter. Because we weren't careful. More like, reckless. We spent those months baking and fucking, mostly in his kitchen, because the bedroom was so small.

Occasionally we were interrupted by his damn flatmate. Once, I was bent over the table and Henri was just on the verge of coming when the latch started to turn. I had to whip around and swallow a mouthful of cum -and- get on an apron in the seconds available. In the event, his flatmate never even poked his head in the kitchen and the door slammed as he exited just moments later. We laughed, though honestly, I was a bit pissed that I'd missed my own chance at a climax. But Henri, who was always a good sport in these things, was soon on his knees licking and sucking and generally making it up.

I shouldn't over-romanticize. It wasn't perfect. Some soufflés fell flat. Some tears were shed. And the moment of departure always hung over our heads. The British immigration system wasn't interested in the heartache of two hopeless romantics, so I was going back to Chicago, come hell or highwater. But it also added a spice to our time. We hungered for each other. We coupled in doorways, between Waterstones and his flat. The one time we made it to the Tate Modern, it was less Rothko and more romance in the in-between spaces. Always wanting more. We honestly wanted to consume each other.

Henri had to go back to Lyon, to a mother and sister who missed him, two weeks before I was due to leave. I recall the airport was crazy in the pre-holiday rush. We couldn't look each other in the eye on the train ride south. He held my hand. I held a tissue, unused. In the end, I didn't cry. That came later. It broke like a dam on me six months later - embarrassingly while in the front row of a lecture hall at Northwestern. But even then, an ocean away, I could still smell the yeast, the cinnamon, the clove from his shirt that I'd pressed my face into as we said goodbye.

****

So now, when people ask me about my "London adventure' about all the wonderful things I was sure to have done, I don't really have a lot to say. I saw things of course -- but all of my focus, all of my memory is in that kitchen, in that flat over the café'.

And that's why I bake. When I un-mold my madeleines and when I turn out my turnovers, I'm reliving that beautiful fall with Henri, when I was the baker's apprentice.