Miranda Levi

Today, I ate the cookie dough.

Peter makes really good cookie dough. Like, suspiciously good. Weaponized good. We use injectables in it and then make cookies, pop them in the freezer, and they mostly just live there waiting to be our yummy little bad decisions. Usually this is all very organized and responsible-adjacent.

Except.

Peter also “accidentally” leaves some leftover dough in the fridge sometimes. He claims it’s because it didn’t fit on the two trays he baked, which is a lie so transparent it should be studied. I know that man. He leaves it for me because he knows I like eating the cookie dough when he’s not around, and because he thinks this habit is absolutely revolting. So naturally, I feel very supported in my filth.

Anyway. Tonight I remembered it was in there, brought it out to the living room, and it was rock solid. So I thought, oh, perfect. It’ll thaw, and I’ll just chip away at it like some little goblin working a cookie dough quarry. Which is exactly what I did. I was sitting there editing, picking out chocolate chips, I am the raccoon with a two graduate degrees.

And then at one point I looked down and realized I had plumb forgot that this was not regular cookie dough.

This was cookie dough with intentions.

This was not “a nice little treat.”
This was “every cookie is approximately one thousand years of my life in the best way humanly and creatively possible, in forty milligrams of cookie dough.”

I ate the cookie dough. I ate more than one raw cookie in dough. A dear. Santa’s fucking female bad ass dear. Rain the thing that called…. Something about roudoulf but I just can’t quite pin it. Maybe I’ll come back. Maybe I’ll forget.

Long story short, an hour or two or maybe closer to three later…I’m honestly not sure, because again, I ate the cookie dough. God, that cookie dough was so good.

I am so deeply, spiritually in the weeds right now that it reminded me of when we lived together and walked down to Bryan and Kathy’s, (who’s names just took me five full business minutes to remember just now, so that’s going great). Anyway, we went down there after eating, I think, half a cookie each, unless it was a quarter, or a quarter the second time and half the first time. The math is gone. History is oral tradition now.

But I remember I started having horrifying time-lapse issues, and I could not figure out how to talk louder than a whisper. Not “I chose a whimsical quiet voice.” No. I mean I literally could not seem to access a volume setting above haunted fern. And I remember it was pissing you off at one point, which in retrospect makes it so much funnier, because inside I was fully like, oh my God, something terrible has happened to me, I am trapped in this whisper forever, and now I can’t even laugh correctly because all I can do is exhale like a Victorian ghost.

I am laughing now remembering it. So very much.

And then there was the other time, when Jessie came home, and all I remember is that I kept losing time like I’d stepped onto the world’s least helpful moving walkway. I was such a baby stoner back then. Just a tiny innocent woodland creature. Had never smoked pot before I met you.

You corrupted me.

You, Melissa.
Aka Lyssa.
Aka Penis.
Aka Melissa Penis.
Aka Penis Girl.
Aka Vagina Melissa (often followed up with remembering I’d left out the word Costume in mixed company and now I’m getting weird looks).
Aka Is She the One Who Carries Around the Pee-wee Doll?
Aka my fiend.

I thought of all of this tonight, but most of all, I thought of you.

I love you. Happy birthday.

You know, up until Peter you held the record for being the longest flatemateship person ever. Now I just call him, Husband and I let you keep the title. There were other roommates, of course. Some for very short periods of time, and others for periods that were, frankly, not short enough. And while most of them had nice moments here and there, my favorite roommate memories were always with you.

Including the time Jesse saved me from a full pot spiral where I could not track time by bringing out paints and a canvas. What I remember is telling some story about Jesse, because apparently even then I was smart enough to know I would never remember what the hell this blob of color was supposed to be without a title. So on the back, I wrote: Candy Mountain Jesse.

Which means there were almost certainly Candy Mountain, Charlie references involved. Probably many. Probably too many. And something about Jessie living on a mountain. And while I also remember at one point genuinely thinking I had fallen into some kind of time vortex, every bit of time spent with you was time well spent, through all the ups and downs.

And that’s the part I really wanted to say.

You were the first person I ever really opened up to about my life. About what happened to me when I was young. I’m sure I glossed over as much as humanly possible, because that was all I knew how to do then, but still, you were the first person I felt safe enough to trust in twenty years.

Twenty years.

That is not a small thing. It never will be.

I have had a lot of therapy since then. A lot of healthy boundaries. A lot of working through all kinds of shit. But I know, in ways big and small, you will always hold a special place in my heart because you showed me that the world really did have people in it worth opening up to. People who could be trusted with tender things. People who could make a space feel safe enough to exhale in. I did not have a lot of people who did that for me. You were the first.

I don’t take that for granted.

I can see all the red threads now, looking back. The ones that stretch from those moments to where I am now. The courage I gained in our friendship. The ways being loved by a friend like you changed what I believed was possible.

I had this overwhelming urge to write one of these stories down today for my blog, and then I looked at the calendar and realized it was your birthday, and that felt like fate tapping me on the shoulder and going, yes, idiot, obviously this is for Melissa.

So happy birthday, Lissa.

Please enjoy some cookie dough and remember that time we manifested a house boy who did the dishes and mowed the lawn. He would not go topless for us, even though I seem to recall you asking more than once, which honestly still feels rude on his part. Especially when he was like, I want to start paying rent now? Like wtf Jesse?!

And movie nights on Mondays or Tuesdays, when the door was always open and stray cats were always welcome. We’d make enough food to feed an army. Sometimes somebody else came over and made it. It was not always especially good, but there was always enough, which feels somehow more important. Sometimes we dragged the couch outside and used the projector. Sometimes we wandered thrift stores together, and every outing somehow turned into, how many different objects can Melissa reposition, misuse, or scandalize in public before Miranda cries laughing?

I’m giggling right now just thinking about you.

And oh my God, the polar bear jump off the pier. It was way too cold for me, but I did take a good photo back then. I never remember I have a camera in my pocket anymore. Is that weird? Is that just what being in your forties is now? I don’t remember anything. Which, honestly, I can empathize with right now because I’m writing a character who has lost his memory, and apparently I’m method acting against my will.

My brain keeps serving up this montage of you. Thrift shops, and enjoying the rare sunlight. Coffee. Waiting in line for moose. Wandering around town. Whole afternoons of nothing and everything. In my office, I still have multiple pieces of your art. I see a bit of you every day, even though I know I rarely say hi. Life does that sometimes. It gets busy and weird and loud and years start moving in ways that make no sense.

But I have too many memories to list, and what I really wanted you to know is this:

You always leave an impression on the people whose lives you invest in.

You did that with me.

Thank you for being you.
Happy birthday yesterday (by the time you read this/I finished writing it and posted it)
And if you ever find yourself eating the good cookie dough, maybe pace yourself better than I did.

Or don’t.

In your honor, I absolutely did not.