Never could I have dated. I am too self conscious, too unaware of the rules, the jargon; too willing to hide myself as well as I can without exploring the possibilities of someone else discovering me. My husband knows me, but it remains unspoken; a space between us that doesn’t exist; a topic only broached if I bring it up or he vents in frustration, which is rare.

Having spent years in the kitchen doing food service related jobs, I became used to hanging out and working with men. As a teenager it was easy to feel that I fit in as just one of the guys, but when I returned to the kitchen as a baker at age 29, after spending ten years screwing around and watching Sesame Street; I was hopelessly, impossibly out of touch.

I kept quiet as I did my job, trying hard to keep up with the younger stronger men who seemed like boys to me. As I worked I would listen to their back and forth banter with a smile on my face. I quickly realized the three stages they went through on their shifts: Hunger, Horniness, and Sleepiness. A few of them went through the stages in that order, others mixed it around a bit before they clocked off.

I had no problem with their crude humor; their attempts to shock me were futile. I had the dirtiest mind out of the whole crew. As I grew more relaxed in the environment I entered into their conversations. For the most part I did alright, but I embarrassed myself, and a few of them, by not having any idea what they were talking about on a few occasions. Once, a coworker was telling me a story about getting a reach around. I stopped him and asked, “Hey, what’s a reach around?” He stopped, tomato red, speechless. I seriously wanted to know, but it wasn’t until my older female supervisor who had been listening from the next station pulled me aside and told me that it clicked in my head.

Around Halloween, pumpkin pie season started. We made so many gallons of pumpkin pie filling we had to use garbage cans to store it in. At first the smell was a refreshing change, the color gave a bit of visual interest to what can become a mundane task, until finally it settled into a crusty orange substance I had to scrape off my shoes. We mixed that pie filling and teased each other with the huge paddles and whisks, pointed out the spanking possibilities with the giant size kitchen utensils, labeled the cans with masking tape and sharpies and tried to wheel them into the walk in coolers without tipping them over.

After a fortnight or so I started to notice the labels were changing. Someone had written, “Blumpkin Pie Filling” on one, another one was labeled, “Plumpkin Pie Filling”. My boss, looking at the buckets with me one evening to assess whether we needed to make more, pointed and said, “These young boys today, they cannot spell.” I nodded my head, pretending to understand the gravity of generation Y, and waited. As soon as I could I asked one of the other bakers about blumpkins and plumpkins. He shook his head NO.

I waited until I had a spare moment with Alex at home and mentioned it to him. He shook his head, sighed and told me the meaning. I asked him how it could be that we could have lived together for so many years and I didn’t know what he knew. “I’ll bet you know what a reach around is too!” I said, and he did. I had held his penis a million times and the thought had never occurred to me. I told him that the guys at work were laughing at me and he laughed too.

The jokes at work grew tiring eventually and everyone settled into a more reserved state of chronic fatigue as the holidays approached. Thanksgiving and Christmas are not the most wonderful time of the year for a baker. As I stirred the pumpkin filling with the four foot whisk my eyes burned and filled with tears, making the sea of orange with flecks of spices blur, then disappear completely.

“Tammy?” Rodney said from across the kitchen where he stood mixing chocolate cake batter for Yule logs, “How far south do you go?” I looked at him for a second and answered, “I’ve been as far as the California Mexico border before turning back.” As the laughter broke out in the room I realized; I’d done it yet again.