Green Peppers

When I turned twenty-five, I was living with a beautiful woman in Waterloo, New York. She was blonde, and fun, and I made a whole mess of the relationship. In the first days of September, a few months after I turned twenty-six, she broke up with me. But before I touched the match to the kindling that would torch the whole thing to the ground, we shared a lot of good. I was lucky for the two years I had with her. She was the first person outside of my family that said that she loved me. I learned so much.

In our tiny, second floor apartment we cooked a lot of meals together. Before we left Pennsylvania for New York, her mother gave us a salad spinner. Since ground beef was cheap, and so was taco seasoning, we made a lot of taco salads. I’d brown beef and simmer it in the taco seasoning while she washed and cut the vegetables. She’d trim the lettuce and run it through the salad spinner to get the excess water off of it. The lettuce and vegetables would go into the bowls first, then the tortilla chips. We’d stack the meat on top of the chips and then top it all with cheese. We ate well for poor twenty-somethings.

At first, my salads consisted of only lettuce, meat, chips, and cheese. I’d dress it with olive oil and garlic salt. She’d laugh at me as we ate and prod me to try some more vegetables. Her bowl filled with an entire garden. I’d laugh and joke back, my extreme pickiness closing me off from trying anything new. But eventually, her prodding broke through. Carrots, chopped up into tiny coins, added color to the lettuce. To my surprise, I enjoyed that salad.

The next time we made taco salad, which would have been the next week, she said, “Why don’t you try green peppers this time?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I don’t like them.”

“How do you know you don’t like them? Have you ever even tried them?”

“No.”

And upon that admission, she sighed and chopped me a square from a green pepper and held it out to me. I took it and ate it. I liked it.

These days it’s rare for me to eat a garden salad that doesn’t have green, and now red, peppers in it.

When I turned twenty-eight, I lived in New Haven, Connecticut and was dating a woman that lived in Westchester County, New York. Her face was beautiful. She was voluptuous in a way that can’t help but spark eroticism. And I enjoyed our primally corporeal relationship. But she lived her life with a narcissistic brutality that manifested itself in screaming fits, alienation, and a single-mindedness that bent so hard toward what shewanted that people became tools. (I once saw her berate a clerk at an auto shop because her car wasn’t ready by screaming that she was “going to rape his face.” The tone was a bit much, but the act didn’t sound so bad to me.) Nonetheless, she was a talented chef. She had worked her way up in the New York restaurant scene, making stops at famous restaurants. By the time we were dating she had recently finished a gig as an executive chef at a fine dining restaurant and had won a reality TV show.

Despite the fact that our relationship hinged mostly on orgasms — and that I had an extreme distaste for how she treated people — we did spend some time learning from each other. I’d teach her about my profession (strength and conditioning) and she taught me how to cook. She exposed me an incredible number of restaurants around New York in a short period of time. Eventually, I’d help her by serving as a “line cook” in her tiny apartment kitchen while she prepped for events that she was freelancing. It started, however, with steak.

I’d bought a ribeye that was on sale at the grocery store down the street from her apartment. I walked through the door, plopped the steak on the counter and said, “Where’s your broiler?”

“I’m sorry. My what?”

“Your broiler. I got a ribeye and I want to cook it.”

“Jesus Christ, Todd. You’re lucky you’re pretty.” (For the record, she’s the only woman to ever say this to me. That’s a direct quote.)

She brushed past me and pulled a cast iron skillet from a cabinet, placing it on a gas burner on the stove and firing the burner up. In another cabinet, she pulled out grapeseed oil and put it on the counter. From the windowsill where she kept a variety of salts out and ready for use, she grabbed kosher salt and handed to me. Then she handed me a pepper grinder. “Here, coat both sides with this salt and this pepper.” I did as I was told.

As the skillet heated, she gave me instructions.

Get the skillet hot with high heat, then put the oil in. When it shimmers and is just about to smoke, put the steak in.

Sear for a couple minutes on one side. Then flip it.

As the second side is finishing, melt butter in the pan adjacent to the steak. Then toss in some minced garlic. Tilt the skillet and bast the butter and garlic over the steak.

Pull it and let it rest.

“You’re going to have to deglaze the skillet anyway. Might as well do it with something delicious,” she said, pulling out some greens. She tossed them in the skillet, seasoned them with salt, and then poured a little red wine in and stirred. At the end of the production, I had a perfectly medium-rare steak and sauteed greens that rivaled anything I’d ever eaten.

I went on to practice cast iron steak searing hundreds of times, and I’ve gotten damn good at it. Since, I’ve expanded my culinary repertoire ten-fold. The greatest joy of my every evening is cooking. Now, rather than featuring discounted ribeye steaks, my dinners feature the wild game meat I take throughout the year.

When I turned thirty, soon after I moved to Northern Virginia, my life was overcome by an exotic beauty. She was half Moroccan and half Caucasian. (I didn’t just say “white” because it’s too bland of a word to describe her.) She was wild and uninhibited in a way that I’d never experienced before. During the year before we met, she converted an old Ford van into a camper and lived in it while she drove around the country. She’d been to burning man — twice. An event that I’m certain from the depths of my being that I’d hate every minute of. But I loved that she had done it. She had wavy hair that fell to her shoulders, mocha skin, and a smile that burrowed its way into your soul. I was immediately entranced.

Hailing from the homogenous culture of Central Pennsylvania — although I’d lived several places by this point — and from a family of mostly anxious and non-exploratory folks, made everything about her alluring. Even the erratic parts of her personality. And especially the way she played with morality.

“Would you ever consider making our relationship open?” she asked me via text. I was in Pennsylvania, visiting friends while she was at home in Virginia.

“What would that mean?”

“When we are different places we can sleep with other people.”

“Like, you’d sleep with other dudes? Would we talk about it?”

“Yes, other dudes. And you other women. No, I wouldn’t want to know what you’re doing. We would just have the freedom to do it.”

“Well, maybe I’d want to know what you’re doing.”

“It wouldn’t work that way.”

I thought intensely for a few minutes before answering her.

“No, I wouldn’t want to have a relationship like that.”

“Okay.”

I didn’t believe, and still don’t believe, that those types of relationships actually work — for either party. I also knew that my heart would live in my stomach every time that she or a I were away.

We settled into a trustworthy monogamy. That might sound like naivety on my part, but it’s true. We were faithful to each other. (There were, however, other gigantic issues that ended up toppling our relationship — leading me to break it off.)

But that she had asked, that she lived a wilder life before me, that she saw the world in many of the same ways that I did but at the same time in a way that I’d never dream of, captivated me. I was with a wildling, and she had chosen me. Every time she’d swing by the MMA gym that I trained at, the guys swooned and asked, “How the hell did you pull that off? You just got here.” My pride would swell while I’d sincerely answer, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

It was more than being struck by the excitement of her wildness and the social standing of being the pale white guy dating the exotic beauty. Our relationship opened my mind — her ideas and beliefs like a crowbar prying the top off of my guarded thoughts. Conversations between us were at once deep and satisfying, while also being challenging and frustrating. I had to think more than during any previous relationship. I had to challenge, deconstruct, and reconstruct my worldview. And I am better for that.

Sometimes it’s something silly like learning that you actually enjoy green peppers. Sometimes it’s a skill that brings richness to your life that you didn’t know you were missing. Other times still it’s having to think deeply about what you believe and why. But at all times we have more people to thank for who we’ve become than we truly realize.