The Cookie Dominatrix [Part 1]

When I was in LA last month visiting my friend Cathy Seipp, I was in charge of putting together an intimate little soiree for a select group, all of whom usually meet monthly at Yamashiro, but because Cathy is not up to going out these days, instead would convene at her house. Nothing too loud; nothing too raucous, just pasta salad, some chips and drinks, some warm chocolate chip cookies. Several of those in attendance were formerly on staff or columnists at Buzz magazine, including founding editor Allan Mayer, Cathy, myself, and Sandra Tsing Loh. As crisis manager to the stars, Allan is in the news every 14 seconds or so, but it is Sandra who's gone on to the splashiest career, writing books, performing one-woman shows, and for the past decade, doing the radio series, "The Loh Life," for which she was notoriously fired by KCRW for saying the word "fuck." Never mind that the word was meant to be bleeped. Did the rival SoCal public radio station pick her up in a heartbeat? You know they did.

Sandra is very, very funny, all the time. Not in a, "god, if this woman doesn't shut up I'm going to pull out one of my eye teeth and stab her in the neck with it," but in a way that makes you realize just how far down on the food chain you really are. Another former Buzz columnist told me a story of going to lunch with some mucky-muck he was hoping to get some work with, just after Buzz folded in 1998, and the woman saying, "Yes, Sandra. She was the real find at that magazine," and then realizing what she'd just said, and to whom. Talk about a "check, please!" moment. Anyway, Sandra was very on that night at Cathy's, though I think we all were. For me, at least, these was a sense that, we may not see one another all that much -- new cities, new families, and now, a friend in such dire health straits -- and yet there's an elastic that keeps us in this nucleus, and when we're there, we're always happy to be.

Somewhere towards the middle of the evening, people started eating the cookies I'd made. Allan and Sandra were sitting across from me in Cathy's cozy living room, when I realized they'd both taken on what I might describe as a mid-coital glow.

"What did you do to these?" Sandra asked. I told her, they were just cookies...

"I feel as though I'm committing adultery," said Allan, whose longtime girlfriend (and my former editor at Buzz) was home with their young daughter.

"Nancy," said Sandra, taking a second cookie and rotating them before her breasts. "You must tell me. I'll do anything you say. The sweetness, the saltiness..."

I told her, I'd give her the recipe...

"I need another," said Allan, his lids hooded, a swipe of chocolate by his lip. Sandra, now, was in full throes. 

"You're using these to control us," she keened.  "Because you know, we'll do anything you say. Just make us more..."

And you wonder why I adore these people.

I emailed Sandra the recipe when I got back to Portland. Here's what she did with it:  The Cookie Dominatrix [Part 1].

Comments

[vj]

I can't wait to listen to it. Hey, how are you feeling -- I just read about it in Cathy's blog...

[nancy]

Do you mean the kidney thing? I'm fine, though as it turns out, I cannot be a donor for my mom. This, after skatey-eight tests. I may blog about this, but, another time.