White Powder

An ordinary moment. An unexpected memory. And an old story dragged out by the ankles.

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I dropped an entire canister of baking powder on the kitchen floor.

Not a little. The whole damn thing. It hit the hardwood and exploded like I’d just lost a cartel turf war in my own kitchen. Then, without even thinking, I grabbed an old credit card out of the junk drawer and started scraping it into a pile.

Which made me stop. Because that’s a weird thing to know how to do.

And just like that, it was 1980 again. I was just sixteen.

⁂

I worked in a cultured marble sink factory back then. I had been wandering around for about a year. No school, no real address, just couch surfing and street smarts. My sister and best friend were already working there, which was essentially the entire hiring criteria.

Imagine spending eight hours a day in a warehouse where the air itself had stopped trying. Everything coated in fine white powder — the machines, the shelves, your lunch, your lungs. My job was sanding the sinks on a moving conveyor belt, in an unventilated room, wearing paper outfits that fit no one, with an angle grinder the size of a small engine and sandpaper I changed by feel alone because I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face through my mandatory goggles. By the end of every shift I looked like I’d been processed through a very aggressive bakery.

It wasn’t exactly where little girls dream of ending up. But I didn’t dream much as a little girl.

And speaking of white powder, it was here where I met, let’s call him, Joseph Smith.

I’m calling him that because I can, and we were in Utah, and because Joseph Smith was famously good at convincing people to follow him somewhere they probably shouldn’t have gone.

If Hallmark made greeting cards for poor life decisions, ours would’ve read: Congratulations on meeting your future husband in a sink factory. Inside: Nobody saw this ending coming. Except probably everybody.

He was charming in exactly the way that makes perfect sense at the time and absolutely none in retrospect. He had a very nice Harley, a ponytail held together with three elastics like a Hell’s Angel edition of My Little Pony, and a business model I perhaps should have asked more questions about. Though to be clear, that’s entirely on me. He didn’t lead me anywhere I wasn’t already heading. I was not running a rigorous vetting process. My hiring criteria at the time was essentially: does he buy me things, does he make me laugh, does he have a place to sleep, and is he not actively being sought by the police. Joseph checked all the boxes. Welcome aboard, buddy.

What I didn't know, and what I was about to find out, was that I had just accidentally auditioned for a supporting role in the low-budget Utah version of Scarface. But instead of a mansion, I was living in a Sears, Roebuck kit house in a neighborhood called Sugarhouse. No lie.

⁂

Armed with my cousin Dee’s birth certificate, I sauntered into the DMV and traded it for a driver’s license. A real one. Issued by the actual state of Utah. Dee’s name, my face, and just like that I was twenty-one. It was like winning the lottery, and the prize was a nightclub called Oscar’s.

Wednesday nights were ladies night. Dollar drinks and male strippers. I attended the way some people attend church: faithfully, and in my best outfit. Hair so big it required its own zip code. A rabbit fur coat, worn by a woman-girl with absolutely no reason to wear a rabbit fur coat. And that is where I met Scorpion, a stripper who was basically me in male form: wild, mile-high hair, completely committed to the chaos.

After that, everything blurs into a highlight reel. Pool parties where clothing was optional and mostly theoretical. Nights that turned into weekends without anyone noticing the transition. A room in our house I was told not to go into, which I respected for approximately forty-eight hours. I’m still not going to tell you what was in it. Some things you save for the memoir.

I drove a ‘67 Camaro that I had no business owning, until I drove it into the side of Godfather’s Pizza after taking out a fire hydrant. The police let me go. I went back to the party. Anyone brave enough to ride with me faced two hazards: my driving, and Calvin Klein Obsession at a concentration lethal in a closed car.

I was absolutely living the life.

I was also perhaps not asking enough questions about the business model. But I will say, it was the start of my entrepreneurial education. Tuition was steep.

I am pausing here because I just had to Google whether writing this on Substack could constitute self-incrimination. I think I’m good.

⁂

Here’s the thing about that kind of life: you just sort of drift in, one questionable decision at a time. You don’t notice you’ve stopped touching the bottom until you’re already in the deep end. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly working with a full set of resources. I was running on survival instinct, dehydration, mild malnutrition, denial, and whatever terrible idea wandered past wearing a leather jacket. My late teens and early twenties were a long series of you know what, fuck it. And somehow, statistically inexplicably, I survived all of them.

I scraped the last of the baking powder into the dustpan and noticed I had a smirk on my face. The kind that belongs entirely to you and a head full of radically bad decisions that turned out fine. Eventually. More or less.

Oven timer chiming.

I’ll leave it there.

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That’s what’s on my mind this week. Meanwhile, in the actual kitchen — muffins baking. Music on. Pull up a stool. Recipe below.

Powdered Doughnut Mini Muffins

(with a little jelly middle)

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Author's Note: I am not a professional writer. I write because I need to tell these stories. I use Claude for spelling, grammar, structure, and occasional emotional support. The story and writing are all mine. Judge accordingly. Now, relax.

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