Nothing speaks for the zeitgeist more than pastries, and there’s always been a vaguely “This is what will make you a Lady at last!!!11” air about them: The Great Cupcake Craze of 2005, for instance, when you may as well have been an asexual cave-dweller until you paid $50 for a single treat at Magnolia. Then the Great Pinkberry Craze of 2007, which Girls’ Shoshanna would probably still be Tweeting about. The entire concept of "sad girl eating Ben & Jerry's."
What I'm trying to say is, we're eating sugary facsimiles of our vaginas.
Recently, a new confection has sauntered, John Wayne-like, up to the pastry saloon. It’s called a cronut: half croissant, half donut, all sexual. It’s also non-gendered (so far – although all it takes is one well-placed shot on, say, The Mindy Project to ruin that for us). "Are Cronuts the New Cupcake?" asks a Daily Mail headline. PLEASE NO. LET THIS NOT BE. Because, trust me, they'll stop tasting as good once pop culture starts telling you that you're only a "real girl" when you eat one in a bubble bath to a melancholy Passion Pit song. Stop ruining sweets for me, world. There is so little that gives me pleasure.
Within 35 minutes of premiering at the Dominique Ansel Bakery last Friday, the cronut was sold out. New York collectively pissed themselves because we're spoiled assholes.
Here is the line as of this morning.
I thought there was already a half-donut half-croissant, and it was called a cruller, but I'm clearly a neophyte. Don't judge.
There was only one thing to do. I would go see God in the hole of a cronut. I even had a speech all prepared in case the cronut wizards gave me any trouble. Hello! Oh, no, are you sold out? I don’t mean to be one of those people, but I write things, very important things about extremely serious issues, for the Internet. You might know my work, my name is Paul Auster.
They were sold out. This is what actually happened.
HARRIED DOMINIQUE ANSEL EMPLOYEE
"Sorry, they're sold out."
ME
[Actively considering purchasing donut and croisssant and layering them on top of each other]
"Oh. Balls. Really? Oh.... oh, but, okay."
Fortunately, there is a support group, Cronut.org, for people like me. But shh. Let's keep cronuts a secret. Just you and me.