I Hate Your Cake, And I Hate You, by Randi Braun

Last week, I was digging through an old Bazooka-Joe lunch-box which, for years, has served as the landing pad for all of my old, glossy, 2-dimensional memories from proms, college years, and graduations. Amongst my Kodak photos was a lone sheet of white laser paper that was folded into fourths. I couldn’t imagine what I had ever printed that needed to be stored in such a safe place, but as I unfolded my discovery (…..Aha!), my brain was flooded with memories that had been in storage for more than half a decade. Printed in bright purple text was a copy of an online-diary entry from April of 2003, written by “Brianne”: the slightly mysterious then-girlfriend of my older brother Jeff.

Brianne’s online-diary (or “live-journal” as they were also called back in ’03) originally came to my attention one evening while I was chatting with some friends via AOL Instant Messenger. Jeff, who was also logged into AIM at the time, had posted an “away-message.” I clicked on his away-message, expecting to see something along the lines of, “I’m eating dinner,” or “I’m out getting shit-faced,” but instead, there was a hyperlink: “Check out my girlfriend’s online diary.” (Whoa). Apparently, Brianne had been trying to establish a following for her virtual journal.

I had met Brianne the previous summer when she and my brother flew to my parents’/my home in LA for a 5-day visit. Since she and I didn’t exactly spend much “quality time” together during her stay at my house (you’ll see what I mean later), I knew nothing about her thoughts, her feelings, her dreams, etc. In other words, I had no idea what made her tick, and that bothered me.

That being said, I was very curious to skim through her diary, which I quickly realized was more like a negative-thought receptacle. After ten minutes of exploring Brianne’s opinions about life, I felt like I needed a mega-dose of Prozac. Her one extraordinary talent seemed to be her uncanny ability to dump all over every person, place, thing, or situation to which she referenced. The glasses through which she viewed the world were obviously smeared with a thick layer of poo.

As I continued combing through the garbage can that was her online-diary, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Since Brianne and I barely knew each other, I wasn’t expecting to find anything about myself in there. But then….

“I started thinking about what’s going to happen when Jeff [graduates college and moves to New York]. Oh sure, it seems worse when I have time to think about it…

Jeff’s “roommate” just closed the door. Apparently, even though it’s technically a double, he wants to make sure that the door is solidly there in between his room and Jeff’s room. What an asshole.”

I just added that last sentence so you could get a better feel for her character.

So, what did I do to deserve such a whipping? Well, let’s try to figure it out. I’ll start at the beginning.

Eight months before the diary-discovery/my wanting to kill Brianne, it was the middle of August, 2002. I was spending the summer at home in LA, seeing as many high school friends as possible before packing up and moving to New York for college.

My brother, who was between his junior and senior years at a college in Boston, called home to let my parents know that he wanted to fly in for a little visit before his classes began in September. And that, by the way, he’d be bringing his new girlfriend along him with him.
Jeff didn’t tell us much about “the girlfriend.” All we knew was that her name was Brianne, that she and Jeff attended the same university in Boston, that she had grown up in Texas, and that she was just one month older than myself, which made her 18.

The day before Jeff and Brianne were to arrive in LA, I pondered Brianne’s situation: she would be boarding an airplane for only the fourth time in her eighteen years on this planet, flying into a city to which she had never been, and meeting her new boyfriend’s entire nuclear family (plus Grandma). That seemed like an overwhelming prospect for a girl who was barely a legal adult. So, being the dork that I can sometimes be, I got the bright idea of baking her a cake and writing “Welcome Brianne” on it, thinking that a personalized lump of flour, sugar and butter, would make her feel warmly accepted into our home.

I raided our pantry, which (thanks to Grandma) always seemed to be stocked full of Betty Crocker cake mix, Pillsbury frosting, and other fun cake-decorating items. I dug out the basic supplies, plus some squeeze-tubes of icing in various colors, and a plastic shaker of pink and white, flower-shaped sprinkles. It was going to be perfect. And she would love me. How could you not love a stranger who welcomes you with baked goods?

I was dating a guy named Chris at the time who practically lived at my house, so he was going to help with my baking endeavor. Since we only had one pan for layer-making, and since I was dead-set on making a triple-layer cake, we had to bake the cake in three shifts. Between baking in shifts; spreading excessive amounts of frosting on each layer; writing Brianne’s name in pink icing (and messing up a few times); drawing pink and green flowers on the cake; and strategically placing the sugary sprinkles onto the platter, the process took a long time. But when the cake was finished, I felt like I had created a masterpiece.

The next afternoon, my mother, my grandmother, Chris and I, sat around the kitchen table, awaiting the arrival of the beautiful, sweet girlfriend my brother so deserved. My stomach was in knots, my grandmother was excited, Chris didn’t really give a crap, and my mom was very close to peeing in her pants.

When the doorbell finally rang, Chris and I waited in the kitchen while my mother and grandmother bolted out of their seats and practically tripped over each other in their scrambled frenzy toward the front door. We heard the greetings: “Oh, Brianne…so nice to meet you! And Jeff…we missed so much!” We didn’t hear Brianne’s voice though; there was no “So nice to meet you Mrs. Braun,” or “Thanks for welcoming me into your home.” I thought that was odd.

When they all turned the corner and started walking toward the kitchen, I finally saw….her: Brianne. (…AGHHHH!!). She looked like a walking scowl. As soon as my eyes met hers, I gave her a polite smile, which she did not return. Instead, she kindly shot me a menacing glare. That’s when I wanted to hide my cake under the table or throw it out the window.

Chris and I both stood up, greeted my brother and then introduced ourselves to Brianne, who was just as unfriendly as she appeared. Then it was time to awkwardly explain my pink and white, flower-covered creation. I felt like such an idiot….

Me: Ummm, I made this for you, to kind of…..make you feel welcome.

You know that terrible feeling you get when you crack a joke, but then realize the person to whom you are speaking has no sense of humor? And instead of that person feeling like an ass for being a humorless bore who doesn’t understand your joke, he or she flashes you with a look that says: “You’re a weirdo. Leave me alone.”? That’s exactly how I felt.

As she looked at my beautiful piece of edible art, she said…

Brianne:………………………..

Then she said…

Brianne:………………………….Oh. Ok.

…which was followed by a horrific, 6-way silence. Nobody knew what to say. The girl didn’t thank me. She didn’t smile. In fact, she looked so mad, you would think I had blown my nose and thrown my snotty tissues at her face.

My mom eventually broke the silence with…

Mom: “Come on Brianne…let me give you a tour of the house!”

In the five days that Brianne stayed in my family’s home, eating our food, using our water, wasting our electricity and breathing our fresh, air-conditioned oxygen, she didn’t even sample a tiny sliver of my cake. Rather, she ignored me (and the cake) for the 120 hours between her arrival and her departure. Between that, her pouty behavior, and the perpetual frown we all wanted to slap off her face, she succeeded in turning my entire family against her. We all despised her by the time she left.

Eight months later, after finding her diary entry, I called my brother in tears. He apologized a lot on Brianne’s behalf and told me to expect a phone call from her the following day.

Sure enough, she called the next day with some half-assed apology and an explanation of her actions that consisted of: “Well, Jeff talks about you a lot. For instance, if I tell him that I like a certain band, he might say, ‘Oh, Randi likes that band too.’ And it really annoys me. I don’t like being compared to you!” So there was no actual incident to which she could point and say, “You stepped on my foot and didn’t apologize, therefore, I hate you,” or “There was that one time when you didn’t hold the door open for me,” or even, “You offended me with all your talk about smiles and rainbows and ponies!”

This brings us back to our original question: What did I do to deserve a carefully composed whipping? Well, given the evidence, I’d say: Nothing. Unless being nice and baking yummy dessert calls for character defamation. If that’s the case, then I really had it coming.

Years later, once Brianne was out of the picture, some dirty stories began to surface. As it turned out, Brianne “hated me” so much that after Christmas of 2002 (before the diary incident), she snatched the $150 cashmere scarf I had given to Jeff, and threw it away. Like…in the trash. My brother couldn’t figure out how he could have misplaced his brand new piece of neckwear, and I was heart-broken, having searched Manhattan far and wide for a Christmas gift that I knew he would actually like.

I’m not exactly sure how Jeff figured out the exact fate of the scarf, but Brianne definitely absconded with it and tossed it into the nearest public trashcan, to be covered with spilled lattes, chewed-up gum, and old newspapers. Apparently, she had knitted a scarf for Jeff that Christmas and was pissed off that he chose to wear mine more often than hers. So…trashcan. Very mature. If the cashmere scarf had been a gift from anyone else, I’m sure it would be alive, well, and keeping my brother’s neck safe from the cold New York winter. Instead, it’s probably in a landfill somewhere.

The good news is: three and a half years later, which happened to be the week before Brianne was scheduled to move into Jeff’s apartment, and which also happened to be the week of her college graduation, Jeff kicked her ass to the curb. Hooray! My family practically threw a party in honor of my brother’s shattered relationship.

The bad news is, she still exists. It’s really a shame people like Brianne have to walk the face of the earth. I’d like to know exactly who is being positively affected by her presence on our planet. Maybe she has a pet that she’s really nice to.

[Note: Just in case you're thinking, “Oh, come on Randi. Aren't you being a bit harsh? So the girl crapped on your head in her little diary. Stop being so dramatic.” The thing is, that was just offense #1. If I told you about #2, 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11......256, it might make more sense. Plus, her cruelty wasn't just aimed at me. It was also aimed at my family. And at Chris]

So what’s the point? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe just to tell a story. Or maybe to reassure myself that, at least sometimes, people get what they deserve in the end. Kind of like that book The Secret (which I so despise)…but the essence of that piece of literary garbage is true: somehow, the vibrations you give out will eventually return to you. Which means that if you dump all over the world, guess what? The world will dump all over you. So let’s all try to be nice to one another, and the next time your boyfriend’s sister bakes you a cake, fuckin’ say thank you!!

Related Posts