As a kid, I thought maturity was an award you’d get after you passed whatever final exam they gave you on your 18th birthday. Obviously, at that age, you know everything there is to know about life, right? Sure.
The only thing I knew was that I knew absolutely nothing at all. I was woefully unprepared to exist in a world that was never set up to accept me—a Black, gay man from the Deep South who had managed to survive by staying on the fringes. A chameleon, as my dad would say, happy to blend in for fear of standing out. In a word, it was complicated.
Despite growing up in Atlanta, the South’s Black Mecca and arguably the safest place for gay people this side of the Mason-Dixon line, it was still unapologetically the South. The cognitive dissonance of feeling at home in a place where you’re constantly rejected is suffocating. To cope, I learned to navigate church pews and school hallways with the same ease that Beyoncé belts out an Arabic scale: rehearsed to perfection and hypervigilant. This hypervigilance became the lens through which I saw the world.
If you asked me about my life back then, I wouldn’t regale you with grandiose plans of opening a bespoke cafe or tell you about the love of my life and how he’s changed me for the better—instead, I’d probably just say I’m taking it one day at a time. Whatever comes, you know? The rhythm of the universe is funny that way. Until that point, I had moved through life the same as always—undetected and stumbling through it the best way I knew how.
Kendall changed all that. He was everything I wasn’t: driven, determined, steady, and infinitely sure of himself—or at least of what he wanted. Seeing him in relation to myself was like having an out-of-body experience, and it solidified in my mind that I wanted whatever he was selling. He was exceptionally mature.
We made parking lots our safe space and found solace on restaurant patios. Monthiversaries were spent in hotel rooms, and date night meant watching Netflix on our phones in the car. Hours blurred into days, and eventually, we quickly realized that for as much time as we spent together, we might as well make it official.
At 22, we secretly moved into a tiny apartment without telling our families and began cultivating a life richer than I could have ever imagined. The truth about planting roots, though, is that it’s not exactly like frolicking through a field of daisies. It’s more like pushing through rocks and boulders, removing the tough, weathered topsoil to reach the fertile ground underneath. A rose that grew from concrete, as Tupac would say.
Simply Recipes / Simone Martin-Newberry
That was us—two men trying our best to heal from unearned trauma and the double-edged sword of our circumstances of birth. We tried to stuff ourselves into boxes and roles society told us we had to. We hid ourselves away, burrowing into each other, sifting through the broken pieces. Kendall tried his best to make a home, and I tried my best to make pasta from scratch. Needless to say, it was pretty touch-and-go.
When we’d go out, we’d get stares and questions from strangers; Who’s the girl? Are you all brothers? Words burned into our skin like being branded, all while we were just trying to figure it out. We didn’t have our families to fall back on, leaving us on our own. We were like two islands passing by each other, hoping to become one. Much like the way I cooked back then, things felt all over the place, like a puzzle with thousands of pieces and no discernible edges.
I had only ever cooked for myself, and the extent of my culinary knowledge came from watching Rachael Ray on Food Network. That didn’t stop me from diving in head first and trying (miserably) to make everything from Ina Garten’s Perfect Roast Chicken to more mug cakes than I could count. Everything was either burned or undercooked, and I had a wildly unhealthy relationship with salt.
“I can’t eat these tacos,” Kendall would say.
I’d frustratedly reply, “They’re not even that bad.”
They were, in fact, that bad, oversalted and spicy enough to clear your sinuses for a century.
Food was the battleground for a lot of our arguments back then, whether they were about food or not. You don’t cook anyway! What do you know? Real mature. We still had to eat, and even if it meant a lot of mistakes (and terrible meals), I kept trying. I’d find recipes online and, after a quick glance, feel confident enough that I could make them, relying solely on my intuition. In reality, I was too bull-headed to admit that I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was doing. (Spoken like a true earth sign.)
I’d pore over dishes that would turn out to be more or less inedible, present them to Kendall, and wait in quiet anticipation for him to tell me how it made his taste buds do backflips. Instead, I got much-needed, honest-to-goodness feedback that I didn’t know how to hear.
“Even the simplest critique felt like a dagger to the heart.”
“You just don’t like my cooking,” I’d say. Even the simplest critique felt like a dagger to the heart.
I was so caught up in hearing the negative that I never stopped to realize how much he believed in me. That Christmas, he bought me my first set of pots and pans, and on my birthday, he got me an apron with my name embroidered on it. He saw something in me that I couldn’t even see in myself, but I wasn’t mature enough to understand that then. Thankfully, life had other plans.
After a while, I became more confident in the kitchen and started to (begrudgingly) apply Kendall’s feedback. I’d make brisket and baked ziti from scratch, experiment with bread making, and even try my hand at culinary gastronomy. I obsessed over learning how the dishes we eat end up on our plates and went on a quest to learn as much as I could about the science of browning.
I even made homemade fortune cookies for Valentine’s Day. I carefully dotted each cookie with pink hearts and filled them with fortunes that detailed all the things I loved about Kendall. Your hair. Your work ethic. Your BOOTAY. Each one was a declaration of my love. To tie it all together, I put the completed cookies in a jar with a heart-shaped note that read, “How’d I get so fortunate?”
As my cooking became more complex, I became more confident in the kitchen. I’d learned not only to taste food myself, but also to let Kendall taste it and tell me what was missing. Is this what maturing feels like? There was still a lot of trial and error, but I had learned to follow recipes instead of taking them as mere suggestions. I had gone from clumsily making a mess while trying to make pasta from scratch to catering my boss’s Coming Out Party, complete with an entirely vegan and gluten-free menu, all thanks to Kendall. He always pushed me to dream in action, to make smart decisions instead of impulsive ones, to say yes, but only after I had considered all the options.
The real test of my maturity (and sanity) came during the weird and not-so-distant pandemic era. I was furloughed from my job, and in an effort to cope with what felt like the end of the world, I threw myself into the kitchen. I whipped up birria tacos and tried my hand at making sourdough. Cooking began to feel like poetry. My love for food had reached a fever pitch, and there was no way I could go back to sitting behind a desk all day. Kendall understood. He encouraged me to attend culinary school, and without it, I wouldn’t be half the cook I am today.
Almost nine years later, I’m still a work in progress, but Kendall and I have moved into a home more beautiful than I could’ve ever dreamed of in a neighborhood with a community garden, bee hives, plenty of native plants, and even an adorable neighborhood cafe. We’ve made friends and neighbors who embrace us, and have become well-versed in the art of entertaining.
I’ve perfected several recipes and have a dedicated notebook for all my spur-of-the-moment culinary notes. According to Kendall, I make a mean pot of gumbo, and my lemon and herb spatchcocked chicken is unmatched. This is what it feels like to be whole. I’d be naive to think that my story is a common one, of course. Many people like me don’t have the same opportunities or the support of loved ones to help them make sense of a complicated world. I know how lucky I am. Some of us are just trying to make it to the exam on our 18th birthday, hoping we’ll pass.
“With time and a little patience, the right ingredients will come together to make a glorious stew.”
The truth is, I still can’t exactly say I’d pass. Maturity is more than some definition in Merriam-Webster. It’s not a one-and-done or even a finite destination. Instead, maturity is openness and the curiosity to learn. It’s being confident in who I am and knowing that with time and a little patience, the right ingredients will come together to make a glorious stew.
To honor the people we’ve become and finally christen our new home, Kendall and I have kicked around the idea of hosting a Chosen Family Cookout this year for Pride Month, which fortuitously coincides with Juneteenth. We’ll invite our new neighbors who have quickly become friends, our family, and maybe even the owners of that adorable neighborhood coffee shop. Kendall will set the table, and I’ll prepare a zesty citrus-roasted cod, strawberry salad with lemon poppyseed dressing, and at least a few entremets if I can find the time. I told you I’ve gotten better.
It’ll be a celebration of our journeys and the lessons we’ve learned, from how to gracefully take feedback to how to make a gorgeous pot of gumbo; An exhibition honoring the pride of Juneteenth as well as our shared love of one another’s differences; A grown-up soireé, if you will. Real mature.
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