xp_logs | Sharon and Layla

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Layla and Sharon make a mountain of schnitzel for mansion residents, and Sharon tries to get Layla to experiment. With schnitzel. They discuss self-identity and being yourself.

Fingertips covered in a gooey mixture of flour, egg and breadcrumbs, Layla reached for the next piece of veal and frowned. "You need to tap into your inner rage here, Sharon. It needs to be thinner like when you make chicken cutlets." She handed the too thick piece of meat back and reached for the next in the pile. They had an easy factory line approach to their Epic Schnitzel scheme here. Sharon tenderized the meat, Layla got gooey by breading it and then they would take turns frying pieces or handing the other one pieces to be fried. This way Layla could figure out what Sharon had been doing wrong. "Maybe the schnitzel felt betrayed that you were using venison. Like 'how dare you try to improve me'!" She said the last bit with a comically thick German accent.

"I dare because I am the chef, schnitzel!" Sharon replied in a comic villain voice, "and you are no match for me! Even though clearly you were because the venison schnitzel was just not turning out!" she added, giggling. "Whoops! Looks like you defeated me once, but I have returned with the cavalry who hasn't fallen down from exhaustion in almost three hours and together we will improve you! It is your destiny!" She had some flanks of venison on her cutting board to tenderize in hopes that with Layla's help the recipe would turn out this time. She also had some mushrooms, bacon, and onions for an attempt at a Salzburger schnitzel.

Layla snorted, then giggled at Sharon carrying on in her tirade against the schnitzel. "I hear you catch more schnitzel with honey than vinegar. But I think that's a lie because honey schnitzel would be gross." She nodded once and shook the excess flour off the piece of meat in her hand before dipping it into the egg. "The thing about schnitzel is you need a firm but gentle hand. You need to tell it who's boss but you can't be too overbearing or the schnitzel will flee and then you just had badly fried veal and everyone is like 'why are you frying breaded veal, of like all thing?'" Layla pulled the coated meat up and shook it gently. "You need to love the schnitzel, Sharon, or it won't love you back."

"What if I don't want the schnitzel to love me?" Sharon deadpanned, whacking away with a mallet at a veal cutlet. "What if I can't settle down with schnitzel because I've already promised myself to sacher torte, or boeuf borguingnon, or moo goo gai pan? Or... what if I am an unapologetic food courtesan who would be destitute if she didn't love all the food that came her way?" When the veal had been thoroughly pounded, she spread some of the onions and mushrooms in the middle of the cutlet, sprinkled some herbs and spices over it, and wrapped the whole thing in bacon strips. She held it up gingerly for Layla to take.

A hand was offered up, palm flat for the...creation to be put on. "You want me to bread this? Really?" With a raised eyebrow she looked between Sharon and the bacon-wrapped veal. "I mean, okay, you fry bacon but you don't like bread and fry bacon and are you sure this is a good idea? Maybe we should set it aside on like its own plate to be fried last so we know which one it is and don't like give it out to the Epic Schnitzel recipients or something. "Cause, dude, mushrooms and bacon breaded and fried...seems sorta...not so much."

"Okay we'll do that one last. But we have to try it at least! It's just a variation on Salzburger schnitzel, where you stuff the schnitzel with bacon, mushrooms, and onions," Sharon explained. "Besides, where's your sense of epic adventure?!" she asked in mock horror, handing Layla a plate to set the Salzburger schnitzel aside to do last. "I bet it's gonna be really good and the Epic Schnitzel recipients are gonna be really sad that we saved the best for ourselves!" She started pounding on a venison cutlet now.

"I dunno, I think stuffing it would be better. Breaded bacon is just wrong, yo. Wrong." She shook her head at Sharon and breaded the bacon-veal. "Should we share the venison schnitzel? Do they have a word for that? Weiner schnitzel's veal and there's like designations for pork and chicken and shit. I should look that up. Or ask Herr Wuschelig." The Salzburger Schnitzel went on its empty plate and set aside so Layla knew where it was. They had a pile of breaded veal, the lone bacon-wrapped veal and then they'd have their venison experiment. "The Epic Schnitzel is gonna be so epic. Because, dude, it's like a pile as tall as me. Well, okay, not that tall. But it should be. We should schnitzel the world!"

"I'll stuff one of the venisons," Sharon laughed, happy to appease Layla. "And we can share the venisons if you want to; we have lots of venison." She pondered the name for venison in German. "Well, weiner schnitzel means Viennese schnitzel, right? So I think we should call the venison one 'mansion schnitzel', or whatever 'mansion' is in German!"

"Villa schnitzel," Layla put in helpfully. "What? I learned the word for mansion like right after I got here so I could tell Herr Wuschelig how 'die villa ist zu groß' and that 'ich bin in der villa die ganze zeit verloren', because, seriously, do you know how annoying it is when you turn a corner and instead of your German class you end up in like a ballroom or some shit?" She sighed, shaking her head. "So, anyway, villa schnitzel! Maybe we'll give deliverees the option of trying villa schnitzel. Um...after we try it and decide it's good. 'Cause if it's not good we can't go letting other people eat it. It'd totally kill our street cred."

"It will be delicious," the catgirl nodded enthusiastically, happily pounding away with her meat mallet. "I can't think of why people would not like it! They may not like the stuffed ones but if they are on the recipient list for regular veal schnitzel I can't see how they wouldn't like regular venison. I wonder if they'd even notice the difference if we didn't tell them," she pondered aloud. "We should set up a blind taste test or something sometime!"

"Uh, you know there are actual Germans on the recipient list, right? Like all of them? English and der Fremde and Meggan and Herr Wuschelig? All German. I think they'll figure out veal or not-veal pretty quickly. And if we don't tell them then they'll just think we fucked it up when we didn't and did I mention how you're totally trying to destroy our street cred yet?" She sounded a little exasperated by the end and had to stop to draw in breath since apparently she'd forgotten to breath as she rambled. Layla dropped an egg covered bit of meat into the breading and watched the bits come up in a little cloud of dust. It was oddly satisfying.

Sharon didn't really understand how being German meant you knew the different tastes of different meats, and she'd thought that by saying 'sometime' Layla would understand that she didn't mean now, when they were delivering to the recipients on the list (which she hadn't actually seen), but she just laughed at Layla's exasperated tone and let her confusion go. "I'll stop trying to destroy our street cred. You wanna switch and hit things for a bit?" she suggested sweetly. "Talk about something else? How's Sarah doing?"

"I have anger issues," Layla stated mildly and held her hand out for the mallet. She sidled along the counter to the meat bashing station and left the breading for Sharon. "Sarah's fine. She's, you know, Sarah. All rockin' her geek and making me watch sappy movies because she totally lives for making me fall asleep. Or maybe she's hoping I cry during one and she can get blackmail pictures."

Sharon washed her hands and started breading the piece of venison she'd pounded out, mimicing the routine she'd been watching Layla perform earlier. Layla had been leaving the meat in the egg mixture longer than Sharon had been when she'd been trying to make it before, so she was assuming that had been her problem. "Blackmail pictures?" She giggled at that. "You need some sort of trick to make sure you don't cry during the movies. Maybe thinking of something funny? Imagining the people kissing or talking about how much they loooove each other are going to be hit in the face with a pie at any moment? Or tackled by someone and thrown in a lake?" The idea of that made her chuckle, at least.

"I don't actually cry during them anyway so I don't think I need any tricks. But if I do I will totally picture you in your little cat glory getting dumped into the lake and then crawling out with that really annoyed look that cats always have after being thrown in water." Layla systematically beat the meat thinner as she spoke, but here she paused and looked shiftily over at Sharon. "Do you have a thing against getting wet? Y'know, since you turn into a cat and chase down mice and shit. Do you get cranky at people for throwing you in pools and shit?"

Sharon was chuckling at the mental image of the look cats got after being thrown in water until it sunk in that Layla was talking about her. "Wait, what?" She looked over, horrified. "No! Nonononono, people do not dump me in the lake in my little cat glory! I dump other people in the lake!" Figuring she had made that clear she addressed the question at hand. "I like water. I guess because I am really human and not a cat." She'd known it for a long time now, but still couldn't seem to keep the sad note out of her voice when she said it. "Or," she added, grinning, "maybe a feline fish obsession has something to do with why I like water. I love snorkelling, and I learned how to scuba dive when I lived in the Middle East so I could see the fish up close and personal. But I'd still probably get cranky if you threw me in the pool."

"Some kitties like water," Layla pointed out. "Like Maine Coons. I had a neighbor with one of them when I was little. He used to hang out in the kiddie. pool we'd all pull out on the sidewalk and fill up or lay around in puddles from tagging each other with the hose. And I think like tigers like playing in water or something. So maybe you're, like, tiger on the inside." She paused in her efforts to flatten and thin out the meat to smile at Sharon. "But it'd be way cooler if you were really a kitty that turned into a person than you being a person who turns into a kitty. 'Cause, I mean, how many kitties get to be people?"

"An old friend of mine used to tell me I'm part Maine Coon," Sharon grinned, putting a batch of schnitzel into the oven. "But I think being tiger on the inside would be even cooler!" She coated another piece of meat, biting her lip. "I used to think that's what I was," she said with a smile that was a little wry, "a cat who turned into a person. I didn't know what I really was for a really long time. Well, I didn't even know I could turn into a girl until I was a teenager- I just thought I was a regular old cat! Even when my friends told me they found my human family, that I'd been born a human and thrown out when I was a year old because I could turn into a cat, I didn't believe them. I didn't want to be a human who turned into a cat. It was way cooler to be a kitty who turned into a person," she chuckled, echoing Layla's statement. "But in the end, we can't run away from who we really are. All we can do is make the best of it."

"Yeah, but who you are was a cat for like, what? At least twelve years? I'm not sure being born human really makes you a girl if you live as a kitty and think you're a kitty for that long. I mean, it's like - and this is totally a bad example," the disclaimer came with a thinned out piece of meat being handed over, "like transgender people. Like, you can't say just because someone is born a girl and is raised like a girl that he's really a girl when he doesn't feel like a girl. Maybe he didn't get that he could turn into a boy and didn't know it was possible but that doesn't make him not a boy. And like people born with three chromosomes? The XXY people? Or those kids born hermaphrodites and their parents make a decision? That's totally a better example! Sometimes babies are born with both sets of genitals, right? And the parents decide if they're gonna sew 'em up or cut it off, right? And the kid totally thinks it's like, a boy, right? Because it's got dangly parts and shit. And it wears boy's clothes and stuff but then it sort of doesn't fit. So they think they're one of those super femmy gay boys, right? And eventually they think they're trans. That they should really be a girl. But that's because they were really meant to be a girl and their parents made the wrong choice. So, you know, just because you were born to humans and born a girl, that doesn't really make you not a cat. Not when that's who you were. Not unless you want to be not a cat. That's what I think anyway."

"I think you're right about that," Sharon answered immediately, completely agreeing with Layla. "It's like how that beauty queen from Canada was disqualified from being a beauty queen because she was born a boy, even though she knew since she was four that she should be a girl and has been living as a girl since she was fourteen. People are being so mean to her now. I want to thwapp them or lake them or run them over with my car or something." She battered the meat Layla had given her. "As for me, I'm glad I learned how to be a girl so that I could decide for myself. Even though some people made me feel bad when I didn't know how to be a girl, I didn't let anybody decide what or who I should be except me. And I guess that's really what I am, in the end," she mused. "I'm me."

"Damn right," Layla put in with a nod. "I'd like, toast or cheers or whatever with the clinky glasses but, you know, we're sorta goopy. But yeah, that. Fuck what other people think and expect and shit. You're a Sharon and maybe you're a super feline-y Sharon or whatever, but it's you and you're pretty fucking rad and I am way more awesome than anyone that's gonna say I'm wrong so my word trumps theirs anyway!" Another nod and she flipped the meat she was pounding down.

Almost absently Layla added, "I've got a license. I could help you run over those assholes being mean to the chick in Canada."

"Okay, but we're not using my car," Sharon responded with a wrinkle of her nose. "I have a feeling that's gonna mess up my suspension real bad."