Hot Mess. Emily Belden

I? Pardon my French, but holy shit, your boyfriend can cook. I mean, seriously, I have been dreaming about those squash blossoms ever since our Uber ride home. Do you know when his next dinner will be?”

      “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. It all depends on securing a venue. But if you follow him on Twitter, he usually announces them there.”

      “Oh, I already do. And on Instagram. And on Facebook. And I follow you, too, actually,” he says, completely fangirling out.

      “Wow, thank you for...all your support. And for the pancakes.”

      I can feel my face turn as red as Maya’s hair. I’m used to attention when out with him, but the fact I’m now being recognized on my own takes the reality of this high-profile relationship up a notch.

      The server scampers away, looking like he just got laid. I’ve completely made this guy’s day and I’m not really sure how.

      “Unreal,” Jazzy says.

      “You literally have the craziest life,” Maya echoes.

      Yeah, I guess this ain’t too shabby, I think to myself as I forklift the top pancake and plop it onto my plate.

      * * *

      So how does a girl like me wind up even crossing paths with a guy like Benji? We don’t hang with the same people. We don’t like the same things. Before him, the hardest drug I’d ever been around was pot smoked out of a water bottle at a frat party. On the food side of things, I never knew what a Michelin star was, nor could I fathom a world in which people paid $400 for a single meal. Before Benji, I could be found shopping the Nordstrom anniversary sale with Jazzy’s discount, hanging at some lawyer-laden soiree with some of Maya’s coworkers or out fulfilling my quest to collect as many punches as possible on my frozen yogurt loyalty card. None of that lent itself to meeting a guy like Benji.

      Well, as it happens, while manning the social streams for Daxa-related news one day, I saw a chef tweet a video of plating a really beautiful dish of food using tweezers and our very own cotton swabs. I clicked on the guy’s profile and realized he was someone with some social media worth, 16,000+ followers. According to his bio, he was the executive chef of a restaurant I hadn’t heard of in the heart of downtown Chicago and seemed to enjoy chronicling his every moment in the kitchen online.

      So I did what Daxa pays me to do: I “at-replied” him and retweeted his picture with a cheeky caption. Cleans your ears, cleans your eats.

      In the moments that followed, my professional responsibilities combined with my personal curiosity and down the Google rabbit hole I went. I punched his name into a blank search bar and was blown away by what I found next.

      One of the first hits back was a YouTube video of him sitting in front of a computer with his feet up on a desk looking remarkably cool. The cameraman sneaks up behind him to catch a glimpse of what Benji’s watching on the screen. Surprise! It’s a porno. “So what’s on the menu tonight, Chef Zane?” says the person filming. “Cream pie?” Benji jumps, lets out a loud “Fuck you...” and the room explodes in cackles. Thank god I had my headphones on.

      I then clicked over to the Images tab and saw no shortage of eye candy there. Hell, there were entire Pinterest boards dedicated to his glorious man-bun. Most of the pictures were candid ones of him cooking, but there were definitely quite a few—some in color, some in black-and-white—of him hamming it up for the camera.

      I got stuck on one photo in particular. It was connected to a write-up in GQ titled “Knife Fight.” He was pictured standing with his shirt off holding a butcher’s knife that was covered in red pepper puree meant to look like blood dripping off the blade. He was tatted up to his chin with everything from olive tree branches to a pig being roasted over an open flame. Over his left knuckles, the word RARE. Over his right, WELL. Kudos for having a theme, I thought. His face had a wicked, smug stare on it as if he was thinking, “You can’t tell because the photo is cropped, but I’m getting an awesome blow job right now.”

      He was hot—at least, I guessed that’s the word you’d use to describe someone who’s both intimidating and alluring all at the same time. Even though he wasn’t my usual type, a small part of me wondered right then what it would be like to walk into his restaurant, sit alone at the bar with a view into the open kitchen and wait to see if a girl like me could catch the attention of a guy like him as I sipped on a glass of wine.

      I hit on a few more links that day and caught myself reading what others were saying about him in the comments section of some blog.

      “Just what the city needs. Another druggie chef.”

      “He’s not on drugs, you idiot.”

      “Doesn’t he only cook while super high?”

      “He’s been clean for years. Get your facts straight.”

      “I heard he powders their doughnut holes with cocaine.”

      “I’d let him powder my doughnut hole with cocaine.”

      Okay, so he may or may not be the Charlie Sheen of the culinary world, I thought to myself. But despite his sordid past, he clearly was a fan favorite. Whether people were loving or hating on him, the one thing that was inarguable across the board was that Benji Zane came with an obsessive following.

      But at the first mention of a drug problem, I tightly closed the lid on my digital crush. There’s always a catch with guys in Chicago, right? Just as I finished x-ing out of all the tabs I had opened about him, he tweeted back at me—well, Daxa I mean.

      See America? Even @DaxaSwabs knows I’m clean LOL

      Yes, he went there. #Awkward.

      I wanted to say I was shocked, but something about the frequency at which he was firing off random thoughts of 280 characters or less told me he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d ignore attention from a major brand—be it America’s favorite cotton swab or Calphalon—when he could spin it in his favor.

      It was never my intention to allude to his could-be sobriety in a tweet, a subject that was well over my head for sure, but according to my job description I needed to continue to engage with him. Daxa’s social media policy states that when engaging with an influencer, we should never be the ones to drop the conversation—let them tire, get distracted or sign off. So I cracked my knuckles and got down to business trying to steer this conversation into more neutral territory.

      Hey @BJZane, we got your back. But mostly your ears.

      @DaxaSwabs if I can get your tongue, U R welcome 4 dinner at my resto anytime. #NotAPervyTweet #JustTryingToBeNice

      As we bantered back and forth behind the safety of our respective avatars, I began to find him palatable. Where was the big, scary addict dude that everyone was gossiping about on the blogs?

      That’s when the fantasy I had of meeting him got the best of me and I did something typically frowned upon in the Daxa social media handbook. I reached out to him from my personal account, introducing myself as the voice behind the cotton swab conversation.

      He replied right away and said I was really funny. And hot. Funny and hot? I’ll take it.

      We spent the rest of the day exchanging DMs. I even forwent a company lunch outing to stay back at my desk and keep the flirt fest going, telling everyone I had a mini crisis with a user who had a swab stuck in his ear. A couple hours later, he had to leave for a restaurant meeting. But not before he publicly tweeted, Everyone go follow my new friend @AllieSimon—she’s a real cool chick.

      Wait. Really?

      A few days later, Benji sent me a direct message. He said he had only one night off from the restaurant and if I wanted to meet him, now would be the time and a little dive bar in the Logan Square neighborhood would be the place.

      I didn’t respond right away.

      Did I want to meet him?

      It’s not that I had other plans. It’s just that I hadn’t actually thought