Chadwick Moore

There was a transgender coffee shop near my apartment I once frequented. I swear, everyone who worked there was a trans man, biological women presenting themselves as men to varying degrees of effort. The baristas were nice enough, but the coffee shop closed, barely lasting six months, which is a travesty considering it declared itself a safe haven for refugees. A large poster displayed on the front window proclaimed, ‘Refugees welcome here!’ with an illustration of a sad Arabic man holding an infant wrapped in a filthy shroud. Where will they go now? During its sad, brief run I spent many hours in that coffee shop seeped in mediocrity.

To peruse any of the tens of thousands of Instagram accounts devoted to food, some of them with nearly a million followers, is a jaunt into the pornographic. The photo captions alone seem straight out of paperback erotica. ‘See this naughty Asian pear get humiliated by sticky globs of caramel-infused pistachio milk while creepy cranberry sorbet watches,’ some of them might as well read. ‘This moist blood orange bundt cake is loaded with drippy pink glaze and grew up without a father.’ On Instagram, like Pornhub, you can sort by fetish. Got a thing for cakes and pies? Stylish editorial displays? Pizza? Seasonal vegetables? There’s a feed for every perversion, even at least one devoted to sprinkles, which is legitimately unsettling.