Cruel Love
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I have always considered myself as a driven person – some might say obsessive. Whatever you call it, it has bought me success and the admiration of my peers, but I wonder whether it is also what led me into a cruel love affair.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by food. Some small boys are interested in toy trucks or building blocks, but I used to like to watch my mother in the kitchen. My mother was not a great cook, but she could be fantastic. She had been brought up in some privilege and had married my father, a hard-working blue collar man, for love. When she met him, she could not boil an egg – my father was a better cook – but she needed to learn. My father bought her two cookery books – “The Complete Italian Cook Book” and “The Essential Pâtissier”. My father said that these produced a series of disasters before I was born, but all I ever knew to come out of these books was close to perfect.

In all other cooking, recipes she picked up and only made once, they were not nearly as good, or they were a disaster. The lesson was that excellence comes from practice. But even from an early age I started to think about how I could do those dishes better, and that was my second lesson, I suppose - improvement.

I offered to help my mother in the kitchen, and with two older brothers not interested, she was happy to have me beside her. I learned some skills from her, but also how not to do things. She was a self-taught cook based mainly on two books. Outside that she was lost – you need to learn from as many people as possible.

These are things that help to make a good chef. I cannot remember wanting to be anything else.

When I left school, I went to work in a very good restaurant in the city. In applying for the job, I made a complicated French pastry from my mother’s second book, and I brought it in. The chef in charge could not believe that I made it until I described every step. He hired me immediately.

The first lesson that I learnt from him is that good food casts a spell on people. It can transport them, but it also encourages them to open their wallets. Good food equals money – on the night they eat and on return visits, and even recommendations. High standards cost money, but they give a return.

The thing about eating is that it is full of mental conflict. People love and people hate, and food produces powerful emotions.

The effect of food on some people can make food the enemy. Some people get fat, some people overeat and get sick, some people get terrible reflux – but we all have to eat.

The different foods produce the most visceral reactions. Some foods disgust people, whereas for others they are the very finest of foods. Take andouillette for example – French stuffed pigs intestine. There are groups in France that worship this dish, and for others the smell of it makes them retch.

Another thing about food is its impact on memory. For me there are some foods that magically take me back to my mother’s kitchen. If I smell madeleines baking, I close my eyes and there I am, in my mother’s kitchen, with her. In my moments of strife, I would resort to baking, and find my solace in smells, and freshly baked treats for my staff were just a byproduct. I think that it helped to calm everybody. We all know about comfort food – that is what it is.

I baked a lot when Serge came to work for me. He applied for a job as a saucier but after a brief test it was clear that he was not up to that. Still, it was suggested that he be taken on as a commis chef – basically an apprentice. I was invited to meet him and even from my first sight of him I could feel something very different – something both unsettling and pleasant. He had eyes that seemed to sparkle and a smile that was (as it turns out) enchanting. After a handshake I turned away and told my deputy to hire him. It seems irrational now, and it was.

I have tried to analyze my feelings since, and even now I have trouble with it. He was a young man, not particularly good looking or powerful, but he was a man. I have always understood homosexual impulses to be wrong. That is not a moral statement, but a simple statement of a natural order that sees males mate with females. I have worked with gay people many times, and some of the best waiters that I have ever known were gay. It was just that I was not, or not until Serge came into my life.

It slowly dawned on me that I wanted this young man. I wanted to possess him, or maybe to have him possess me, because I felt totally passive in his presence. I knew that he was impressed by my skills and perhaps he was even envious of them, but that meant nothing. I wanted him to look at me and want me.

It sounds incredible but when he started to flirt with one particular waitress, I was consumed with jealousy. I remember seeing myself in the bathroom mirror and urging myself to take better care of my appearance, but why? He would not be interested in me in that way. To think that he would sounds like madness. I think that is what it was.

I had relationships with women before that time. I had sex with women and I enjoyed it. I never looked at men with any lustful thoughts before. But that all changed when I fell in love with a man. How could that be? It must have been deep inside me – repressed, just waiting for a trigger to open it up. He was that trigger.

But, after all, who understands these drives? It’s something deep within the human psyche, the physical appetite and the delicate sense of taste. That is what I am supposed to understand. That is what I do. Food is my vocation, my profession and my obsession.

All that dedication to my craft had pulled me away from forming relationships. My work was afternoons and evenings, when people meet and form bonds. That was when I was working, and when nothing else mattered but what I produced and presented. I had not dated for years, and the only time off I took, was to visit other restaurants and meet other chefs, on a professional basis.

All my feelings were bottled up because we worked in a busy kitchen. I just wanted time alone with him, to know him and perhaps explore why I had these feelings. So I suggested to him that we meet before work at a garden plot I had been working on, growing special herbs and vegetables.

I feel that I should explain that I am not a bad person and I try my best to be a good employer. I can be a perfectionist and I can be frustrated by lack of attention to detail or quality, but these are things that make for excellence, and we all benefit from that. I only say this because I do not accept that I should have been dealt with so cruelly by Serge.

I did not even have to explain to Serge that I had feelings. He was not a great cook but he was not so foolish that he did not see the way I looked at him. That is why he started our private chat by confirming that he was not gay. It was a friendly way of saying that he wanted to keep his job and stay on as an understudy provided that I understood that he was not interested in men.

I told him that I had no experience of homosexual activity at all, and that I would not wish him to engage in any such thing. I said that I just wanted to know what he found attractive in a woman.

It really did not cross my mind that I was suggesting that I could become some kind of sissy, but I did not want him to change for me. It seemed to me that I was drawn to him, so I wanted him to stay the man I desired. That would mean that I would need to change. I told him that I was ready to do that.

He looked at me in a very strange way. I now see that it might have been a look of mischief, or even evil. He understood that he might hold some incredible power over me, and the truth is that he did. How far could he push his advantage? He wanted to keep his job, he wanted to work with me and become as successful as I was, and perhaps secure material support in his ambitions. And I was his pet puppy.

I had to tell him that his work was not up to standard. He could see that I did not want to. But as I said to him, my standards must be high. Otherwise I would not be the chef everyone expected me to be, including him.

The worst thing was that I could see that he knew that he was only keeping his job because of my feelings toward him. I could see him thinking about what he could do if he thought that I could not bring myself to dismiss him. The fact is that I would have dismissed him. Not that he was a bad cook, he just was not up to the standard that I require.

The truth is that I knew then that he would never be a great chef, but he could have been a competent one if he tried harder. I could not tell him that and risk the chance of losing him. But if he had really wanted what he said he did, he would have just stayed close to me, and thrown me an occasional bone. So why would he have chosen to be cruel?

“I always fall for girly girls,” he said. “I like long blond hair and nice tits, and women who like lacy underwear, colorful dresses and high heels.”

It was everything I was not and never could be. Perhaps he was testing how I would react. Perhaps that statement would end my attraction by making it clear to me that what I wanted I could never have. Perhaps that is exactly what should have happened. It was the time when I should have walked away, but instead I started thinking about other chefs I knew who changed themselves drastically – one a goth and the other heavily tattooed. Does anybody care what the chef looks like provided the food is good? I worked in a profession that allowed me to be whoever I wanted to be.

But I did not want that. Until he came into my kitchen my life was so normal, but now it was in pieces. There is that sense of joy that love can bring, but how can you be happy when you face the impossible? I had to tell myself that with a love as strong as mine was, it had to get better. I could make him love me. So, I told him that for him I was ready to become what he wanted. But what I really wanted was for him to be closer to me. Could that be possible?

He told me that if there was to be a relationship, he would be the man, so I would need to be the woman. So, I needed to become more feminine. I looked at him and I saw his smile. It should have shown me that he was using me, but I only saw that I had the chance to make him happy.

He had some ideas for me. No hair cut for a start. Maybe some color in it. Some more flamboyant clothes outside the kitchen, and hormones.

As a chef, I can put long hair in a net and wear any clothes I like, provided that I dress as a chef in the kitchen – and that is the same outfit for both men and women. But hormones?

God knows where he got them from, but he presented them to me - daily tablets and patches to go under my arm and be replaced weekly. He was daring me to go through with it. I was just so besotted that despite everything, I nursed the idea that he could see past the ugliness of my male form to the beautiful woman inside. I wanted to be that woman, for him.

I announced to the kitchen that I was going to present as female from the next day, that being the day of the week when the restaurant closed. I had already booked for a beauty treatment on that day, and I had prepared the spa with the statement that I wanted to turn up a man and leave as a woman. I know that there are specialist feminization spas but I was ready to build my own recipe. What I required was to understand all the flavors that I needed at the end and look at the ingredients to get there.

I suppose that the starting point was smooth and clear skin. I requested a body waxing and facial electrolysis. I was not fully prepared for the discomfort, but I understood that all serious endeavors come with a little pain, and I was determined to be serious.

I took Serge’s advice and had my hair dyed. I had a good amount of hair that was normally a little curly so that when straightened I could have a chin length bob with curtain bangs that I could grow out. I could put it in a hairnet while working which is what I did. Nobody in the kitchen treated me differently, which I took as a sign of respect from my employees. Only Serge seemed to be sniggering. He kept telling me that I should take more care with my appearance.

I was still under his spell. Wearing makeup in a hot kitchen is not really practical, but I did my best to appear pretty for him, so that between tasks I could smile at him and receive just the briefest look of approval. That was ecstasy to me. I know that I was a fool, but that was love, for me at least.

At the end of a shift, I would shake out my hair and brush it a little, and touch up my makeup before sidling over to him in the hope that he would slide an arm around my waist, and perhaps kiss me on the cheek. If that happened then I was in heaven,

But he was just as likely to say that I was too manly and unattractive. I was trying and failing, but my approach was always to keep trying.

I decided that I needed to develop a more feminine demeanor. I started to watch women and I even started watching daytime soap operas. I practiced looks in the mirror - little upward glances across the kitchen at Serge, with a little smile, as if to say: “Hi there, I’m a silly little girl just like the kind you might fall in love with”. He would smile sometimes, but other times not.

I could see the others in the kitchen looking at us in disgust. Love does not blind a person to everything, it just tells you that their opinions don’t matter. I know now that they were disgusted with him, not me. They could all see that I was the victim, not just of lovesickness but of Serge. He was not popular in the workplace, but he did not seem to care. He did his job and he relished the effect that he was having on me. His cruelty was beyond belief.

But like so many women, I kept loving my abuser. I began to feel that I was a woman, and an abused one. It seemed to me that only women could love the way I loved, and love the wrong man. I used to cry myself to sleep some nights, especially when Serge did or said something nasty. It seemed that sometimes he enjoyed making me cry. I never used to cry, when I was a man. Now I blubbered like a baby whenever he put me down.

I just accepted it. I hoped and prayed that maybe tomorrow things might be better – that tomorrow he would appreciate all that I have done, all that I have given away, to be his. But there were so many disappointing tomorrows. The only thing that I was grateful for was the restaurant, and the quality of my food, and the respect of my customers. I was still a great chef, perhaps even better because of my own personal turmoil.

But every day I tried harder to be the woman he wanted me to be. The hormones took hold of me and I started to look more attractive – even I started to see that despite what was clearly low self-esteem. My breasts had grown to a considerable size and my hips and rear had acquired feminine curves. My male bits had reduced in size and I had taken to sitting down to urinate. My hair got a little longer, and I started to wear it up when working and dispense with the hairnet. I started to step out into the restaurant as I had done before Serge, to bask in the approval of my customers.

Everybody assumed that I was a transwoman, and I suppose that was exactly what I was. But I knew that gender dysphoria was something that you are born with or it develops very early in life. That did not seem to apply to me. It all seemed to start with Serge. Somehow, he had addled my brain, deliberately or by accident. I started to see it as a sickness – a mental illness. I have known many chefs to suffer madness for their art, but not in any way like this.

I think that helped. I started to gain an understanding of my predicament. I was not well, but I could function. I started to consider the things that I used to do when I was a male chef, and that I should do again as a female chef.

Then, I was invited to join a tasting table at another restaurant. This is where a chef has developed some ideas and wants to have his work judged by his peers. My first thought was that I needed something nice to wear so I went out and bought a cocktail dress, and I went to the salon to have my hair and makeup done. I wore earrings and not just studs. I had told everybody in the restaurant that I would not be working that night, but I thought that I looked so good that I walked into the kitchen before service to show Serge just how good I looked. I suppose that I thought that he would see just how far I had come – I was confident that he would.

Everybody complimented me on how good I looked, but I was only concerned about Serge’s opinion. He looked a little confused at first, but then he looked angry. Just as I was about to leave he came up to me as if he was about to kiss me, and I got very excited. He was close enough to smell the new perfume I was wearing. He then whispered in my ear - “You look fat”.

I was not fat, but the dress I was wearing showed off all of my curves and my great and largely natural cleavage. It was my turn to be confused, but then I suddenly realized that he was jealous. I was going out looking fabulous and to be admired, and he was stuck there at his station. Instead of bursting into tears, I felt strangely empowered by his cruel putdown.

Was I winning? Had he turned a corner? Was he starting to truly love me?

But then I started to wonder if I really cared any more. I looked at myself again in the mirror in the restaurant atrium. I was an extremely good-looking woman. I was a successful professional, confident and together, and almost totally female. It was a winning combination. If he could not see it, then did that really matter?

And then, that night I was introduced to Leo. He was a wine merchant and a gastronome invited to the tasting table, and he was keen to sit beside me. He had heard about me and my transition from male to female and he was fascinated. After only a few words he told me that I was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I found myself saying that I was just coming out of a toxic relationship with a very cruel lover, and that I would never make that mistake again. He replied that he was not that kind of man, and that turned out to be true.

The simple fact is that I am a person who loves very deeply, perhaps to the point of madness. I understand that now, and so does Leo.

As for Serge, I just needed to have my clarity of judgement re-emerge to make the right decision – he is not only cruel but a bad cook, and does not belong in my restaurant.

The End
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© Maryanne Peters 2026

Author’s Notes:
Six years ago I wrote a story called “Cruelty” along these lines, with a chef hiring a sous chef and becoming besotted,
Thanks to Eric for the editing on this one
n another note I don't want to appear overly needy in this regard, but I have noticed that there have been no reviews of my postings for some time. I admit that I have not been reading a lot lately with writing taking up my spare time, but have always thought that we need the input of others to do what we do. I am grateful for the readers and the likes, but some further thoughts would be appreciated.
Maryanne.