The end of hot chocolate season came far sooner than Nathan had wanted or expected. As someone who had been an enthusiast of the beverage ever since he was a child, it had made sense that Nathan would eventually find his way toward becoming a “purveyor of hot chocolate.” In other words, he had rented out a small storefront (barely a thousand square feet) in the Echo Park area where he could sell his gourmet, small-batch hot chocolate for no less that seven dollars a “glass.” Though he mostly served his product in paper to-go cups, as the outdoor area only had two tables for the lucky few customers that might secure one and, therefore, be able to “sip serenely” from their glasses. Of course, Nathan was aware it was fairly impossible to feel “serene” when watching and hearing the traffic that tended to congregate by the stoplight at the corner where his shop was located. A traffic patch that, quelle surprise, tended to result in a lot of honking and, sometimes, even some shouting out the window (for not all Angelenos were as “passive aggressive” as they were made out to be).

Yet Nathan was willing to take the risk on such “ambience” (or lack thereof, hence the cheaper rent price) because he was that confident in his product. Confident that they would show up in droves not just in the “cold” (by L.A. standards) winter months, but even during the warmer months as well. Looking back on his naïveté just six months after opening the business, Nathan couldn’t believe the level of hubris that had talked him into doing this. How could he have been so arrogant, so blind to the realities of the hot chocolate market? Especially the hot chocolate market in L.A.?

He got his first taste of the nature of that market (a nature that anyone with even half a brain might anticipate) when spring descended upon the land. This after initially relishing his first fall and winter in that shop, which he had called Il Fait Chaud (wanting to cater to the people of the area that felt they were “chic” and “international” now that it had been overrun by richies). The amount of sales he made after opening in the fall was shocking even to Nathan, who had been overconfident about the quality of his product drawing customers in droves.

But he should have known that after any ascent comes an inevitable fall. Though he wished the season of fall would come instead. Because now, he was stuck in an abyss of spring and summer, when no one—except the most eccentric of eccentrics—wanted to partake of hot chocolate. No matter how delicious and profumato Nathan was capable of making it. No matter how many whipped cream, cocoa powder, pirouettes (a.k.a. “cigar cookies”) and/or marshmallow flourishes he put on top. And so, to his chagrin, he realized he was going to have to “diversify” his product if he wanted to stay afloat even just through the next month.

So it was that he came up with what he could now look back on as a completely cockamamie idea. Emphasis on the cock of that word. For he decided that making penis-shaped chocolates in varying available sizes might attract enough clientele to compensate for the fact that no one was presently buying his primary product. Fool that he was, he would have been better off trying something like that in West Hollywood rather than Echo Park. Some part of Nathan knew that too, but he, perhaps as a hopelessly clueless straight man, erroneously felt that chocolate dicks would be of interest in a neighborhood as filled with fundamentally “mild-mannered” people as he himself was. And sure, he could have tried “crafting” chocolate vaginas in lieu of or in addition to the dicks, but during the small amount of time he experimented with that notion, Nathan found chocolate vaginas to be just as much of a challenge to navigate as real ones.

This much he confirmed with a few “test rounds” of a vagina mold that could never quite capture the right look and shape, even after he attempted to “imprint” it with the necessary lines that were meant to help the, er, eater recognize what it was. Instead, the added lines somehow made the entire thing look even stranger, more unappetizing. And it made Nathan give up in favor of sticking to what he knew best: dicks. In the end, it was what everyone knew best. The world at large, after all, was a phallic place. Nathan was merely catering to the landscape.

Except that, apparently, no one was feeling catered to at all. That is, if the total lack of foot traffic in the shop was meant to be an indication. Not just of how no one was interested in buying what Nathan was selling, but also in supporting any kind of “local business” that couldn’t understand the fact that one needed a “year-round” sales plan to survive. And that maybe those who couldn’t figure that out didn’t deserve to. Yet Nathan had poured his heart and soul into this enterprise—not to mention his entire life savings. He just had to figure something out that would help him endure.

In the middle of the afternoon one blazing hot day in May, while Nathan was zoning out as he stood behind the counter of the empty shop, it came to him: frozen hot chocolate. How this hadn’t occurred to him before, Nathan didn’t know. Especially since drinking frozen hot chocolate for the first time (and no, it wasn’t at Serendipity) had completely blown his mind. But it had been so long since he drank it that he had forgotten about its existence entirely. Until now. It had been staring him in the face this entire time as the only probably solution—his “last best chance.” And he wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers. Setting about the business of making it, Nathan proceeded to take stock of the “tools” required for the endeavor: a blender, ice, chocolate milk, his own special powdered hot chocolate mix, plus the whipped cream and chocolate shavings he would add on top. While others could probably turn this recipe out in under ten minutes, it took Nathan a full fifteen to blend it just right. And he knew that was going to make all the difference in people understanding that the nine-dollar price point was worth it.

Alas, in the days that went by after “launching his new product” (by way of a sandwich board with the phrase, “Try Our Frozen Hot Chocolate This Summer!” scrawled across it), Nathan discovered that the few people who did trickle in to further investigate what the frozen hot chocolate was all about didn’t seem to think nine dollars was worth it when they could just “get a Frappuccino” from the Starbucks across the street for seven-something.

When Nathan grasped that his “overpriced” frozen hot chocolate would be no match for the frozen drinks being offered at that corporate juggernaut, he still refused to lower the cost. To do so, he felt, would also be lowering his standards. He knew he would be cooked, out of business before summer was over at this rate, and yet he couldn’t compromise. Part of the reason he had opened Il Fait Chaud in the first place was to not compromise. Yet here he was, already offering chocolate dicks and frozen hot chocolate instead of just the “plain old” hot chocolate he had wanted to sell. If that wasn’t a sign of compromise, he didn’t know what was. He was more willing to compromise on going back to his job as a cater waiter on weekends, even though that was the only “prime time” for what few customers he did get in the shop. But it was either that, or no shop at all in the future.

And then, just when he was about to swallow what was left of his pride, a certain blonde, anorexic-looking girl traipsed into Il Fait Chaud on a Tuesday around eleven. This being Nathan’s first clue that she might be “famous” (along with the the two gay men who came in with her holding her light ring and camera stand). Or whatever was left of that word’s meaning as a result of “influencers” taking it all away. Stripping it down to mean nothing more than being a well-known person on the internet that hawked shit people were willing to buy because you had hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers.

Rochelle D’Amato, a name that Nathan would be hearing a lot of after this moment, was just such an influencer. And, for whatever reason, it happened that she felt like showing herself getting a frozen hot chocolate at Il Fait Chaud. Totally butchering the store’s name as she said it, but still smiling as she took a dainty sip from the drink and touted how “yummy” it was. Within hours of Rochelle making that declaration, Nathan’s store was inundated with people. He would never know why she decided to come in that day and promote his frozen hot chocolate—for it wasn’t as if he gave her anything in return (except the offer, after he realized her value, of free hot chocolate whenever she wanted). All he knew was that, at least for the rest of the year, his business was spared from the chopping block. That is, until the “trend” of coming into his store began to wane as people forgot about her video entirely. But until then, Nathan would ride the wave of this “success.” Even if it was less a compliment to his product, and more of one to how easily people could be “influenced” by the so-called right person.