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(Published as "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" in The Adventures of Food, O'Reilly and Associates, 1999.)
I could make a meal of him, one says. She is good enough to eat,
a feast for the eyes, I can almost taste him. More often than
not, I have mingled that taste with perhaps an acid shot of tequila,
a post-bliss peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an early morning
cup of coffee almost as warm as the body under the sheets beside
me was. More often than not, the city I am in vanishes, shifts
when my senses take the helm. More often than not, "food" is simply
not an apt description for what I take in with my mouth, and where
my mouth takes me.
He is new to me, this one, this time, and the taste of him. A
day has passed between lapping his skin with my tongue, and the
newness lingered freshly in my mouth. We sit across a white-spread
table, in a restaurant as new to me as he was, vacant for the
night. He, by trade, is as much experienced in the intimately
different tastes of one actual meal or another as I am in the
infinitely different tastes of one proverbial meal or another.
A wide glass is set on the table, with liquid within as thick
as molasses, but clear as water, a single bean suspended in it
mysteriously. Set to my lips, the scent of anise filled my nostrils,
attached itself to his eyes, watching a full mouth balance a drop
of syrupy liquor. There is, in Chicago, where I live, a sweets
factory, deep in the industrial section of the city. As I drive
through the area from time to time, I will think, in the frazzled
way that I do, of a thousand things: bills that need paying, jobs
that need doing, flat tires and poems I can't finish. I will do
this until I drive exactly one block past the sweets factory,
and at that moment, none of these things exist. There exists only
the sweet, overwhelming incense of anise and coffee and roasting
chocolate, more evocative of sweaty sheets and midnight tangos
than overdue bills and old factories.
This is no glass in my hands, this is skin. This is not liquor,
but is longing I drink in.
The silver of tableware jingles, set down. A plate is delivered:
rich swirls of tomato lingering round steaming mussels, shells
coal grey and smoking. Cilantro tickles my nose, transports me
to a sunset years back, in Mexico, on the coast, where my blue
eyes and fair skin won me a free bottle of poison nightly, a smile
appeared everywhere I turned, even in places my fair skin was
sunburned. His fingers open the shells with deft grace, nimble
soft fingers as strong as both my hands held together. The fork
is cold on my mouth and the meat of the mussel on it slippery
and smooth. His lips were like that, cool and hot all at once,
smooth to slide on and easy to swallow.
This is no sea treasure on my lips, this is a kiss. This is no
appetizer, but remembered and impending bliss.
The table is clean again, the vaguest spots of drizzled sauce
hide amidst the slightest crinkles, folds. Silver bowls arrive,
chairs are moved closer. Frost confuses itself with steam, making
fog on the shimmer and sheen of the metal dish. Inside, a spoon
teases a glacier of gold, capped with red berries cold on the
icy peak of the sorbet. It is as frigid and as rocky as the cliffs
were the night I spent in Lands End in England, aptly named, when
I felt the wind rip at me and still stood, tangled in my hair,
delirious with the possibility of being pulled over those desolate
cliffs and into the icy, mermaid-infested waters below. The wind
was a siren song saying, "Go.". The long sloping fall of his nose
and those hollow cheeks rise cool above the frost of this second
course, above the south end rocks of Lands End. I remember that
face, coiled back like a snake, mouth closed tight, as tight as
it clasps around the spoon, swallowing harder than at this moment,
and not near as quiet.
This is no intermediary cleansing of the palate, this is delight.
This is no frozen berried ice, this is a ghost of last night.
Plates juggled again, a black sea bass arrives on a bed of peppers
green and dandelion yellow, slivers of reddest tomato, paper-thin
slices of almonds rolling a finger around and around the steaming
flesh. Once, as a child, in the hot valley in California, I was
determined to see if, indeed, the sidewalk was hot enough to fry
an egg upon. It was hot enough to sear the tender bottoms of my
feet so that I had to sit on the grass to watch. I watched, slowly,
as the soft albumen sat and began to simmer, yolk staring at me
like a lost eye. And I watch you watch me slide forkfuls into
my mouth, humming with delight, touching my tongue to try and
add to one sense and inflict them all upon me. I watch as you
watch like you'd watched the night previous, slipping my fingers
in and licking them off one by one, tasting the two of us mingled,
after we'd come undone.
This is no supper, this is seduction. This is no feast, but the
vaguest reflection.
Table cleared, the tray of sweets is held out for observation.
The richest of chocolate cakes makes a place for itself before
me, a fork sets itself to my lips, the scent of the chocolate
infuses with the scent of the hand offering it. My eyes close
automatically: any sense more than taste is too much when my mouth
is filled with such a sweetness, such overbearing richness I can
feel melt unto my tongue. I am not in Chicago, I have been transported.
My grandmother, whose face, shining, is the only thing of her
I truly remember besides her sweet alto voice, sits at her kitchen
table, a tall window overlooks the streets of Venice. Her fork
is filled with the same chocolate mine is, and the air is heady
with chocolate and her strong espresso. With the sweetness in
her mouth, she is not in Venice. She is not in a kitchen alone,
plagued with an unhappy marriage and a war-torn country. She is
in a restaurant in Chicago, where a man with the face of an angel
sets his fork to her lips and feeds her spoonfuls of rich chocolate
cake.
His eyes are as bright as stars, and the scent of him overrides
the scent of chocolate, cilantro, anise, peppers or bass. She
looks to the empty plate with a soft smile, knowing the feasting,
here is done. Knowing there remains a feast to be had, in another
place, in another time, that has not yet begun.
This is no finale, this is only a prelude. We describe so very
little of what we feast upon when we merely call it food.
© 2000 Heather Corinna. All rights reserved. |
