The Food Issue: August 2005 Archives

Wendy of Housewyfe and Caveman summarizes one of the keys to superb sex.

The old menu [was] precise and orgasmically-focused. Now the orgasms are just part of the pleasurable equation.

Ever been to a restaurant with small children?
Do they seem to care much about...

• making plans to go out to the restaurant?
• discussing where to go with the people you'll go with?
• thinking about other people you might want to invite along?
• picking out nice clothes to wear to the restaurant?
• meeting companions out front and chatting in the lobby?
• perusing the menu?
• selecting a nice wine that goes perfectly with the meal?
• nibbling the bread and olive oil?
• enjoying the corking ceremony, tasting, and then approving the wine?
• pouring wine for everyone else?
• contemplating the menu?
• asking about specials?
• eating the salad?
• chatting while you eat?
• eating the entree?
• joking and laughing while you eat?
• commenting on one's own selections and hearing other's comments?
• offering each other morsels of this and that?
• savoring the flavors, textures, aromas, and appearance of each tiny bite?
• the sensation of slowly, pleasurably getting comfortably full?
• contemplating the dessert menu?
• murmuring pleasantries as you wait for dessert to arrive?
• sitting back and relaxing after?
• savoring cordials, coffee, or port after?
• sitting together talking and laughing as you wait for your meal to settle?
• maybe going for a nice walk afterwards?
• bidding your companions a leisurely farewell as you leave to go your separate ways?

• dessert

• they're not very patient with anything that doesn't cut right to the chase: dessert
• if it were up to them they'd go straight to dessert
• you can tempt them to try other things you know are good for them by pointing out exotic, adventurous-sounding items on their special menu but no matter what it's called it's really just the same five bland choices they always want.

So what would public health be like if cultural mores about sex and eating were reversed? I can think of a couple of things right off the bat.

Obesity would be as big a nervous curiosity to the general public as BDSM wear, and as poorly understood.

Diet-related illnesses such as diabetes and arterial sclerosis and food-borne illnesses such as salmonella, trichinosis, and E.Coli would also be pitifully understudied and misunderstood.

The U.S. Deparment of Agriculture would be housed in the Department of Justice.

Trichinosis and diabetes would be lingering uncurable illnesses. Efforts to study it and limit it's spread would be aggressively blocked by conservatives on family value grounds. Meanwhile HIV and Herpes would most likely have been nipped in the bud. If they persisted they'd be studied and attacked in a well-funded, coordinated fashion.

Conservatives would complain bitterly about trafficking of undocumented farm workers but would ignore the much lower-frequency traffick in undocumented sex workers. If they worried about it at all it would be because illegal sex workers were stealing jobs from hardworking American men and women.

Progressives would decry the spread of fast-fuck joints saying that they provide unhealthy and overprocessed sexual experiences. Columnists would wax nostalgic for the good old days when most people had sex at home. Fringe purists would argue endlessly that unassisted two-person sex was more natural. Everyone would think that was going too far. Vagegans would be claiming you should have only vaginal/penile sex. Hardly anyone would pay attention to them.

Not everything would change, of course, Right-wing red-state knuckledraggers would continue having sex with their underage relatives, but thanks to childhood vaccinations and early education programs venerial disease and teen pregnancy wouldn't be as chronic in red states. And blue-state liberals would still feel unnecessarily guilty about giving their children dairy products and red mean, but they'd be put in jail for it if caught doing it.

[To understand this story you may want to read the Food Issue Introduction. --fl]

I first realized Brandi, the girl across the hall, had a "big appetite" when I spotted a telltale flash red plastic mesh in the incinerator chute. It could only have come from one of the potato sack from the little adult "snack" shop in "Irishtown." I felt that familiar stirring in my saliva glands.

I was pretty sure Brandi ate around with a lot of other guys but the dirty little cook never gave me the time of day. Sure, we'd sometimes go out for a shower after word, and sometimes we'd wind up at her place after but every time I hinted that she might be a little hungry she'd ice over. "I like you Brian but not like that. I mean I really don't feel comfortable moving things out of the bedroom." I mean, her kitchen was just completely off limits. But now I had her right where I wanted her.

I made my plans. Saturday I went over to her place early, too early for her to have had time to "ease" herself. By about 10:30, as we were towelling up I could tell she was getting a little antsy to excuse herself but I kept putting it off. We'd talked about food before, of course, just between friends of course (it's 2005 after all and younger people are willing to be a little more frank.)

I mentioned how I'd once found a recipe for homefries in a magazine in the bottom drawer of my dad's desk. I told her about how it said in a lot of places people eat them with ketchup and I could tell she was getting a little uncomfortable. I looked her right in the eyes and told her in some places they use salsa instead of ketchup. Her eyes said "go" but I could hear her stomach (I hate how clinical that word sounds) gurgle. Her lips were sealed tight but when I saw her swallow I knew her mouth was wet.

With a sardonic tilt of an eyebrow I picked up my pants, and teased a new potato sack from a pocket. She let out a burbly moan and I knew she wasn't just wet, she was gushing.

Grabbing her by the shoulders I told her "you can't hide it from me anymore, Brandi" and pushed her into her kitchen and forced her into a chair. Whipping open the "broom closet" I hit the motherlode. Aprons! And a tidy stack of oven mitts. Whoah!

It wasn't time for nicities so whipped I a couple off their hangers (reveling in the heavy aborptive fabric) and bound her to the chrome-set chair. (Chrome set, if you can believe it, the little tummy lead a seriously secret life.) Of course she tried to scratch me but I put a stop to that with her own mitts!

Her eyes were fixed on me as I sliced and diced. She seemed reluctantly impressed at my pan work. She tried to wave away the plate as I slowly moved it under her nose but it only increased the steam and aroma wafting harder and harder into her reluctant nostrils. On the one hand she was begging me to let her go but the saliva practically squirting from her mouth told me she was mine.

Sitting down in front of her I unwrapped the foil pouch I kept in my wallet and ripped it open and handed her a wipe. I think that relaxed her a little, knowing I was at least cautious enough not to risk food-borne illness. At the last minute I popped the top from a fresh tube of margarine (the real stuff, not the petroleum-based stuff you alwasy get from the furtive western europeans that hang out by the docks) and squeezed ounce after ounce after ounce of the sensuous, gleaming, melting, yellow delicacy on her servings.

With a cry she threw herself on the food, moaning and drooling in abandon. Nearly mad with hunger myself I couldn't help but watch her mouth open and close over and over again -- I mean I'd had a little experience snacking in darkened movie theaters but I'd never really seen a woman chewing before.

She was ravenous! She ate pound after pound of potatos, serving after serving. The more she ate the hungrier she seemed to get. When my margarine ran out she admitted she had some of her own. Of course she was ashamed but by her seventh helping she could no longer help herself. I was afraid it would be the soy-based stuff you get from the Thai but no, this wasn't just margarine it was the real thing! Butter!

Yeah it was taking a big risk but with 13 pounds of potatoes in me I was beyond worrying. I heaped both our plates and added pat after pat of butter. As we waited for it to melt -- much more slowly than any margarine I'd ever seen -- she calmed down long enough to point to the iodine bottle she kept in her "fridge." Chilled at the risk we'd almost taken I spun the top off the chilled bottle and splashed the antiseptic all over our plates... and then... we began.

Afterwards, thorougly sated, I looked down at her ordinarily trim flat belly all swollen from our own personal "feast" and sighed contentedly. "Same time next week?" I asked her?

She looked at me with sultry eyes. "Next week? I don't know if I can go so long without eating with you again. How about... lunch?" I was ready to salivate all over again. The little chef was insatiable! But that's a story for another meal.

Think about an alternate society for just a moment, one where sex wasn't taboo but eating was. Actually, you may have to think about it for more than a moment as I think I'm going to be dwelling on it a lot this week.

Sex and eating are a lot alike anyway. Both are necessary for survival (as a species anyway.) We encounter both as very primal urges and we can get pretty wiggy when we're deprived. Sex and eating can done in strictly utilitarian or extravagantly excessive ways. You can pay people to provide you with either. Both have their own publishing genres. Moralists, medics, politicians, and everyday people have strong opinions about both. And nearly every culture has its own fascinating preparations, ingredients, and riturals.

I don't know how far I can go with it, but I'm going to try to provide a little social policy, a little bit of technique, a little bit of "pornography" and along the way I'll provide (and I hope) receive a little more insight into our attitudes about sex. And food.

Stay tuned.