13.04.2024

(or, EROTICA NO. 2)

A charcuterie board. You decide to fix me the perfect plate. You narrate as you move your body around the flat wide landscape, a small city filled with wonders just for me. The board asks you to contort, to arch your torso a mile high to pick up a buttery slice of prosciutto. “Let me tell you what you’re going to eat” you say. And I smile dumbly and submit. Because that’s all I’ve ever wanted, really, is for a beautiful woman to make me a plate and tell me why I’m going to love it. You straddle the board as you wiggle your fingers. You tower over like a god, like an almighty connoisseur of flavor, like the perfect woman doing what she does best: feeding me. 

First the base. You pick up a light cracker, pale and flaky with darkened edges. There is oil and there is rosemary. There is sea salt and there is warmth. You also choose a baguette. Walking one thousand feet you find a bread knife at the edge of the board and begin to cut me a slice. Suddenly you are no longer a giant but are instead very small. For this moment the bread becomes godly, overtaking your body with its sheer size and force. You are humble. You are tiny. But with all of your strength you hoist the knife up—arms trembling—and begin to saw. You are the perfect woman and this is your moment. Crumbs fall as you cut the bread and they are cherry blossoms, decorating the charcuterie board with the promise of summer and the smell of a french bakery. The sawing is difficult, but you persist. Your upper lip trembles and your pits fill with sweat. I could cry watching you. I could cry with love and desire watching you suffer in the name of my nourishment, in the name of my pleasure. Your muscles are tightening and softening, tightening and softening as you play the knife on the bread like a bow on a cello, and I swear I hear singing. The crackle and crunch of this dance of submission: the bread submits to the knife, the knife submits to you and I watch as your body grows—this powerful act making you once again the owner of the board, the conductor conducting, the pianist playing. Big again, you tower over and lean down to pick up the fruit of your labor: a perfectly cut slice of baguette. You slowly turn to me and wink at our good fortune. Again, I could cry. Excitedly, you begin the ritual of dressing. It’s your favorite part. First butter: you lunge to the left and scoop a dollop of it onto your fingers, the smell of mothers and pastures now filling the room. You grab greedy handfuls of salt, squish figs in the palms of your hands, put honey in your mouth and then drool it onto the bread. Spit mixed with honey and the flavor is unbearable. Next you address the cracker—you have not forgotten. A nutty cheese balances on the rosemary wafer, precarious but destined. You pile meats with abandon—salami, prosciutto, chorizo. Cured sausage. You build me a tower of meat, something to climb and then devour. A kingdom of meats and it is all for me. You throw salt like it's a baseball and the tomato is a home run. You grind your hips and pepper comes out. You force yourself to cry and it’s olive oil. You wipe the sweat from your brow and it’s balsamic vinegar.

I’ve almost forgotten my body, watching you dance around the charcuterie board. I’ve almost forgotten my body but right when I’m at the point of oblivion you walk the mile to my side. You tell me to close my eyes and I comply. And you feed me. I’m starving, clearly, but you insist that we take it slow. I’m like a teenage boy, rabid with hunger and selfish in my longings. I’ve suffered too long to be teased, I’ve hurt for too many years to slowly inhale the scent of your hardship before sinking my teeth in. But I'm in love with you and I respect your work, so I acquiesce to your rhythm. First you feed me the bread (baguette, butter, figs, sea salt and honey). You manually direct my mandible and suddenly I am chewing. Like a little baby, thanks to the guidance from your palms, I am really chewing. And so I am lost: borders blur as butter becomes bread becomes fig becomes honey becomes salt becomes lip. Things I’ve never actually tasted enter my mouth: the first time we touched pinkies, my third grade teacher’s heaving breasts, that time I’d forgotten all my English and it came crashing back into me in a stampede of geometric shapes and colors. You guide my jaw into chewing and I’m crying golden honey. I want to laugh but you keep my lips closed with your fingers— this bite is just for me. To open my mouth would be to invite others to the party, to risk contamination from the world beyond our bodies, beyond this charcuterie board. So I laugh with my eyes and let you manipulate my face. Let you massage the edges of my jaw as you coach the food down my throat, gently pressing your fingernails into my neck to ensure that I swallow. Until there is nothing left. Until my mouth is empty but for the echo of your perfect bite. Your labor of love.