Food Pr0n

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I’ve never been one to combine food and sex. It’s just not my thing. Which is kind of funny for a couple of reasons. One, almost everything is my thing when it comes to sex. Two, I like food. Good food. Quite a lot. And I do think foods in themselves are sexy — cherries, figs, oysters (oh my gods, so sexy!). But I don’t really want the two to be combined.

That’s not entirely true. It’s not that I’d be adverse to it, truly. I’ve read some stories and seen some pictures that have made me think, “Okay, yes, that is sexy. Soooo sexy.” Lovely kitchen goddess Gina makes food sexy for me. So does the sexy and oh-so-culinary Donna. I’ve read a few stories about fruits and fucking that made me… well, cream. But for the most part, nope.

I guess ‘food and sex’ just too often makes me think of cliches. Huge cucumbers in private places. Nine and a Half Weeks. Whipped cream on my nipples. No thank you. Still, I know that most likely, it’s one of those things, like so many, where I’ve just never had the proper opportunity to really explore the two together.

Which all makes it odd that two of the three erotic stories I’ve written this week are focused on food. Where did that come from? I have no idea. But there they are, and sometimes you just have to follow the fluttery, fucked-up muse where she leads. This week, she led me to eating disorder groups and food-filled funerals…

From the draft of “Craving Madeline”:

There is, it seems to me, nothing more cruel than bringing donuts to an eating disorder group. And yet, there they sit every week, two dozen of them. And the good kind of donuts too. Cream-filled, chocolate-topped, with and without sprinkles, iced pink and green. Right next to the bad coffee, and non-dairy creamer in little packs that have to be a hundred years old.

My group has anorexics, over-eaters, bulimics, bingers—that’s me—and those who are all and none of the above. Almost all women. There’s one male who comes sometimes, but he takes two donuts each time he’s here, two donuts without stopping to stress, without even hesitating or caring what kind he gets, and he eats them both. In the way that normal people eat. I think he’s faking it. For sympathy or women. After all, to someone with an eating disorder, donuts are never just donuts.

Maybe people think the same about me. In a group filled with bone people and fat people, and no in-betweens, I’m an anomaly myself, being average-sized. If I work out and eat healthy most times, it seems the binges don’t wreak as much havoc on my body.  I haven’t binged—seriously binged—in almost six months. The group is helping, I think. Or something is.

I tend to get to the meetings late, partly because I can’t stand to be in the same room with those powdery, sugary temptations for very long. But I also show up right at the last second because I like to walk in and see Madeline sitting there. She always takes the same chair — the one right across from the door. She’s like a donut herself, all soft, pale curves inside a stretchy brown dress and she’s got this short, hot pink hair that’s cut close to her head. I want to run my hands over it, pull her into my chest, beg her to lick the soft, sensitive curves of my chest.

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And from the draft of “Sustenance”:

In the middle of my mother’s long and exhausting funeral, my stomach starts to growl. Loud and long, a rolling rumble. Not a sound that should be heard during any kind of death service. Blatant enough so that people look back. They look away again, of course, as soon as they realize that the protesting stomach belongs to me. Or they give me this long, quiet look, that tilt of their head that is supposed to convey, I suppose, sympathy. Or empathy.

After all, to all outside eyes I’m the grieving daughter. If I look gaunt and pale, if I haven’t eaten for hours, for days, it is acceptable. Forgiven. Perhaps even expected.

Only Raul knows better. His look carries none of those expressions that people give when you are grieving, those perfect arrangements of lips and eyes that are supposed to make you —or themselves — feel better. He merely drops his hand to my skirt-covered thigh, tightening it so that his nails dig through my black nylons. The gaze of his dark blue eyes settles on my profile — I can almost feel the heat as he contemplates me — and somehow his thoughtful silence is louder than anything else in the room. Louder than the friends who break down halfway through their odes to my mother, louder than the tick-tick-tick of the continual clock, louder than my stomach even, although I can hear it, hear its groaning emptiness and everything that sound carries, more clearly than almost anything else.

“Tessa,” he hisses so softly under his breath, raising one thick, black eyebrow. It is a question, but also not. It is a hiss of displeasure, of disapproval. A flutter of fear slides through my empty stomach, and I duck my head.

He slides his free hand into the pocket of his dark jacket, letting go of my thigh just long enough to unwrap a small piece of candy, the crinkle of the plastic burying the drone of the woman speaking at the front of the room.

I keep my chin to my chest, eyes closed, feeling the hard curve of the piece of candy as he pushes it to my lips. It smells sickly-sweet, of strawberries and cherries and calories, and my stomach revolts. I tighten my lips closed, holding my breath until it is pounding behind my eyes, asking to be let out. His hand tightens into my thigh, nails pointed against my pulse until everything narrows into those tiny pin pricks of pain, until all I can feel is my blood heating up beneath the clench of his nails.

I exhale in a gasp, my head swimming with the new air, and Raul slides the candy between my lips. But the candy is on my tongue and Raul’s hand is covering my mouth. Beneath the scent and taste of sugar, there is the scent and taste of him—heated flesh, the piney soap he uses, the metal of his ring. He never tastes of food, only of inedibles. Trees and stone and silver.

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Where in the bloody hell is YOUR muse leading you these days?

Kiss kiss bang bang, s.

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“The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”  ~G.K. Chesterton

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PS – Fantastic photos from jozychen.