Ravenous

There has to be a better word for the union between two people than husband, wife or partner. I want a word that describes my desire to gulp my lover up and eat him whole. I’m greedy for him. I want his mind and his magic. If his mouth wasn’t so tiny I would try to climb inside. I’d like to live in his veins and be like the blood that pumps through his heart.

I often say to my dearest, Jason that I’d like to eat him like a slice of pie. Cherry pie if I had my way because it tastes so sweet and sour at the same time and it’s red. I love any food that is a red color. I just want to shove him in my mouth with both hands and get really filthy while doing it. I want there to be food in my eyes and hair. I want to wipe it away like I’ve just had a pie thrown at my face, bits of crust falling from my lashes. I’m a glutton for him. He’s as delicious as pie and as crisp and salty as a handful of greasy potato chips grabbed in fistfuls from a cellophane bag that crinkles as I shove my hand inside.

He’s a succulent Christmas ham decorated with pineapple and neon red maraschino cherries, a once a year treat and a sight to behold.

To call him my husband or partner is an understatement of my love for him, but I can’t introduce him as my Christmas Ham, Jason. Should I introduce him as my pie? Should you describe your partner as your favorite food? I now pronounce you Pie and French Fry?

As a child, bologna was a delicacy. Our lunch meat was usually Aldi’s brand cut in paper thin slices. A whole pack stretched to four sandwiches. It was like eating a whiff of meat. Just enough to wet your whistle my mother might say. My desire for bologna was less about the taste and more about peeling the red plastic strip from the edge, slowly so you could watch it curve around the slice.

If I loved bologna more I’d have to introduce my husband as Oscar Meyer. I’d make sure to recite the jingle from the 1980’s TV ad each time he was introduced.

My boloney has a first name it’s O-s-c-a-r

My boloney has a second names it’s M-a-y-e-r

I like to eat it every day and if you ask me while I’ll say

Cuz, Oscar Meyer has a way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a

If you were really fed up with your partner you could demote them to Aldi’s Brand Chipped Beef. It has no memorable song and a real lack of taste.

Every year on my grandpa’s birthday my grandma would make him his favorite pie, banana cream. I can still see the coveted dessert sitting on the counter of my grandparents kitchen, tucked away into a corner, a secret that resisted being shared. My heart ached at the sight of it. I knew I’d only be allowed a sliver. Delicate waves of Cool Whip curled across a layer of vanilla pudding, infused with discs of banana and layered into a crust made from crushed Nilla Wafers. The aroma made me dizzy. This was love.

Maybe I can call Jason, my delicacy. It sounds so similar to your majesty.

Your Delicacy, I will say bent before him to present a slice of my heart on a saucer, bloody and raw and freshly ripped from my chest.

He’ll gobble it up and eat it and I’ll watch him in ecstasy as I fall to the ground clutching my chest wishing I had the strength to serve him another piece.

For the first six months of our relationship my husband lived in San Francisco and I was here in New York. I had met him for the second time at his going away party where he followed me around with his chest thrust out like a pigeon wooing a mate. Two older men who were writers for a horse betting magazine saw him doing this and told him he should get down on his knee and ask me to marry him. So he did. I said no, but he had lured me in. When I woke up the next day, I said to my roommate, I’ll probably never see that guy again but that’s the kind of guy I want to marry.

Later in the day. I checked my email and there glistening on top of a row of unread messages was his. It read,

Hi Christiane

I really enjoyed dancing with you last night to Echo and the Bunnymen.

X Jason

Or something like that. This message became the first of many that spanned an entire month. We never spoke on the phone, just sent feverish emails back and forth. Falling in love online.

The first time I did call him, he was sitting in a patch of redwood trees, a place he liked to call The Magic Forest, eating a salmon sandwich and a peach.

I had never heard of someone willingly eating a salmon sandwich. I’m from Iowa. I grew up eating fish sticks and canned tuna. The craziest we got was when my grandmas made oyster stew on Christmas. I couldn’t even tell you what it tasted like because even the word oyster sounded gross to my young ears.

He sent me a grainy photo of his lunch. It was 2005 and he had taken it with a flip phone. It looked kind of good, especially the plump, fuzzy peach I imagined him sinking his teeth into. It made me feel faint. I could see the juice of it soaking his mouth and pooling in the dip above his lip. My favorite part of his face.

I began painting peaches, lots and lots of peaches, dripping wet, opened up and revealing their red core. Friends who saw them laughed. I was so transparent. I cut them out of the paper and sent them to him in the mail.

I wanted to sit with him in the Magic Forest and watch him stuff his face with peaches and salmon sandwiches.

I once sent him a coconut. I don’t know why. I guess I was trying to make him laugh. I was still trying to understand this mysterious connection I had with him and somehow a coconut seemed fitting. At the time I was unaware of the symbolism behind the coconut, revered in many cultures as The Tree of Life. Representing resilience, fertility and abundance as well as a spiritual connection between heaven and earth.

I wonder if he ever held it to his mouth to sip its sweet milk or cracked it open as he would my chest to reach my vulnerable heart. Had we lived in a society where the coconut was more highly regarded we may have immediately understood this gesture of sending it from one coast to another. I was giving him my body. Nourishing him from afar.

I am his coconut. Aren’t I a peach?

Very early in our relationship, I tried to cook for Jason. I had decided on fried chicken. I don’t know why because I hardly ever cooked meat and in fact hardly cooked at all, but I was determined. I felt anxious. I wanted to get it right, give him this gift. I remember him watching me cook. He seemed on edge. Something didn’t feel right. Then he suddenly erupted, “is there milk in the breadcrumbs?”

I cried out incredulous, “there isn’t milk in breadcrumbs!”

I felt myself breaking. I wanted so desperately to make him a nice dinner.

He jumped up and checked the ingredients.

“There’s Parmesan cheese in them. I can’t eat these. I’m allergic to milk.”

I broke down and began to cry.

I had vowed many years before never to date a man who had a food allergy after witnessing a vegan lift the bun of his veggie burger and say “it’s got cheese on it. It’s going to give me phlegm,” then throw it away.

Here I was faced with a picky eater and one who I already so desperately loved.

I felt my world falling apart.

I put the chicken aside. There was milk in the mashed potatoes too and butter. I’d never cook with butter again.

Then he decided to go strictly veggie. Visions of casserole’s straight from the pages of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest danced in my head. Broccoli trees placed straight up in a Pyrex dish surrounded by gloopy mushroom gravy. He was essentially a vegan now. I felt like I had been tricked. Had I known he had so many dietary restrictions I would have thought twice about starting a relationship.

Fortunately, the veganism passed, although the surprising thing is that I now cook mostly vegan food. We don’t eat much chicken or fish and he still doesn’t eat dairy, so vegan it is. I’ve learned to adapt and I’m probably healthier because of the choices I’ve been forced to make. Now when I tell friends about the delicious black bean burger I made, I can see them shudder. It really was good though. The key is garlic. Lots and lots of garlic.

I love nothing more than to watch my Christmas Ham eat. I feel like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, greedy, ready to pop him in the oven. My eyes bulging in delight as he licks his plate clean.

More I ask.

More he says.