SECTIONCODE: 41-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: Anyone willing to take the time to prepare you a meal from scratch will take his time in bed
W/C:
TEXT:
I was in bed, rereading an old article in GQ on how to cook her into bed. The menu lists “oyster with a champagne butter sauce” I was laughing out loud at the thought of a guy trying to crack open an oyster, much less make champagne butter. Sorry, my bias. When I was done with the article, I realised my current cooked me into bed. It was a home-cooked meal of chicken breast stuffed with XX cheese, wrapped in prosciotto then roasted in a hot oven. There was wine, lots of it, followed by make outs, lots of it. I'm not sure what was more impressive, the fact he made me a meal from scratch or that he had designer place mats. He might be the full package, as they say.
I was telling my friend MM about my new someone and he emailed me a recipe that's always worked for him when he was on the hunt. In his words:
"I call it my makeout recipe….Duck breast, sautéed mushrooms with thyme on a bed of couscous with burnt orange sauce drizzled over it. I cook the breast very rare, a nice slathering of fat is the perfect comfort food to relax the ladies. A salad of rocket leaves with lemon zest dressing, blue cheese and tomatoes will show you’re receptive to the female dietary needs. Then lots of red wine. No whites – red wines make them sleepy. If the girl is badass you get out a little cognac or port, then you're off to puddy town."
So do most guys have default recipes to get girls in bed? It seems so as every guy I asked could recite a recipe without having to draw too far back into file cabinet. "There's always one or two in my repriotorier," says my playboy friend MC. His specialities are sauces, ones you can feed woman with finger (chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, "it depends on her hair colour," he notes.). I'm all cheesed out at the thought, and worse, women fall for it.
I was hoping my chef friends had better recipes to share but nothing they said really would impress me enough to jump out of my clothes. "If you really want to impress her," Chef CM says. "Then you invite yourself over to her kitchen and make a meal out of what she's got in her pantry. "I've only got ice cubes," I challenge him. "Then he'll make slurpees," says his pastry chef friend.
So if he cooks her dinner, then it's a sure recipe that he gets the girl? I mean once you're in his house, he's got you for the night right?
"Duh. If a guy invite you over for dinner, and you accept, you know you have to put out," says my girlfriend IH. "And you know you are supposed to bring wine too." But what if she's trying to impress him? "Then produce a dessert to show off your home economic skills," says my tai tai girlfriend CD. "Bring something that will scent his kitchen with warmth and homeiness, like a perfume that lingers on his pillow days after, and make as little mess as possible." Now that she's mentioned it, I do have one or two recipes in my repetorier, one of which includes a homemade madeline that impresses with the smallest amount of effort excerpted. This and a cup of vanilla early grey will make him think: Who the hell bakes anymore? Oh, my mother.
But if you are totally inept in the kitchen, here's a fool-proof bring-over. Waitrose does a fantastically delicious frozen pear tart. Pull apart the packaging, pop it in the oven for 30 minutes and let it cool for 20 minutes before serving. I also like to 'make' a vanilla sauce to dress the tart, which involves a trip to 7-11. Grab a small pot of vanilla ice cream, then let it sit on the counter as you have dinner. By the time you are ready to serve dessert, the ice cream is fully melted and you spoon some creme on the plate or on top of your tart. It's up to you if you want to lie about the origins of the cake, I prefer to come clean when it comes to pre-baked. I've 'made' this tart for a party of eight before and there's no need to pretend like you've spent all day baking and saucing. Best to be upfront about your busy lifestyle and your make-do 7-11 sauce. You can also do a nice 7-11 parfait with Twix bars, pre-pack fruit salad, and double-cream. Or a nice casserole of bread and butter pudding and 7-11 granita (depending which flavour coffee they have that day) with crushed Kit-Kat bars. In fact, a good amount of my dessert recipes has some origins from 7-11.
What was my point? Right, sex and how to get some. I don't know. But its not really about the food is it? It's about someone caring (real or fake) enough about you to spend a few hours in the kitchen with the desire to feed you. And when we're talking about food, we might as well be talking about sex as in this context is interchangeable. Because anyone willing to take the time to prepare you a meal from scratch, will take his time in bed or the kitchen or wherever.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The drunk dial
SECTIONCODE: 40-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: My most memorable drunken text was from a friend who wrote this at 3.13am: “I don’t love you anymore, I mean my wife.”
W/C:
TEXT:
Lately, my sleep has been interrupted by an exboyfriend. We don't speak anymore per se, but his phone likes to call me occasionally around 3am, the dead of night. Our breakup had left me with lots of unanswered questions, and I began seeking answers in the smallest of details. When the morning came, and after the sleep fog as past, the rationalising hat went on. He must be drunk dialing again, you think to yourself. Or maybe since my name begins with an ‘A’, I’m the lucky recipient of unintended pocket calls. Well, if he doesn’t miss me, then at least his phone does. Confirmation is had when I go to check my voicemail: a series of 10-minute long messages of euro trash beats crushing the threshold of my phone's speakers filled the available recording space.
There are some people who complain about being that guy who strangers stop on the street to ask for directions, well I’m going to complain about being that girl who is on the receiving end of drunk messages. And it’s not just dialing, but drunk text messaging, emails, Facebooking, and visits.
My most memorable drunken text was from a friend who wrote this at 3.13am: “I don’t love you anymore, I mean my wife.”
While our self-editors tend to turn off under the influence and our true-selves released, I’m happy to be on the receiving end of unabridged conversations and stream of conscious mind barfs, but not in the middle of the night please. And after years of being a one-person crisis hotline, I have noticed that we, when intoxicated, are the total opposites of our daylight selves. The inhabited become un, and vice versa, we know. But I’m talking a Jekyll and Hyde complex, where sinners become saviours, and where the dumb become smart, which phantoms out. Booze, it seems gives us voice.
For the past few years, I've been the receiver of drunken emails from one reader who sends me page-long passages on topics such as women he’s just slept with and the future of Sarah Palin’s America. And inevitable, he’ll follow up with an email the morning after to tell me he was very, very drunk and very, very sorry. I quite enjoy his email rants about nothing, and everything. Though I don't believe for a second his perfectly composed letters sans spelling mistakes and filled with paragraph indents were written under the influence. If we are opposites from our drunken-texting self, then he must be illiterate.
Ok, I’ve given a few drunk-dials as well. They were somewhere along the lines of “I hate you, but I love you,” Judy Garland cries. But I’m not going to relive those. I want to help people, like me, with drunk-dialing/texting disorders. One solution is to kindly ask your phone carrier to block you from making calls to certain people (or all people) without a special dial-in code. If your phone service doesn’t offer you this, you can do what one of my girlfriend does: “I leave off the last digit to my boss’s number on my phone. It’s the only way I can prevent myself from calling her the foulest witch in finance.” Overseas there are services that make you do a simple math evaluation before unlock your phone privileges between the hours of midnight to 6am (the magic hour when reasoning returns).
Google has stepped in too to help drunk emailers. Its Mail Goggles is your email straitjacket. You have to complete five arithmetic problems in under 60 seconds to unlock your email between designated hours. (I’m not sure my aptitude in mathematics would allow me to do this sober.)
LG also makes a breathalyzer phone, which prevents you from dialing certain numbers if your blood alcohol levels is too concentrated –any time of day.
These gadgets are fun, but also an admittance that you have a drinking problem. So I take a less techie approach to control my uncontrollable self, I delete the numbers of my formers. Their numbers may linger on the memory for the short term, but this guarantees me piece of mind when in the company of a bottle.
But, even with all these tools to prevent the true-self from speaking, it always finds a way to transmit. I sent out a drunken text of my own asking the ex if his 3am rings were intentional, even unconsciously intentional, or was his phone just foned of me? (True self translation: ‘after months of silence are you trying to reach out, or am I to continue to rationalise this and pretend your phone keeps calling me by accident?’ Ok, my drunken self and true self are pretty much in line.) I wanted answers. Apparently, my drunken text voice was an angry one.
His response was one I hadn’t factored in: “I was trying to call someone else but was epically drunk. I might have to refile you under Wong.”
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: My most memorable drunken text was from a friend who wrote this at 3.13am: “I don’t love you anymore, I mean my wife.”
W/C:
TEXT:
Lately, my sleep has been interrupted by an exboyfriend. We don't speak anymore per se, but his phone likes to call me occasionally around 3am, the dead of night. Our breakup had left me with lots of unanswered questions, and I began seeking answers in the smallest of details. When the morning came, and after the sleep fog as past, the rationalising hat went on. He must be drunk dialing again, you think to yourself. Or maybe since my name begins with an ‘A’, I’m the lucky recipient of unintended pocket calls. Well, if he doesn’t miss me, then at least his phone does. Confirmation is had when I go to check my voicemail: a series of 10-minute long messages of euro trash beats crushing the threshold of my phone's speakers filled the available recording space.
There are some people who complain about being that guy who strangers stop on the street to ask for directions, well I’m going to complain about being that girl who is on the receiving end of drunk messages. And it’s not just dialing, but drunk text messaging, emails, Facebooking, and visits.
My most memorable drunken text was from a friend who wrote this at 3.13am: “I don’t love you anymore, I mean my wife.”
While our self-editors tend to turn off under the influence and our true-selves released, I’m happy to be on the receiving end of unabridged conversations and stream of conscious mind barfs, but not in the middle of the night please. And after years of being a one-person crisis hotline, I have noticed that we, when intoxicated, are the total opposites of our daylight selves. The inhabited become un, and vice versa, we know. But I’m talking a Jekyll and Hyde complex, where sinners become saviours, and where the dumb become smart, which phantoms out. Booze, it seems gives us voice.
For the past few years, I've been the receiver of drunken emails from one reader who sends me page-long passages on topics such as women he’s just slept with and the future of Sarah Palin’s America. And inevitable, he’ll follow up with an email the morning after to tell me he was very, very drunk and very, very sorry. I quite enjoy his email rants about nothing, and everything. Though I don't believe for a second his perfectly composed letters sans spelling mistakes and filled with paragraph indents were written under the influence. If we are opposites from our drunken-texting self, then he must be illiterate.
Ok, I’ve given a few drunk-dials as well. They were somewhere along the lines of “I hate you, but I love you,” Judy Garland cries. But I’m not going to relive those. I want to help people, like me, with drunk-dialing/texting disorders. One solution is to kindly ask your phone carrier to block you from making calls to certain people (or all people) without a special dial-in code. If your phone service doesn’t offer you this, you can do what one of my girlfriend does: “I leave off the last digit to my boss’s number on my phone. It’s the only way I can prevent myself from calling her the foulest witch in finance.” Overseas there are services that make you do a simple math evaluation before unlock your phone privileges between the hours of midnight to 6am (the magic hour when reasoning returns).
Google has stepped in too to help drunk emailers. Its Mail Goggles is your email straitjacket. You have to complete five arithmetic problems in under 60 seconds to unlock your email between designated hours. (I’m not sure my aptitude in mathematics would allow me to do this sober.)
LG also makes a breathalyzer phone, which prevents you from dialing certain numbers if your blood alcohol levels is too concentrated –any time of day.
These gadgets are fun, but also an admittance that you have a drinking problem. So I take a less techie approach to control my uncontrollable self, I delete the numbers of my formers. Their numbers may linger on the memory for the short term, but this guarantees me piece of mind when in the company of a bottle.
But, even with all these tools to prevent the true-self from speaking, it always finds a way to transmit. I sent out a drunken text of my own asking the ex if his 3am rings were intentional, even unconsciously intentional, or was his phone just foned of me? (True self translation: ‘after months of silence are you trying to reach out, or am I to continue to rationalise this and pretend your phone keeps calling me by accident?’ Ok, my drunken self and true self are pretty much in line.) I wanted answers. Apparently, my drunken text voice was an angry one.
His response was one I hadn’t factored in: “I was trying to call someone else but was epically drunk. I might have to refile you under Wong.”
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Dear Future self
When you get this I hope you are sitting down. If you only knew what a trouble maker you are today, you can't give your daughter shit for wanting to do the same.
.
I just hope i live to my potentials.
I hope I never turn on my self-editor and lose the ability to throw up my thoughts on a page.
In fact I hope I don't change much.
If I'm lucky enough to make it to 80+ and reading this email, then I'm one lucky girl. In fact, I'm already very lucky.
I hope I don't forget what's his name. i hope we're still on speaking terms
Oh, those lump bits, that's from eating straight pork fat.
All those obsessive bits turned out to be a good thing didn't it?
Turns out you didn't need all those shoes did you?
In fact, if I'm doing exactly what I'm doing right now, I'm pretty happy.
Subject: What if
Wish you were here. At 32. Loving life .
Future Me, I wonder if I'm in a love marriage, a convenient marriage, or an arranged marriage.
That book on my desk; Diary.
Future self: I have so many questions for you.
I haven't thought about the future me since I got my tattoo at 18.
Are you still climbing every mountain, swimming every ocean and crossing every dessert. Who is making you do that? What's his name?
When you get this I hope you are sitting down. If you only knew what a trouble maker you are today, you can't give your daughter shit for wanting to do the same.
.
I just hope i live to my potentials.
I hope I never turn on my self-editor and lose the ability to throw up my thoughts on a page.
In fact I hope I don't change much.
If I'm lucky enough to make it to 80+ and reading this email, then I'm one lucky girl. In fact, I'm already very lucky.
I hope I don't forget what's his name. i hope we're still on speaking terms
Oh, those lump bits, that's from eating straight pork fat.
All those obsessive bits turned out to be a good thing didn't it?
Turns out you didn't need all those shoes did you?
In fact, if I'm doing exactly what I'm doing right now, I'm pretty happy.
Subject: What if
Wish you were here. At 32. Loving life .
Future Me, I wonder if I'm in a love marriage, a convenient marriage, or an arranged marriage.
That book on my desk; Diary.
Future self: I have so many questions for you.
I haven't thought about the future me since I got my tattoo at 18.
Are you still climbing every mountain, swimming every ocean and crossing every dessert. Who is making you do that? What's his name?
Monday, October 5, 2009
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
SECTIONCODE: 39-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers.
W/C:
TEXT:
I’ve always been in love with Angelina. In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers. We had no idea then, at 14, we were entering the most powerful time in our lives. Being young and carefree, and discovering the powers teenage girls hold over men of all ages.
Angie was so aggressively feminine that if she was anymore feminine, she would be masculine. Full lips, full body, full hair, she was every adolescent’s dream of what it would be like if we had transformed into adulthood as quickly as she had. And she was nice. Every girl hated her. But I loved her, even now though I haven’t seen her since graduation. That is why I couldn’t wait to visit her in Beijing.
It was no coincident that I asked her to meet at Kiss Kiss, a yakiniku joint for the tragically hip. The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying. This was the kind of perverted food love I love. I arrive early to secure a table right off the beatnik’s dining row of Nan Xi Gang. As I sit here by myself in this sticky black-box dive with graffitied walls plastered with Polaroids of couples in tongue tango, I make it a point to tell the entire staff I’m waiting for someone as random men will come up to you and ask for a peck. I turn around with every anticipation of the door opening, then slink when it is not her. I can’t believe I was this nervous.
My phone bells. Angie sends me a text: “BJ traffic. So sorry babe.” As I reply, the bartender comes over. “Want to kiss?” he asks a little too friendly. “No that’s ok, thank you,” I smile. An older gentleman with a detective moustache begins his approach and I just looked down and shake my head. This might be the loneliest place in the world.
An hour goes by before I see an angelic figure float across the windows. She was as majestic as ever, now with bone straight hair pulled back in a secretary by day/ sex kitten by night kind of way. I always knew she had cheekbones that would make her age gracefully. We greeted eachother with a kiss on the cheek and it felt like an arrow missing the bull’s eye. Her big, generous smile was brighter than ever, helped by peroxide.
The years did part us and we were strangers now struggling to find common interest again. Minus the gym class smoking breaks, the underage clubbing weekends, and experiencing our firsts together, we had nothing in common as adults. It was strenuous to even fill the gaps of silence between sips of beer and short ribs.
In the least sexy way possible the owner comes up to us with his Polaroid and asked if we wanted to make out for him. Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me, but then nearby tables started cheering for us to kiss. Girl-on-girl action was not well represented on these walls or in Beijing.
One look at Angie and I could tell she wasn’t into it either. But in a moment of temporary nostalgia, I shrugged and said to the owner, “Would you give us a free meal if we made out?” He took a second to think about it, but by that time the bartenders and cooks wanted a show. “Let’s do it like we did for Mr Douglass (our former tennis coach),” I said to Angie.
And like a pony doing his trick, we held lips for mere seconds fully realising this is completely ridiculous. Her lip gloss smelled like a drugstore and stuck to mine like rubber tree sap. There was no tongue, there was no fluid exchange, there was no breath as neither of us dared to breathe. We just held a Broadway lip lock for ten long seconds in angst awaiting release while people hooted. This was stupid. This was horrifically stupid. When it was over, it was over. We unlocked in awkward silence. And when the tables of teenage boys offered to buy second rounds, we pretended to need sleep.
My greatest days of youth-rebellion rewrote itself in ten seconds as a miserable show and tell of cheap tricks. Some memories are best left to remember, locked away as stories of being young, dumb and powerful, never to be restaged, or upstaged in this case, in adult life.
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers.
W/C:
TEXT:
I’ve always been in love with Angelina. In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers. We had no idea then, at 14, we were entering the most powerful time in our lives. Being young and carefree, and discovering the powers teenage girls hold over men of all ages.
Angie was so aggressively feminine that if she was anymore feminine, she would be masculine. Full lips, full body, full hair, she was every adolescent’s dream of what it would be like if we had transformed into adulthood as quickly as she had. And she was nice. Every girl hated her. But I loved her, even now though I haven’t seen her since graduation. That is why I couldn’t wait to visit her in Beijing.
It was no coincident that I asked her to meet at Kiss Kiss, a yakiniku joint for the tragically hip. The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying. This was the kind of perverted food love I love. I arrive early to secure a table right off the beatnik’s dining row of Nan Xi Gang. As I sit here by myself in this sticky black-box dive with graffitied walls plastered with Polaroids of couples in tongue tango, I make it a point to tell the entire staff I’m waiting for someone as random men will come up to you and ask for a peck. I turn around with every anticipation of the door opening, then slink when it is not her. I can’t believe I was this nervous.
My phone bells. Angie sends me a text: “BJ traffic. So sorry babe.” As I reply, the bartender comes over. “Want to kiss?” he asks a little too friendly. “No that’s ok, thank you,” I smile. An older gentleman with a detective moustache begins his approach and I just looked down and shake my head. This might be the loneliest place in the world.
An hour goes by before I see an angelic figure float across the windows. She was as majestic as ever, now with bone straight hair pulled back in a secretary by day/ sex kitten by night kind of way. I always knew she had cheekbones that would make her age gracefully. We greeted eachother with a kiss on the cheek and it felt like an arrow missing the bull’s eye. Her big, generous smile was brighter than ever, helped by peroxide.
The years did part us and we were strangers now struggling to find common interest again. Minus the gym class smoking breaks, the underage clubbing weekends, and experiencing our firsts together, we had nothing in common as adults. It was strenuous to even fill the gaps of silence between sips of beer and short ribs.
In the least sexy way possible the owner comes up to us with his Polaroid and asked if we wanted to make out for him. Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me, but then nearby tables started cheering for us to kiss. Girl-on-girl action was not well represented on these walls or in Beijing.
One look at Angie and I could tell she wasn’t into it either. But in a moment of temporary nostalgia, I shrugged and said to the owner, “Would you give us a free meal if we made out?” He took a second to think about it, but by that time the bartenders and cooks wanted a show. “Let’s do it like we did for Mr Douglass (our former tennis coach),” I said to Angie.
And like a pony doing his trick, we held lips for mere seconds fully realising this is completely ridiculous. Her lip gloss smelled like a drugstore and stuck to mine like rubber tree sap. There was no tongue, there was no fluid exchange, there was no breath as neither of us dared to breathe. We just held a Broadway lip lock for ten long seconds in angst awaiting release while people hooted. This was stupid. This was horrifically stupid. When it was over, it was over. We unlocked in awkward silence. And when the tables of teenage boys offered to buy second rounds, we pretended to need sleep.
My greatest days of youth-rebellion rewrote itself in ten seconds as a miserable show and tell of cheap tricks. Some memories are best left to remember, locked away as stories of being young, dumb and powerful, never to be restaged, or upstaged in this case, in adult life.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
SECTIONCODE: 39-food-utt
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying.
W/C:
TEXT:
I’ve always been in love with Angelina. In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers. Angie was so aggressively feminine that if she was anymore feminine, she would be masculine. Full lips, full body, full hair, she was every adolescent’s dream of what it would be like if we had transformed into adulthood as quickly as she had. And she was nice. Every girl hated her. But I loved her, even now though I haven’t seen her since graduation. That is why I couldn’t wait to visit her in Beijing.
It was no coincident that I asked her to meet at Kiss Kiss, a yakiniku joint for the tragically hip. The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying. This was the kind of perverted food love I love. I arrive early to secure a table right off the beatnik’s dining row of Nan Xui Gang. As I sit here by myself in this sticky black-box dive with graffitied walls plastered with Polaroids of couples in tongue tango, I make it a point to tell the entire staff that I’m waiting for someone as random men will come up to you and ask for a peck. I turn around with every anticipation of the door opening, then slink when it is not her. I can’t believe I was this nervous.
My phone bells. Angie sent me a text: “BJ traffic. So sorry babe.” As I’m replying, the bartender comes over. “Want to kiss?” he asks a little too friendly. “No that’s ok, thank you,” I smile. An older gentleman with a detective moustache begins his approach and I just looked down and shake my head. This might be the loneliest place in the world.
An hour goes by before I see an angelic figure float across the windows. She was as majestic as ever, now with bone straight hair pulled back in a secretary by day/ sex kitten by night kind of way. I always knew she had cheekbones that would make her age gracefully. We greeted eachother with a kiss on the cheek and it felt like an arrow missing the bull’s eye. Her big smile was brighter than ever, helped by peroxide.
The years did part us and we were strangers struggling to find common interest again. Minus gym class smoking breaks, underage clubbing weekends, and experiencing our firsts together, we had nothing in common as adults. It was strenuous to even fill the gaps of silence between sips of beer and short ribs.
In the least sexy way possible the owner comes up to us with his Polaroid and asked if we wanted to make out for him. A nearby table on teen Goths cheer us on. Girl-on-girl action was not well represented on this walls, I think, was what the owner was to convey. One look at Angie and I could tell she wasn’t into it either. In a moment of temporary nostalgia, I shrugged and said to the owner, “Would you give us a free meal if we kissed?” He had to think about it, but by that time the bartenders and cooks wanted a show. “Let’s do it like we did for Mr Douglass (our former tennis coach),” I said to Angie.
And like a pony doing his trick, we held lips for mere seconds fully realising this is completely ridiculous. Her lip gloss smelled like a drugstore and stuck to mine like rubber tree sap. There was no tongue, there was no fluid exchange, there was no breath as neither of us were breathing. We just held a Broadway lip lock for ten long seconds, while cheers deafen the room, we angstly awaiting release. This was stupid. This was horrifically stupid. When it was over, it was over. We unlocked in an awkward silence. And when the adjacent table offered to buy second rounds, we pretended to need sleep.
My greatest days of youth-rebellion rewrote itself in ten seconds as a miserable show and tell of cheap tricks. Some memories are best left to remember, locked away as a story of youth, and not restaged.
SECTION: food
SUBSECTION: under the table
HED:
SUBHED:
STARS:
P/Q: The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying.
W/C:
TEXT:
I’ve always been in love with Angelina. In school we were the two Angies causing all sorts of trouble. We greeted eachother on the lips as school girls do to gain the attention of male teachers. Angie was so aggressively feminine that if she was anymore feminine, she would be masculine. Full lips, full body, full hair, she was every adolescent’s dream of what it would be like if we had transformed into adulthood as quickly as she had. And she was nice. Every girl hated her. But I loved her, even now though I haven’t seen her since graduation. That is why I couldn’t wait to visit her in Beijing.
It was no coincident that I asked her to meet at Kiss Kiss, a yakiniku joint for the tragically hip. The Taiwanese owner gives complimentary plates of beef tongue if you make out with someone for ten seconds and let him photograph you tongue tying. This was the kind of perverted food love I love. I arrive early to secure a table right off the beatnik’s dining row of Nan Xui Gang. As I sit here by myself in this sticky black-box dive with graffitied walls plastered with Polaroids of couples in tongue tango, I make it a point to tell the entire staff that I’m waiting for someone as random men will come up to you and ask for a peck. I turn around with every anticipation of the door opening, then slink when it is not her. I can’t believe I was this nervous.
My phone bells. Angie sent me a text: “BJ traffic. So sorry babe.” As I’m replying, the bartender comes over. “Want to kiss?” he asks a little too friendly. “No that’s ok, thank you,” I smile. An older gentleman with a detective moustache begins his approach and I just looked down and shake my head. This might be the loneliest place in the world.
An hour goes by before I see an angelic figure float across the windows. She was as majestic as ever, now with bone straight hair pulled back in a secretary by day/ sex kitten by night kind of way. I always knew she had cheekbones that would make her age gracefully. We greeted eachother with a kiss on the cheek and it felt like an arrow missing the bull’s eye. Her big smile was brighter than ever, helped by peroxide.
The years did part us and we were strangers struggling to find common interest again. Minus gym class smoking breaks, underage clubbing weekends, and experiencing our firsts together, we had nothing in common as adults. It was strenuous to even fill the gaps of silence between sips of beer and short ribs.
In the least sexy way possible the owner comes up to us with his Polaroid and asked if we wanted to make out for him. A nearby table on teen Goths cheer us on. Girl-on-girl action was not well represented on this walls, I think, was what the owner was to convey. One look at Angie and I could tell she wasn’t into it either. In a moment of temporary nostalgia, I shrugged and said to the owner, “Would you give us a free meal if we kissed?” He had to think about it, but by that time the bartenders and cooks wanted a show. “Let’s do it like we did for Mr Douglass (our former tennis coach),” I said to Angie.
And like a pony doing his trick, we held lips for mere seconds fully realising this is completely ridiculous. Her lip gloss smelled like a drugstore and stuck to mine like rubber tree sap. There was no tongue, there was no fluid exchange, there was no breath as neither of us were breathing. We just held a Broadway lip lock for ten long seconds, while cheers deafen the room, we angstly awaiting release. This was stupid. This was horrifically stupid. When it was over, it was over. We unlocked in an awkward silence. And when the adjacent table offered to buy second rounds, we pretended to need sleep.
My greatest days of youth-rebellion rewrote itself in ten seconds as a miserable show and tell of cheap tricks. Some memories are best left to remember, locked away as a story of youth, and not restaged.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
dear penthouse
Dear Penthouse
I never thought this could happen to me. Sitting in a restaurant with a woman I've fantanised about since high school, and now, meeting in an erotic city of beijing, I find her so boring.
The sexual attracyion must have been purely physical, but not chemical. Her mind doesn't fuck me. I had no desire to kiss this woman, even though I brought her to the one place to guarantee a little mouth to mouth.
She hadn't change one bit, sexy as ever. But if I had to take a guess, relied too heavily on her lips and glaze that she never exercised a different muscle, her XXX.
I guess gain confidence, either though knowledge or compliments, fulfills the void and tames the drive for compensation.
I had loved her, as I have all my past loves. But I realise now that I was in love with romanticised idea of her and me in highschool. And in reality, we had little in common/ lust.
This is the Dear Penthouse letter gone ary.
I never thought this could happen to me. Sitting in a restaurant with a woman I've fantanised about since high school, and now, meeting in an erotic city of beijing, I find her so boring.
The sexual attracyion must have been purely physical, but not chemical. Her mind doesn't fuck me. I had no desire to kiss this woman, even though I brought her to the one place to guarantee a little mouth to mouth.
She hadn't change one bit, sexy as ever. But if I had to take a guess, relied too heavily on her lips and glaze that she never exercised a different muscle, her XXX.
I guess gain confidence, either though knowledge or compliments, fulfills the void and tames the drive for compensation.
I had loved her, as I have all my past loves. But I realise now that I was in love with romanticised idea of her and me in highschool. And in reality, we had little in common/ lust.
This is the Dear Penthouse letter gone ary.
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