From the pages of Bon Appétit, where Brooklynite pronoun-stipulator Isha Maratha is determined to overshare:
My First Time Eating an Oyster Was an Act of Queer Intimacy.
Ms Maratha’s first time, in Boston, during college orientation, is recounted in some detail:
My own acquaintance with the oyster started off memorable — hot and vulnerable, in public, and somehow profoundly intimate. The oyster covers most of your face when you eat it, and it’s usually alive when you do. It can keep a secret. In it, there is something uniquely unspoken between the eater and the eaten.
If anyone’s getting aroused by this, I’m fetching the hose.
When the server brought out a tray of shaved ice, my peers looked on, nonchalant and delighted. I slipped on a facade that I too, was well-acquainted with the mollusc. I wasn’t about to give an arbitrary group of strangers at my liberal arts college the benefit of knowing that I — the only Indian girl I had seen on campus thus far — would be performing the act for the first time.
If madam’s outpourings seem a bit much, be assured things do not get better on that front.
I snuck peeks at the nice girl with a Chanel handbag and a minimalist balayage. Her name was Lily. When she introduced herself — a screenwriter’s daughter from Los Angeles, studying marketing — in a drawl, leisurely and low, during one of our earlier icebreakers, I wanted to hear more of her talk; I wanted her to hear mine.
Hot stuff. And hence the, er, significance of the mollusc-gobbling.
I tossed my neck back to let the crustacean slide into my mouth, a brief, brisk flash of vulnerability washing over me. I returned eye-level to our table — an Olympic swimmer finishing the race, coming up for air. Despite the oyster’s cool taste, I felt warm, and then feverish because Lily was looking at me. Her symmetrical eyebrows were raised ever-so-slightly. And just like that, I knew she knew — it was my first time.
This goes on for quite a while, longer than seems strictly necessary. Droplets on chins, alluring eyebrows, lemon wedges being squeezed.
“My memory of that first time,” writes Ms Maratha, “echoes that special frisson of noticing your femininity.” You see, “Something about the discovery of the oyster’s flesh, the patience needed to harvest it from its shell, and the fortitude required to enjoy it, feels intrinsically feminine.” We’re told, by an obliging editor, that Ms Maratha’s “love of oysters grew alongside her queer identity.” And that, “For her, the act of eating an oyster uniquely and intimately expresses her queerness.”
Next month, one assumes, the erotic thrill of sausages.
Via Jonathan Kay.
When I read purple prose like this my first thought is always “this is really good satire”. Then I have flashbacks to National Lampoon Magazine and feel that a plagiarism has occured. Then I realize it’s written in earnest and just feel sad. Indeed, bring on the cocktail weenies.
Crustacean oyster?
Crustacean oyster?
Forget it, Jake. It’s journalism.
I’m outside. Do you want a documentary about molluscs?
And a good New Year to my fellow patrons.
An oyster is not a crustacean any more than eggs are a dairy product just because they are in the dairy section.
Other than that….yes, Isha, we are pointing and laughing.
To some people, everything is stridently, relentlessly, remorselessly ideological.
I wonder how much Bon Appetit would pay me for my fearlessly honest recounting of “My First Cheese Doodle”?
You always wondered where titles like this got their start. Now you know.
the erotic thrill of sausages
Band name.
I think we need more “queer intimacy.” Remember that Nada in ‘They Live’ was a gay man, rejecting the slogan of [MARRY AND REPRODUCE]. He even got a hotel room with his black boyfriend.
I’m just going to leave this here.
“The oyster covers most of your face when you eat it…“
I know everything’s reputedly bigger in the US, but c’mon..!
To the classics!
I’m just going to leave this here.
LOL. Not a fan?
Come now. The world can never have enough strained erotic writing.
Chances are … there was never a Lily.
The oyster covers most of your face when you eat it, and it’s usually alive when you do.
I’m just going to leave this here.
I see what you did there.
And despite having consumed over the years a fair number of gin and tonics, I’ve yet to find lemon wedges particularly erotic.
The oyster covers most of your face when you eat it…
Very small head, or don’t eat the oysters from Chernobyl.
…the patience needed to harvest it from its shell…
I know, right, it is just like brain surgery.
…I reached for another half shell.
Especially when they are already shucked.
Bon Appetit – come for the recipes, stay for the lesbian bodice rippers.
OT, seen elsewhere:
Everyone stay calm.
Tens of hours – it is less than 600 miles from Boston to Norfolk even averaging 50 that isn’t even 2 “tens” of hours.
I suspect the whole thing is fiction, but especially the oysters – she went full Georgia O’Keeffe, you never go full Georgia O’Keeffe.
Tens of hours – it is less than 600 miles from Boston to Norfolk even averaging 50 that isn’t even 2 “tens” of hour
Well, I did once see an elderly man, hunched over the wheel, doing 30mph on an interstate highway. Maybe this journalist is just as terrified of speed as he was. 😀
I’m outside. Do you want a documentary about molluscs?
“the mollusk is a randy little fellow whose primitive brain scarcely strays from the subject of the you know what.”
Speaking of facehuggers and unspeakable secretions, I re-watched Alien a few days ago and enjoyed it, again. I think Veronica Cartwright’s performance is sometimes overlooked.
Prick!
@David
Since you’re obviously struggling to find entertainment, not that Alien isn’t invariably worth the revisit, let me heartily recommend The Devil’s Hour. It completely blew my mind. I think it’s probably the best thing I watched all year. And that’s last year. Not this year!
Though I was unexpectedly impressed with Matt Smith’s portrayal of the Doctor Who, I had hoped that the elder Capaldi would bring back a certain portentous gravitas that I considered mildly lacking. Sad to say I was disappointed. But everything that his Doctor might have been is on display in The Devil’s Hour.
Over the subsequent Doctor’s descent into farce we will draw a veil.
Clearly, I need to write a list.
“I’ve got a little list. I’ve got a little list.”
Recent offerings have, I’m told, been utter trash, but then the thing has always been pretty crap, even in its heyday. I mean, the premise is much more interesting than the execution. I watched a couple of ancient Tom Baker episodes recently and while Tom gives it his all, and seems to be having fun, the shortcomings of everything else are hard to overlook. It’s more panto than science-fiction.
Tom Jones did it better
Somewhat related.
Oh no it isn’t!
(Sorry couldn’t resist)
Though it’s true that most of my fondness for Doctor Who is pure nostalgia, there actually were some good episodes (Blink – I’m looking at you). Though very few before the David Tennant era.
“…the overcast south shore of Virginia”
Around this part of rural Virginia we call that “North Carolina”.
I’ve bumped it near the top of my to-view list. I just need your signature on this written assurance that I will be suitably enthralled. First born child, immortal soul, the usual stuff…
Ah the writing style that screams Cluster-B!
The oyster covers most of your face……….
Just wait until it comes bursting out of her stomach.
I’ll just leave this bit of oyster related content here
https://twitter.com/pnkmrnbiology/status/1569313334083592192
Off topic, but here’s David putting the accent away at the end of a blogging day.
Steve E: Dang! I was going to post that on the next Friday Ephemera.
Well, David? What do you have to say for yourself? [ Arches eyebrows. ]
I’ll just leave this bit of oyster related content here
Could have been prevented with proper hygiene and/or shaving, failing that crabs are readily treated with topical Lindane, Malathione, or Ivermectin.
She should write a review of my sausage…recipe.
Fatuousness Alert:
“What I find amazing about black music is its global influence.”
–silly man-boy announcer in “Gateways Music Festival” show on WFMT classical radio
Note that European music, created by white men, has global influence but that silly twit would never obsequiously say he was “amazed”.
He describes every black composer in glowing terms, while in all other shows on this radio station white composers are merely named when their pieces are played.
This supports my contention that these “black music” shows are about racial politics rather than the best music.
Could have been prevented with proper hygiene and/or shaving, failing that crabs are readily treated with topical Lindane, Malathione, or Ivermectin.
That’s very specific knowledge; personal experience? 😉
I’ll just leave this bit of oyster related content here
Hey, maybe clothing has benefits and is not merely a cruel manifestation of Christian-fascist puritanism. Gosh!
“Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.”–Donald Kingsbury, Courtship Rite
This supports my contention that these “black music” shows are about racial politics rather than the best music.
Related: Semi-historical Hollywood movies about black people, in which their accomplishments are exaggerated to depict them as super-competent, smarter and more skilled than all their white contemporaries. Why not just depict them as they were, competent and admirable but not cartoonish superheroes?
That’s very specific knowledge; personal experience?
PTSTDSD, I have seen horrors beyond your comprehension…
Dunno about those things, but I have a nephew you could take immediately. I can have him wrapped in 10 minutes flat…
I recommended The Devil’s Hour to a friend and his hard-to-please wife (aren’t they all?) and they were suitably amazed. Or claimed to be. So there’s that glowing endorsement.
Maybe if you are 4 years old.
“Written assurance”! WRITTEN ASSURANCE?
No warranty. Credit note only.
(I’ve waited literally YEARS to lash back at Our Host. My glee is great!)
That nonsense from Bon Appetit is just the logical end of the narrative recipe trend,which in first noticed in larval form back in the 80s, in cookbooks with bits of bio interlarded. Then of course the ridiculous way recipes are presented by websites: COLD CEREAL WITH MILK – Dear fellow gourmet, There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else.
“Crustacean oyster”
Taps mic.
Really? Really? Four days on, and no-one has done this yet?
*clears throat*
Band name.