Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 6: Souffle of Engorged, of Long-Suffering Flesh by Nora Robertson

Another favorite.

This piece so seduces me on a sentence-by-sentence basis that I'm disinclined to analyze it. It's sentences get me off, sentences like--

~"Whip a pint of heavy cream into a frenzy of stiff peaks."

~"I'm your slut, your slit, your bitch."

~"The rest of the day, a tug in my groin suggested esparadilles, a sangria top, accessories."

~"Now all I can do is masturbate, an insomnia of flesh shivering for release, next to your supine body."

...Still, I should probably say something more substantive.

The food-sex connection has already been thoroughly worked, but I never tire of it -- I think it's because gluttony and lust remain so closely linked in our culture. Robertson's piece gleefully celebrates both.

There are three threads here. One is instructions for making chocolate mousse ("mousse makes me think of frozen desire"). Another is the narrator's agonizing decision whether to buy two dresses she believes she oughtn't ("I saw the whispering dress, Marilyn Monroe shoulders and a layered cotton skirt cinched in tight.") The third involves the narrator's relationship with her lover ("...our hips buckled together, swollen spots rubbed raw"). I dig how Robertson sharply juxtaposes these three elements without any obvious connective tissue. Like ingredients thrown together and whipped into something delicious and hot. Yum.