VEGETABLE LOVE
It begins in the supermarket, in the produce section, where I fondle carrots, celery, cucumbers, perhaps a winter pear with its narrow top widening to a sturdy base. Remove the stem and it’s perfectly smooth, hard, not yet ripe, a young maiden of a pear. The celery, no, too narrow, too rough, but I might get it for soup, along with some onions. I put a wide, firm cucumber in my basket, then a bunch of long, hard carrots, and, so as not to arouse suspicion, hothouse tomatoes, lettuce and spinach for a salad. Too bad grapes aren’t in season, but here are some imported cherries—expensive, but they might do. And from the butcher, a long, narrow soup bone, a perfect fit for me and my soup pot.
At my age I don’t have the time or inclination to be anyone’s coy mistress, so I take matters into my own hands. The longhaired man who selects only locally grown fruits and vegetables; the woman pushing a baby in a cart so full I can’t see beyond the pack of disposable diapers on top; the bald man buying whiskey and bread and peanut butter—would they be shocked if they knew what this sweet grandmother was up to? Would they be hurt to learn that today I’m not interested in taking the time to meet them, embrace them or cook for them? No, my groceries are for myself and I want them now, before they decay. I load my finds into my car and drive fast, as if carried by wings along empty afternoon streets. This time is mine.
At home I scrub the pear, the cucumber and the cherries, removing stems and bumps, then peel a couple of carrots, soaking them all in a basin of warm water. Time becomes elastic, both speeding and slowing. I start with a long soak in a hot bath filled with chopped rosemary and lavender from my yard, remembering years of past lovers on whom I once depended for my pleasure. Some are gone for good while others have left me on my own, where I can race time or make it stand still, with no one to please but myself.
I have a particular fondness for my first lover, a young Chinese chef whose cock seemed enormous to me. When fully erect, his was an ear of corn, a long English cucumber, a banana, a carrot on steroids. So much for prejudice. I couldn’t imagine that thing in me.
“Are you?” he asked. “I mean, haven’t you ever…”
In the early sixties, we didn’t talk about sex. If a woman was willing, it was assumed she had some experience. I was eighteen and worried I might die a virgin, which seems like a ridiculous fear now, but back then all my friends claimed to have lovers, and hinted that I couldn’t be a woman until a man had made love to me. No, fingers didn’t count (especially not your own), dildos didn’t count, any orgasm without the aid of a penis didn’t count. And other women? Oh, no, you wouldn’t want to be one of those eternally virginal lesbians. Only a man could relieve you of your virginity.
My lover, whose name was Dave, was gentle, kind and creative, as American as his cock.
“Let me show you what I like to eat,” he said as he lowered his lips to my cunt and began to nibble and lick, his tongue speaking a language I’d never known. He lifted his head to tell me my sauce was perfectly seasoned, then bent back down to suck and lap, murmuring, “Num, ummm, nummm, nam, nam, ummm.”
I’d come many times before, from my own fingers, or a boyfriend’s, and the first time while playing nurse with a girlfriend, but this was different. Was it because his penis, still hard, was brushing my leg as he lapped what he called my delicious juice? I felt like all of me had liquefied.
After I came, he knew not to stop his tongue until my throbs diminished.
“I need to make something for you,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched him go into his kitchen, and imagined possible Chinese delights he might create for us. Crab puffs? Pot stickers? Almond cookies? Certainly not fortune cookies, which he’d dismissed as cardboard novelties for tourists. But it was too soon for the postcoital snack I was in the mood for. He hadn’t come yet.
He came back waving a carefully peeled, long, narrow carrot, which he held against his own erect root.
“For you,” he said, as if he were presenting me with a wonderful new dish he’d created.
“Is that a carrot?” I tried not to sound disappointed.
“I have a new way to prepare it,” he answered, kneeling beside me on his bed.
He rubbed that carrot across my cunt, coating it with my sauce, then slowly inserted the narrow end, moving it carefully around, stretching me so gently I felt only pleasure. He pulled it out, then inserted the wide end deeper inside, rotating it carefully in circles.
I giggled at the thought that I was losing my virginity to a vegetable, but it was wielded by a man, and a cook at that, so it must count. My pleasure grew like a pot beginning to boil. I came again, my cunt walls clutching that carrot.
“Perfect, this will be perfect,” he said, taking the carrot out, then sniffing it like a connoisseur.
At last it was time for dessert, that giant sweetmeat I felt so ready for. He raised himself above me, rubbing his cock across my slit as he’d done with the carrot, then inserted that final treat, which didn’t feel a bit too large. My expanded cookie jar easily accepted the whole thing. I felt the pulse as he came, felt his liquid wash into me, but, worn out by that carrot, I didn’t come again.
“There’s more,” he said after he’d caught his breath. “Stay still, don’t move.”
He went back to the kitchen and returned with a handful of grapes.
“Spread your legs,” he said as he lowered his nose to sniff my cunt. “Perfect,” he added as he inserted the grapes one by one until I was full.
“Wait a minute, if you can,” he said, but I felt myself begin to tingle from the pressure of all those grapes. “Hold on,” he ordered, and I did as long as I could, but the throbbing took me over and my orgasm popped those grapes right out.
He picked one up and ate it. “Ah,” he said. “A savory sauce is so good with fruit. Here, try one.” He pressed a warm grape into my mouth.
I was reluctant, but as I bit down, the combination of sweet tart grape and salty liquid filled me with a pleasure that was both gastronomic and sexual.
“Your sauce is still in there, too,” he explained. “That adds an extra sweetness.”
Then he took the discarded carrot back to the kitchen, where I heard him chop it, then open and close the oven door. He was back in five minutes with broiled carrot slices on a plate, perfectly seasoned with my own sweet sauce. We ate them with our fingers, along with the grapes.
Oh, we had many more cooking sessions, experimenting with different fruits and vegetables, and even sausages and strips of chicken and steak, which had to be precooked, though we always provided the seasoning.
When he went to France to study—French cooking was actually his specialty, not Chinese—time erased him from my life, but I’ll always be grateful for what he taught me about fruits and vegetables.
Out of the bath I am warm and pulsing, perfectly ready, imagining my clean vegetables. I dry off, pull on a silk robe patterned in leafy greens, then drain my produce, soothe them with a coating of olive oil and carry them to my couch in a wooden bowl. Now to begin, but where? I lie back, trickle more oil onto my fingertips and massage my nether petals, paying particular attention to my stamen, which stands at attention. The pear is a good first choice, I think, the smooth stem end fitting neatly into the outer rim of my cunt as my well-oiled fingers circle my own stem. I am a fruit, a tree; my sap starts flowing.
I set the pear back in the bowl and take out the cucumber, still warm from its bath and much thicker than the pear, so I introduce it slowly, gradually working it deeper until it fills me. Carefully I twist it, turn it, press it to the top of my interior garden, mushroom sweet and sweating now. Outside my window, I see bare tree limbs sway in the wind, but inside I’m warm enough to let my robe slither off as I tighten my muscles around my firm, warm vegetable lover, strong yet silent, undemanding, loyal. I imagine I’ll slice him up and eat him when he’s been properly processed, which seems to be a fitting end.
For now I hold him in, tensing and relaxing, then gently pushing. My stamen throbs, sooner than I’d like because I want time to stop, I want to hold my breath to make myself eternal. As I relax and exhale, the slippery cucumber eases out, an untroubled birth, to be returned to the wooden bowl.
I want more. Vegetables aren’t my only toys; my coffee table has a drawer of battery toys, and my bedside table contains the electric things. It’s too much trouble to get off my couch of pleasure, so I reach down and pull out my Jade Rabbit, with ears to tickle my clit and a shaft to go inside my pleasure garden, but the shaft is insufficient, too small, the vibrations lost in my folds. It’s better to hold the rabbit’s ears against my clit, with the shaft for additional vibration where it’s most needed. Grow, bean! But then, fritz, fritz, there goes the rabbit, perhaps in need of new batteries.
I shake the rabbit, and he’s alive again, for a while. Perhaps he needs a carrot; bunnies love carrots, and there’s a lovely big one in my salad bowl. It’s not too wide and goes in just deep enough. Perfection. I give Jade Rabbit another shake until he quivers against my hard berry, ripening by the minute as I wag the carrot back and forth inside me until I gush salty and sweet, pushing out the poor carrot, which has become a bit wet and limp from my hot juice.
My garden needs dessert; it needs cherries. One, two, three fit neatly inside, and then a fourth, making a real cherry pie. My quim, my valley, squeezes and relaxes, holding those cherries, letting the last quivers soften them until they’re just right, warm and salty sweet. I pull them out one by one and suck them, spitting the pits into the ashtray on my coffee table, until there’s nothing left.
I’m hungry after I’ve languished a bit, so I wrap myself in my robe, pick up my wooden bowl and carry it to the kitchen to make myself a large salad. I wash the lettuce and spinach, tear the leaves, then peel and slice half the cucumber, not too hard, not too soft, but just right. The carrot is almost parboiled because my body was much more steamy when I got to it, so I cut it into thin disks instead of grating it. I slice a tomato, and add some chopped pear because I love mixing fruits and vegetables. And for protein, some Gorgonzola cheese, which blends so well with the pear, the cucumber, the half-cooked carrot. I need no dressing, just a bit more olive oil mixed with the remnants of the salty, creamy juice that still oozes from the carrot and the pear. I devour the whole thing. Nothing has ever tasted so good.