Culinary erotica

Is that already a thing? I could Google the word pairing and find out if the genre exists already, but I don't want my inspiration squelched.

(I don't know if squelched means what I think it means, and really, I don't even know what I think it means. What I wanted to convey when I first used the word is that I don't want my firey fantasy of founding a new erotica genre doused by reality—neither by the reality that the genre exists already nor by the reality that it doesn't exist, because its not existing would probably be the result [insofar as nothing has a cause] of no one wanting it to. But now squelched strikes me differently, in a more onomatopoeic way, as a sound that might accompany sex. Lots of words that aren't sexual sound sexual to me. Plethora, for example, seems like a word you'd see in an anatomy textbook next to an arrow pointing to a figure of female genitalia. Actually, it sounds like the bodily manifestation of an illness. The textbook might read:  "Medical practitioners have found that the removal of the plethora permits the patient to safely resume sexual activity. Recovery from plethora removal is generally swift and the risk of post-op metastasis is slim, presenting a first-world incidence of 0.8%." Sounds like the plethora might have psychosomatic origins, but that's just my initial clinical opinion.)

Here's a poem about eggs:

There are the ones that happen deep

And the ones that feel

like spreading warmth

And the ones that feel

like shrinking heat

And of course there's the one

that you eat.

Or it's about orgasms. Those are feelings I have about eggs, not facts. A dish called "Scotch eggs" consists of deep-fried eggs. Omelets make me think of spread-out warmth. And a poor or lazy cook may make overwell eggs by using a stove's high heat setting.

The truth about Scotch eggs is that they're deep-fried after being wrapped in meat, so I feel a bit guilty even bringing them up. If I were to write an erotic food story it'd have to be vegetarian, to both preserve and express my sense-of-self. Less animal ethics-oriented erotic authors could write the more meaty tales. (Aron opines that they'd all be meaty tales, but he's forgetting the lesbians, whose stories I imagine would involve mostly or completely vegan dishes, since the logic used to justify the domination of animals by humans is very similar to the logic used to justify the domination of women by men. Aron, who, because of an incident last night involving avocados, became somewhat nervous when I told him what I'm blogging about, has already titled his own erotic culinary masterpiece:  "His Cucumber Was Far from Cool.")

The idea of culinary erotica has the perhaps insurmountable defect of being way too easy. Too-obvious foods might have to be forbidden from the literature:  bananas, hot dogs, melons, pound cake, bundt cake, strawberries, anything chocolate or chocolate fondue-able. Probably all desserts should be avoided. Cliches just aren't sexy. On the other hand, I'm reading a book in one of my classes called A Visit from the Goon Squad, and so far the plot heavily involves a kleptomaniac and therapy sessions, both of which seem to be overused in film, television and literature, but somehow the book feels very original regardless. So maybe there's a way to make a banana more than a banana-penis.

Foods like mashed potatoes would be a real challenge, I think. Artichokes are clearly romantic, but do they have sex appeal? Vichyssoise is a sexy word, but is it a sexy eat? Spanakopita:  hot or not?

It might be because of the nearness of Valentine's Day that I'm thinking of such spectacularly sexy things, but I more suspect that St. Thomas Aquinas put me in the mood. I read parts of Summa Theologica aloud today, which proved to be an extremely efficient way to get Graham to fall asleep. Summa made me think of Augustine's Confessions, and then I came here, to Blogger, to blog.