Changing planes in Houston the other day, on my way home from a trip to San Antonio where I got to see my good friend Snappymack (anotherfrigginblog) again, I searched for a kolache to munch on while enduring another three-hour layover at Bush Intercontinental. (And if that doesn't have Larry Flynt spray-painted all over it, I don't know what does.)
(Editor's note: What the heck's a kolache? In South Texas, it's kind of like a pig in a blanket, sausage or ham and cheese encased in a baked bread roll. In North Texas--more specifically, in the town of West, Texas, south of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (north? west? south?), and other parts of the Lone Star State--you will find variations on the theme of kolache, including ones filled with poppyseed paste, prunes, and cream cheese. Now let's send a big ol' "yum"-out to our Czech and Slovak brothers and sisters for that addition to the American table.)
But no kolache, not even at my favorite $10-for-a-cup-of-coffee counter at the crossroads of Terminals C and E. Thus I "made do" with the aforementioned pretzel dog.
The nice lady at the counter handed me this wrinkled sausage, coil-wrapped in pastry, its beefy head poking out from the hood of the crust, and I suddenly felt intense shame for eating this member in public. My face flushed as red as the rude dog's knob, and I felt the hectare's worth of surface area known as my forehead grow veined and erupt with sweat.
It's like I was suddenly caught watching Steele Ranger in public--or watching the South Park episode that features a clip of Steele Ranger in public.
Or was found at age 13 at the "adult magazine reading room" of my local Rip-and-Run with a copy of Playgirl nestled inside the copy of Playboy I was trying to fool everyone--and no one--with.
Or was discovered at the Record Bar at South Park Mall, circa 1976, lingering a little too longingly at the Gino Vannelli section. (Oh, Gino, I humiliated myself more than once over your Storm at Sunup cover, but you never called . . . . )
So who is the queer marketing genius behind pretzel dogs, and would he be available, say, any Saturday night from here to eternity? I mean, honestly, it was food as porn, so shameful and so pleasurable at the same time. You can't help but fall in love (or whatever) with a food professional who knows how to deliver the double entendre goods in a big, uncircumsized meat-and-carb-laden package.
Clearly, though, food as porn is not a new concept. I mean, there was Nine 1/2 Weeks, wasn't there? I didn't see it--I'm often disgusted by some of the sexual perversions avowed heterosexuals get up to--and probably never will, but I vaguely remember hearing about a scene in which, I dunno, Mickey Rourke cleans out Kim Basinger's refrigerator and uses the contents in a sexual way. "What would you like me to do with this year-old string cheese and past-its-sell-by-date jar of capers, my dear?"
Ick. Hold the mayo. If anyone did that with my refrigerator contents, they'd end up dead from salmonella poisoning in a matter of nanoseconds.
And then there's A Dirty Shame (the name says it all, doesn't it?), the John Waters film, which is something of a celluloid catalog of sexual deviations, with Tracey Ullman and Johnny Knoxville as the head librarians. If you watch the DVD's extras, you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know about a certain type of sexual expression involving food--and lots of it--in very gooey form.
Double ick. Too late to hold the mayo, Madge. You're soaking in it.
Call me a prude--or do I mean prune?--but I can't bear to share that information with you in this blog. Plus said blog is probably being monitored as I write, so why torment and tantalize the folks at Homeland Security more than I have to? They're busy enough listening in on phone calls and reading mail. Besides they have their own kinks to work out, I'm sure.
Anyway, I'll give you a topic for the next couple of weeks: Think about ways in which we as human beings refer to sex and food jointly. Here is a good example: porking.
Enough said.
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