Cook for Me

My idea of a date:

I like white t-shirts and boys who can work their knives

Make quick clean severs in a way I think they would be quick and clean drawing a line across my palate with their own tongue, tasting every part of me

And if I were the smoke that rose from the burners I’d curl myself around his fingers, the scent of raw salt and olive oil, I’d stick to him the way the perpetual sweat does on the lines of his forehead when he concentrates.

I think my ideal date would be cliché with him, because he is food and all heat of the kitchen.

I think he would come to my apartment and we would walk a crossed the street to Holiday Market. It would be awkward, we’d smile for a brevity of seconds then look at the tile flooring or distract ourselves with produce, poking at fresh vegetables, wandering through the isles. I’d steal glances of him, unused to the street clothes, the dirty wash jeans and glasses, used to the checkered pants and black bandana. He’d ask me what I want for dinner and I, like a girl, would tell him that I’m indifferent and that I don’t care, that it is up to him, that he should surprise me. Finally I’d make a deal with picking the wine and beer. Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noir and a red blend, or maybe a cab for me. Somehow I think he’d be surprised that I drink red wine, that I seem more like a Riesling girl. I’d tell him that I used to be but am broadening my horizons...that I love a wine I can chew on. He’d smile at that and I hope he’d be thinking that the red I chose would make my cheeks that color later on.

The food, at this point, is irrelevant because whatever is created by those deft and swift hands of his will taste of fervid longing and sexual tension, maybe the way marinated mushrooms do, or even a slow roasted animal of some deep forest. I would tell him to teach me to cook. That I need lessons, this is my fantasy. The apartment would be slightly warm from the pre-heating ovens and inadequate burners, puny compared to the ones he uses at the restaurant, but he will make do. He’d switch into restaurant mode, lose sight and care of everything around him but the pan he works in his grip like I hope he will do to me later, maybe on the cement floor so my back bruises and I can secretly relish in the bluish marks from contact with the floor below me and his body above me.

I’d say his name, look at him, smile, pop a raw tomato dripping with water from being rinsed into my mouth, chew slowly, watching him the whole time, and he would forget about the pan and guide my hands over his on the handle, the heat from the steam and popping oil trapped between our pulse points. If some searing liquid escaped the pan onto my bare forearm he would guide my wrist to the sink and hold it under the ice-cold tap. I’d shiver. He’d keep looking.