Being Vanilla

H was an artist. I became his favourite subject. He’d hang me impossibly and forever so that every sliver broke me. Then he would paint and sell the spoils as art. Orange was our flavour: sweet and sour and dripping with sweetness.

R’s flavours were so vicious that I still wear scars from it. I have been marked and, in this way, I still belong to him.

He had a whole candy shop of flavours. E promised he’d be the same. I preferred knowing what he tasted so I forewent my own experiences. C told me I’d have to wait because he wanted to start only with chocolate.

H used to hang me so that my head fell all the way back until he’d achieved a perfect combination of dearth. It tasted like an alien species.

He didn’t spoon honey into me, he threw me into it. Ever since, I’ve told men that I don’t pretend. It has to be authentic. They have to do it so it feels real.

E was never demanding enough. His flavour was delivered creatively: wear cinnamon when you do that launch, eat it in the public bathroom afterwards. Don’t just eat it with the drapes open. Go onto the balcony. Face the street. Eat it at that coffee shop. Let men watch. Don’t flinch. He fabricated a hunger so powerful it strung me up in his absence. When he said, “I want,” I shuddered.

I am no connoisseur. I have no preferences for bitterness, acidity, or salt. I don’t bleed, I don’t scar. I will not be bound with, or suspended from, or thrown against you. There will be no smooth, no back-bending, no sharing flavours. I will not be your feast. Even though I have enjoyed all of these things, I am vanilla until a new flavour is made.

I’m intimidated by every extreme thing I’ve ever loved, but with these particular men, I felt intimidated by none of them. I want the twisted, clean, heavenly, depraved, saccharine tastes that emerge with him and with us. The organic relationship working itself into its own gastronomy because some flavours can only afford to slip through with some men. I’m vanilla until we build.

You have a cellar somewhere that brews a bourbon so fine I’ll become a cultist of your top notes, your scent, the settling of home-brewed alcohol between my bones. When I find out, I’ll give up vanilla and order some of that brew.