This visit, as an experiment, Robbie and I agreed that I would get to do a lot of the cooking. I have been begging to do this for months, because I love to cook and because cooking for someone is an obvious way to provide service. (Why did I say I wasn’t a service submissive? I forget.)
Usually, having me cook is inconvenient, because Robbie lives with folks not all of whom would appreciate my cooking. But this visit we have had his place to our ownsome, and I have gotten to whip up quite a few things that pleased him.
Last night, as we sat down to a salad that I’d made and some sausages he’d grilled to perfection, I began to brag about what excellent food we’d put on the table, between us, the last week or so. (Apparently, one of my frequent conversational themes is, “Look at what a great team we make.”) And I poked fun at myself for ever having believed, as I did at one point, that our respective eating habits and preferences were such that we’d be unable to have a happy relationship. (I’m nothing if not hyper-dramatic.)
Robbie looked at me a little confused. He didn’t remember what I was talking about. “Don’t you remember,” I said, between bites of sausage and mouthfuls of beer, “that fight we had, about two years ago, when I wanted to talk about food, and you said that you thought menu planning was the least of our problems?”
“I don’t remember the fight, but you’re right, if we lived together menu planning would be the least of our problems.”
He looked at his sausage, and I waited for what he was going to say next.
“It would be cock for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” he said. He took a drink of beer, warming to his theme, while considering the label on the can. “Would you care for an appetizer? Could I offer you some cock? No? Well then you must be ready for the main course then–big, steaming cock. How about dessert? We have an excellent mousse au cock.”
He looked at me, totally deadpan. “Care for a digestif?”
I was in fits of giggles by now, but he wouldn’t stop. “Perhaps you would like to choose our special menu, table d’hote. Seven courses of cock. Magnifique.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think menu planning would be our biggest problem. I don’t think it would be a problem at all.”
Amen to that.
The work of Roy Stuart.
Letters from a Seraglio 