Offensively Defensive?

First of all I hope you both will forgive me my once a week, at best, posting right now. My life is not in total upheaval but between some emotional/personal wrenching, changes at work complete with brand spanking new hires, half the storage and back stock space I had last holiday season, and having to entertain the idea of piles of wine in the ladies room, the full court press from sales reps and importers needing to get their own ducks in a row and what has been a wonderfully full social calendar lately, well I simply haven’t had the time to devote to this place and the handful of you that come here to read, listen, lurk and feel me. It is a gift I never stop thinking about, please trust me on that. I am sure I am craving and thinking about you more than you are me but I can’t seem to muster more than the semi occasional, nearly always, mindless scroll and blurt over on Facebook these days. Killing me as that spot, while a fun outlet for my profound goofery, doesn’t bring me one one thousandth of the joy that being here does, readers and comments or not. Part of my whole being better to myself deal that I am building…or trying to build in the spare 10 minutes a day I have to devote to it right now. Pisser. Bugging me but not as much as another issue that has had me all arms folded and mouth shut lately…

“Yes, I’m calling from Texas and I was wondering, could you give me a recommendation for a red wine to serve with Thanksgiving?” a friendly enough caller that I was thankful was a slow talker so I could stand there hunched over trying to catch my breath seeing as I had to sprint across the shop to answer the ringing phone. I did explain to the nice gentleman that we wouldn’t be able to ship him any wine due to his state, (read controlling asswads) doesn’t allow us to but I would be happy to offer some suggestions anyway.

“Oh okay, well I am at the Target here in (insert whereeverthehell Texas city here) and I was hoping you could help me pick a wine from their selection here.” Sigh. Big huffy one actually. My mind was whizzing about with, “What the hell dude? How did you get our number? Why are you calling me? How can you have no idea how freaking nutty this is? You think my boss likes paying us to share the knowledge, he paid us to acquire, helping people spend their money somewhere else?” face scrunched into such a wrinkly mess I must have looked like a big fat walnut standing there. I was able to calmly (shut up, it was) clear my throat and say, “Sir, I honestly have no idea what wines they have there at the Whatecverthehell Texas Target” which I thought was pretty damned friendly for a sort of brush off. “Well it’s just your standard stuff, Castle Rock and Estancia” he continues….humpf. “Sir, I can’t help you. I don’t know those wines at all and wouldn’t feel comfortable giving you a holiday recommendation, from the Target wine department seeing as I haven’t had the wines in forever, if ever.”  Once I hung up I had one of those moments where I stand still for like 5 minutes wondering if that actually really happened before I dash across the store, arms flailing, back sort of arched in a “Oh no he did-int” fashion as I track down whichever employee I can wrestle down first to share that story with. 

Happened to be in Target, (don’t judge) a few days later and made a beeline for the wine department. I think I was just more curious than anything else and I have to say, at least in the Target I was shopping in, there were fewer big brands like Estancia and more, sort of silly labels. Lots of Mommy’s Time Out, Layer Cake, Ooh La La Pinot Grigio. I strolled through the aisle, (there was only one at my Target) very few things I’d seen before in front of me, feeling a little female pandered to, kinda cheesed out and that was when I saw, Fancy Pants Cabernet Sauvignon…yes! I whipped my phone from my bag and snapped a photo which I quickly uploaded to Facebook, you know, to share seeing as I had of course shared the Texas Target story there, with the caption, “Shopping the Target wine…depot”. 

The whole thing stupidly cracked me up. The Texas guy, my reaction, my staff’s response, just the wonder of human behavior that is retail. The reason I posted the Fancy Pants Cabernet picture kind of a jab at all of us, including myself. Got home to find that I was being taken somewhat to task for “making fun of people that buy those wines”. Say huh?! I found myself scrolling up and down trying to see what would make anyone think I was mocking, there was nothing. It was merely the picture and the name that, in my estimation, had someone else feeling defensive or feeling as if those wines needed defending from the big bad French buyer lady. I was taken aback and after hearing “I would bet that most imports in the $8-$12 price point are factory made” when I had not once brought up, or even thought about imports, well I fell into the protective mode of trying to figure out what I did that was offensive  enough to have someone telling me, “If those wines get people to drink more wine than I am all for it” and my own defensiveness responding, “I’m not convinced those wines do in fact create more wine drinkers. In fact, I think they do more harm than good.” Which just had us lobbing shit back and forth, and enough to pull some wanker in that couldn’t wait to point the, “You are being defensive” finger at me.  Kinda hard to defend yourself and not come off…well, defensive. Especially to those that see every comment as loaded and from an import specialist, a nip on the neck. Not very unifying that….

Felt the same kind of kerfuffle, discomfort and bile loaded ugly offensively defensive crap when I read some of the reactions to a Kermit Lynch interview in The New York Times Magazine. It’s like those waiting to be offended folks were just aching for something to snarl about. Running each line through their tense and sensitive meters looking for something to get their undies twisted about. I read Tom Wark’s recap and it felt like we had just watched two different movies. 

I read those answers Kermit gave, an eyebrow raised looking for those snarky and shitty comments I had heard swirling about and…um, not so much. I read things like, “I find myself asking sommeliers, “where’s that from?” it’s a treat. One of the most exciting things happening is sommeliers turning customers on to new wines” I’m sure he meant French wines and only French wines. He didn’t say anything even remotely like that but whatever. Noticed the “Pop wines” reference that got everyone frothing and seething and he didn’t once mention California wines in that part of the answer, in fact Tom tacked on a piece of another answer to that part of the recap which made it read that Kermit gave up on California wines because they were “Pop wines”. I don’t mean to imply that it was misleading, nope not implying at all, it was down-right misleading and funny there was no mention about the part where Kermit said that not drinking wines that were a certain alcohol percentage or higher meant you were missing out on great wines. Well shit no, couldn’t include that because that mucks up the whole hater image.

To clear it up, Kermit said he gave up on California wines when they started chasing scores, and even uttered a modicum of regret that he had missed out on some great wines because of that, which to Tom’s credit he did mention, as well as an appreciation for Kermit’s lack of dogmatic, “If you aren’t drinking this way you suck” which was a nice breather. There was a final bluster or rant about how higher alcohol, richly extracted wines sell and aren’t going anywhere and I agree, nor should they if they sell and make people happy but to completely ignore the fact that the more restrained and less rich wines have also always sold, continue to do so and have a growing audience, and increasingly so here in California amongst winemakers and consumers, well then you are selling your agenda and maybe being a little defensive.  Oh and one more thing, anyone looking to Kermit Lynch for advice or commentary on the wines of California is “touched”. Just as touched as anyone asking Charlie Olken or Steve Heimoff about French or Italian wines. Go talk to Parker’s Wine Advocate, the Spectator, a great retailer, (ahem) or some other publication that has specialist in each region. Kermit has been a French wine advocate for 35 years. He is the reason those of us that love, no, need French wines, drink as richly as we do and to waste his time asking about California wines, even though he lives here in California, (also lives in Provence, just saying) is just, well sort of shady. He isn’t an expert on California wines, he doesn’t love them and personally I think pinning him to the felt and using the looking glass to inspect him is an exercise in nut tugging. Just as I would should someone pin Charlie on the wines of the Loire, Alsace and Burgundy. Why are we all this way? Really? Can’t people like what they like without someone else thinking it means we are calling their baby ugly?

 Before anyone starts thinking I’m making myself out to be some fucking patron saint of wine drinking or appreciation, well just back on up off it. Just yesterday got myself tangled in a rat’s nest of bullshit and side picking. Dammit...beginning to wonder if I might need some industrial strength tape to press against my lips…to bind my fingers.

Found myself scrolling once again. Lost in the mindless flashes of kitty photos, memes, pictures of Pho and various political reposting crap over on Facebook, (fuck, am I selling that joint or what?) in an effort to not think about the go-jillion issues that have been pressing tightly against my skull and chest. Arrow up, arrow back down, click the like thingie, add an “LOL” where it applies. You can pretty much picture a drooling 5 year old and have a pretty clear picture as to what much of my time wasting Facebook stint looks like. That is until my puddling drool and thoughtlessness is brought to a screeching halt by a picture of two bottles of wine, both domestic, one Pinot Noir the other Grenache with a caption, “Two Burgundian reds”…everyone out of the drooling pool! Read that and felt like someone had slammed a 2x4 against the back of my skull. Literally felt like my brain imploded. Burgundian Grenache? Um I’m sorry but…what the?!

So of course I commented. Did a “???? Grrr” thing to start but goddamn it if I wasn’t sucked deeper into the lair of discontent. Found myself arguing with people whom I don’t know and have never heard of, (even the writer who posted I’ve only heard of via Facebook, never once has anyone in my 17 years mention her and I’m sure in her world no one knows me) had a newer blogger, (and someone that does it for fun, of course) tell me that I should read his post about why people use the term Burgundian to describe Pinot Noir, in an effort to straighten me out and got plungered into the spinning cycle of defensiveness that seems to weirdly encapsulate this wine stuff. Felt the fur on my neck getting all spiky with each, “Oh Samantha, you need to relax” comment that made me feel like I was uptight for thinking using the term “Burgundian" for Grenache, a variety not grown in Burgundy of course, is about as stoopid as “SonomaCoastian Chablis” and having a circle of jerks make me out to be the asshole while not one of them answered my inquiry about what Burgundian means and if it is the same as California Champagne? Think that was a fair question…I mean if it is a style then it’s a style and by using that term you just let me know you have much, much to learn about Burgundy. There isn’t one style and if you mean restrained, elegant, feminine or graceful…well guess what, there are other words that don’t fuck with the consumer (and make them look silly when they ask for a Burgundian Grenache…as opposed to what, a Bordelaise Grenache?) but once again when all the teeth left their mark and the jerking was over I was left with the slippery stain of elitism and snobbery because I am on “the other side”. 

“What did you expect if you splash around in the kiddie pool other than diaper rash? They are right Sam, you need to read that bloggers post, it’s such an original idea that has never been discussed before he came to the table and written about Ad nauseam, by you especially. Time to cash in that first ticket to the rodeo and stand your ground.You do need a drink, might I suggest a glass of Burgundian Grenache? Why argue with the noise? Use your unique voice and power, your draw, to pull the people, like me, that are here waiting to hear.” The email in response to my sniveling and fussing. A wine business friend that does happen to be on the same side but is also one of the most fair and balanced humans I know. Like me he just wants us all to find a way to talk, buy, discuss, feel impassioned by and drink wine. I was tucked into his firm chest and cuddled by the comment, no matter how shortly. The fact that I was tugged about in all sorts of directions just reminds me how much I love this wine stuff. None of us have the right answers for everyone. The trick, if there is one, is to kick some of the mud off the path in an effort to make big broad steps and room for the next firm backed and strong hearted bunch of pourers, talkers, writers and  teachers…

Hopefully with a little less offensive defensiveness, from both "sides" 
 

Comfort Of Cover

“No! Oh my god, no!” my own voice calling out so loud, accusatory and punitive that I found myself sleepy-eyed, confused and sitting up in bed. Feeling blurry, terrified and for some reason, guilty as my heart pounded against the back of my throat, my chest lurching along with the wind in my lungs almost as if they were trying to keep up with the lunging and  pull my heart back down into its rightful spot.

Third time in the past couple weeks that I’ve been awoken like this. To my own voice dripping with primal fear and utter panic. Fucking nightmares. I’m a grown ass woman, like way old and junk and here I am wiping tears away from my eyes, trying to catch my breath and digging myself deeply under the covers. Trying to soothe my racing heart and thumping chest by slipping one leg out from under the blankets, slowly and methodically running the bridge of my foot along the soft fabric, lips barely spread as the panicked pace of my breathing slows to a normal pant. The soft whisper of deep, “that wasn’t real” exhales the soundtrack to my toes dancing along across a puffy duvet. Settling my unrest under the comfort of cover…once again. 

In this really weird spot right now. Not bad, per se, but I feel like I’m balancing on the edge of, something, and I can either step back and keep going as is or jump, feel my heart rattle around in my chest like it has its hands on prison cell bars and is beating the hell out of me from the inside out. Feel all my limbs floating. Been trying to figure out what my body, my screams and mind are trying to tell me in those rare moments when I’m holding still enough to hear. To listen.

 I was thinking it might be a work thing. One of my coworkers is leaving, one that I love more than I can even begin to tell him. I have a brother, this man that is leaving is the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever known. I was crushed when I heard he was moving on. I understand why and know that he and I, well we are years away from being done with one another. He is leaving to do outside sales, so he’s going to sell wines to assholes like us and the funny thing, in the past 5 months I’ve had 3 offers from importers to do the same. Leave The Wine Country. New gig. New start. So I think part of me worried that I might have been stupid, mistaken or letting fear keep me from taking those positions. Took me a couple weeks to figure out that for me, that outside sales business, well it isn’t what I want to do. Like not even a little. Never has been. In fact leaving the store, well that isn’t something that even begins to pass for craveable in my world. It isn’t work…

“You have his face”

“You have to see my ex-wife’s daughter. God, what an ugly little bitch she is”

“I love fucking you from behind…..that way I don’t have to look at you” 

“You never noticed that you don’t that many friends? No one likes ugly fat girls. You’re my sister and I can’t stand you”

“What a waste”

“You know if you were smaller I’d consider dating you”

“Who’s going to believe I forced myself, on you. Look at you”

“Sam, why do you cut your own hair?”

Because I can’t stand sitting in front of a mirror long enough to let someone else do it…..

Last month I hit the one year mark on my non-smoking thingie. I haven’t had a cigarette in like almost 400 days. Not sure I have within me the capacity to express how fucking unreal that is. No cigarettes?! Been smoking for longer than I’ve been a mother so in actuality those leggy, long, smoldering tar sticks were one of my longest and most committed, at times, cherished relationships, like ever. I’m not sure I spent much time thinking about quitting before I did it. Sure I knew I would smell better, be at least a tiny bit healthier and I would save loads of money but that quitting nonsense that was for… well for fucking quitters. I was crazy in love with my cigarettes. They kept me company when I was lonely and the rest of the world had bailed, fucked me over, and died. They were always there to crawl into my chest and cover my pain with, stinky and poisoning comfort. 

 There was only one thing that would or could inspire me to give them up, love and the fact that I had promised my life to another. What kind of woman would I be if I purposely, or selfishly “Indian gave” that life by cutting it shorter with my addiction. I’ve never had much to give, my big dumb heart and my word. Not much by any stretch but, they are at the very least honest. I laugh loud, bite hard, make love like I mean it, cry too much, drink even more than that but, I love huge and if I muster up the courage to tell you how much I love you, you can go to your grave knowing that you were genuinely and absolutely loved. I wish you could all see my scrunchy face now…scrunchy face and shrugged shoulders. It’s all I got….

“Please, for the love of god take a picture of yourself naked and send it to me!”

A dear friend being funny when I told him I had to cut our chat short because I needed to pop in the shower to wash the hair dye off my stanking skull. I laughed, like demonically, at the very idea. “Get naked and show you?! You’re high dude” my chuckle as I logged off and headed off to rinse the natural blonde from my noggin. Hair dried and me bored I popped back online only to have yet another friend make some reference to me sending a naked picture of myself. I am assuming he was kidding too, might as well have been because once again I was nearly snorting with laugher. Impossibly hilarious, like panda bears sitting on the Supreme Court kind of ridiculousness. Me naked for others to see, I can’t even manage a fucking haircut, you think I’m going to expose myself? Let you see all of me? Um….

“I stopped reading your blog because it scared me. I’m too formal. Too eastern European and Lutheran. It was too much to read all that…You”

“Your posts about your father, I had to write you because I just lost mine…”

“I was sitting on the tarmac reading you on my phone, that piece about your real family being those that you pick, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying”

“I read your stuff about Jeremy and I wish, wish that you were my Mom”

“I savor your posts and get sad when I can see the end is getting closer to the top of my screen”

“I’m crazy in love with you.”

“I read you and know someone out there gets me”

Impossibly hilarious. Me naked, exposed, wide open for the world to see. Fuck.

I started thinking about these dreams that have been jarring me from the comfort of the sleep I never get enough of. The images that have been flashing against my flinching eyelids, the sounds that crunch and bang so loudly they stab holes through my slumbering skull like a whizzing drill bringing with it blinding flashes of exposed light, maybe, hopefully, enlightenment. As I pushed the pieces around on my mental dining room table I saw the puzzle coming together, each and every dream that grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me awake, “awake” they were all me finding myself somewhere alone. Waking up in some dingy hotel room a million miles from anyone or anywhere I know, not knowing where I am or how I got there. The sound of a boot crushing a cluster of dried clay, a heavy door slamming and me opening my eyes, jaw painfully tight as I my head swivels, knuckles white and gripping the steering wheel of a busted Ford pickup, nothing but corn fields and absolute silence for miles upon miles…me flinging open the rusted out door of the truck, my bare feet splitting and bleeding as those caked clay clusters refuse to crumble beneath me. My mouth wide open, throat tight as I try and scream, beg, cry and nothing…no one can hear me. I wake terrified. Terrified and mad. 

Being left. Left behind. Left to deal with whatever fucked up and wrong decision I’ve made this time. Mean and cruel words I’m used to and the loudest voice, my own. The thing I blame every little bit of lonely and heartache on, the way I look. Why not right? Been a theme in the verbiage since the beginning. My mother angry at me for looking like my father, the man she still loved so much she cried herself to sleep at night, even years after he succumb to his only true love, the needle. The brother that had to assure me of his dominance by pointing out how different I looked and how many more friends he had….the ones that would come over to “his” house and snort big dreams and delusions of grandeur, provided by his father’s bank account of course, up their nostrils before enacting their angst and rage on a scared little girl that just wanted to belong. A lover that never lied about his cruelty and rage but in my young and splintered mind seemed better than my station allowed. College educated, firm and full hard body, checking account and a family that owned their home. His words cutting enough but his fingers, bats, knives and rage, the kind of punctuation you never forget. The one man I thought I could trust with every huge, tiny bit of me, from my soul to my true voice..my whole heart and just once, my whole naked body and having that be the last time he ever made love to me before he decided he didn’t really love, need or want me anymore. That time in the mirror, fucking hate it but…

So those toes that feel like they wanna take a leap? The jump my body and soul need? I think I have to bury myself even deeper into work, let myself feel and slither about in my formidable French wines, let them move and shape me…let them squeeze my neck and pull the little lever in my back that makes me ooze. Down with that but there is this one thing…me, naked, here and feeling like it’s okay to be in my own, this skin. Jesus, even typing that has my hands shaking but I need another challenge after that giving up my beloved smokes. So, if I was willing to give up my long, leggy, smoldering partner in honor of my love and promise to another, what am I willing to give myself? How do I prove to me that no matter how hard the words, the tears, the blood, fear and walk back home that I am more than this shell….that I’m worth the effort? 

One year from this day I will post a picture, of me naked and as raw as I’ve always been here. No nipples or nubbins but the same kind of sensual photos that I post and am drawn to, this time it will be me my shape, skin, body. The body that I bring will either be the one I am living in now, and have grown to embrace or one that I’ve worked on, (I did give myself a year…incentive much?) not looking to impress, I mean fuck, I’m 42 now and there are thousands of better things to look at naked on the internet, might I suggest baby whales?! Fuck me. Cannot believe I’m doing this but I need to kick these messy and stifling rocks out of my path. That and I know those picture begging folks, while kidding, know they could have been enticed by any keystroke, it was me they asked to see…me and that has to mean something right? 

Time to slip out from beneath the comfort of complete cover…

Back In Babys Arms (November Newsletter Blurb)

So some of you might not know this about me but when I started at The Wine Country 17 years ago, (holy shit) brought on to help with shipping and the quickly growing mailing list, I came on with one very specific issue, one I was honest about and rather unwilling to change…I hated wine. Never drank the stuff, couldn’t really believe there was even such a thing as a store just for wine and I somewhat nastily resisted even tasting the wines open on the tasting bar, no matter how much my coworkers urged me. Just wasn’t my thing and the only time I would get pulled into tasting something was when Randy would call me over to do so. I would drag my feet, groan, huff and puff all the while Randy handing me glass after glass of stuff that all tasted and smelled the same to me. One afternoon Randy called me to the tasting room, big smile on his sweet face and he handed me a glass of golden liquid, a glass of wine that would start my heart racing on a path that has never ended. I fell in love with wine that afternoon, changed my career path and became obsessed with aromas, textures and flavors all after one sniff of Zind Humbrecht Gewürztraminer.

Alsace started my love affair with wine and the famed Zind Humbrecht wines lead the charge. Alsatian wines have continued to play a huge roll in my wine drinking pleasure but the wines from Zind Humbrecht, not so much. Two factors as to why, one being that after getting tons of press and fawning over from the wine media the prices went through the roof and right out of my price range, secondly, the press was going gaga over wines that were, in my humble opinion, overly saturated, alcoholic and cloyingly sweet. I was finding it difficult to even taste the wines let alone pair them with food and paying like $80.00 for a wine that was only really suited for cheese courses and were so pushed as far as extraction that they were falling apart after five years in the cellar, well we had to cut the cord as it were. Let the wine media and followers of it have those wines, let them figure out what to do with them while we set forth in restructuring the Alsatian department. Finding little wines like Roland Schmitt Pinot Gris and Bott-Geyl Pinots d’Alsace, wines that did what we loved Alsatian wines for, paired brilliantly with a wide array of foods. We couldn’t be more pleased with how these wines have been preforming and how many people have also fallen head over heels for the wines from Alsace. That said it always made me a little sad that I couldn’t sell the wines that flipped my wine switch in the beginning, so when I was approached by a sales rep about getting “brought up to speed” on Zind Humbrecht, well I took her up on it.

Could not be happier to report that The Wine Country is once again in the Zind Humbrecht business! The wines are more reserved than when I last tasted them and while they are still on the spendy end of things we were able to procure a couple bottlings that may not be everyday drinkers but are in prices that we can afford on a splurge and especially with Thanksgiving right around the corner. Turkey and Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris? Yams or sweet potatoes with Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris?! Yes please! 

2012 Zind Humbrecht Pinot Gris $25.99

If you’ve ever been curious about what a textbook representation of Alsatian Pinot Gris is you need look no further. Showing plenty of peachy notes on the nose but tempered by a slicing cut of nectarine and orange zest. On the palate the wine is ultra-bright and practically shimmying with minerals and fat cutting acidity. We could just drink this refresher on its own but you can pair it with everything from slightly spicy seafood and chicken dishes, to gooey cheese and even eggy dishes. What an absolute delight to drink.

2011 Zind Humbrecht Thann Pinot Gris $45.99

Now this aint your auntie’s Pinot Grigio! This is a curvy, rich, powerful white wine with so much depth and richness it almost needs chewing, just this side of being over the top but with a far drier palate than the nose, and its apricots, syrupy peaches and honey would suggest and bristling acidity that keeps it in absolute perfect balance. Not a wine for subtle foods. Here you want fall flavors, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, powerful cheese or heavily spiced white meats. You won’t believe the texture here, or the fact that it clocks in at 16.5%! Indulgent and worth it. 

2011 Zind Humbrecht Clos Windsbuhl Gewürztraminer $76.99

To anyone that think Gewurztraminer is insipid or for beginners, you owe it to yourself to be educated by this stunning bottle of wine. The entire staff was rendered speechless, well aside from the groaning, when we tasted this very serious and heart-stopping white wine. The nose is a gorgeous mix of peaches, dried apricots, lychee, black tea, browned butter and baking spices and on the palate the weighty, but far from fat, wine just seems to melt across the tongue and stain it in the most sumptuous way. Very fruity but far from sweet there is a refinement here that only Zind Humbrecht could deliver. Blew our minds.    

Welcome, home....

Feeding

So okay, I’m willing to admit it. Willing to cop to this one embarrassing indulgence….I get the damn magazines for the pictures. Fuck the articles and stories; I greedily finger those glossy pages, my mouth watering, my want building, my eyes devouring what my hands, fingers, lips, tongue can only dream of. I sheepishly slip the plastic off of them when they come…moving slowly at first, much like I would undress a lover….taking the time to marvel in each crease, each uneven bump, letting the cool silkiness rest upon my palms before I cannot wait another second. My pulse quickening, my fingers, my touch less measured, more desperate as my fingers slip between the pages and I pry the object of my desire open and peel away at it like a ripe orange. Flip-flip-flip, “Oh God, I want that” and flip-flip-flip again. You all might “read” for the articles but I am there for the sumptuous flesh, the gratuitous money shots and the way all of it makes my bits tingle.

After undressing one of my lovers I begin flipping, peeling and lusting as always but when my eyes happen to fall upon one page….a page that will send me even deeper into the belly of those glorious beasts and leave me reeling, eyes watering, heart pounding away in my chest as if it were being held hostage. Speechless and floating in and out of my own fleshy memories, nostalgic and pickling in the brine that has both toughened my skin and softened my heart.

“Anything but pancakes” my answer to my mother whenever she would ask what I wanted for dinner. An inside joke and a way for me to stab away at her heart with my preteen angst. Make her feel worse for the plight I felt she had subjected us to. Food. Food was forever an issue with my mother and I, is still an issue with my mother in law and at times with my sweet little sister….baffles me that I can spend hours with some of the most interesting women I know and all they can do is talk about food, in a very negative way. Kills me and is part of the reason I feel like I am gawking at porn when I slip those covers off my food magazines when they arrive.

Years ago I ripped open one of the afore mentioned lovers of mine. Glossy, slick, swollen with the kind of prose that gets me slipping about in my seat. It was Saveur and as I read, Our Daily Bread, a short piece written by Richard Rodriguez my eyes instantly began to water, my heart started its pounding away, my breath sped up and as my eyes rolled over each beautifully and powerfully written word I felt my feet come out from beneath me. His connection to his family’s food, his passion and desire for what it all meant were laying out before me…as naked and honest as any piece of food writing I have ever read and so much like my own unashamed connection to food that it literally brought tears to my eyes. Food, much like wine and lovemaking has never been a simple thing for me. To get me off…. in any of those three areas it takes far more than polish, simple beauty or style…I need to be touched, like truly touched before you can slip inside me and while I can appreciate the beauty in glossy pictures, glossy humans and glossy wines, it takes something more raw, earthy and spread wide open to really inspire me.

“Go grab your sugar cane while Grandma gets some things for herself and Grandpa” the raspy booze and cigarette seasoned voice of my grandmother. I knew even though I really didn’t know what she was going to get…the bottle of Bourbon for him and bottle of Scotch for her. I stood in that market in Rosarito Beach, five or six years old…skin dark brown from hours spent sitting outside the funny smelling, trinket filled, foodless trailer of my ex-pat grandparents. A junk filled silver tube of sadness that rested upon soft beach sand that I felt honored to rub my toes through. I didn’t really know them, didn’t really know their son that had made me possible but I learned early on that Bourbon or Scotch scented kisses meant I was free to wander the friendly streets, the markets whose smells beckoned me and I was able to sit in a stall watching, smelling and tasting freshly made corn tortillas with the sweet Mexican lady that lived down the beach from my grandparents. She called me an angel and used to laugh as I would take out plates of warm, soupy, veggie studded tacos to her waiting patrons, my payment was always a pocket stuffed with still warm from the stone corn tortillas, a kiss on my white blonde head and a pat on the behind as she sent me back to the trailer of the foodless “sleepers”.

Those summers spent in Mexico were the very first to waken my senses, the most vibrant food memories I own, the snappy peppers, the gamey smell of the markets, the thick aromas of overripe fruit and cinnamon. The way a six year old finds joy in something that was shameful and missing for lack of funds at home…food. The chewing on starchy stalks of sugar cane, the tortillas that warmed my skin on my breezy walk on the beach…the sound and smell of the ocean always a soundtrack to my life….always a smell that would conjure up images of freedom, sweetness, sadness and liberation. The curling up on a trailer sofa, letting my tiny fingers slip between the loops in the knitted blanket, looking at my grandmother in her pale blue pant suit sleeping in the chair beside the table that her ice filled, sweaty glass of scotch rested upon…missing the pancakes of home but finding the early bits of this me….this me that you all read now, finding her scared, lonely and finding something soul satisfying in the breathless walk from the stall, the caked on sand clinging to my feet, the toothsome give of a chewy, freshly made tortilla. The aroma of corn, the doughy feel in my mouth on those lonely nights….the kisses I would bestow upon the “relative” stranger as she slept. The feeling when I was back at home and we got the call, “Can you come identify the body?” a grandfather I never really knew, the woman…my mother that took the call, made the drive and did what my “father” would have never been able to. In tomatoes, avocados, onions, cilantro and doughy corn I trust. 

My life, this scent filled, glossy page fondling life of mine started there….sand between my toes, not sleeping, a lust for something, anything pleasurable in a tube of sadness that was saturated with Bourbon, Scotch and the palpable loneliness that I still feel resting upon this heart of mine that seems forever engaged in trying to feel full. I fail, a lot but there is just enough intrigue and inspiration to keep me sniffing, kissing, opening my mouth to roar or to take a bigger, much needed bite....