Let me start off with saying, “Mom – cover your eyes.” Now that that is out of the way…
I am not a fan of talking dirty. Oh, I’m foul-mouthed to be sure and have said that I swear more that my dear friend who is a sailor, but “dirty talk” is beyond me. When I watch movies where people talk dirty to each other, in person or on the phone, I squirm at the whole idea, and the uncomfortable nature of people pretending to be what they aren’t. If it doesn’t roll right off the tongue, it’s not genuine and being the genuine person that I am, disingenuous behavior makes me uncomfortable.
Okay, Mom, you can uncover your eyes now.
That brings me to the other night. There I was, in the garden picking beans and my mouth was watering at the thought of steaming those little, green beauties and tossing them in some melted bacon fat and with fresh thyme from the next bed over. I looked at them lustily, craving their taste. I wanted them in my mouth with a passion that was heated and which seared me to my very core.
And then I spied them. Weeks ago they were tiny and cute, but now? Now, they were bigger than I could hold in my hands. I moved my eyes over them and whispered, “You are the most luscious melons I have ever seen. Grow…. grow bigger… become sweet and juicy, for I must taste you.” And I pictured myself burying my face into their seedless glory…. for I was growing watermelons this year and they had gone forth and reproduced.
But did it stop there? Oh no. Grape tomatoes had been coming of age for a few days and I’d been relishing them with abandon, but there it was…. a beefsteak-type tomato. She was big, pink and slowly reaching the age of consent ahead of her estimated 15 pounds of sisters. She was a German Queen, an heirloom variety and I gazed at her longingly and whispered, “Soon I will have you.” My fingers lightly brushed her leaves and I felt a shudder and I began to hunger for her taste on a much deeper, far more inappropriate, level.
And then it occurred to me…. it wasn’t that I didn’t talk dirty, it was that I only talked dirty where I found it most fitting: to the plants in my garden. My fingers encased in nitrile-dipped gardening gloves as I pulled weeds and picked veggies from dirt I’d been farming for a few years, encouraging the plants to burst forth in an abundance of delicious produce. I wiped another mosquito from my brow. I licked my lips as I picked up my bowl of green beans. Soon…. very soon, they would be mine. My conquest would be complete.
And now I smell like tomato and cilantro… all I need is a little jalapeno and you can call me Pico de Gallo! A spicy little number.


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