Sitting on a cucumber, wondering why they’re so bitter
There’s this thing I do that’s really not to my benefit, or perhaps it is. See, I’m picky. I used to be picky with food. For instance, I wouldn’t eat bananas or tomatoes and I wouldn’t even dare to smell milk. To this date I cannot stand avocado. Yet my current pickiness is of a different sort. I like guys, most of them. Seriously, a lot of them turn me on. I don’t care if you’re a douche or a geek with terrible OCD; I’m going to want to fuck you in my mind, hence the issue. I don’t fuck. I can’t even get near cumming when I’ve fooled around. So I concluded that I’ve only fooled around with guys that don’t really stimulate me, physically, emotionally, or mentally. So how am I picky if I like them all? Well, for starters I don’t go to bed with all. In fact, I’ve only gone so far with those who don’t really cause me anxiety, the ones I wouldn’t want if sober. And so I mess around with these mediocre ones, and then the next day they call me. I’m disgusted by them, moreso with myself. I’m not grossed out because of the whole immorality and superficiality connoted with one-night-stands. I’m grossed out by them, physically, emotionally, and mentally – hence my self-assessed pickiness.
I began eating tomatoes sometime during high school. They tasted fresh and gave my meals a different spark, one I had been ignoring for so long. I now like tomatoes everywhere. I love hamburgers with two to three slices of tomatoes, delicious. Along came college, and I tried good weed for once. I came home after nearly finishing a thick blunt by myself. My mom greeted me; she knew something was up. I smelled different. And so she sat me down and talked to me about how I should pick my friends in a more mindful manner. While she was speaking, I was devouring a bowl of fruit loops. Up until that night, it was a custom of mine to eat the cereal and thereafter pour the milk on the sink and watch it go down the drain, very inconsiderate of me, I know. In my defense I went to a Catholic high school and therefore, figuratively, lived in a pink bubble, thinking the world was my own to consume. Any which way, on that very night, after a tremendously long and lousy speech by my mother, I traveled to the living room, bowl still in my hand, and sat in front of the television. I was probably watching some rerun of Will & Grace, when I finished every single fruit loop and thought to myself I’m still hungry. I wonder what milk tastes like. And so I drank it, and it was glory – white, smooth, fresh, natural, glory. It was like the liquid sent from heaven, or even better, a cow’s fleshy udder. I was amazed and satisfied as the silky milk traveled down my dry throat.
It wasn’t until later in college when I tried my first banana. As a first-semester sophomore, I decided to enroll in an upper division psychology course, Psy 351 Psychology of Personality. The professor a tiny, little man with the optimism of a huge, silly elephant, he sincerely cared about his students, and their personality, and their awareness of it. He presented to us several theories of personality, Freud’s, the behaviorists’, and some other alternatives. I remember one theory involved morphological concepts. The idea was that three different body types were causing factors of people’s behavior. Burly men were aggressive, maybe. I paid more attention to the dopamine, serotonin, and that other neurotransmitter which makes you cranky section. I decided to research how to elevate the amount of good type neurotransmitters in my brain. I found food studies. Nuts made you horny. Chocolate did too. Sunflower seeds energetic and bananas gave one the feeling of contentment. Having recently been called bitter by one whom I considered honest and observant, I couldn’t pass the opportunity to remake myself. I took the first bite. Normally, even just the odor of a banana would make me puke. But I had motivation and was determined to eat it. I gave the second bite; it wasn’t all that bad. I finished it – devoured it. And then I wrote about it.
In my exploration of previously-forbidden foods, I concluded that life was full of self-imposed boundaries. My philosophical approach spoke to me personally. I shouldn’t let my immature perception of things abstain me from life’s secret joys, I wrote. Had I known bananas induced contentment, I would have been a happier person, perhaps more amicable person through high school, I exaggerated. I even told a few friends about it. BANANAS = HAPPINESS; SUNFLOWER SEEDS = ENERGY. That was my motto, and for a whole year, or maybe less, I lived by it. I had orange juice in the morning, gulped a banana on my way to school, and carried a tiny bag of sunflower seeds with me regularly. I wanted to know life’s joys, and I didn’t want to be the person who wouldn’t try things just because of fear, or an old, stupid connotation. My last thoughts on the matter were even-more contextual. See, my inner hate towards bananas was deeply embedded in my past. Once as a baby a banana made me vomit, perhaps it wasn’t fully mature and therefore inedible. As a young child, my older sister, treacherous and vicious, knowing that just the smell of bananas made me gag, smashed the yellow fruit on my face. I puked allover her, naturally. Ever since, bananas were my enemy. I hated them – despised the thought of them. And when kids in my elementary school made jokes about my genuine femininity and called me a fag, they’d try to humor me by suggesting I loved bananas and their phallic shape. But I hated bananas, and noting to them that I did so was ever-so empowering; not only was I “not gay,” I despised phallic-shaped bananas. So as a young adult, as I discovered the penis-looking fruit would make me not-so-bitter, I hit my head against the wall and reassessed my life-view. I promised myself not to ever make judgments based on old, immature ideas. I was to reevaluate life. I was to look into myself and destroy my old stigmas. I wasn’t to be picky anymore. I wasn’t to disregard all bananas just because of a bad one I ate.
I jumped off cliffs. I made out with strangers and fooled around atop a pool table. I traveled to San Francisco, came out to everyone I needed to come out to, and pierced my penis (not). But that day I learned something I wished not to ever forget. And now as I sit affront my computer screen, wondering why I haven’t shagged anyone or why I’ve not even made out with any douche recently, I can’t help to compare myself to sluttier people and wonder if I am too picky, sexually/romantically. Am I, by telling off truly unappealing men, shutting down to life’s secret joys? Do I think they are deuces or unintelligent ballerinas because of what I was told as a child or what I once concluded in my immature mind? Should I tell a guy to f-off just because of the way he speaks – the speech, the slang, and the intonations he makes? What if he’s the answer to my discontentment?
