In my silly little world, there are three standards of goodness in men: There are good men, there are great men, and there is Lloyd.
A good man will notice that the sink is getting a bit dish-heavy, and will do a bit of washing-up.
A great man will notice the sink is getting a bit dish-heavy, also notice that you are doing a bit of puttering around in the kitchen and baking cakes and whatnot, ask "will I be in your way if I do some dishes?", and do some washing-up.
Lloyd will notice that the sink is get dish-heavy, also notice that I am doing a bit of puttering around in the kitchen and baking cakes and whatnot, ask "will I be in your way if I do some dishes?", do some washing-up, return to the living room and announce in a matter-of-fact, not-at-all-self-congratulatory tone of voice: "Well, I have maintained my dominion over the sink. I have not achieved complete dominance over the sink, but I have maintained my dominion", and then put on the new New Pornographers album for our listening pleasure.
I'm still asking myself what I did in a past life to get him in this one, because I surely never did anything in this life to warrant such a prize.
(Lloyd, if you're reading this, I can already tell what you're thinking. Just take the compliment, already, and please get that look off your face before it freezes that way.)
Dear friends, I thought that I would only need a day or two to decompress from the Big Project at LuthorCorp, but it appears it will take me a bit longer than I thought. Luckily, there is good news to be had. Those of you who visit here regularly know that 'mouse is a good friend, to me, to PTMYB, to blogs various and sundry, and to the people who feed and water them. I have been proud to call 'mouse a friend for three years, and in much of that time, I, along with several other friends, have encouraged him to blog. We have sweet-talked, cajoled, wheedled, threatened, offered baked goods, expensive alcohols and unguents, sexual favors; you name it, we have offered it, and still 'mouse demurred prettily, agreeing only to guestblog for anyone who would have him do so. Finally, the wily-yet-goodhearted Keith, keeper of Word Shadows and Scrine, took matters into his own hands and built 'mouse a blog without his knowledge or consent. Bwahahahaha. We think 'mouse is still getting over the shock, so while he gets acclimated to his new authorly status, I will share with you one of his finest moments, his reverie on Thai mangoes, "Strange Fruit," which originally appeared here on June 30, 2004, while I was frittering my days away in Arkansas, writing about eggs. A warning: Be sure to crank your air conditioning and keep the fans running while you read this. You'll need them.
Without further ado, leave us turn the floor over to 'mouse...
(Let me just get the apology for the title out of the way up front)
Once upon a time, a much younger, less adventuresome and painfully shy 'mouse (one you'd hardly recognize today) set off in a pea green boat (okay it was a silver 747) from his North American homeland to the semi-tropical island of Taiwan. He was there to learn some Chinese, expand his horizons, and, at least in his more exciting young dreams, sow a few wild oats.
As for what happened in the grains foodgroups, well, this is a family blog, so you're going to have to use your vivid imaginations. This post is about fruit. Strange fruit. Fruit that to a horny 20-year-old in the peak of his prime shocked young senses with a radical epiphany: Some fruit is BETTER THAN SEX!
You can shake your heads and say, "We know you 'mouse and we know how much you like sex and there ain't no way that's true." But I kid you not.
Taiwan is home to "cloud fruits" that are pear shaped and light and glow with a translucent whitish-pinkish-reddish blush that itself suggests the color of sex. They are full of sweet water that bursts over your tongue and cools you with the slightest hint of apple and pepper on the hottest tropical days. They're great. But at their very best they're a 75 on a scale where good-average sex is 100.
Taiwan has longans. They're good fresh. They're really interesting dried. Perhaps the closest analogy is a dried cranberry. Except they're sweet and nutty and rich. A plump raisin that's been to Fiji and packed in a ship of spices and sandlewood. Exotic and Asian and like licking your lover's salty skin but without the salt. In just the right mood, they can score an 80.
Lychees. Fresh from the tree, stored in the refrigerator just long enough to get icey cold. Peeled and eaten whole. A pure burst of refreshment. The softly feminine yin to the longan's yang. Sweet. Wet. Pure. Cold. A 16-year-old Hawaiian nymphette and her buff lover playing under a waterfall in one of those advertisements that look too perfect. 85 points on a good day.
Milk, honey and papaya create a drink that gives you hope in a world filled with bad news. Stopping in an air-conditioned streetside milk bar and looking out as college students walk by shiny and young and full of promise. Papaya wraps that up and preserves it with its red flesh. At the same time, it hints that it knows the wisdom of the ages. Papaya must come from Egypt. It smells of Cleopatra and the pharaohs. But it never scores more than 88, even with honey and milk.
Then there is the slightly spicy, woody pleasure of the two different types of guava they have in Taiwan. "Thai" style are big and crunchy and I grew to enjoy them. I know people who swear by them, but I can't say that even the best guava ever rated better than a golden delicious apple and that's only a 50. Kind of like when your lover nuzzles those soft, fine hairs on your neck just back below your right ear.
But then there is the fruit that does it all. Huge. Red and gold. Royal colors. The skin warm from the sun. Yielding yet firm, like a young breast, budding with potential. Yes, I'm talking about the famous Thai mango. After several weeks wondering if they were worth the outrageous price of $1.50 which was more than the cost of most of my student-budget meals, after feeling them up at the fruit stand and smelling their promise, I was ready to try.
I took my lover back to my room. Luckily my roommate was out so we would have complete privacy and there would be no embarrassment and no sharing of our special moment. I smell her deeply. I look at her shape. I rub her flesh against my cheek. Closing my eyes, I feel the smoothness of her glowing orb. As I open her up, her juices begin to flow. I lick them from my fingers. Again, my eyes close involuntarily. This is going to be hot. It's going to be messy. I spread a bathtowel on my desk and turn the fan up. I take my shirt off. I lock the door.
I bury my face in her moistness. Juice runs down my chin. I savor every bite. Melting in my mouth. Sunshine yellow made soft flesh. Sweetness with a hint of acidity but no sourness. No tartness. Buttery perfection on my tongue. I can't stop. Oral orgasm. Repeated over and over. The only way a man can understand that shuddering, wonderful potentiality of multiplicity. 120 on a scale of 100. Eyes closed. Senses focused. One with the universal truth. Sated.
And then I took a cold shower and promised myself one the next day. And the next. And the next. The summer passed way too quickly.
Years later I made a quick business trip to Taiwan and discovered they were still as stunning as I remembered. (Checking the calendar to be sure the statute of limitations has expired...) I even smuggled one back to the States to share the experience with my lover. Risk of a $10,000 fine and jail time. Worth it. The things we do for love. For mangoes.
I'd tell you about the Rainier cherries here in Washington which have just come into season but then I'd have to get excited all over again. Let's just say that on a good day in the right mood they'll score a 97. But I'm an adventuresome adult now. Why keep fruit and sex separate? Perhaps together there are yet-unreached heights of pleasure to be shared.
One of the dangers of having a day job in New York is that if one is not careful, one can find one's expectations seriously skewed. Unless you are a completely healthy and self-actualized individual -- in which case, I don't want to know you -- it is difficult, if not impossible, to look around you and suddenly find your manner of living completely ridiculous. You might be the most nonconformist, struggling artist in your cubicle block, banging the ten-key punch on your keyboard as you input incomprehensible data into an unreadable spreadsheet as part of the wretched temp job you are working until your band signs a deal with Big Recording Behemoth Music, or you find an agent willing to shop your novel around, or you can finally afford to go to grad school, knowing that it's just a day job, food and rent, nothing more. Then you'll overhear a pair of bigs in the elevator chatting about their Lexuses (Lexi?), or about how they're getting killed on school taxes this year, and if this keeps up they'll have to sell one of their other three properties, or how their co-op board has finally started getting estimates for the jacuzzi being built on the roof. You know that you don't really want any of this shit, and you know that even if you did, you would have to spend ridiculous hours doing things you hated to get them; still, if you have never felt like a feckless, overaged college student in the presence of these folks, than you are a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
It is obnoxious and unseemly behavior, and it's a surefire sign that it's time for me to stop fretting over frivolous trivia and get back to work on the book, or on the articles I am shopping around. Unfortunately, I am a champion at this unseemly and obnoxious behavior, and I am terrible at just stopping it by sheer force of will. I require, if you will, external forces.
Nowhere am I more prone to this sort of nonsense than when I fall into a conversation about real estate. Lloyd and I have lived in our apartment for 11 years. Never mind that this is a way of life in New York, that I have known people who have rented for much longer than that, and I don't consider it a moral failing on their part, that my mom's cousin was lucky enough to sign the lease on a rent-stabilized apartment in the late 1960's, when I was a wee bairn, and I don't see this as a sign that he refuses to grow up. (My mom's cousin is a lawyer in the New York State Attorney General's office; he is one of the smartest, most interesting, most principled men I know. This has nothing to do with tonight's post. I just wanted to brag on my cousin a bit. Hi, Ken!) Somehow, though, I have managed to exempt myself -- and Lloyd, the poor angel who doesn't deserve this -- from similar grace and forbearance. I come to work and hear my friends and coworkers talk about the extensions they're putting on their houses, or the houses they've just bought with an eye to extending one day. I realize that people my age have school-age children (which is a whole other issue in and of itself -- we are still dreaming of little Pugsleys and Wednesdays to call our own, and we are stubborn in the pursuit of them 
and portfolios outside of their 401(k)'s and equity. I am a worm, a wriggly worm, I think to myself, in the voice of Ed from Ed, Edd & Eddy.
Lloyd and I have a house's worth of stuff in three rooms. We should be looking for a bigger apartment like sane people, but we have a terrific landlord, the likes of which we'll never see in any other building in this city. "You don't know that," says my mom, reasonably. "You'll never know until you look." I am a genius at looking for houses outside of New York: Pittsburgh; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Snowballville, Colorado; even the Scottish Borders; but inside New York, I know better than that.
Saying goodnight to me, Lloyd trips over the power cord to my laptop, which stretches all the way across the living room. I have to find a way to make things better for him, I think. It's not fair to make him live like this.
The next morning we wake up, perform our regular squinty-eyed time-to-make-the-doughnuts ablutions as we do every morning, and get ready for another day of corporate day-job hilarity. Lloyd opens our apartment door, getting ready to leave. There is a white plastic grocery bag hanging from the doorknob. "I *thought* I heard someone up here last night," he says in a voice of happy surprise.
Dear friends, this is why, as long as we are living in this city, we are not going anywhere. We do not have access to the backyard; only the landlord and landlady have that, and they use it for grilling, for sitting in the sun, and for planting a garden that kicks the smell of greenery into the air on stormy late-summer days. We can't go into the garden and pick a beefsteak tomato off the vine, but they can, and they can pick some extra, and they can put them into a grocery bag and leave them at our door. They can -- and do -- also pick peppers, both bell peppers and pepperoncini; they have picked stringbeans for us, and one year they gave us a cluster of Concord grapes straight from the trellis, for this is a neighborhood of winemakers, and my landlord is no exception. Maybe there is another landlord who would share his garden with us like this, but such landlords are few and far between. Besides, one of the prettiest sounds I know is that of our landlady, no slouch of a cook herself, gasping happily as I bring down a jar of cherry-almond jam, or string bean pickles, or a plum kuchen or a chocolate-cherry-marzipan torte, saying, "ohhh, did you make this?" as if I had brought it back from Peck in Milan. From this vantage point, or from the point I found myself tonight, as I seared a pair of New York strip steaks in the cast-iron ridged grill pan on the stove, boiled half a pound of spaghetti together with some baby peas, sliced the steaks and three of those bright red tomatoes, put everything into a bowl and dressed it with a buttermilk and herb dressing and stared at all that red and green in one big gorgeous bowl until I thought I would never stop smiling, from here, I know that we are not feckless, or stupid, or careless. We are lucky.
