Lust Life: Sex in the Kitchen

| 11 Nov 2014 | 01:38

    He lifted me up onto the kitchen counter and dove right into my pie. He must’ve been hungry, because his mouth was full for a long time. So consumed was he with pie that he barely spoke. I just sat there with my legs dangling off the counter, having the time of my life watching him devour my dessert (when I wasn’t imagining other recipes with my eyes closed). Some people think eating off the kitchen counter is uncouth, but have they ever tried it? Granted, I never actually ate off a counter in the way my lover did the other day, but when I served him a meal this way, I was amazed at how satisfying it was. No dishes, no utensils, no frills—just food at its most basic, hunger at its most primal. Although I didn’t have dinner until later, it was such a pleasure to cook, not once, but three times, as he enjoyed my special dish.

    I could go on writing about sex without mentioning sex, but instead I shall explain why the kitchen is the perfect metaphor for lust and everything it inspires. When we cook, the kitchen gets hot, as do we. We add spice to make the food more palatable and interesting. We enjoy tossing salads and playing with teabags. We turn on the oven, and when it’s hot enough, we put something inside…don’t forget the sauce and the cream. Eat me, please! The kitchen is the bedroom of delicious desires.

    You see, the modern sexicon owes a lot to the kitchen. The lyrics of an old Broadway tune come to mind: Cause I can bake, too, on top of the lot/My oven’s the hottest you’ll find./ Yes, I can roast too/My chickens just ooze, My gravy will lose you your mind…(“I Can Cook Too” from On the Town). Ethel Waters jazzed up the metaphor in the blues song “My Handy Man”: Why he shakes my ashes, greases my griddle, churns my butter and strokes my fiddle…And R&B star R. Kelly couldn’t be more direct in his song “Sex in the Kitchen”: Sex in the kitchen over by the stove/Put you on the counter by the buttered rolls/Hands on the table, on your tippy toes/We’ll be making love like the restaurant was closed.

    Hmm…buttered rolls. Chocolate. Oysters. Aphrodisiac foods are prepared in the kitchen, not the bedroom. Not only is cooking a wonderful way to be generous with someone (as long as you don’t give your spouse/lover/date food poisoning), it can also be a form of foreplay—an appetizer before the main course. But be careful: Sex while cooking in the kitchen could be messier than sex itself, not to mention dangerous if you’re caught in a moment of passion and forget to turn off the stove. Maybe that’s part of the thrill. The kitchen is not made for sex; that’s one reason why people love doing it there. The hard surfaces complement raw lust. You can even get creative with the utensils. Vegetables too have uses beyond eating.

    Ah yes, the trusted cucumber—when women were stuck in the kitchen, they must’ve had some fun. How else could they have greeted their men with big smiles day after day? Before feminism opened doors for women to have lives outside of the home, husbands were used to seeing their wives standing at the sink with their sleeves rolled up, or in front of the stove, sweat dripping down their cleavage. All a man had to do was lift up the woman’s dress and…As for the rich, spoiled wives who hardly set foot in the kitchen, they had the ripe maids and nannies to contend with—the saucy girls who did more than keep house and take care of the children. Domestic roles are even more erotic in our modern world, now that they’re not so strictly defined. (Note: gay man in a French maid costume).

    I never had sex in a kitchen before my recent one-man pie-eating contest. Fooled around, yes. Simulated it in a film, yes. Cooked in lingerie, yes. Although I’ve reveled in the metaphor, actual sex in the kitchen was never on the top of my list of kinky things to do. Sure, I had domestic fantasies, but sex in the kitchen seemed so cliché! It was too typical for my sophisticated palate, an over-ordered entrée on the marital menu of ways to spice up a stagnant sex life. The kitchen was a place for foreplay, but then when things heated up, to the living room or bedroom I went. But if you’ve never tried a dish, how do you know you won’t like it? Now I’ll never sit on a counter again without thinking of what decadent delicacies the kitchen may inspire.