welcome to wet appetites
a newsletter about food and sex
Disclaimer for former subscribers to my Repro/Recommendations newsletter: Hello! I’ve done a very Aries thing which is to start a project, abandon it, then return to it a year and a half later having taken a sharp left. I am on a new platform, with a new subject, but I hope you’ll stay with me. If not, unsubscribing is easy and will only minimally bruise my ego! I promise never to bring it up if we hang out.
My first understanding of the word orgy was that it was a giant party where people ate cheese. And not only did they eat cheese, but should someone lose their piece of bread in the massive fondue vat, they would be punished by flogging, much to the glee of the other orgy-goers. I was probably 9 and my mom was reading me the Adventures of Asterix in Switzerland, a French comic book series from the 1960s. Meant for children, the dairy-laden orgy scenes were a little wink to the adults in the room who knew, of course, that food and sex go together like gooey cheese and red wine, like sex toys and lube…you get it. It wasn’t until much later that my understanding was corrected — and by that time my neural pathways had made the link between food and sex a thousand and one other times. The pairing is ubiquitous in art, advertising, and, it does not feel too grandiose to say, modern American life.
As much as I’d like to, I can’t fully credit Asterix for my interest in food and sexuality. I grew up with a family whose “food-first” approach to life continues to be my default. We plan our next meal before our plates are clean. And in my adult life, working in the field of sexual and reproductive health has made me more comfortable than perhaps some would like with sex as a subject of open discussion. I’ve also been embracing my own queerness more fully than I ever have before over the past few years— and while queerness and sex shouldn’t necessarily be conflated, exploring and embracing my own sexuality and unpacking parts of my more closeted past has put sex and identity in the front of my brain more so than usual.
To answer your question, YES, I’m fun at dinner parties! But maybe none of this feels particularly unique. At least for those who identify as allosexual (as opposed to asexual), having an appetite, both for food and sex, is intrinsically part of the human experience. We like to snack and we like to fuck! But while the connection is logical, it also feels mysterious — and somewhat taboo. Sexuality as an academic topic tends to be treated as a punchline — which like, fine! Sometimes sex is sometimes funny!! I am not beyond a crude joke. But I’d encourage us to also think about it as INTERESTING. Sexuality and food have been huge influences on the shaping of our culture, history, and identities — both separately and as combined forces. And that seems worth exploring a little… deeper ;)
So what is it about food, exactly, that’s sexy? And more specifically, what makes certain foods sexier than others? Is it the way someone eats their pasta so that the sauce and the noodles glide into their mouths just so? Is it foods packed with allegedly libido-inducing nutrients, like chocolate or oysters? Is it the way a halved stone fruit opaquely reminds us of genitalia?
Of course, taste in both food and what’s ~hot~ is in the eye of the beholder — and has changed through time and across cultures. But how do the powers that be determine what foods are seen as sexy? And how does that change when we bring queerness or a more fluid understanding of gender into the picture?
WITHOUT further ado…. welcome to Wet Appetites — a newsletter about food and sex where we’ll explore all this and more. Grab your juiciest snack and some protection (a napkin tucked into your shirt) and join me.
(you can also follow along on Instagram)
The Peach
Where to start? The peach. It’s in season, and that’s sexy!! Whom amongst us has not noticed the soft buttock of the peach, whom amongst us has not licked its juices from our chin on a balmy summer afternoon………………………….
Okay sure, peaches have their fair share of wholesome connotations — peach pie, the Japanese folkloric tale Momotaro about a hero born from a peach etc. But also, peaches are undeniably...hot. The list of not-so-wholesome connotations, and dare I say, explicit connotations, came much more swiftly to mind — Peaches n Cream, the famous scene from Call Me By Your Name where Elio eats that cummy peach, my favorite new fact which is that only 7% of texts containing the peach emoji are about the fruit, and the rest are about butt stuff. Even sweetgreen, the salad chain I hate to love, posted this very erotique peach on IG. But I suspect that none of us are born with a horny-for-peaches gene. Instead, these associations have come from centuries (millennia, even) of peaches acting as erotic symbols for people of all genders, with a special abundance in queer history.
The oldest peach stones unearthed to date were found near the lower Yangtze River valley in eastern China in the remnants of Neolithic villages that existed around 6000–5000 B.C. The peach made its way to Persia and eventually is said to have been brought to Europe by Alexander the Great. The Romans, not knowing of their Chinese origins, called them malum persicum, meaning "Persian apple.” Down the line a couple centuries, Spanish conquistadors apparently took a liking to peaches (... although what kind of liking, JSTOR could not tell me) and took them to the Americas, specifically the American South where the peach thrived, eventually becoming a major symbol of the region. Unfortunately, its ultimate arrival in the South means that the history of the peach is not unscathed by its link to slavery — but that’s for a different newsletter.
But backing it up (lol), the first nasty peach story I have to tell you is indeed from its original homeland. Third century Chinese legal philosopher Han Fei wrote a somewhat foreboding tale about a man named Mizi Xia who worked in the court of Duke Ling of Wei. In some versions of the story, they are explicitly lovers, but in others their relationship contains but mere homoerotic undertones. Either way, Mizi Xia is rumored to have been both very attractive and “highly favored,” by the Duke — so much so that he allowed Mizi Xia to get away with things that for others would carry the unenviable punishment of having their feet cut off. One day, Mizi Xia was taking a walk with the Duke when he found an especially ripe and delicious peach. After taking a bite, he handed it to the Duke who saw it as a gesture of love, as Mizi Xia had forgotten his own hunger in order to feed the Duke (my therapist might call this codependence but who are we to question ancient peach love). Unfortunately, in the end, the Duke loses interest in Mizi Xia and turns against him, the moral being that rulers are fickle and can’t be trusted — but the story was interpreted by many to be a tale of same-sex attraction. The terms “bitten peach,” and to “share a peach” eventually became euphemisms for gay male attraction and gay sex, and is the namesake for UK-based Pan-Asian queer cabaret collective, The Bitten Peach.
Meanwhile, by the time the peach was making the rounds in Europe, it was being assessed as an aphrodisiac. Albert Magnus, an medieval herbalist believed that peaches could “increaseth intercourse,” and a German translation of a medieval Latin text called Das Buch der Natur (a very fun one to say in your worst German accent) also claimed that peaches were particularly useful for men who were having a hard time getting laid.
Fast forward a few centuries, and the peach became a centerpiece of transgressive art. While religious conservatism still gripped Rome after the Reformation, cultural movements were beginning to experiment with the secular. Renaissance artists revelled in eroticized still life paintings and cheeky (...) wordplay. Painters such as Raphael, Caravaggio, and Vincenzo Campi all featured fruit, and specifically, the peach, in their work as thinly veiled euphemisms. Caravaggio was especially horny for fruit. According to academic John John L. Varriano, nearly every piece of fruit in Caravaggio’s work “suggests sexual tumescence or receptiveness to penetration.” Much has been speculated about Caravaggio’s sexuality, both because of who he may have slept with, but also the homoerotic undertones of his work, which are filled with young, muscular men serving bedroom eyes that would put Troy Sivan to shame.
But even without young hotties in the frame, Caravaggio gets salacious with his produce. His painting, “Still Life on a Ledge” is considered to be a prime example of raunchy Baroque art. While my layman’s eyes see a simple cornucopia, the painting is apparently overtly sexual when interpreted by art historians, who seem on the whole to be hot and bothered by the ripe, bursting fruit, the phallic gourds, and, as so delicately put by one of Caravaggio’s biographers, the “peaches staked on top of the basket [which] bear an uncanny resemblance to dimpled derrières.”
Even the word “peach,” in this particular era of Italy seems to have implied queerness —or at least, sodomy. A 16th century Italian dictionary contained two definitions for peach, or pesca: the fruit and “a young man’s bum.” The phrase “dare le pesche” (“to give peaches”) also appears, meaning “to give one’s taile, to consent to buggerie.” Consent to buggerie indeed!!!
This insight becomes especially helpful in the reading of Francesco Berni’s delightful poem dedicated to the peach from 1522:
Oh fruit blessed above all others
Good before, in the middle, and after the meal
But perfect behind.
In conclusion, peaches are sexy — but why? It seems decisively unsexy to create a rubric of sexiness, but let’s just SAY I were to do so… for the sake of a thesis…... the peach meets all the criteria. It’s an arousing symbol within certain contexts (see Mizi Xia and Call Me By Your Name), it’s an accredited ancient aphrodisiac, and its voluptuous looks have inspired poets and painters alike — and it’s gay as hell. Can the peach be outdone? Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, here’s a slightly adapted version of the sexiest peach recipe I could find, and obviously it’s by Martha Stewart. I made this with Prosecco but you could also do a non alcoholic version if that’s more your jam.
Grilled Peaches with Prosecco Sabayon
Ingredients
5 large egg yolks
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup Prosecco
3/4 cup heavy cream, chilled
2 peaches, halved and pitted
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 teaspoons light-brown sugar
Directions
Step 1
Heat grill or grill pan. Prepare an ice bath; set aside.
Make the sabayon: Combine yolks, sugar, Prosecco in a large heat proof-bowl set over a large pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly until mixture is very thick and has expanded in volume, about 7 minutes. Place bowl in ice bath; let cool completely.
Step 2
Place cream in a large bowl, and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold whipped cream into egg-yolk mixture. Cover with plastic wrap, and place in refrigerator at least 20 minutes.
Step 3
Line grill or pan with heavy-duty foil (or, for more pronounced grill marks, don’t.) Brush peaches with butter; sprinkle with brown sugar. Grill cut side down until peaches are tender and sugar is caramelized, 6 to 7 minutes. Divide sabayon among four dishes, and top each with a peach half. Serve.