CANNIBAL DREAMS

At first we were just roommates. He answered the ad I placed in the paper, and I chose him, as I might have chosen a dress for church: unremarkable, conservative, neat. He seemed to be all those things. He worked as an accountant, didn't smoke or drink excessively, and, unlike the other male applicants, didn't come on to me when I showed him my room.


One night, as we ate boxed spaghetti together and watched Casablanca, he said to me, “Have you ever eaten frog?”


I’d dissected a frog in tenth grade biology class, but I’d never eaten it. I regarded him suspiciously and after an abrupt silence, told him, “No.”


"Would you like to?" he wanted to know.


Another pause, after which I responded, "I’m not sure." It seemed a rather forward thing to ask, a strange and ambivalent question. Or maybe he was joking.


He was dead serious.


"There's a guy at the market who sells frog's legs," he went on, "and I bought some from him this morning. Would you like to try some? I'd love to share them with you."


Frog legs. Visions of bad Chinese buffets came to mind, as did the frogs in the window well screaming as they were attacked, torn at the neck, belly and eyes by a rabid shrew.


"I’m game,” I said. “I'll try some."


At the time I barely knew him well enough to remove his whites from the dryer; so it was strange to consider sharing delicacies with him. But there was something so sincere in his face and his voice, so innocent and inviting in his, "I'd love to share them with you."


When it came time to actually eat though, I was worried for a moment that I wouldn't be able to after all, that I would insult him, and worse, that I would reveal to him a weakness, a fear. But as I watched him savor every mouthful, chewing slowly with mute rapture, I couldn't resist, and took a tiny bite. It tasted like tender chicken thighs, cooked to perfection and basted in herbed butter sauce.


I mmmmd my approval without thinking, and he smiled at me, saying nothing and everything at once.


After that night exotic dining became a weekend routine for us: sweetbreads, rabbit pie Cornish hen, ostrich burgers, buffalo steak, squid, sea urchin, shark, raw oysters, Rocky Mountain Oysters, steamed mussels, escargot. Then of course there was the vegetable and fruit kingdom: artichoke, kohlrabi, blood oranges, plantain, guava, pomegranates, kumquat. We devoured it all, and I grew happier and more fearless with every new discovery.


I also learned a lot about him from his culinary crusades: "Tonight is sushi night," he would say, "because it reminds me of my stint as a DJ in Yokohama," or, "Try this jambalaya. I got the recipe from my landlady in Louisiana. She taught me voodoo hexes, too." Once, in the forest, as we picked wild mushrooms to eat with our freshly picked asparagus, he pointed to a patch of dainty flesh-colored fungi with round caps. "Those are magic mushrooms," he explained, "I tried them once."


Here was a guy who ironed his tee shirts and wore a tie to work, and he had partied at Mardi Gras and eaten magic mushrooms. I was intensely jealous of him then, and, of course, suddenly in love.


He watched "B" movies on late-night television one night, and showed me how to taste wine the next. He had a tattoo of a dragon on his shoulder and a Fishes of the Great Lakes poster on his bedroom wall, framed. More than that, however, he was entirely at ease with all his private contradictions, and those of the world at large.


Soon I began to obsess about him leaving. Not that he had said anything about moving out or moving away; but I knew it was inevitable that he desert me, just because there were still places he hadn't been. And one of those places, I reminded myself, was my bed. I would not let him go without, as he would say, sharing it with him. So I waited for an opportune weekend, bought an extra bottle of Shiraz for our supper, dabbed on some exotic perfume. Patchouli.


"Clara," he said to me after it was over, "I should tell you I'm already attached."


There was a picture of a pretty woman in a military uniform in his room. I had hoped it was his sister or his cousin, but had never asked, just in case I didn’t want to know the truth.


"That's fine," I lied.


That night, after he returned to his room, I dreamed I was having dinner alone. The meat was choice, delectable, tender and rich, with the flavor of wild game. I knew in the dream that I had cooked it, that I had even hunted the beast myself in the forest, but I could not remember what it was. Venison? Rabbit? Pheasant? Bear? I couldn't say. But I knew the sauce was made from magic mushrooms. Patchouli simmered in the damp heat, and I wondered if eating this flesh was a sacrilege. I thought that even if it was, it was the finest meal I'd ever had. Only when I woke did I realize I'd been feasting on him.


I've recently learned that some species of frogs are cannibals, and I haven't been able to touch them since.

c. Melissa K. Dalman-Furbush, 2004