The Cerebral Catalyst

There are a number of favorite foods of mine that Amy, my wife, doesn’t care for. Despite her affection for vegetables, mushrooms are one she won’t even touch. When we order Chinese food, she orders chicken with vegetables and always says, "No mushrooms," but, inevitably, some usually appear in her dinner, and I tell her we’re going to have to start cutting off fingers for every one of these fungi we find.

She will also not eat seafood. She tried some lobster once when she had one murdered for my birthday dinner. She nearly vomited, and, luckily, had planned a surf ‘n turf so she could eat something. Then we had a Valentine’s dinner at this restaurant called The Bootlegger. She ordered some kind of chicken dish, and I had the Seafood Catizone. Some people refer to something they’ve eaten as being, "to die for," which is stupid, but, I’ll tell you, I’d go as far as to say this dinner was maybe, "to get a slight paper cut for." It was that good.

But Amy wouldn’t kiss me afterwards because the smell of the seafood disgusted her so. It’s nice to know there are certain foods that will render you unkissable to your soul mate. She keeps telling me I need to quit drinking coffee. When she was a kid she hated kissing her father when he had coffee breath. She says our children won’t want to kiss me in the mornings if my breath reeks of java. Well, good. The bastards.

But there’s a new kid in town when it comes to foods that make me the Elephant Man to my own wife. I’ve been forbidden to eat onions. Amy, never a lover of fast food hamburgers, recently discovered the deliciousness of a Burger King burger. I asked her, "Why do you think he’s the King? Because of some delusion of grandeur? No, because he’s the King Friday the XIII of Burgerland, and you’re Miss Henrietta Pussycat. Now, kiss me."

But she wouldn’t. I had already started belching from my Whopper, the most fantastic of the fast food burgers. The problem is a Whopper belch, particularly the onion aspect of it, is tantamount to germ warfare to Amy. And, as these belches are likely to continue for hours, unhindered by a vigorous teeth and tongue brushing, she started demanding that the phrase, "Hold the onions," be spoken as long as BK says you can, "Have it your way."

Then, last night really became D-Day in terms of onion breath. Amy called me as I was driving home, listening to Paul Revere and the Raiders' Greatest Hits (And, as a side note, if there’s a more underrated rock band in the history of American music, I certainly don’t know of them). Amy was stopping for subs. You may call them hoagies, grinders, or what have you. They’ve always been submarine sandwiches to me, mister, and also to a little company called Subway, thank you.

I told Amy I would love an Italian sub with lettuce, tomatoes, and, yes, onions. That kind of slipped by her.

So, after much anticipation, I got a hold of this Italian sub. Soon the belches started flying. You would have thought Amy was a CSI at a gruesome crime scene the way she was covering her nose. Every belch was like a stink bomb, an attacking skunk I catapulted towards her in the heat of battle.

"No more onions for you!" she exclaimed.

"But I like onions," I replied.

"Too bad," she said. "You stink!" And she extended the pronunciation: "Steeeeeeeeenk!"

And the belches kept coming. I couldn’t help it. So Amy demanded I move from the couch to the chair across the room. After a couple of minutes she said I could come back if I was done belching, but I wasn’t.

An hour or so later Amy came down the stairs while I was in the kitchen eating an onion like an apple, all teary-eyed, like George Costanza without his glasses.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she said, laughing, but completely disgusted.

"Oh, just kiss me," I said, walking towards her as she ran away from me. I then turned back into the kitchen. I could hear Amy walking back too, so I put a big chunk of onion in my mouth like Don Corleone did the orange in The Godfather right before he died. I turned around and roared at her, and she freaked out. She’s so easily scared. She screamed like a girl and started hitting me, and it occurred to me she’d be absolutely no help in a fight.

After seven Tic-Tacs, three sticks of Double Mint, two Listerine rinses, and a full five minutes of brushing with a lethal combination of Colgate and Crest, I hopped into bed with Amy, singing the Beatles, "Glass Onion," all the way, and went to kiss her. She said she could still smell the onion on my breath. I grabbed my pillow and went to sleep on the couch.

"No, no," she said. "Let’s just go to sleep."

The next morning I awoke and prepared for my day. While Amy still slept, I showered, got dressed and made some coffee. When the coffee was ready, as I usually do, because I’m such a great husband, I went up to sit on the side of the bed to have my breakfast with my wife, this time singing "Cheese and Onions," from Eric Idle’s Beatles parody film, The Rutles. Amy always appreciates my sitting with her, even though she’s usually half asleep when it happens.

I had my cereal and my coffee, and Amy began to stir.

"Do you still smell like onion?" she asked me.

"No," I said. "Just Fruit Loops and Maxwell House."

"Good," she said.

I then ripped the biggest, loudest fart I probably could have, and Amy cried, "Ew!" and hid herself under the blankets.

I drove to work thinking how lucky I am that she loves me.

______________________________________
Michael Frissore’s short prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Monkeybicycle, Flak Magazine, decomP, The Scruffy Dog Review and elsewhere. He grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife.

posted 04.29.08.

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