Strippers, Cactus, & Other Edibles III

Goat milk caramel and strawberries with whipped cream are common confections in Guanajuato. Yet, I’m introduced to these ordinary sweet things by an extraordinary sweet thing: a brown sugar and exotic dancer named Clementine. This girl doesn’t spend much time in the kitchen, but she could teach your grandmother some luscious ways to serve up desert. Here is how I get myself into an extremely sticky situation.

I meet her in a cantina just across the state line from my Queretaro ranch. The joint is located on a stretch of the Pan-American Highway that specializes in used cars and used women. Auto body parts and female body parts are available for sale here. Both local commodities have generally seen a lot of mileage, so I’m stunned when my fresh-faced, hard-bodied waitress begins dancing hypnotically and shedding clothes systematically.

Didn’t know it was that kind of bar. Still, I can’t honestly say I’d prefer tap or ballet. What beauty is there in this world to compare with the female form in motion? The finest high-performance automobile? Not even close. While this curvy supple woman - as naked and unashamed as Eve - makes love to the music, I further ponder the collocation of cars and hookers. Both cater to folks rushing to a destination rather than savoring an extended romantic journey. Both leave behind some wreckage.

Despite my anti-prostitution sentiments, the hair on my arms rises and the blood in my veins surges when the gorgeous redressed angel approaches. She tells me her name, chats me up about where I’m staying, then asks if I’d like to have the full Clementine experience. With a suggested minimum donation, of course.

The flesh is willing, but the spirit is too philosophical. I tell her, “It’s an honor to touch a woman of your caliber, but I’m addicted to that look in a woman’s eye that says you’re the one she really wants and you can’t put a price on that. No, thanks.”

I finish my food and beer then crash at my nearby hotel. At 3:00 am, there’s a doorknock. I drowsily stagger up in my underwear, only to be pushed back down on the bed by a voracious Clementine licking her lips and laughing knowingly.

Straddling my electrified pelvis, she shushes my mouth with one hand and pulls off her blouse with the other. I can’t believe this is really happening. She spoon feeds me strawberries and cream from the plastic cup the street vendors supply, occasionally biting half a strawberry from my lips with gusto.

Next comes the caramel. Grabbing a squeeze dispenser bottle from her purse, she chews off the conical end then drizzles the tasty nectar over her swollen breasts and nipples in a crisscross pattern worthy of a pastry chef – albeit a desperate, hurried pastry chef. She doesn’t have to beckon me twice to lick it off.

After I spend what seems like an eternity in caramel paradise, she decides that I’ve been to her mountain tops long enough. Now she’ll go to my promised land. She wields the bottle with extreme prejudice as a caramel squiggle winds its way over my chest and abs, back and forth but always lower and lower. Then her tender tongue begins tracing the recently-paved highway to heaven.

People who don’t get the food/sex connection don’t fully appreciate the glory of edibles. In keeping with my plan to compose this narrative for a general readership, I must end the tale here. (Surely, we can all agree that this is a fine tail, a nice piece, and an elegant end.) Whatever I did (or didn’t do) in that hotel room, I did (or didn’t do) solely for the benefit of you the reader. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it – like caramel on a bedspread. Let me close this foodie journey with a heartfelt thanks to Miss Clementine and a heartfelt acknowledgement that whoever said a meal just isn’t complete without desert was a freakin’ genius.