“Stop licking me you knob!
You just sucked on a stick of butter like it was a popsicle and now me!
Can’t you see I have a second degree sunburn – adding a buttery topping will only encourage the burn deeper under my skin!
I can’t believe you keep a mini-fridge in your janitors closet filled with sticks of butter and lemonade.
What kind of freak show are you running here?”
He could hear her speaking expletives at him but he couldn’t resist – he had a thing, a tantalizing taste for sweaty, sunscreen-coated shoulders – especially warm ones baked under the hot sun.
The school where he worked hadn’t received any government funding in over six years – he ran the school store, first aid office, and café out of his janitor’s closet.
The one thing he couldn’t keep contained in his closet though was his outlandish and highly inappropriate tastes – like a craving, an insatiable craving a pregnant woman might have – for pickles dipped in chocolate – or ice cream sprinkled with dirt.
His tastes were more personal though, like – attached to a person. Crispy chicken shoulders of a sun-baked lady – sweaty eyebrows and any collection of all sorts of things ground up under fingernails – hot sauce after gardening was in his top three for texture, flavour, and means of extraction.
He was lucky he had found her. Online – of course – an unpaid site where anything and everything can be found. He had first seen her on plenty-of-fish – but knew she would make a great companion after the response he received to his craigslist ad.
It read, “Very male custodian with strong jaw looking for very female to participate in precarious palate-teasers of unknown and likely never-before-tried combinations. Please reply with your favourite flavours only.”
Her response,
” 1 – Twisted chameleon candies coated in cheese whiz and stardust.
2 – Scalloped potatoes left in the sun with a dash of marmite.
3 – Roasted snails, roast squash, and uncooked baby carrots.”
They met after work one day at the local market that sold odds and ends and out-of-the-box treats.
Chocolate-covered crickets and raw octopus tentacles on sticks.
There was a station where you could dunk frozen condiments in an array of dustings.
Her favourite of the day was a ketchup popsicle in seagrass flakes.
where rivers are born 