“Belgian Beer is Best.”
This time the slogan had been
scribbled on a slip of coffee-stained stationery and slid under Ania’s front
door. Lavazza. It had to be. It was the only brand of coffee Davin
drank. This month. He was so obsessive about his beverages. That’s what had
started the Belgian beer campaign in the first place.
Davin was
no food snob: he savored a Whopper as much as smoked salmon, if he was in the
mood for it. When it came to food, he was simply interested in exploring new
tastes, new textures, new versions of old favorites. That’s how he had
discovered the casual comfort of popcorn in tomato soup and the nostalgic
gratification of frozen HoHos and fruit-filled snack pies devoured right from
the freezer. But when it came to drinks, especially the potent potables, Davin
was on an unending quest for the best.
Of course,
the only way to determine the best is to try the rest. And Davin made it his
life’s work to try every alcoholic beverage ever made. This was a full time job
in itself. Not that Davin was an alcoholic. Or even that his desire was
insatiable. It was a matter of experimentation, evaluation, trial and error.
Davin’s
favorite explanation for his fixation was to quote Blake: “The road to excess
leads to the palace of wisdom.” Without excess of rum how would he have learned
that Black Seal was supreme and that Bacardi was better suited for mouthwash
than firewater? Without excess of agave, how would he have discovered that
mezcal was the finer cousin of tequila? So far, Lajita Mezcal had earned his
vote, but he would need to become familiar with more gusanos before the
next election. Unlike politicians, liquor didn’t lie.
In vino veritas: In wine there is
truth. Davin was seeking truth. The only problem was that falsehoods came in
too many enticing flavors: some tart, some sweet, some bold and sassy, some
cool, distant, and refreshing. Unable to part with the past, Davin’s solution
was to maintain a harem of hard liquor and a supply of wine concubines. When
looking for a new beauty, packaging was certainly a consideration: a shapely,
smooth bottle added to the allure, like lingerie on a mysterious woman. But a
virgin display was not enough. Davin was convinced that truth lies only in
experience, not in imagination. So he indulged in experience.
When I say, “Just looking,” I mean I am
searching, I have my “eye out” for something. Looking is hoping, desiring,
never just taking in light, never just merely collecting patterns and data.
Looking is possessing or the desire to possess—we eat food, we own objects, and
we “possess” bodies—and there is no looking without thoughts of using,
possessing, repossessing, owning, fixing, appropriating, keeping, remembering
and commemorating, cherishing, borrowing, and stealing. I cannot look at anything—any
object, any person—without the shadow of the thought of possessing that thing.
Those appetites don’t just accompany looking: they are looking itself.[1]
The only liquid Ania indulged in was
body lotion. She collected new fragrances like Davin collected new flavors:
Relaxing Anise, Stimulating Spice, Hot Toddy. Her latest acquisition was
Concupiscent Cucumber-Melon.
Ania was also seeking truth. The only
problem was that there were too many truths, too many interpretations. She
wanted intellectual anarchy, not an election. She found fulfillment in
formulations of fantasy and reality, in compositions of natural and artificial
ingredients, in emulsions of lanolin and FD&C Red No. 5.
It wasn’t really an argument. And it wasn’t
really about beer. It was about Ania’s refusal to participate in Davin’s
elections. The problem wasn’t that she questioned Davin’s obsession or his distribution
of superlatives. The problem was that she imagined.
She imagined that Davin was her lover.
Sometimes. Sometimes she imagined that he was her father. And her child. And
her friend. And her enemy.
Ania actually kissed him once. It happened
at the State Fair. They had literally been throwing money away, trying to land
dimes on glass saucers. It took Davin two hundred and forty two dimes, but he
finally won the fuzzy stuffed purple platypus.
Ania wanted it. She was fascinated by
platypuses, having read that male duckbills are the only poisonous mammals.
Ania imagined that they used their poison as an aphrodisiac, when it worked,
and as a tranquilizer when it didn’t. Davin offered to trade the platypus for a
kiss. So Ania kissed him once and realized that Davin was also a part of
herself. A part that petrified her.
Desire here is enacted as a
restlessness reversing the libidinal economy of ownership; instead of wanting
to possess or even “know” the other, we want to sustain the experiential
excitement of not knowing, the seductive wonder we feel at discovering that the
other is beyond us, unknown, inexhaustible.[2]
Ania actually kissed him once, but she
imagined kissing him a thousand different times. She imagined she kissed him
every time she found one of his notes, one of his not-so-subtle suggestions
that she experience more of life. She imagined long, wet kisses in the living
room where he slipped notes under the door; soft, stolen kisses outside, by the
mailbox, where he wasted paper and 20 cent stamps sending her postcards; hot,
breathy kisses in the laundry room where she found messages scrawled on used
dryer sheets; full-bodied full-body kisses in the bedroom where he hid notes
under her pillows. And after each imagined kiss she shredded Davin’s note and
swore under her breath.
Explanation
I open my eyes
sing out my secrets
and those dreams drown
in your eyes?
By keeping my silence
I cannot disappoint
and the dreamer never dies[3]
Davin rejected Ania’s explanation. Ania
continued to reject Davin’s intimations. Davin rejected Ania’s rejection and
continued on his quest for the perfect drink.
“You want that on the rocks?”
“No, Sir, I take mine neat.”
Davin couldn’t imagine how anyone could
dilute experience. Who would vitiate a shot of Oban with ice? He didn’t even indulge in mixed drinks
because he likened it to participating in an orgy. What might be gained in
pleasure is definitely lost in control. Davin wanted control, so he stuck with
serial monogamy.
Ania didn’t know how not to dilute
experience. When you can’t manage experience with your hands you manage it with
your imagination. What might be lost in pleasure is gained in control. Ania
wanted control, so she stuck with masturbation.
Irony is about contradictions that do not
resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding
incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true.[4]
[1] Elkins, James. The Object Stares
Back: On the Nature of Seeing. San Diego: Harvest, 1997.
[2] Davis and Schadle, “Alternative
Research Writing and the Academic Act of Seeking,” CCC 51.3 (2000): 422.
[3] Janice Carello. 1993.
[4] Haraway, Donna. Simians,
Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.
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