Aphrodisiac

Welcome to 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤, a special edition of The Nightlife Review created with Cake Zine, a literary food magazine exploring society through sweets in print (and occasionally online).

Today’s dispatch is a piece of fan fiction by Puloma Ghosh.

I routinely slipped off my shell for the cameras, to remind everyone that I was only chocolate underneath, entirely edible. Men found it striking, a revelation, even though we all knew Red, Yellow, and Orange were the same.

I liked it. While Brown went to work, Orange wore silly disguises, Yellow delivered stupid lines, and Red made a spectacle of himself, I drove a convertible, scarf trailing. I sipped an elaborate drink by the pool, legs draped over the side of a lounge chair. They gave me stilettos to strut around beautiful houses, showered with petals of mint, dribbles of molten chocolate everywhere. I rolled around in satin sheets. The others were my accessories, there to stare dumbly as I arched my back and stretched my legs into the air.

The more I performed, the more people clamored for green, green. They wanted whole handfuls, fed to each other until their clothes came off. Valentine’s Day, 2008, they primped me up for television interviews. Forget pink and red, they were selling whole bags of just green. I transcended myself, became mythical before the lens. Green was “love and fertility,” the story of femininity that existed before I did. I said those words over and over, then winked, stuck to the script. “It doesn’t hurt that I look so good in these white hot go-go boots.” A shimmy, a shake. “Just look at me, baby.”

Flirtatious emerald-colored sweet seductress. The ultimate aphrodisiac. The anchor men and women cooed at me from their desks, and all I could look at were their pearly teeth. I crawled on the beach for them. I splashed my boots through sea water and posed with my arms in the air. I undulated under colored lights and slid down a pole, pulled the zipper to yank off the green, reveal the sweet center. Put me in your mouth, I begged, and they did.

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One morning I woke up to find my heels replaced with sneakers. I thought maybe there had been a mistake, that they gave me Red’s shoes by accident. They looked about the same—blunt, flat, laced. But they fit my feet like they were made for me. I took some experimental paces. They were more comfortable, sure, but each step was soundless, like I should make no impression. I twirled the dial on my little green phone and called up The Powers That Be to ask for my old shoes back.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” TPTB sighed through the receiver. “It’s just not right, how you’ve been acting so far.”

“I don’t understand.” I stared at my bare calves, grotesquely exposed.

“The consumers don’t want to see women reduced to that image anymore.”

I didn’t know how they could call my work a reduction. I had acted right. Perfectly, even. From the first day they raised my chin and placed each eyelash, plumped my lips with green gloss. They told me I was different from the others. Good enough to eat. They gave me my boots, white, jeweled buckle. I pulled them on and felt like more than I was. They told me, all you have to do is walk down that street and the men will do the rest. The world will open for you. I set those feet down one step after another, the satisfying clack of white heel on concrete and all around me, eyes turned. Yes. That had its own power.

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