Eat Me: In Defense of Sex and Bacon

By Josey Vogels, My Messy Bedroom. Posted July 28, 2008.

Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.

I'm pretty sure she's never written a cookbook that includes a scene of a guy wanting a woman to rub a Baby Ruth chocolate bar all over her face while he masturbates.

It wasn't until Sarah Katherine Lewis heated up the Baby Ruth to facilitate the smearing that it dawned on her why her client was so insistent on Baby Ruths.

" ... his shit fixation was gross, sure," writes Lewis in Sex and Bacon, a series of smart, potent, and effin' funny essays that connect the dots between food, sex, and the body, "but no more terrible or degrading than any of the other contortions we went through to make our customers come. Frankly, I preferred getting paid to eat microwaved candy to pretending to finger-bang my own pussy through the cotton gusset of my thong."

A former sex trade worker and also former "fat girl," Lewis learned to love her body, not by starving it (that just kept her fat and hungry) but by feeding it full-fat, delicious food and well, by getting men off by rubbing Baby Ruths all over her face.

"The adult industry tells a lot of unforgivably ugly lies about women, female desire, and erotic love but in general it also taught me to walk with my back straight and my head up," writes Lewis."My big ass and thick thighs paid the rent for a score of years -- not because I was ashamed of them, but because I brazenly displayed them. And of course I wasn't to every customer's taste -- but that's where the egalitarianism of the industry comes in, because every girl is going to be attractive to a certain population of buyers if she simply allows them to admire her and reinforces that desire by demonstrating her own belief in herself. [ ... ] I'm not saying the industry isn't disgusting -- I'm saying it's equally disgusting, that it's an Equal Opportunity Employer of Filth."

As Lewis herself writes, she despises "bullshit pro-adult industry 'sex positive' rah-rahism" but admits "it's hard to hate your own body when it has become your best friend and strongest ally in your pursuit of a livable wage."

Her life as a sex worker is in stark contrast to the sterile office environment where she later finds herself when she takes a cubicle job as a corporate writer where bodies are concealed, and no one appears to have assholes or farts and, "For the first time in my professional life, my coworkers are unaware of whether I have pubic hair or not."

In between the stories of Baby Ruth turds and concealed office assholes are lovely musings on the body and food, from the bizarre practice of eating sushi off of naked bodies to why Lewis would rather shove fresh strawberries into her mouth than into her "coochie."

It may be hard to imagine how an essay about how a guy was willing to pay $150 to drink your pee out of Dixie Cup (until he insisted on bringing his own wine glass) can sit next to a recipe for wicked spaghetti sauce or berry cobbler, but Lewis makes it work beautifully and seamlessly, seducing you with her finger-licking good fried chicken and her tales of trysts with smoky, leather-jacketed lesbians.

Her recipes, like the body, are messy forgiving and delicious full of "glugs" of this or however much you want of that.

She has little tolerance for vegetarians. "No matter how earnestly you tell yourself that meat-free soy patties are "better than the real thing." Ha! Sure -- like a punch in the face from a surly political vegan is better than getting tongue-kissed by your own sweet lover."

Her love of meat comes to a head in her essay "The Bacon Quotient." Tired of the measly three or four strips of bacon often served with breakfast, Lewis conducts her own experiment to discover The Bacon Quotient or BQ. Three pounds, as it turns out. Though she cooked up a fourth just to be sure. "I didn't want to be mistaken -- to think that I'd reached the BQ, only to realize an hour later that I'd been premature."

By the end of the collection, one is left with not only an immense appetite but also a refreshing perspective on the absurd relationships we have with our bodies both individually and collectively. Writes Lewis: "What if we didn't have to whore our bodies to discover their value? What if we just knew our bodies deserved love and care? What if we woke up feeling beautiful and treated ourselves like beautiful creatures all day long and woke up the next morning and did it again? How would our lives be different?"

Well, sadly, we probably wouldn't have Sarah Katherine Lewis' wonderful and thought-provoking essays to amuse us. But, the trade-off might be worth it. Maybe.

See more stories tagged with: sex, gender, food, sex work, bodies

Josey Vogels is the author of the nationally syndicated relationships column My Messy Bedroom and the dating advice column Dating Girl.

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