No. 2
March 2005
Firefly Journal
Because the End Times Never End and Everything is Still Possible

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Spider Eating Bee Photo by Josh Morsell and Brendan McGuigan

HOT MUSTARD

by S.E. Smith

M y first serious girlfriend and my fourth grade best friend’s mother had one thing in common—both could sexualize the making of a sandwich so throughly that it probably scarred me for life.

Cindy Lou Bishop was a career PTA mom who took making sandwiches as serious business. Little Randall Bishop would bring home a bevy of noisy, dirty friends and Cindy Lou would peg our sandwich needs faster than a prostitute scoping out a john. This assesment may not have been too far from the truth—in seventh grade, the explorational call to a phone sex hotline turned up Cindy Lou’s sultry voice saying “hello,” exactly like it had for years when I called looking for Randall.

Cindy Lou specialized in the industrial strength, whitebread sandwich. Wonderbread, mayonnaise, electric yellow mustard, slab of iceberg, coldcuts. But something about the way she lovingly assembled those sandwiches left us in thrall as we stood around the kitchen. She would lovingly slice up tomatoes with a knife so sharp you could split a hair on it. Slowly she would open that mayonaise jar and sensuously she would slither a butter-knife over a slice of bread. Painstakingly, she would dismember the cold-cuts and pick the best one for your personal sandwich, with a long and loving look in your direction to remind you that this choice was made for you, and you alone. Finally, and with a hint of savagery, she would slice the sandwich in half and present it on her Fiestaware with a little toothpick in the middle of one side.

I met Anne my freshman year in college in a seminar on how to conduct good research. She was an older student, probably a pet of the instructor, who had spent a semester in San Francisco studying child prostitution. She came in to talk about the ethics of research, and I somehow landed a date with her.

After an abysmal movie, we repaired to her apartment for the uncomfortable coffee, tea, or me exchange. When we were done, she made me a sandwich. This was a genuine, pure, hippy dippy sandwich. Anne couldn’t cook much else, but she could make a mean avocado and hummus on rye. After Mrs. Bishop, sandwich making had progressed to such a point for me that the mere opening of a mustard jar sent thrills through my lower half. Ultimately, this doomed our relationship, but those first few nights it made for some fantastic sex.

You know those people, they call them “sploshers”? That’s what I was, a splosher, except I didn’t want to smear myself and partner with food, I just wanted to watch my girlfriend make a sandwich and then peg her in the ass right as she was plating it.