Hungry men
I remember how years ago, sixteen years ago, A. looked at me in absolute terror and almost collapsed into a panic attack at the mere suggestion of using mushrooms as an ingredient in something. He said the smell alone would make him vomit. When he was a young boy, he said, his nan had once cooked them all mushrooms, and he had got it into his head that she was trying to poison them. I never mentioned them again.
I remember how a little more recently, ten years ago, I had a roast dinner with B. in The Hampton Arms, on Upper North Street in Brighton. I had just met him at the railway station. He had got back, bronzed, from a two-week holiday sailing around the Aegean sea, with his family, and his ex. I had texted him while walking to Brighton station saying that I might be a little late, because it was the day after my birthday, and there had been a big party, and I was very fragile. I actually wasn’t late to meet him at the station, but for the crime of potentially being late to meet him at the station, he barely spoke to me for the duration of the entire roast dinner, and stayed angry for days.
I remember how much longer ago, when I was a teenager, I was in a relationship with C. who was from Kalamazoo, in Michigan. This being his first time in England he was almost totally unfamiliar with English condiments. Often he would take something out of the fridge, or the cupboard, and stand in the kitchen with an intensely curious frown, slowly rotating the mystery object in front of his face, as if it was an out-of-place artefact, before whispering to it, quietly and full of awe: ‘What are you?’
I remember how D. would vanish from the table just as you brought dinner to it, so that he could run into the kitchen and obsessively pick at any leftovers in the pans with one fussy little finger. His own attempts to cook were intensely stressful, would involve rendering the kitchen a no-go area with a powerful psychological cordon — often for about twice the amount of time you’d expect — and they would also sometimes involve him suddenly shouting ‘I need some help in the kitchen’ before quite managerially describing the chaos you were being asked to rein in, in a tone of voice that implied it was anyone else’s fault, and possibly even yours.
I remember how E. used to work in catering, and had a great deal of knowledge and expertise when it came to laying on food for scores of people, but I have absolutely no memory of what he liked to eat, or even of whether he was any good at cooking. I do recall (and still adhere to) a bit of advice he gave me about egg. We were, once, walking down London Road, having a conversation about going vegetarian together for a short while. As we approached the fishmongers, it became a conversation about whether he had ever had a fresh smoked mackerel, straight from the ice. He hadn’t, so we bought one, took it home, and ate it in the sun in the garden. We didn’t go vegetarian.
I remember how many, many years ago, F. tried to make us scrambled eggs, the morning after the first night we spent together. He was so hungover that the look of the eggs as they congealed was too much for him, and he suddenly fled from the kitchen and darted into the bathroom. I was so hungover I could barely even remember how scrambled eggs were done, but between us we got there in the end. He’d plied me with vodka, and with pernod, the night before, in Village, on Wardour Street. We were fourteen — or maybe he was fifteen — but I was definitely fourteen — so I don’t know how we ever got away with that. It was fucking brilliant.
I remember how G. was probably, among all the men I’ve been with, the best with food. He’d worked in kitchens, so he knew what he was about; but he was the most fun to cook with, too. One of my most contented meals ever, although it did involve him, wasn’t one that he made, nor was it one that I made. It was on December 24th, 2018, when at the eleventh hour he decided to come back to Brighton, having been at home with his family, to spend Christmas with me instead. He did not demand that I met him at the station; we met in Trawlerman, that chippy in the middle of the North Laine, and we sat right at the back, and we each had a massive fish and chips, and a cup of tea, hiding out cosily from the cold and the dark, the night before Christmas. Our relationship had a miserable and stupid ending, but I put that one memory at the end of this list because, of these few, it’s the one that most cheers me up.
The ordering of these anecdotes about men A. through G. (well, two of them boys) was arbitrary, but in C.’s case, his name actually did start with C. I thought you ought to know that. I recommend writing little paragraphs about your memories of people and how they eat. It takes you away for a second.
This has been a mid-March HORSES NOISE. Hope you’re well!