Chocolate is God's way of reminding men how
inadequate they are. I am vividly confronted with this fact every time my wife
and I go out to a restaurant. When it gets to dessert, my wife usually
orders the most chocolate-saturated dessert possible: It's the one
Double-Fudge Chocolate Mudslide Explosion" or some such thing. I
always wonder why anyone would want to eat anything that promises a
catastrophic natural disaster in your mouth. The dark brown
monstrosity arrives at the table, and my wife takes the first bite. Before the
fork is even removed from her mouth, a small moan escapes her lips. Her
eyes, previously perfectly aligned, first cross slightly and then faze
completely, pupils dilating in pure chocolate pleasure before the eyelids
clamp down in ecstasy. The hand not holding the fork clenches into a
fist and starts pounding the table. The silverware rattles. After about
six minutes of this, she finally manages to swallow the bite, realign her
eyes, and take the next shuttle back from whatever transcendental planeshe's
been visiting. Slowly, her sphere of consciousness expands to include me, her
husband, her life-long mate, her presumed partner in all things ecstatic.
"Hey, this is pretty good," she'll say. "You want some?"
No, I don't. I want nothing to do with an object that does to my wife in
one bite what I've worked for an entire relationship to achieve. It
wouldn't do any good, anyway. Men just don't have the same relationship
with chocolate that women do. It's not even close. I wandered around the
office today and asked men - "Chocolate. Your thoughts?" - and the
result was always the same. First, a confused look as to why they're being
asked about something so trivial, and then some lame, obvious statement:
"Uuh... it's brown?" Ask women the same question, and
you get responses like "The ONLY food group," "ESSENTIAL
to life as we know it," and the ultimate casual swipe at every member of
the Y-chromosome brigade, "Better than sex. Ouch. Some women will try to
make up for that last one by quickly adding that chocolate is supposed
to be an aphrodisiac. Uh-huh. Chocolate certainly increases desire;
problem is the desire is usually for more chocolate. The best a guy can
do is buy a box of chocolates and hope he'll be considered somewhere
between the cherry truffle and the strawberry nougat. Don't get me
wrong. Guys like chocolate just fine; it's just not essential to life as
we know it. Respiration is essential to life as we know it; chocolate is
simply one of those nice little bonuses you get. We> won't usually pass it
up if it's offered, but I don't know too many guys who would get
substantially worked up if it were to suddenly disappear from the face of the
earth (ironic in a way, as back in the days of the Aztecs, only men were
allowed to have the stuff). When I eat a chocolate dessert, I enjoy it, yes.
My world view doesn't narrow to include only the plate that it's on. Maybe
we're missing something. On the other hand, we don't have to pick up our
silverware from the floor after we're done with our tiramisu. Life is
about trade-offs like that. All I know is that come Valentine's Day, chocolate
will be among the things I offer my wife. I> can't truly appreciate it, but
I can truly appreciate what it does for her. Which is close enough.
