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July 30, 2022

Money Shot

Sienna Liu

Come to think of it, in human porn, for lack of a better word, the money shot always comes with liquids, bursting out, rushing out, contaminating the lenses, while in food porn the money shot is the luscious sauce that coats pasta in a sensuous light, the glorious goo that soaks into the sandwich bread, an egg yolk that thickens just so perfectly, creating a creamy, unctuous ooze that when finally released from its surrounding body, rushes out and makes everything it touches golden and good. There is nothing like forking a good yolk into submission, wrote one food blogger. The rupture, the intrusion, the sense of relief, of liberation. When I forked open an egg we were at a nice restaurant. As March began we went to a nice restaurant every evening to do research for my thesis on food porn, eating dish after dish of remains of cold animals drenched in a green pulp made of mashed vegetables and flower garnish that was edible, all grown in the chef’s back garden. It was ridiculous, really, in retrospect, to live a life that was barely affordable. We thought, at the time, that these moments could be called eventful when we began to have time, later on, to recollect them. But while we were passing our days like that we also feared that it might not be the case. That all of this would just be as blurry and weightless as the smoke enveloping us. Something would add up eventually, sums, or substances stuck to the inner walls of our organs, that we vaguely knew, but at the time, when we reveled in what these things did to our tongues and our lungs, those considerations were still something for the future. Our sense of destination was flimsy and dull. With our aimless, intoxicated gazes, we walked until the sky was about to dawn. Until our blood was full of cheap wine and our wine glasses were full of cheap smiles. As the night progressed we would end up in a dim room, handing the number we got from one guy to another, taking selfies, lots, without sending them to anyone, initially. Some glasses or beer bottles were being smashed. More people were taking selfies that would soon be sent to a select few, all while squeezing their cheeks and boobs. On the table were pizzas and chicken fingers and chips dipped in hummus, looking violently at us. Threatening gazes from half-eaten pizzas. How did we end up here, I thought. Sometimes entire blocks of time passed us by without us noticing. One night, one of the guys we met introduced us to vaping. He showed us how you put your mouth to a USB-shaped thing and suck on it. Life begins with sucking, after all. I didn’t tell him that, of course.