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Food

Juicy, Wet Nachos Are the Only Kind I’ll Put in My Mouth

On a recent afternoon, I drank pissy beer and listened to a plate of nachos. I brought one chip to my lip, rimming her edges with my tongue. Using my teeth as a lever, I pulled down. I could feel her body stiffen, then bend and grow taut. And then I...
Photo via Flickr user KittyKaht

Nachos are often consumed in a space where it is loud, by the flickering light of a flat screen television across whose digital skin run sporting men and chyrons. This is a shame. Nachos deserve love. They need attention. They just can't call out for it. Perhaps because their cries are drowned under a blanket of airtight insulation, like cheese, or because their gullets are clogged with bits of pork. Perhaps because chives and sour cream conspire to stifle their moans or, more likely, because they are nachos and can't talk.

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But if a nacho would talk, what would it say? On a recent afternoon, I quietly drank pissy beer and listened to a plate of nachos before me. The triangular contours of some were distinct. Around the littoral zone, bereft of cheese coverage, they were naked and exposed. Their yellowish flesh was speckled with goose pimples, its texture still crispy and dry like the feet of an old man whose hospital blanket is a touch too short. Most of my nachos were massed in all sorts of triangulated contortions. Under the cover of yellow cheese and red salsa, their edges and bodies pressed against each other in hot Antonioni-like gathering. Unctuous and undulating waves of sour cream sploshed around the bed of dessicated tortilla chips, finding youth again in the entreaties intimacy make on a chip's soul. These chips weren't soggy. They were moist. They were massed. They were messy.

I worked my way from without. I started on the coasts, where the timid naked nachos huddled. They were vulnerable, as light as a butterfly wing though lacking iridescence. I brought one nacho to my lip, rimming her edges with my tongue. Crystals of salt nicked my tongue, my taste buds stood at attention.

After I finished my crisp nacho bride, I ate her sister, then her sister's sister, then the bridesmaids, and then their neighbors.

When to crack this nacho, so brittle like a Connecticut wife? She whispered slow and lowly to me, as if passion had never before coursed through her capillaries—or if it had it was a long time ago, before she had moved out to New Canaan. "Do it," she said into my mouth, "just push a little harder." And so I did. Her tip in my mouth, I grabbed her base with my fingers. Using my teeth as a lever, I pulled down. I could feel her body stiffen, then bend and grow taut. The pressure against my upper teeth grew and so did my desire. And then—kerak—I cracked her in two. We both felt the release instantaneously, my nacho and I. And she lay there silently, yielding and pleased, as I ate first her angles and then her corners. Then she was inside me and I was inside her and our flours conjoined.

After I finished my crisp nacho bride, I ate her sister, then her sister's sister, then the bridesmaids, and then their neighbors. I ate the outer township of frailty, pledged fealty to the power of the baked masa. "Yes, master!" they cried and I murmured, "My mistresses." Debased and engorged, broken nacho crumbs flitted around my mouth. On my fingers, the odor of collective crumbly yearning. These nachos of the outer ring were dry tinder in life, but in the moment of dissolution they burst forth into a conflagration of lust and crackle, a cri de coeur of passion. I'll not soon forget those moments of life, death, and sex. What a benediction that the last words of these ascetic nachos were moans of pleasure.

Then, it was into the goopy nucleus, a primordial cauldron of salsa, sour cream, pulled pork, and guacamole. It was like rooting about in a dark room at The Cock: from every inch a limb, an appendage, or a member protruded. I fished from this stew one yielding chip of many.

There's a pleasure to be had in revelling in this sogginess, for there is no shame in yielding to a nacho's gentle touch. My pulse charge isn't from the crack of a brittle chip—pressure, then release—but from the immediate yet slow yielding. Eating this soft triangle was like watching a wave crest in slow motion. From my lips and down my chin ran watery salsa juice, from the corners of my mouth leaked white daubs of sour cream, and on my tongue danced the fried corn tortilla chips, undulating like Salomé in my mouth, with the sports channel blaring in the background, blasting me into a pure state of ecstasy until the waitress came over and handed me the bill.