Doing it Orally (Taste)

By Anonymous -
On March 31st I attended JBK's talk "Doing it Orally." I found the presentation thought provoking and informative. As it bridged the concept of eating with many of our senses, including taste (obviously), hearing, seeing, and touching. There is an obvious connection between food and sex; kissing is eating, and beyond that - eating is more than merely tasting. As quoted in the song of songs, "Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, for your love is sweeter than wine. Your ointments yield sweet fragrance (1:10)... My sister, my bride, I have smelled my myrrh and spice. Making love is like eating and smelling (5:1)."

Clearly, kissing requires your mouth, but it also stimulates other senses: smell, taste, touch, and sound. The mouth is a multifaceted sensory receptor. Eating could be considered hearing because the bones in the ear come from the jaw. "Ear tests words as palate tastes food" (JOB 12:11). The Song of Songs reaffirms the taste-hearing connection as well, "let me see your face, hear your voice, voice is sweet.."
Eating as Seeing: The concept of seeing as eating goes back to the time of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, when they were able to "see" their nakedness, when "seeing" the appetizing Tree of Knowledge and eat the fruit.
Eating is sex: JBK included a lovely poem by Emily Dickinson that emphasized the desire to lust after things we cannot have, or things we know are bad for us primarily because they are bad/forbidden. To emphasize the eroticism in taste and eating, we examined the symbolism of figs. There is a proper etiquette to eating a fig in public; a fig symbolizes the female genitalia. We read a poem about the female pubescent growth as described through a fig's growth to maturity. "Women burst into affirmation... stitch to adorn bursted fig, not to cover it." Themes of power and change, the poem emphasized women's sexuality evolving into something can yield and assert power with as opposed to being the submissive recipient of sexual domination by men, a tool to utilize instead of a threat to fear.

Continuing on the path of tasting and eating, use of the mouth as a sensory reception organ brings to mind the other oral associations: communion, saccharine, consumption, shit talker.. etc. Consumption is considered synonymous with taste - which we identify as the most intimate sense, there is an entering and expulsion of bodily fluids, breaking down matter into parts to be absorbed by the body. Tasting and eating allows for the most vulnerability by the individual, you open your mouth to expose your insides.

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