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Delicious

by Kathie Giorgio

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We were in the break room talking about nothing, when my co-worker said, “My daughter was dancing naked with marshmallows. My wife poked her head in the room and said, are you keeping an eye on Brittany? And I said, sure, she’s in the other room with the Lion King video. I went in and there she was, no clothes, dancing around the room with a bag of marshmallows, throwing them all over the place.”

Dancing naked with marshmallows. I was stunned. Imagine being able to fling off your clothes, grab a bag of marshmallows, and dance wildly around the room, marshmallows flying, body parts flying, mouth full of sweet sugar. No worries about if you were going one way and your breasts were going another, or if the saddlebags hanging around your middle were jiggling more merrily than the rest of you. Just freedom. Freedom and fresh air on skin, music in ears, sweet taste on the lips and tongue. Sweetness everywhere. White squishy oval snowflakes dotting the room.

Imagine.

I left the office imagining. I stopped at the A & P on the way home and bought a discount bag of marshmallows. Then I chided myself and pulled into the nearest ultra-mega neon-lighted superstore and stalked a bag of gourmet marshmallows. If I was going to dance naked with marshmallows, I was going to do it big.

 Rapidly eating my supper, I felt my heart beating and a tingle in my skin. My body knew what my mind was thinking, and both mind and body were on edge, titillated, ready to go. I remembered when I used to feel like that almost all the time. Before a first date, sometimes before a second. Before canoeing, then whitewater rafting. Bungee jumping. All from when I was younger, and I thought, foolish. But maybe not.

I carefully closed my blinds, making sure that they went all the way down to the windowsills. Then I searched through my old tapes for dance music. I wanted disco, that mindless beat of my youth when I danced with abandon, just stomping my feet to the rhythm and thoughtlessly humming the words that made no sense. I found the perfect Donna Summer tape and turned it up full blast.

And then I did it. I tossed my clothes to the left and right as I strutted around the room. There was an artistry to my striptease and I admired it. My shirt slouched over the arm of a chair and my pants sprawled spread-eagled on the sofa. My panties were draping the lamp while my socks hunkered down in two lumps by either heating vent.. I ripped open the bag of gourmet marshmallows and threw them, watching the white wads fly through the air and splat against wall, ceiling, and floor. I stuffed my mouth full as I danced, my feet in a barefoot clog against the carpet, and as I tasted the sugar, I wondered briefly about rugburn on my soles.

But it didn’t matter. Before the first song was half over, I was winded. My knees shook. And dammit, my breasts did go one way while I went another, and I could feel my stomach doing a shimmy to a tango beat all its own.

Panting, I leaned against a wall. My living room was flecked with mashed marshmallow blobs and my clothes were thrown like the bodies of strangers in a bizarre car accident. The disco rhythm vibrated against the wall and it gave me a headache.

I turned the tape off. I cleaned the mess up.

Later, Barry Manilow warbled from my stereo and I sat in my recliner, safely wrapped in my favorite flannel nightshirt, the one with the pink and red stripes that was at once both soft and vibrant. As I dropped three surviving gourmet marshmallows into my mug of hot chocolate, I thought, Oh my God, it’s come to this.

I’m old. Archaic, prehistoric, antique. Old.

I cried into my mug.

***

A week or so of hot chocolate and marshmallows later, I went out for a night on the town. My company threw a shindig of sorts with several of its sister companies. It was held at one of the city’s largest ballrooms and as I swept out of my apartment in a tumble of taffeta and satin, I again thought longingly back to the days of ripped-knees blue jeans and fringed bare-belly tops. But still there was a swish to my walk that was lovely to hear and the cool evening breeze lapped at my neck, left bare beneath upswept hair to face the elements. Driving to the ball in my blue ‘87 Corolla instead of a pumpkin-shaped carriage lowered my spirits, but after I abandoned the car in the parking garage, I was able to revel in the swish and the air once again.

About halfway through the dance, after a dozen fox-trots with co-workers, including the father of the naked marshmallow dancer, a stranger led me out on the floor. He asked me to dance with a voice just barely above a whisper, so soft it made my ear tickle. The band played a waltz and I fit easily in his arms as we swayed across the floor. In my mind, I hummed the One-two-three-One-two-three and the hum must have brought my lips together in a smile, because he smiled back at me, open, admiring, delighted.

We were together for the rest of the night. Once, he even waltzed me completely off the dance floor and onto an outdoor balcony. Beneath the satin and taffeta with the soft music playing at my toes, my breasts and stomach reunited with the rest of my body and we all danced together, arms, legs, hips, torso, at one again, smooth, happy, lovely.

Tingling.

My partner continued smiling at me as if I was the only woman on this earth and we talked beneath a sappy full moon that left me weak in the knees. I let him kiss me and his fingers on my bare arms brought me back to throwing marshmallows, dancing naked. But now the marshmallows rose slowly from my open hands, they floated across the room and landed with soft gentle whispers against pillows and clouds and down-filled quilts left out in the sun to air. I tasted kiss-sweetness on my lips and then briefly, my tongue, and I felt myself melt into a jacuzzi of warm chocolate.

I let him kiss me again at the door of my apartment and I promised that I would call him in the morning. And I knew I would.

Later, dressed again in my pink and red striped nightshirt, cradling a mug of hot chocolate laced with plain grocery store marshmallows, I swayed to Lionel Richie crooning from my tape player. And I thought, so this is what it’s come to.

I bit into a marshmallow and felt the sugar press, melt, and flow against the roof of my mouth and then down my throat in a slow lapping river of heat and richness. I said out loud, stickily, “So this is what it’s come to. I am slow-dancing, sleepily, with marshmallows.”

Then I nodded and settled back into my life like a recliner, wrapping my flannel arms around myself and breathing in the chocolate, drinking deep of the warmth and sweetness held by my own two hands, surrounded by the gentle rhythms of the softest music in the world.

Slow-dancing, sleepily, with marshmallows. This is what it’s come to.

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