Cashew

Preface: I came to France alone, to escape all those things you can’t escape, and found myself in a châteaux at the ass-end of Carcassonne trying and failing to write my other work, because this one was blocking the way. So, bon appétit.

–

I rotted late into the early hours consuming him again.

It started out with an FYP reel: a unwelcome reminder of his existence. Then it was YouTube hours, fan edits, and Reddit forums discussing his most recent venture (the one I’d purposefully ignored). I never contribute to the comments, obviously. That would be nuts. The distinction between fan, and creative equal, is both vitally important to me, and does not exist. I laugh at the minor errors of the fans, and revel in the details that only I can confirm.

The video was of him sharing the old wives tale of his favourite snack, cashews. You know the one— the old lady who’d suck the chocolate clean off and gift the naked nuts to handymen working on her house. He tells it like it’s a harmless bit of folklore, something faintly disgusting but essentially charming. The room laughs. I laugh, because I know something funnier: I would eat a cashew spat out and crushed beneath his boot, if he willed it. I would pull the discarded fragments, piece by piece, from the tread with my teeth, and thank him for the pleasure.

I run a hot, midday bath in an attempt to pry this orbitofrontal loop from my skull. I get two pages into Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion before posting it to my story for him to see. The irony of this is not lost on me or my wet corpse, and I sink beneath the surface for a few moments of overdue flagellation.

Even restricted oxygen can’t mute his relenting presence. He’s beside the tub reading to me. He’s squashed at the tap end, sucking my toes. He’s holding the shower head and telling me to stop wriggling so much. Is there no reprieve?

I hike my trackie bottoms over my wet body, hide my face behind the Airbnb owner’s sunglasses, and go out into the street to get some air. I go out into the street to get some air, and it spills over the edges.

I see myself french-kissing the very, very old man smoking outside the boulangerie. I clean out the ice-pick scars in his skin as I lick up his cheek. I start on his lovely little wife, too. I mess her perfectly coiffed bun with my nail-bitten fingers. I drag my teeth down her neck as she moans into me. I drop kick their dog into the plaza fountain.

I would slap myself if it weren’t so quintessentially French. I need food or something. I turn a corner, and I’m heading to the Monoprix.

The warm air of the supermarket jolts me for a moment, but it’s not enough to stop me removing and snapping the glasses of the nice woman stacking oranges. I stomp on them, then lick her face too. I take her fingers in my mouth, then mine in hers, and it all gets a bit confusing, so I move on.

On every aisle there’s an unsuspecting shopper who I’m f*cking, or is f*cking me; hair-pulling, lobe-biting, up against the baked goods. The cleaning products. Bent over that thing you put coins in and they spiral downward. I realise I’m spiralling downward and it’s almost enough to make me miss the thoughts of just him. All contained and permissible.

I look down and I’m holding the two items he mentioned in the podcast I fell asleep to: a single Kronenbourg and a bag of cashews. The only thing I despise more in this world than the acrid sob of beer, is unsalted, boring-ass nuts. I chuckle to myself as I buy both.

I’m in the very French, very dark liminal courtyard between the street door and my apartment when it happens.

Oh no, a thought.

I tear the bag and throw a single cashew into the middle of the desolate walkway, watching as it touches quite an impressive number of unidentifiable things on impact. Just stuff. Bits. Pieces. Pieces that are almost certainly not meant to invade a body.

If I hesitate, I won’t do it.

I tuck my hair behind my ears and drop to my knees, the damp gravel absorbing into my fleece lined joggers. Aligning my bare forearms so they’re straddling the nut, I feel him above me. His awful comedian trainers millimetres from my spread hands. I push my ass into the hair and whisper his name, once. If anyone walks in now, I’m absolutely fucked.

I imagine the view from behind me and it looks like I’m praying.

“I haven’t got all day, Harriet”.

My face nearing the filth, the unmistakable smell of French piss overwhelms me, invading the back of my throat. I close my eyes and think of his laugh six minutes and forty three seconds into the interview. My lips find the wobbly little alley-lump. I open wide, my tongue flattening into a soft pink pad, and press down until it clings to the damp heat inside my mouth.

Grit, and fluff, and unidentifiable tang leak into my cheeks, as I try and fail to contain the now-seasoned nut to just the roof of my mouth. I sit back on my feet, my eyes still shut.

The enormity of what I’ve just done dawns as I begin to splutter and gag, which is the exact moment I feel his hand close around my neck. My whole body is consumed by the warm fuzz of devotion— suspended in a chokehold above the shame— and I crack the nut in two with molars. It bleeds a little bit of something, as I scrunch my face and swallow. For a split second, I feel his mouth on mine.

I gather myself and my things, brush down my joggers, and walk off from the scene of the crime— concealed as a dog in a fountain. ‘I will never, ever be able to eat another cashew’, I conclude, as I ascend the steps to my apartment.

I’m reminded of the time I made a playlist titled ‘Cancer songs’, to listen in the chemotherapy ward as I waited for my fading mum. Songs sad enough to cry to, but crap enough that I wouldn’t miss them when they’re stricken from my Spotify forever— upon death or remission.

Thank god I didn’t like cashews in the first place. The James Blunt, Three Wise Men to my chemotherapy. I’m beyond relieved that lasagne, or Crispy Bacon Wheat Crunchies, or Mint Poppets weren’t featured in his particular Off Menu episode.

I brush my tongue for seven minutes, and go to bed. I drift off to dreams of him laughing at a funny thing I said in the future.

(A note for the concerned: the fact I can write about this at all should tell you I’ve had plenty of distance from it—well over a year. Don’t you worry about me.)