I totally wasn’t planning on writing about flanken, in June nonetheless, but there it is. It keeps sneaking into everything I write. The only way out is through, so here we are. I feel compelled to share that I once made flanken for a date–the man, not the fruit.

Candied meat, oh what a treat.

I might have busted into song that night, changing all the lyrics of “Oh, What A Night” to “Oh, Candied Meat.” I can’t recall. What I do remember, in alarming detail, is that on the night I finally invited him up for dinner, an hour or so after our meal, a sound—reminiscent of something you’d hear in poltergeist apartment pipes, in an overloaded, overworked, front-loading HE washing machine with non-HE detergent—erupted, somewhere in my nether regions. It was as if my small intestine was no longer small. It was all.

Then I started to sweat. Man sweat. Rings. I wouldn’t know off hand, but if the hot flashes that accompany menopause are anything like the “you’re about to have the ‘rhea for the next four hours,” then call me Phyllis Diller. I was well beyond my menopause years. These were doody fears. And the worst of it? My wee apartment had one bathroom: in my bedroom. You cannot make out with a guy when he knows you’re about to defile your bathroom, just an arm’s length away from your bed… and your vagina. So what did I do?

Dude, you gotta leave.
What?!
It’s time.
Time? Time for what? I don’t follow—
Dude, you just gotta go. Trust me. It’s for your own good. You don’t want to think of this ass as a gremlin.

With that we went from maybe to Fabreeze. And there wasn’t even a goodie bag.