APHRODISIACS
Is it possible they’re more exhausting than erotic?
Few things dampen passion quite as swiftly as the offering of any delicacy labelled an “aphrodisiac.” The very term smacks of an aging potentate grinding rhino horn on to his caviar in the hope of bedding a nubile young courtesan.
I remember with quiet shivers the male acquaintance who offered me horny goat weed tea, as if that filthy concoction would render his horny goat-man advances more palatable. Worse still was the lunch at a Japanese restaurant when a man made me try sea urchin, crying with triumph as I pulled a face: “See! It tastes exactly like sex.”
I am just grateful I missed the days of Spanish fly, when powdered blister beetle was supposed to inflame the blood vessels around the groin, with frequently near-lethal effect.
Roald Dahl satirized the practice in My Uncle Oswald, where his protagonist discovers the volcanic qualities of the Sudanese blister beetle and crushes the resulting powder into Prestat chocolates; he employs a gorgeous female accomplice to serve the treats to world-famous males (such as James Joyce, Albert Einstein and Claude Monet), so she can steal their genetic material to sell to baby-hungry heiresses. I presume Dahl was tired of writing about giant peaches.
Where the great author hits the nail on the head is the fact that aphrodisiacs seem so pointlessly exhausting. But as we all know, there are exceptions to every rule. I am prepared to allow oysters the rare accolade of being a genuinely sexy foodstuff, especially when there is an “r” in the month and bivalves are back on the menu.
Last week, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society celebrated its 30th — or pearl — anniversary by launching a whisky and oyster pop-up bar to celebrate the seductive qualities of both. I was invited to give a guest lecture on aphrodisiacs and found myself succumbing once again to the subtle, briny delights of Aphrodite’s favourite mollusk.
It’s not just the fact that Casanova consumed 50 oysters a day just for breakfast, nor the shellfish’s high zinc content, nor even what one friend calls “the bite of Tabasco on mermaid’s inner thigh.” Nope, it’s the suggestive way the thing glistens at you once the shell has been shucked open.
When I was editor of The Erotic Review I tried to put a ravishing black and white David Bailey picture of an oyster on the front cover and was smacked down by my horrified publisher; he said it was the rudest photo he had ever seen. It’s little wonder Jonathan Swift once wrote, “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”
The link between oysters and sex is beautifully rendered in Sarah Waters’ 19th-century Sapphic romp, Tipping the Velvet, which starts with the sentence, “Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster?” and moves swiftly on to the slippery softness of inner thighs. Most women I know will admit to the seductive properties of the shellfish, so long as they aren’t served on a first date: far too forward for most tastes.
One friend keenly remembers the occasion when she was a slip of a thing in publishing and was offered oysters by the late TV journalist Robin Day at the Garrick Club. Unsure of how many to order, she gamely ventured: “Twenty,” not realizing that even the bravest souls usually stop at 12. She then had to slip down the whole platter before the great broadcaster’s astonished gaze. It was probably just as well Day plumped for the roast that day.
In 2005, a team of U.S. and Italian scientists found that oysters contain rare amino acids that trigger increased levels of the hormones testosterone in males and progesterone in females, lifting their libidinous power far above the symbolic.
Even so, I am inclined to be sympathetic to P. J. O’Rourke’s line that few things “increase sexual arousal, particularly in women,” more than “the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.” And, much as I like oysters, I’d still rate a good single malt as a more potent aphrodisiac. For what Briton ever managed a seduction stone-cold sober?