An Open Letter from Wasabi Peas

Evil Jeremy,

I see that, spineless jellyfish that you are, you’ve yet again gone crawling back to that rotund slut black beans.  I see that once again, I’ve been used and thrown away as if you’d picked me up for $1.49 in a store.  Well done, Jeremy.  You’ve made me feel like a complete whore—a little snack on the side not worth being the main course.

But Jeremy, will you ever stop telling me lies?  “Oh no, wasabi peas,” you whine to me, “black beans and I are through this time.  That tart and I have parted ways; I’ve had enough of her and her gas.  I mean it—done and over.”  And I, silly, stupid little glutton for punishment that I am, believed you.  Again.  I gave up my goods to you one more time, thinking that maybe this time you’d really changed—that you could finally realize that black beans isn’t right for you, that my crispy, piquant goodness is worth twenty of her.

But you couldn’t just crumple me up and throw me in the trash, like any disused old bag, could you?  You had to tell the whole world that you were groveling back that skanky bitch, didn’t you?  Well, she can keep you this time.  You are cut. The fuck.  Off.  Wasabi peas ain’t playin’ no mo, playa.  You wanna keep black beans as your dish and still have a little sumpin sumpin on the side?  Call that low-rent, wanna-be-tangy spicy peanuts trollop.  Yeah, see if she be so hot she can make your eyes water.  What’s that?  No, I didn’t think so.  Or better still, call that fat ho cashews.  Yeah, you and her always looked real good together.  Oh yeah.

But fool, I am done with you.  I come from the imported foods store, playa, and I can hold out for a whole heluva lot sweeter sugar daddy than you, EJ.  Take your dirt broke, black-bean-eatin’, cashew oglin’ ass back under whatever rock it was you crawled out from under.  Wasabi peas ain’t havin’ this shit.

F.O.A.D.,
wasabi peas

An Open Letter to Black Beans

Dearest black beans,

I sing a song of your body electric, of your low-carb, high fiber, saintly virtue—free from the ungainly taint of trans and saturated fat.  I raise aloft a frothing flagon of mead to your delectable, slow-cooked goodness, demurely cloaked by only a slinky sprinkle of diced green onion.  Black beans, as you exude the erotic perfume of rosemary, oregano, garlic, and the occasional diced turkey sausage, I know that  must be mine, now and always.

But black beans, I am but a weak, profligate man; you must forgive my dalliances with split pea and lentil—those hussies mean nothing to me, black beans, and in their presence I could only pine the more for your warm, caraway-and-basil-infused embrace.

I know, black beans, that we met long ere our love blossomed.  As you coyly nestled within a Chipotle barbacoa, your charm remained safely stowed away from my obdurate gaze.  Overshadowed by braised beef, salsa, and guacamole, you eluded my childish, cloddish understanding.  But now, dear beans, I should come to you were you immersed in the foul turpitude that is a writhing mass of kidney beans!  Lima beans, even, I dare say!  I would rescue your gentle soul from the clutches of those slimy hags!

Black beans, there are some who will assail our love, deeming it a transgression, a monstrous miscegenation.  They will say that we sin against our respective heritages; they will wonder why I could not have loved white beans, or at least have tried to mask your Nubian splendor with dull, white saltines.  Black beans, pay them no heed—they do not understand that I love you not despite your blackness, but because of it; that your blackness embodies to me the very presence, the chaste embodiment, of presence and life itself.

How do I love thee, black beans?

Let me count the very ways.

Addendum to NYR, 23/b4.

I seem to keep forgetting to remember, or something like that, to post "hey, I'm still alive," type posts while in the midst of large, ugly academic projects that take up my blogging time. So hey, I'm still alive, having failed utterly since the last post to die in a fiery plane crash, OD, or be killed by a disgruntled J.D. Salinger fan. My blogging absence would certainly be more interesting if one of those things had happened, but no. I am in fact just lazy and very, very busy.

I'm off, now, to write a paper on Charlotte Bronte's Villette, which I put myself through in the span of three days (it's 715 pages long) in the hopes of gaining some miraculous insight into Victorian women's fiction. I certainly learned one thing well enough, and that's she wrote about a third of the goddamn thing in French, with the apparent understanding that everyone worth her time to write for would read the same. Charlotte, babe, I take exception. I liked your book, really I did, but I'd have liked it so much better if you'd have kept it in one motherfucking language. That's right, Charlotte: I am an English major, and if your treatise is going to find its way onto my comprehensive exam reading list, you could have at least written it in my native tongue.

Fucking Victorians. I swear.