The Cannibalistic Quality of Cake

We needed a lot of cake.

Together our group had sold over 400 tickets to the big spaghetti dinner/fundraiser that was to be held later that week at the church. Each meal was comprised of the obvious spaghetti, a dinner role, and an individually wrapped slice of pound cake. Indeed, we needed a lot of cake.

I slung my jacket over a chair and peeled the fingerless gloves from my hands, shoving them in my pocket before taking the newly purchased cake into the kitchen. It would soon be cut into neat slices and stored for future delivery.

I was greeted by four of my friends: Ali, Kimmie, my youth pastor, Jacob, and my synesthete friend, E (the one who knows the gender of objects). I saw they had already been dissecting cakes for some time. Mountains of the disassembled sweets lined the counter top; the literal hundreds of bagged pieces surrounded us.

As I grabbed a knife and cut into the soft, spongy mass of sugared dough, a startling proposition hit me: what if food has gender too? What if, to E, this was this a little boy I was slicing into manageable portions? The thought was sickening.

I glanced up at E. She didn’t seem at all bothered.

My youth pastor placed another decapitated segment into its wax-coated body bag.

Can she see dead things as well? If you destroy a cake, does it die? I shuddered at the realization that the piles of cake could be like bodies to her eyes.

Jacob was still sacking the newly cut chunks as I thought about these things. A bite-sized segment crumbled off and I watched in horror as he popped the morsel into his mouth, savoring the delectable taste.

Sweet strawberry jam! My youth pastor’s a cannibal. I gasped. So was I.

I had to do the equivalent of mentally slapping myself and shouting “get a hold of yourself, man!” to stop the influx of thoughts. ‘After all,’ I reasoned, ‘it’s not like I see these cakes as anything other than a product of eggs and flower. Nor did the meatloaf I had for dinner seem very human before now.’ But still, I wondered what she saw.

I glanced around at the others again. They were busily cutting away and chatting with random outcome. I wasn’t really paying attention to what we were talking about, but my subconscious kept me in conversation. Remember that this happening took place a few months ago, BEFORE many of my friends knew about synesthesia. I contemplated asking E about this later, but as the small group attacked yet another platter of crumbs (a.k.a human intestines) like rabid pigeons I decided to ask right then.

“Hey, E?”

“Yeah?

“Does cake have gender, too?”

She stopped cutting.

“Gender?!” Kimmie burst into the infant conversation.

“Shut up, I’ll explain later.”

E unsuccessfully suppressed a smile. I guess it is humorous that no one else in the room knows what we’re talking about.

“Is this cake a little boy, or an old man?”

She looked uncomfortable.

“It’s best not to think about it. You don’t want to humanize food. Like at that McDonald’s in Tennessee, with the painting of the food that had happy faces and clothes on. It’s creepy.”

She picked up the knife again and began cutting the cake, very slowly, very carefully.

“This one’s a little girl,” she said.

Jacob listened, but did not stop eating the crestfallen crumbles. We had only known each other for about a week at this point in time, and he no doubt thought that ‘old men cakes’ were reference to some kind of weird inside joke. And as I noticed him thinking, trying to process and crack this code we seemed to speak in, I realized that, in a way, synesthesia IS an inside joke. And, (not to sound clichéd) it is the best and worst kind of inside joke, because only the synesthete can ever fully understand it.

The conversation soon left synesthesia (after a quick song visualization), and turned to lighter and more random departments of interest

.

On the way home I caught myself thinking that it would be insanely awkward to see the gender of food. Ah, so that’s how people feel when I tell them about my colors.

I reminded myself that she, like myself, grew up this way, and that this is a perfectly sane sensation to her.

And if you really take the time to think about this for a while, you’ll realize that food has gender anyway, even to non-synesthetes. What?! No! Food doesn’t have gender. Well, yes, it does. MEAT. Ah… yes I forgot that meat comes from animals, (at least REAL meat comes from animals, that odd substance they serve in hospital cafeterias could be anything) and animals have gender, don’t they? So, I guess, technically, meat has gender.

Hark! What’s this I hear? the laughter of vegans? Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you; plants are capable of gender too, but we just don’t think about that when we look at a flower or eat a salad. That said, we eat items of gender daily.

But still, this is quite an interesting form of synesthesia. I mean, come on, the possibilities for pranks are nearly endless.

“What’s wrong with you!? Stop eating that old woman’s child!”