“The Bread of Life,” a new short story by Katherine Plumhoff

You start by thanking your lovers. You acknowledge the lessons they taught you, spreading gratitude over your history like dry rub over a roast.

You thank Carlos, who taught you how to be positive in the face of something frustrating, i.e. having to pay for three places of accommodation—room in Valencia, rental house in Greece, and hospital in Madrid—while shitting yourself silly with salmonella from eating an undercooked tortilla española. “Think of this way,” he’d said. “You’re really supporting the European economy.”

You thank Leo, who taught you how to say, “I’m worried about pregnancy, can you finish in my mouth?” in Italian.

You thank Markus, who taught you that there were four components to good food—salt, fat, heat, acid—and then to always check the source, when you realized he’d coasted by on stolen valor. (Sorry, Samrin Nosrat.)

You thank Matt, who taught you what stolen valor was. You’re pretty sure you used it wrong just now. You apologize for that.

You pause and adjust the laurel wreath that’s slipped down your forehead.

You thank Edu, who taught you to wear thicker socks. You’re wearing them now, underneath green canvas pants and white sneakers. He would like this look, were he alive to see it.

You thank Max, who taught you that wanting to be worshipped is a completely valid approach to lovemaking and would spend hours caressing your downy stomach. Post-Max lovers paid the thanks forward, earnestly (for your goddess complex) or not (for your perceived laziness in bed).

You thank Ian, who taught you how to eat oysters, and also that you do not like oysters.

You thank Chris, who taught you that a man who would drop you off at the ER after you’d fainted in the bathroom but would not stay until you were discharged—he’d see you at home, he was tired from work—was not worth cooking for, yet alone chaining yourself to for the length of a human lifetime.

You thank Isaac, who taught you that all you really need for an excellent weekend is a good book, sunshine, nudity, barbequed meat, and no cell service.

You thank Andy, who taught you to compartmentalize by leaving you in bed to take his wife’s—you always wanted to put “ex” before that but that would make it untrue and you are many things but a liar is not one of them—calls from the guest room. And also that having sex to Don DeLillo is more delicious than it sounds.

Thus thanked, you anoint each lover’s body with the ambrosia I helped you prepare. Eight times sweeter than honey and twice as thick, boiled for days in preparation for this banquet, it glistens on groins and clavicles. It drips down necks like gravy.

Stories honored and bodies ready, you sit down. You have waited for this, prepared for this, cut and chopped and measured. The final meal your human body will consume. The table, your altar, dark and craggy as chocolate bark. Their congealing blood, your nectar. An eternity of taste awaits you.

I tie a white napkin around your neck.

You lift your goblet and finish saying grace. “I humbly receive the fruits of Your bounty. I give thanks for the eternal life that You have promised and made manifest through Your endless power and everlasting glory.”

I lift the table up and slide your lovers towards your open mouth.

Katherine Plumhoff was a 2021 Foundation House fellow in creative nonfiction. Her essays have been published by Slate and Litro, and she is currently working on a collection of short stories. She lives in Spain. 

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