by Roberta Carwin
(07/25/01)

"Let's try some aphrodisiacs."

"Excuse me? You saying I need a tune-up?" Tommy looks wounded.

"Oh, come on."

I just think it would be fun to experiment. Nothing too elaborate: no elk antlers or pickled ostrich phalluses. Above all, no ants. I've recently read that a guy in Italy crashed his car after swallowing dried crushed ants to improve his lovemaking. (Not sure how his driving was affected. Did he get such a big boner he couldn't see over it?) I'll settle for a few of those supposedly stimulating food and drink items you can find around a supermarket.

"Scientifically, it's all a crock." Tommy claims. He's acting so negative. Is he secretly worried that an infusion of aphrodisiacs will have us fucking ourselves to death?

I hit the Internet and read about sex-enhancing food: Phallic mushrooms; oysters and clams that split open to reveal slippery, salty insides. A lot of the food is not only suggestive, but barely this side of gross: squishy, slimy, pungent. Even dangerous: mushrooms can poison you.

Let's see if I can domesticate the stuff just enough.

At the store, the seafood counter beckons. Mussels are on sale. I've got a recipe with onions, garlic and saffron -- all supposedly aphrodisiac -- in buttery white wine sauce.

Tommy peels garlic and chops onions while I scrub the mussels and pull off their "beards". Yikes -- they really do look and smell pornographic. Even more so when they're cooked and open up. We wiggle or flip the little creatures out of their shells and dip them in the sauce. Tommy looks pornographic too, his lips and fingers smeared with butter.

We're sitting on the floor with one big bowl between us. We crack shells in half and sip broth out of them, feed it to each other, lap it up.

"Like going down on a woman." Tommy says.

"Mmmm, yeah."

We mop up with crusty bread, then grab each other.

"That was fun," Tommy says, licking my shoulder. Fun and stinky. The whole place is full of the smells of onion, saffron, and garlic. So are we. Maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems like the butter and garlic have made our sweat -- and other secretions -- extra slick.

So, did it work? Who knows? Tommy argues that if this kind of thing really worked scientifically people would be doing the nasty in restaurants. They'd be slipping under the tables for a humpfest between courses. Come to think of it, we've almost done that, but I can't remember whether or not we were eating seafood.

I'll show him "scientific". Back to the market for something more persuasive. Ah, they're finally stocking Niagara. "Love Herbs", the soft drink bills itself. "For Good Staying Power." I take a couple of bottles home, chill them, and pop one open even though I'm alone. Might as well do an objective test. The drink is electric blue, it's sweet and fizzy...and it makes me feel flushed and tingly and excited. I check the ingredients again: sugar, ginseng, caffeine, guarana...With this combination of stimulants, I might chew Tommy's head off before we get around to anything else. Especially if he keeps going on about "science".

Back up a bit, though. Damiana is an ingredient too, and one that keeps coming up on lists of aphrodisiac herbs people really believe in. I learn there's a drink called Damiana, a liqueur from Mexico. We might be able to make a mellower potion out of that.

In my manic Niagara-fuelled enthusiasm, I rush right out. I track a bottle down at about the fourth liquor store I try.

"Oh my God," says the girl at the cash register.

She rotates the bottle, eyeing it from all sides. I realize what I thought was the front of the bottle was in fact the back, in the unmistakable (now I look closely) shape of a well-rounded butt with love handles. Whoever stocked the shelf turned the front -- molded to look like a pregnant woman's thighs, belly and breasts -- to the wall. Yes, it's a sculpture of a voluptuous naked pregnant woman, filled with golden yellow liquor.

"What on earth?" says the cashier.

"It's supposed to be an aphrodisiac."

She laughs, showing her back teeth, and turns the bottle around again. "It looks scary. Maybe you should get someone else to try it first."

"I'll try it out on my boyfriend."

"Hahaha! Come back and tell me if it works."

Why did I do that -- suggest I was going to trick Tommy, drug him? There is sort of a tradition, in the literature, of slipping people aphrodisiacs, but today isn't that called...date rape or something?

Anyway, I wonder if the booze can really contain a powerful drug. Back home, I look at the little booklet that comes with it.

"The Guaycura Indians drank Damiana Liqueur in their centuries old ceremonies, and according to the ancient legend it had such incredible aphrodisiac power that the Indian chieftains banned its consumption."

Sounds like there should be a warning label.

I check the official Damiana Web site.

"Take a bottle to your next party or family gathering and watch the crowd go wild!...Serve Damiana...at your next party and the house will start rockin'."

I imagine people at one of my family gatherings, not warned of Damiana's aphrodisiac properties, tearing off their clothes and dancing wildly. Think I'll take a pass on that one. There's no tricking Tommy anyway; when he comes over the next day he sees the Venus-like bottle and realizes it's another "experiment".

"Not too bad," he says, sniffing and tasting. "A little herbal, a little fruity. Sweet. Margaritas, definitely."

I don't like Margaritas, usually, but the drink he makes is pretty good, with lime and crushed ice.

"Let's watch a video," Tommy says. He sorts through my small collection and picks High Fliers, a silly movie about lesbian flight attendants.

"Wait a minute! These aren't controlled conditions! What? You're the one who wants to be all scientific."

I hush up as the action in the cockpit starts. The pilot is a woman too. I can't believe the plane is still supposed to be airborne, considering what they're doing with those levers. Oh. Wow. I'd forgotten this part.

Tommy sucks a piece of ice clean and slips it down the front of my tank top. It's a hot day, and I'm braless. The ice makes a cold, wet trail down to my belly button. "That's an aphrodisiac."

"It's just an endorphin rush."

Whatever. I try it out on Tommy, unbuttoning his shirt and putting the ice in the hollow over his collarbone, then sipping it up as it melts.

"Stay right there." Tommy jumps up and heads for the kitchen -- to get more Damiana? No; he comes back with a bowl of ice "cubes": actually those thin scallop-shaped pieces some refrigerators make.

"Lie back." He tugs at my shorts and panties. I jump a little as the ice touches my labia, but when it slides between them it feels surprisingly pleasant. Like the first jump into a cold lake, but from the inside out.

Tommy is hovering over me now, his shirt all the way off. I fumble with his pants. "Maybe...not a good idea," he mumbles as I approach his scrotum with another piece of ice. Okay. I reach around and press the ice into his buttcrack. "Oh. God." It sounds like his reaction is similar to mine.

Something worked. Was it the ice or the Damiana or the iced Damiana?

We'll have to run another experiment.

Yummy, yummy, yummy:

When you run a Web search for "aphrodisiac," you'll likely find some 70,000 sites, ranging from a band of that name to myriads of homeopathic, herbal, and artificial recipes, solutions, and pills.

The big question, naturally, is do any of these actually work?

Maybe so, maybe not, but that doesn't stop people restlessly searching for the big A on their way to find the big O.

People have been seeking enhancements to their libido since time immemorial. The ancients believed a lot of things acted as aphrodisiacs, from mistletoe to garlic, from figs to artichokes, from onions to peaches and tons of other foods and mixtures. Most of these beliefs were founded on sympathetic magic. "Well, it looks sexy!" In ancient Egypt, for example, lettuce was considered an aphrodisiac, maybe because the leaves wrinkled up like labia, or possibly because of the slight opium-like effect (in the '60s, along with banana skins and such, people smoked lettuce!).

In Ancient Rome, the Caesars sent thousands of slaves to the English Channel to gather oysters for their feasts, believing that since Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, rose from the sea on an oyster shell, the mollusks must contain the essence of passion. Many centuries later, belief in oysters' power to enhance libido and sexual stamina would lead the legendary lover Casanova to begin his meals by eating 12 dozen oysters.

In Medieval times, mandrake root, ginseng, and even horseradish were considered surefire cures to "bed malady".

Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers. Virtually any edible from the New World was considered an aphrodisiac by the Old Worlders: a way to assist their flagging desires. Many, like coffee and tobacco, were condemned, both by clergy and legal advisors to the rulers.

One of the most libidinous aphrodisiacs to remain, from yesteryears to today, of course, is CHOCOLATE! Hence our still living tradition of showing up for a date with a box of chocolates under the arm or sending "sweets to the sweetie" on Valentine's Day.

Medically speaking, most aphrodisiacs are harmless, mere metaphorical placebos to get the sexual juices flowing and inhibitions lowered, but some are poisonous. Like the infamous Spanish fly, for example.

The Spanish fly isn't really a fly at all. It's the emerald-green blister beetle (Cantharis vesicatoria or Lytta vesicatoria) which is found in the southern parts of Europe. The body is usually 15-22 mm long and 5-8 mm wide, with a strong smell and a burning taste. The dried and crushed body of the beetle was earlier used medically as a irritant and diuretic, but was also regarded as a potent aphrodisiac, especially for elderly gentlemen.

Descriptions of its use as a medicine date back to antiquity. The drug was mentioned by; Hippocrates, Celsus and Pliny. The Roman empress Livia (58 B.C. - A.D. 29) purportedly slipped it into the food of other members of the imperial family to stimulate them into committing sexual indiscretions that could later be used against them. (Livia was the wife of Octavianus, later known as Emperor Augustus). In 1772, the Marquis de Sade doctored aniseed sweets with Spanish fly and offered them to some prostitutes who took part in a flogging orgy. However, there was no aphrodisiac effect. Instead, the girls became very ill, so ill that the Marquis was brought to trial for poisoning.

Roald Dahl wrote a hilarious book called My Uncle Oswald, about a man who discovers the ultimate aphrodisiac, the Sudanese blister beetle, and proceeds to become "the greatest fornicator of all time."