Cuisine / Cousins

What I took with me coming to America at the age of ten was sexual neurosis and how it plays itself among youth, inherently overlapping family relations. As my mother would have it she and I were very close. She confirms this to be outrightly me being her firstborn so she took me everywhere, brought me to church without my other siblings. I have very stark memories sitting beside her as she drove in her red Datsun, her back in that denim dress weat with sweat. The very constant trip was to the Makola market where middle aged women displayed their goods and wares.

I was aware of my mother's promounced beauty, her glorious eyes, full lips and brilliant smile. It wasn't a matter of incest between mother and me. It was independent of amour. Mother loved me as son and it was clear at heart. We had maids who came into the city to take care of me and my brothers as children. Memories of mother shared otherwise included her cooking, driving us to school, where one day when she arrived at the gate the headmaster was whipping with cane those who were coming in late, so mother promptlly turned the car around and drove us back home.

Father was traveling around the world as journalist. He was stationed in New York and advised mother to bring us over. My one and only favorite memory of father when he arrived from Switzerland was staying in bed with me one morning feeding me chocolate he had brought with peppermint in the middle. I remember the smell of his luggage. They were leather with a scent of newness.

Our apartment was part of the Airport Residential flats stationed beside an airport. Quite often from our window we saw airplanes taking off. It was a modest apartment with a lovely living room with furnishings. I remember the day mother's oversized freezer was delivered - a white tank of a thing. There were curtains, brandnew sofas we replaced a few times. We had a small kitchen were outrageous smells of food emanated on Saturdays during which the act of making fufu was present. One perseon stood with wooden stick with flat botton raising it up and down while another turned over cooked plantains and cassava in a wooden pot.

These maids were the ones who mostly did the cooking. They entered the city of Accra and once they did, they acquired the style and nuance of modern city women. There were never any particular momemnts where I felt attracted to them perhaps I was too young and naive. More so I saw them as gaurdians but I have memory standing on bookshelf watching my male cousin have sex with one of these maids. Watching the act of sex for the first time seemed new but ingrained in my very own system. The youngest of the maids exposed herself to me while bathing me. This was my first evidence of "cunt."

Earnestly living on grandmother's compound weeks away from our trip to New York, I got a sense of the compatability I shared with two of my cousins on mother's side. This is the greatest example of how sexuality was expressed between my aunts and me as well as my cousins. We bathed together and slept together. In doing so we became horny when the lights were turned off. Where as the youngest of the maids bathed me with her pubis exposed, my cousins sat and spread their cunts for me to inspect. They also taught me how to masturbate.

To this date I find it ironic that I learned about sex from two female cousins.