Serious Chocolate

"All I can say is that if women are supposed to prefer chocolate to sex, then I'm a bloody man!" said Sally.

No one in our office could think of anything to say in reply. She obviously wasn't. On the other hand, she doesn't have an imp sitting on her shoulder, as I do. The imp's name is Qina, and she whispers things in my ear.

Qina said: "Look at Celestine. She's pretending she didn't hear that. Look at her - you can only see her head, neck, and shoulders as she sits at her desk, with her back to you. OK so her hair is quite short, but that means you can see her neck. It's smooth like a polished newel-post. Her shoulders are broad, but broad in the way only a woman's can be. Her white blouse is fairly tight across them and - wait! - she's standing up, and you can see that blouse tapering down to her waist. Through it you can see the back and shoulder-straps of her bra, and that is such an intimate thing to consider. She was naked to the waist before she fastened that clasp - see, it's a slight bump in the centre of the back-strap!"

Belgian chocolate truffles, on the other hand, offer an intimacy I know only too well. It is possible to eat one at a single bite, but I prefer to take them between finger and thumb, holding them for just long enough for the dusting to begin to melt under the warmth of my fingertips. Then I introduce that dusting to my lips, and to the tip of my tongue, where it transforms instantly to liquid. I bite through the shell, which is barely harder than the truffle centre anyhow, and leaves a deposit on my teeth as I take half of this delicious confection into my mouth, let it melt, and let it slide like a newly-formed ingot down my throat. Then the other half. Then I lick the residue off my fingers and teeth and, realising that I have had my eyes shut all this time, I emerge into a renewed brightness. Intimacy and poetry all in one!

Qina said: "Look at Celestine. She's facing this way. She's smiling that open, honest smile at you. Her eyes are on you, and only you. She is looking at you, and you are all she sees. She feels the same way about you that you do about her. You love her. She loves you. Speak to her at tea-break, and this time make it more than 'Have we got any semi-skimmed milk left?'"

Tea-break, for me, means a cup of hot chocolate. Talk of semi-skimmed milk is irrelevant - the last time I mentioned it, it was simply something to say, a way of breaking an awkward silence between sips. Drinking chocolate was invented by the Aztecs, as a love-potion, as an aphrodisiac, but it is its own fulfilment! I take a teaspoon, and pick up a little heap, like a miniature Popocatapetl, and transfer it, without spilling any, to a thick, china mug. I trickle in enough full-cream milk to make a smooth paste out of the powder, and churn it with the spoon until it coats the bottom of the mug. Now I take a small, light pan, and pour in about half a pint of the same full-cream milk. Over a half-ring of electric heat, I bring the milk slowly to the boil, taking it off the cooker just before it rises up to spill over the pan and burn, and pour just enough into the mug, leaving a little in the pan for top-ups later. Then I whisk the mugful until the whole contents are creamy, and little bubbles form at the top; then I dust it with some more powder, so that brown stains form little continents on the surface. I bring the mug to my face, and before I touch it with my lips, I breathe in the vapours that rise from it, chocolate steam which fills my nasal passages and lungs. Then I am ready for my first taste. It scalds my mouth slightly, and the skin of the boiled milk attaches itself to my lip and has to be licked off, but the instant buzz is there. When the drink has cooled just enough, I let it run over my tongue and down my gullet in little gulps - chocolatl ..... axolotl ..... quetzalcoatl - like cooling lava running down a mountainside. And, yes, my eyes are closed in ecstasy; my hands are cupped appropriately around the mug. A slight sweat breaks out all over my body, and my cheeks burn!

"It's the twenty-fifth anniversary of my fist kiss," announces Sally. "It was Martin Ashworth. I had his name written on my geography jotter, until he discovered that he could get further with Maureen Evans, and chucked me!"

"Ah, les folies de la jeunesse!" said someone else.

Qina says: "Celestine is passing your desk, she is stopping to talk to someone at the next desk. Look at her hips in that black skirt - they are perfectly curved, and made for running your hands down to appreciate the shape. Her tummy is flat, and her thighs can't help making the skirt's fabric form a V, with its point exactly where you know her mound will be. Look upwards, see white through white, her bra again, under her blouse, supporting breasts of textbook proportions. Is she perfect or what? See! She's smiling again! She knows you appreciate her, and she loves to be admired!"

I remember the day I first bit into a Dairy Milk block. It was a cold day, and the chocolate was hard. It hurt my teeth, trying to force them into the runnels between the individual blockettes, but I managed to get a square plus a jagged half-square crammed awkwardly into my mouth. And there it sat for fifteen minutes, slowly melting against my palette. Now that is what love is all about. I have been a slave to it ever since – a faithful, willing slave, but a slave nonetheless.

Qina said: "You don't need to take your clothes off to have a good time. Go to Celestine, and place your forehead against hers. Breathe in as she breathes out, and catch the scent of her breath. It is sweet, though there may be the tang of exotic cooking somewhere at the back of it. Her eyes will be fixed on yours, and then they will close. Her lips will part, her head will tilt, she will whisper your name in four equal syllables - 'E-liz-a-beth' - and she will say, 'Kiss me'. Your lips will touch, melding perfectly, tingling. Your tongues will meet. She will slip a hand around your waist, and press it against the small of your back, drawing you to her. You will bring your bodies together, and there will be intense friction as you press against each other through your clothes. You will be so close. If you were any closer you'd be back-to-back! It will be good. It will be what she wants. It will be what you both want."

"Yahoo!" shouted Sally. We all looked round. I remembered shouting like that when I read that chocolate contained a mild anti-depressant.

"I've got past the company's firewall, and I'm on a dirty web-site!"

We all clustered round (Qina said: "You're standing next to Celestine. Her arm is against yours. She is enjoying the warmth of this contact. She is not moving away"). Sure enough, Sally had brought up the home page of a site which advertised exotic dildos. Someone asked her how she had landed there.

"Well, the web address was in a women's magazine, and I just entered it at the top, and - bingo!"

Qina said: "There is nothing a woman can do to herself with a foreign object, that another woman can't do better with her finger or her tongue!"

To introduce, into the yielding softness of my mouth, a Cadbury's Flake! The surface of it is rough, like a miniature oak-log. Bits of it break away. I like to push it into my mouth until it is within only a couple of millimetres of gagging me, then withdraw it, then insert it again, and see how often I can do that before its structure begins to break down, or before I can no longer resist biting it. When I do bite it, I begin a little game where I try to catch the fragments with my tongue, as they stick to odd parts of my mouth or try to escape from my lips. It's good stuck into a chocolate ice-cream, with chocolate sauce, too!

Qina said: "You'll get fat. Have sex with Celestine - it'll burn off pounds!"

I go jogging each evening. That burns off pounds, or rather it keeps me in a state of equilibrium. As I trot along the footpath, my left-right left-right footfall beats out a tattoo in my mind, which I form into half-words.

"Choc - late - choc - late - choc - late .........."

Qina however makes my intake of breath say, "Sex ........ sex ........ sex ....... sex .................." Or she mocks my chocolate strides.

"Choc - lick -choc - lick - choc - lick ........."

Or even, "Cho - clit - cho - clit - cho - clit .......!"

Every evening after jogging, I take a shower, and sit on my bed, towelling my hair. Tonight was no exception.

Qina said: "Imagine Celestine coming out of that shower. The scent of fresh shampoo, fresh shower gel, fresh body-spray, freshly laundered, towelling bath-robe, all mingling with the scent of a woman. Imagine her dropping her bath-robe, standing beautifully naked before you. Imagine her taking you by both hands, stepping close to you, placing as much of her naked body against yours as it is possible to. Imagine words of love. Imagine emotion and sexual tension building up in both of you, heart-rate and pulse skittering, perspiration breaking out under your arms. Imagine sinking onto your bed with her. Inter-racial sex is cool these days, it's trendy, but you can pretend that it's still a little taboo. The occasional slur about each other's skin colour, as you make love, is as exciting as calling each other slut or tart. It'll be fun! You are meant to be together. You are meant to enjoy each other. Tomorrow, tell her you love her!"

After my jog and shower, I deserved a reward. A chocolate trifle. I reached into the fridge and, virtuously, took out a low-fat one. Maybe this was half a move towards Celestine, half-listening to Qina. But for tonight, it was my little pleasure to take little spoonfuls of dark brown mousse, with embedded crumbs of chocolate cake and little, melting whirls of cream on top, and place them in the centre of my tongue. I did this until I had scraped the last morsel from the plastic pot, and had let it slide down my throat. It was as though I could feel it hit my stomach, sending flights of butterflies back up my oesophagus. My eyes closed, as they always do when a climax of pleasure comes. For a moment I was tense throughout my whole body, then I relaxed into a sea of cushions. Shades of brown on my dark brown sofa. My favourite, favourite, absolute favourite colour. I mean flavour. I mean...