You know how it is.
Summer Night. Dinner party. Christmas Lights. A huge table covered in an endless array of delicious foods. Surrounded by old friends and new, all laughing, cracking jokes, and making merry.
She catches your eye, and under the dim glow of the twinkling lights, she shines like the most beautiful jewel you’ve ever seen. Time slows down, butterflies erupt in your stomach. As you gaze at each other all you can think of is how you have never wanted, never desired something as much as you want this now.
Someone nearby laughs at their own joke but you don’t hear it. You send a wink and a cheeky grin, but she plays coy, gazing at you motionless. You muster all your courage and make the first move. You lean across the table and reach out...
...Light kisses give way to wet tongues, and your lips become red with the sweet juice from the peach you are currently devouring. You are on top of the table now, surrounded by all your friends. They have stopped what they were doing and are watching you, they start cheering you on, but their voices are muffled by your own heartbeat. As you devour the last of the strawberries, you notice two more of your friends, the coconut fried rice and the smoked duck, beckon you from the end of the table. They are motionless - frozen with excitement - they want to be inside you.
You hastily wipe the peach/strawberry stained shame from your lips and dive towards the fried rice, through valleys of peanut satay and mountains of mashed yams. Your whole mouth has become an erogenous zone. You laugh maniacally while you roll back and forth, tasting one, then another then another…
In the corner, a prudish Crepe Suzette waits patiently in the chaos for the end of the feast. You will save her for last.
Part 1 - introduceyourself
So. I got a little bit carried away there. Lets start over. I realize this is supposed to be an introduceyourself, and accept that the attentive reader (you) will now have a healthy mistrust of me and is probably wondering if they should in fact keep reading. As with any article that describes itself as an ‘almost-not-unsafe-for-the-workplace’ autobiography, the answer is probably,: no, unsubscribe & delete history. But, if you are intrigued by this #ANUSFTW intro, then I can promise you: below this line, this post gets a lot less weird.
Narrator: It didn’t.
Hello, I’m 
Disclaimer: I’m not actually sexually attracted to most food.
Now, reader, I posit to you, that all humans and animals and even some minerals are intimately, even carnally tied to their food. I appreciate that this revelation may make you uncomfortable and confused ( and what is good journalism if not a vehicle for unease?) but I will break down your unease with just 3 simple, irrefutable and thoroughly scientific arguments.
Argument 1: Correlation is causation
Take 10 people at random and ask them if they have ever fantasized about swimming in a vat of fruit salad or hazelnut butter or ghost pepper ramen and sure, maybe 8 or 9 out of 10 of them will say No. But then ask those same 10 people which of them can really say that they are living their best and most fulfilling life? Only 1 or 2 would say yes. Coincidence? YOU DECIDE.
Argument : The Chocolate Straw-man
Who among us has NEVER at one point in their life smothered their belly with peanut butter and Nutella in an attempt to absorb the goodness directly? Perhaps most of us - but only because we never thought it would work. (It wouldn’t work. Would it? Is knowing it wouldn’t work a good enough reason not to try?)
Argument 3: The Third Argument
Finally, Imagine, if you can, the process of eating the humble banana (any banana will do, humility not withstanding). First you peel it lovingly, undressing it in three or four deliberately sensual motions as not to bruise the flesh. Some people even take care to remove the imperfections - black spots, stray peels. Then you carefully insert the naked part into your mouth. The moment before you bite down is perhaps the most vulnerable & intimate moment that you will ever experience with a partner. (In this case- the banana).
-Once you’ve reached second base with a banana there’s no going back. You are committed. You’ve said your vows, thrown the bouquet and all but the consummation is left. No pulling out. You bite down.
A gorilla could leap out of its enclosure at the zoo, hopped up on cocaine and determined to murderize you and you’d still be compelled to bite down, chew and swallow before your brain would let your legs run for cover. Subconsciously, you’d rather risk death by gorilla than leave a banana mid-kiss. The only ones who remove banana from their mouths without biting down are pornstars and extremely gracious elephants*1
Now that we are in agreement about our shady relationship with food, lets get back to the point at hand. About me:
I was born and have lived most of my life in London, England - famous & infamous for it’s delicious ‘Indian’ food, and colonization respectively.
And like the colonists of the Great British Empire, I also have strong links to Ghana and Cameroon in West Africa. I spent a significant amount of my early life growing up alongside cousins, aunts, uncles, friends (though which aunts are aunt-aunts and which were just aunts who hung around continues to confound me) these places became part of me, they also became ‘home’. They are also where I met my first love: Plantain. *2
Perhaps because of this location duality, I fell in love with traveling, and discovering new places.
As you may have guessed, I’m also somewhat fond of food and cooking. This is probably something to do with Ghana and Cameroon having some of the most delicious food on the planet.
Cameroon, for example, has some of the most varied foods in Africa. Its fertile land weave through forest, desert, and Savannah. It climbs up mountain regions and spreads out onto the coast. Cameroon’s history has also shaped (among other things) its food. Portuguese, German, French, and British are just a few influences that have left their mark on the cuisine.*3
So, I’m ‘hot’ for food and the culture around it. Cooking and just making things in general. Can’t wait to read and share more here. If you’ve made it this far, please except my genuine thanks and humble apology. I can never repay you for the time I’ve robbed you of, but I can leave you with this news story that may signal a coming dip in the BanCoin market: (Disclaimer: I am a substantial holder of BanCoin - the cryptocurrency dedicated to supporting banana related freedoms of all peoples)
Footnotes:
1 Neither of whom are you. Unless you are, in which I’d love to hear more about it in the comments.
2 I love plantain. Like sheer unadulterated love. In fact, there’s an alternate version of this post in which all of the dishes on the table in the introductory ‘story’*2.1 are different variations of plantain. Fried plantain, steamed plantain, grilled plantain, plantain chips… *2.2
2.1 I say ‘story’ here but to draw any resemblance to something an author might write is charitable at best. I pitch my writing somewhere between a public bathroom stall wall and a podiatrist’s dissertation (There are a lot of footnotes).
2.2 If you don’t know what plantain is I saw this understated post a whiiiile back from 
3 Incidentally, Ghana and Cameroon were no.1 & no.2 in global plantain production while I was growing up. In 2012 Uganda increased their plantain output by a factor of 9 (they nonupled?), eclipsing Ghana, Cameroon, Columbia, Rwanda, Nigeria and pretty much the rest of the planet. I don’t know who the secretary of agriculture was in Uganda, but he probably likes plantain almost as much as me. Source: http://www.fao.org/faostat/