Kinky kitchen: Erotic bites excite the appetite

The meeting of sex and food

Tell me what you enjoy about your body.
And your mind?
What’s your physical history like?
Where’s your mental wellbeing currently?
Do you have a history of trauma in the past, sexual or otherwise?
Do you have a spiritual calling — what do we do if something comes up for you while we’re in session?

These are some of the questions Tapiwa Guzha asks when facilitating his informal “crash course in intimacy”. This process is part of the context establishing, trust-building and safety setting the ropework artists/practitioner designed for preparing for a session with someone new to the practice — or at least new to practising with him.

Guzha has been called an indigenous food activist for his work at his ice cream store, Tapi Tapi, although he prefers to be referred to as a cultural activist. Through flavours excavated from the continent, he serves memory, nostalgia and culture swirled in a scoop. Tastes remind customers of who they are. Other flavours are passport-free travel across the continent. Through confectionery, Guzha references history, maps geography and celebrates African identities that are often overlooked.

Kasvikiro is his recent cultural intervention, a visual art project leaning on a self-developed calligraphic style to narrate African philosophy, cosmology and philosophy. He’s also a body movement coach. A craftsman. A soap maker, mirroring some of the ingredients which show up in his ice-cream. A self-touted generalist whose many selves sit at the table for this conversation. Although, it’s the perspective from Guzha as an intimacy and pleasure educator and advocate we’re engaging with most acutely. 

The “crash course in intimacy” shows the participant that whatever they bring into the vulnerability space will be understood.

“You’re trying to get to know someone in as natural a way as possible. It doesn’t have to feel like an interrogation, but it can be direct. If they feel like they’re seen and that some of their needs and traumas are taken into consideration, you can get to a very intimate space very quickly,” he says.

Let’s talk about sex, baby

The sex positive movement has recently proliferated in public discourse. Guzha and other contributors like sex columnist Dr T (Tlaleng Mofokeng) authored some of the chapters in speaker and podcaster, Tiffany Kagure Mugo’s, Quirky Quick Guide to Having Great Sex. Guzha’s include “Before booty sex: Prepping for anal”, “Soft serve: Enjoying erection-free sex” and “Snacking on someone: Mixing food and sex”, among others.

“For me, it;s primarily about opening up conversations around intimacy, sex and sensuality … in the hope that you’re creating room for people to make the decisions they need to; whatever makes sense for them … It’s creating spaces that nourish mindsets that encourage people to be informed and feel empowered around the choices they want to make,” Guzha says.

He admits that his views on food and sex have evolved over the years, chuckling that he has experienced “changes in appetite”. Guzha recognises that his perspective on food has shifted, “inviting a bigger world food experience”. His palate has expanded to appreciate different cultures and various flavour profiles and combinations. 

“I’m figuring out what my position in the food world is and what I’m trying to do by reconnecting with local identities around food — as opposed to the international benchmarks around what food should be,” he says.

Food and sex have various touch points. Some are a bit more overt — both are relied on for sustaining the species; others a little less considered — the effects of taboo mindsets on people’s relationships with these acts; the dis-ease and anxiety around them. 

Guzha says that people’s engagement of both is often functional. “You don’t enjoy food from your own culture the same way you’re allowed to enjoy food from other cultures. It’s very utilitarian: I’m going to eat pap now, not because I love pap [but because of] a sense of nostalgia; because I’m craving home. But to enjoy it in the moment for its beauty is not something we really speak about. We don’t celebrate it as a daily experience. It’s an exception to glorify our own food culture…

“It’s hard to separate Europe, and other influences depending on the region, from the food and sexual experience on the continent. The food legacy on the continent is a bunch of different Europeans’ perspectives,” Guzha continues. “In my background as a Zimbabwean, the repression mentality that shut down sexual conversations and sexual spaces is the same repression that shut down and replaced our cultures and food systems with British sensibilities. It’s the same thing that’s shut down our languages. The idea of using sexual words in your own language seems so crude and offensive — our power’s been stripped away.”

He adds: “With more personal confidence or self-assuredness, you make fewer apologetic choices. You make more choices that suit you as opposed to what people want you to do to fit in. The same is true for sexual relationships and intimacy. With more education being available now and more intentionality around sex, I personally know a lot of people, who’ve moved away from pop culture’s idea of sex” where there are no awkward moments; where bodies fit seamlessly and where orgasms are available in multiples.

There’s a growing recognition that sex doesn’t need to revolve around orgasm. This perspective shift and expansion has also applied to Guzha’s relationship with sex. He says it’s his understanding of what sex means that has undergone the most significant transformation.

“[It’s] not needing physical intimacy to always be tied into sex. The idea of cuddling, or even the rope work that I do is quite a sexual experience for some people — and it doesn’t have to be. The idea of being naked in a bathtub with someone, but you’re not trying to be sexual, but rather sensual, enjoying something delicious without sex as an intention.”

Food as foreplay?

Foreplay’s not a thing, at least not according to Guzha.

“I don’t agree with the idea of foreplay any more. It’s always been something I’ve been uncomfortable with, and I finally have the language around it. The danger of categorising moments in an experience is having to identify starting, middle and end points — and then markers of success for each of those different phases.”

He prefers the idea that, regardless of the dynamic of the relationship, foreplay is always going on. Whether the sexual partners are doing yoga together or sitting and reading together — the senses are engaged.

“Sex is just another aspect of that sensual experience. Yet when we speak about sensuality we mean sex-adjacent things for the most part,” Guzha says.

He says that if one is setting out to have sex that’s based on: 1. Getting the juices flowing; 2. increase the pace a little; and 3. Someone orgasming, maybe (sometimes more than one person), then it’s easy to get stuck in a script of progression. This can make people forget that the nature of being alive is a constantly sensual experience with the senses invariably engaged. For him, flipping the script can include using food as sex toys, like a condom on a cucumber or corncob for a ribbed effect, or by substituting baby aubergines for Ben Wa balls. Or turning the entire act of grocery shopping into play by sending your partner off with a list of items to buy that can be either for meal-prep — because nothing slaps like the smell of good food being prepared after a long day at work — or for produce that can be used as part of the sexual play; to drizzle, dip, lick, flick, suck — adding a layer and texture of delicious to the experience.

“The thing that connects food and sex is that they can overlap, and they both engage with our senses really well. If you think about really good food, it’s going to engage with your perception of temperature, smell, sight, sound, taste, touch,” Guzha says.

Similarly he says that often the same can be applied to memorable sex, either by titillation through sensory engagement, or by intentionally taking away one or more of the senses to heighten another. A push-pull play on perception.

He adds: “I now understand thatwe can decouple intimacy and sensuality from sexuality if we need or want to. It’s like a Venn diagram: there’s an overlap region, but those things can also exist separately.”