By Aaron Suranofsky
Love sounds like beef jerky, sometimes a quick snack—tangy and tender, squeezing juice over your gums as you stir the ooze of savory slime. Sometimes dry, grinding, sucking out a shallow taste that gets stuck in your teeth, that you might lick at later when it’s had time to soften. Sometimes expensive for a bag of meat you chew into too fast, leaving a film in your throat, a guilty migraine, and high blood pressure. But sometimes it’s a slab of fresh venison. A pair of sweat-stank muscles strip skin, craft it from a wild passion, put it under a smoke blanket. Finish to a filthy whisper of spices. Your mouth ignites, gently chewing, a tongue massage coaxes a salty taste slurped into every taste bud, seeping phlegm thick sparks down your neck before swallowing, satisfied.