Dorothy Parker tries Japanese candy
In cool springtime, a lady’s thoughts lightly turn to liquor. In nasty times such as these, a good bolt of gin would do wonders to lift my dark mood. I haven’t felt this low since F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway decamped for Paris in pursuit of alcoholic adventures, leaving me dry and depressed. How often have I muttered to myself, grimly shaking my fist at the copy of the 18th Amendment pinned over my bathroom mirror, “How can one be expected to endure the Great Depression without liquid refreshment to stave off creeping despair?”
How indeed, my devoted friends?
Into these trembling hands has lately fallen a candy bar that promised sweet deliverance from the bitter reapings of the sober life. From Japan, land of the raisin rum, came a peculiar variety of Kit Kat infused with the savor of demon alcohol. In the regular round of life’s cycle from hard luck to rotten remembrance, your Constant Eater would ordinarily not deign to soil her tongue with vulgar candy. However, as misery loves rotundity, and the agents of the New York City Prohibition Bureau and I are swiftly moving from cool strangers to best pals, I had no choice but to employ adulterated chocolate as means of beating back the DTs and the blues, while simultaneously fattening myself up like a member of the Dubuque Elks Club Wives Auxiliary Corps.
Swathing oneself in a crackling wrapper of robin’s egg blue is one way to catch the eye of the fickle consumer. One might forgive any number crass acts of American-styled Orientalism on the part of the Japanese branch of the Nestle corporation, but one cannot forgive the spelling out of “Tokyo” in twining grape vines, a clumsy performance of Asiatic apery that would make David Belasco blush like a schoolgirl.
As you, my astute reader, are surely aware, the Japanese Kit Kat manufacturers insist upon producing ever more baffling and upsetting flavors for the foreign markets. It is a harsh trial for your Constant Eater, who must chase and chronicle these thin trends at the behest of one miserly publisher after another. But alas, the trends justify the magazines, so I must sedulously forge on with my mendacious Rum Raisin Kit Kat review. The sorrowful state of my bank account inclines me to humor the whims of taste, I should mention. Ah, the road to hell is paved with “I should mention!”
Tearing asunder the wrapper, two slim, slight bars of pale chocolate revealed themselves to these astonished eyes. Two’s company, three’s a Salt Lake City marriage license. Far be it from a delicate lady such as myself to demand more than a few meager inches of pleasure, however.
As my years of modern urban living pile one upon the other, I can attest that the bigger they aren’t, the louder they catcall. The humble appearance of the pallid little candy surely belied bright Byzantine delights, I assured myself. I drew my optimism ‘round me like a velvet cloak. Depression is the better part of pallor, however, and I was yet again left unsatisfied and sore.
“Does the Rum Raisin Kit Kat contain alcohol?” you eagerly demand. Indeed it does not, my poor children. After imparting a faint hint of brandy beneath the cloying decadence of white chocolate, the mean little candy melted away behind my quivering lips, leaving nothing behind but the slick, oily aftertaste of Easter basket gleanings, which lingered for interminable perambulations of the clock’s arms, like the cruelest of bathtub gin hangovers.
In the absence of the courtly knights of yore, the woman of today must needs protect herself, and as necessity is the mother of contraception, I wished I could turn back time to reapply the wrapper, leaving the lily-white rod untasted. Should you seek to woo your lady-love, be well advised: candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker. This is not one of Constant Eater’s oft-abused Dorothy Parker quotes. Neither is this: What fresh smell is this? Ah, perhaps my time as a respected critic has come to a quiet end with the consumption of this vile piece of confectionery!
As the fragile blooms of spring unfold to welcome the tender light of dawn, how often my Algonquin Round Table chums clamor, by telephone, “Give us more Dorothy Parker poems!” A humble poet renown for her magnificent wit and exquisite taste would demur with becoming maidenly modesty. Let she who is without sin endure a ringing phone—your shameless Constant Eater shall answer the damn call.
Men of Letters
Arthur wooed in tender verse
Bob slipped hundreds in my purse
Charlie Smith sent roses red
Donald steered me toward the bed
Eddie wished me for a wife
Fred proposed the wicked life
Gordon vowed to e’er be true
Harold Jones would kiss and coo
Yet from such men I always shrink
I love Jim Beam—I need a drink!
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