A Taste for More

"Just think of it this way," George started lecturing to himself. " If poetry is words reconnected to their divinity then wine is grapes reconnected to their divinity. Just pick a bottle like you would pick a poem."

The elderly English professor pulled up the hems of his slacks and looked at the yellow socks again. His toes stretched inside polka-dotted cotton, loosening up the arthritis. Three purple dots fanned out into tight little grins. He admired his choice.

"Ahh," he exhaled with a smile, "Like chocolate-covered strawberries. Great first date socks. Now for that bottle of wine!"

If you asked him about his sock comment, he would have cracked a joke about having good taste in style. However, after living with synesthesia for 72 years, George was more than an expert in good taste. He could taste metaphors. The synesthesia, his neurological condition that crossed the pathways of senses in his brain, allowed him to taste the metaphorical energy of everyday objects, ideas, and even words.

Earlier that morning, he had already put away his black dress socks because they "tasted" like whiskey. He took out a pair of white athletic socks, that tingled his tongue like an orange peel, but he decided against those too. He pushed the argyle pairs aside because he wanted to wear something more exciting than graham crackers.

Finally, he found the polka-dotted socks. The sweet drip of a strawberry and warm milk chocolate melted in his mouth. Although the synesthesia made choosing socks a bit dramatic, it was what made George a great professor of classical poetry.

"This last sonnet here by Proust differs starkly from his earlier love poems," he once explained during an oral examination. "It gives the reader a different taste in the mouth--like Thursdays, grey horses, the number seven. If you follow me, sir, it tastes like gravy when the others taste like lavender."

He had a full head of hair back then and his whole life ahead of him. His taste illuminated connections in the world that other people could not see. Although it catapulted him into the world of literary criticism and poetry analysis, it proved to be a barrier when connecting with others on a personal level.

Now with a few wiry grey hairs stubbornly hanging on, he felt confident about his sock choice, but less sure about his choice in wine for his first "first date" in thirty-eight years.

Standing in his cellar with nervous excitement, he lurched towards his wine rack. His aged but spry hands caught the first bottle without looking. His spine shifted and settled like a stack of library books. George closed his eyes. He rolled the bottle in his hands. His swollen knuckles like ampersands felt the glass. He tasted the contents within the closed bottle. George thought about what he tasted: "Vanilla, oak trees in the summer, a bite of a cherry, August nights, nostalgia."

He squeezed his eyes more tautly and let the tastes carry him to another connection. It tasted like "Bed in Summer" by Robert Louis Stevenson. He could feel the days getting longer and hear the children playing in the twilight heat. IWhen he opened his eyes, he was not surprised to find that he was gripping a 2012 Sophonisba Pinot Noir.

"A bit too familiar for a first date," he said aloud as he considered the metaphors.

His hands pulled him to the right and landed on a thicker sturdier bottle. He tasted William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" almost instantly. The deep berry sweet summer song of passionate love affair. Blackberries, plums, and forest floors tumbled across his tongue. He tasted Shakespeare's palate for juicy innuendo and on the nose infatuation. George looked down the long label and realized it was a 2019 Dark Turn Petite Syrah.

"I don't want to be that forward on a first date," he blushed to himself.

Finally George's anxious hand traced over the edge of the wine rack to the bottom left bottle. He could not make out the label in the dark of the cellar shadows. He placed a hand over the bottle. He immediately felt the song "Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night" playing in his head. He tasted soft velvety fruits and sweet kisses. Black tea leaves and baking spice splashed like a dreamy summer morning in a French café. He tasted Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking"--a poem about the richness of a summer's end and the satisfaction in another year of beauty. It was also about the end of something beautiful but spent, and the time for something new.

"This is the one," George boasted with his chest high and his smile wide.

He took the bottle of the self and admired the 2014 Jetbird Merlot. George had his socks and he had his wine. He was old and he was odd. But nevertheless, he was ready to taste true love.