"Men are obsessed with sex. They will do nearly anything to get it." This cliché about men resonates with women around the world, unfortunately. The more men you meet, the more convinced you will become that they have one thing on their minds, and one thing only. But it wasn't always this way.
Approximately five hundred years ago, in the days of Christopher Columbus, men were much more interested in spice. Men yearned for spice. They burned for spice. They travelled around the entire world for spice. Sex barely registered as an afterthought.
No, it was not the ecstasy of intercourse that enchanted men. It was the prurient lure of nutmeg that beguiled them. The forbidden tang of pepper that bedevilled them. The bedroom eyes of mustard seed that bewitched them. To clarify, spices turned men on.
Of all the men seduced by sensuous spice, none was as obsessed as Christopher Columbus. If ever there were a man who thought with his taste buds, it was young Chris. His ravenous libido propelled him across the ocean at all hours of the night, even when he knew he had work the next day. What was he searching for? Ginger. Turmeric. Cinnamon. The list is as long as a very large spice rack.
After many lonesome months on the ocean, however, Columbus’s discovery proved a dud. Native American oral histories have taught us that, when Columbus arrived, believing he was in India, the explorer kept asking everyone "where the local spices hang out." But the New World that Columbus encountered was a wasteland devoid of any spice.
Columbus returned to Spain with nothing to show. However, he kept on insisting that spice existed in the New World. He kept promising that the spices were really hot, though no one in the Spanish courts believed him. Columbus was asked why, then, hadn't he brought any back? Columbus said that he had forgotten the shovels; that there was way too much to carry; and, besides, he had been "playing it cool." Many of the conquistadors merely responded with a roll of their eyes.
King Ferdinand nevertheless financed further exploration, and Columbus brought back what he thought was cinnamon but which was actually just regular tree bark. He walked around the court licking it and bragging, "Mmm, this is my new spice."
Columbus, sadly, was not the only honest man ruined by spice's seductive powders. Far from it. All across Europe, men would stand beneath clove trees, yelling up to the treetops, "I love you! Please, come down." All the rap songs were about spice.
Many spices were harvested only to be burned to repel insects, but, the more pungently they repelled, the more men desired them—the forbidden delight. These men would travel to the Malabar Coast, to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, to Morocco, to China. They would stand quivering, baskets in their hands. The spice wooed them.
"Make me yours," some men claimed it whispered, specifically to them.
For the most part, women felt threatened by spice. Although always the more open-minded gender, some women were spicecurious, especially in college.
Nowadays, spice's erotic legacy is nearly erased. In restaurants, the pepper grinder serves as a phallic reminder of what once was the Cleopatra of spices. And, when my wife asks me to "spice things up" in our marriage, she does so in order to help me recall why it is that a part of me wishes to sprinkle oregano all over my naked body.
This Columbus Day, I hope to remember Columbus not for his moronic failures in finding spice, or his brutal tyranny, but for his optimism, as he hoisted the sails on the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Paprika (as he wished it to be called).
