The Cuntiness of Olives
By Libby Driscoll
Red wine, coffee, whiskey, mushrooms and olives always stood as maturity check points for me. Wincing through my first sip of Rioja and pretending to enjoy it, a snide jab of laughter would infect the elders around me followed by a crushing, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll like it when you’re older!’.
The words sat tormenting me deep in my chest. Desperate to be seen as an equal, I would wean myself on to the bitterness of adulthood. First with milk and sugar in my coffee and Diet Coke in my red wine (I know, I know) until I achieved the medal of maturity. At least, until I could bear to sip on the bitterness of age without visibly wincing.
Whilst I’m still yet to tick mushrooms off the list, like many other twenty-odd year olds I have become accustomed to (nearly) all the tastes I was told I would enjoy when I was older. I often wonder if my taste did decide to change one day, or if I just fooled myself into thinking I enjoy them, and it’s really the taste of accomplishing some kind of mundane milestone or taking autonomy over time that satisfies me, even to this day.
Olives, however, have become a welcome addition to my life for the past decade or so. My love-hate relationship with the shiny pitted fruits began at around ten, years old, watching my younger brother eat a mozzarella, tomato, pesto and olive panini in Starbucks. The savoury aroma of the beige little treat hooked me but, after asking for my own, the karma of an early gluttonous sin struck me as I bit into my first olive. The fleshy brininess felt so offensive I couldn’t think why anyone (especially my 7-year-old brother) would willingly eat them and ruin a good cheese toastie.
Whenever we returned to the cafe, I would order the same panini again and again and pick the olives off, which would find their way to my brother's plate instead. Eventually over time, I would leave one or two olive slices in the panini to consume them like a sick dog swallowing their medication, mastering the illusion of adulthood.
However, my cunning mastery of cheating fate eventually turned back on itself. I can’t remember the exact turning point where I fell in love with olives, but I do remember that no Italian restaurant visit would be without a side of olives, and any movie night or homemade dinner with friends must be equipped with our post-pubescent acquaintances.
Before long, this rich salty flesh became a sweet, juicy essential presence. The tiny oval spheres became the keepers of secrets pooled on the bar at the bottom of our glasses, accomplices fighting debauchery by lazily lining our stomachs. They became a familiar face on dates, sitting between us on the canal, allowing a refuge for our eyes to rest and avoid one another for a brief moment.
Unlike their mature counterparts, olives don’t offer anything more than pleasure in its simplest form. I don’t reach for them to temporarily stimulate my body in the morning, I don’t guzzle them down after a stressful day to numb my brain, they exist as a choice, as an appreciation of that adult bitterness.
But where does my life go now that I enjoy olives? After disappointing the fungi family that was waiting for me with a ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, kind of acceptance, I’ve ticked off all that was left on that adult milestone. Twiddling my thumbs and wondering what was next, my rose-tinted vision reminds me that as you grow, you begin to appreciate pleasure in a different way - you can romanticise all that you have come to love.
My inner Libra takes a hold and decides that olives can be the lustrous desire to wear a white linen dress and frolic amongst the grove as the sun strokes my skin through the branches. In a reality where a film camera would be encased in my fingers instead of a phone, where I’d kiss the sun goodbye with a raised glass of wine as he paints the sky orange for me and my friends.
I suppose it’s beautiful that in the dead of winter, or even just the concreteness of the city, the remnants of a sun kissed romance can still reach us on the side of a martini glass or in a small porcelain bowl accepting its punctured fate. They represent an acceptance of change, standing as a symbol for what once was and what is now, reminding me it’s okay to change my mind. That I am an adult and can bravely bear the bitterness of that reality. Hell, I can even enjoy it.
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because they’ll always remind me of sharing them with my little brother.