Cheese when it’s starting to go off smells the way I remember the boys locker room smelled. Like feet and bodily gases, something chemical-like or blooming, something alive that shouldn’t be.

I consumed things well past their shelf life as a point of pride. The kiwi that had gone slimy, sliced and packaged in plastic in the fridge untouched for days. Tossed that in my morning smoothie with some mint and yogurt, the limes that had gone so hard they cracked like walnuts in the juicer.

Charlotte berated me over using the cool whip that was old, now gone stiff like spackling.

The cheese intolerance with Charlotte was more a phobia, and like any good phobia irrational. But there was an explanation. Certain kinds of cheese freaked her out, certain formats. Grilled cheese sandwiches, grated cheese on pasta, melted cheese on pizza: these were all fine. But raw, spreadable cheese or a slice of aged cheddar, forget it. Cream cheese, no problem. Mozzarella on caprese salad, no way.

I remember when Charlotte made the connection over her fear: it was the Wallace and Gromit claymation show. Something about the ambiguous consistency of those characters, the lifelike but dodgy nature of their limbs and features. She associated that same fear with cheese. It had an uncanny valley quality like Mark Zuckerberg’s eyes, his clammy skin. Something real but not somehow, not to be trusted.

Mom and John’s friends Rob and Paul dealt with it too, the cheese phobia. Rob could not have cheese in the refrigerator for fear it would infect other foods. Which made living in France awkward, especially in restaurants, pressing the waiter in English, or very English French, to double check if a dish had cheese: then sending it back if Rob believed it did. Rob ruined some of the best restaurants for me over his fear, places I can never return. He is long gone but the embarrassment lives on.

Cheese is weird. Like mushrooms or octopus, these are things we shouldn’t put in our mouths. But not understanding what it is or how it was made has never stopped me from consuming it. Cheese with jam, with mustard, or meat. Cheese for dinner, with bread. Or in the morning with fruit.

Though it had flecks of white and had started to bloom I put the aged cheddar back in the fridge. How can something be too old if it was aged to begin with? Doesn’t it make us stronger to endure bacteria and molds? Didn’t we evolve as a species like this? What had we been reduced to? Clay, featureless figures?

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Humor

Tags: humor, Memoir