April 1990: A week after Easter, the basket’s largely depleted – tulle bedding (my mother having declared Easter grass tacky, perhaps her worst epithet, reserved for such atrocities as colored Christmas lights, My Little Ponies, and being called “mom” instead of “mama”) squashed and chocolate-smudged. Jellybean count: one red and one green (lime and cherry being held in high esteem), a couple of purple (okay, but redolent of Dimetapp), and about seventeen black (the dreaded black licorice jellybeans). I wonder if I can trick my little brother into trading for something – anything! – by claiming I was saving them because they were the best sort.
August 1993: The Dodge minivan makes its way home from the summer cabin on Lake Michigan, and as my father refuels, Mom offers a rare treat: non-special-occasion candy. I request licorice, looking forward to testing out for how many mile markers I can suck on a Twizzler before the empty core loses structural integrity and collapses into sugar-slime on my tongue. She comes out of the gas station, beaming, and hands me a packet of black licorice. “It’s your favorite, right?” Twenty years later, one of my greatest regrets is still the way her smile collapsed when I fixed her with a scowl and shrilled “It’s the one I HATE, MOM.”
October 1997: I’m fourteen – way too old for trick-or-treating – but I agreed to accompany my little brother so that my parents wouldn’t escort him (social suicide) and put on some tights, bought at the Spencer’s Gifts at the mall. They’re red with flames picked out in glitter running down the sides, so I figure that if anyone asks I can sullenly say “I’m supposed to be a devil.” Mostly I’m too embarrassed even to ask for candy, even at the house that gives out full-size bars, and anyway, at fourteen I’m Snackwells-terrified of fat. I accept a couple of mini chocolate bars and a waxy sleeve of Necco wafers and scarf them down, later, on the stairs to the deck behind the house. The Neccos’ pastel color scheme disguises the black licorice ones – they’re a kind of lilac-grey – until it’s too late.
June 2001: The condo in Ocean City feels impossibly grown-up, and Jeni’s raiding her parents’ liquor cabinet before we go out. We were on the cheerleading squad together in high school, but she seemed to slink around effortlessly, with parties and boyfriends while I joined the chemistry team and dated a guy who wouldn’t even eat a liqueur-filled chocolate before he turned 21. But we’re both in college now, and all that’s there is Sambuca. We both throw back a shot and are hilariously indignant that it tastes like the worst kind of licorice. We shove the mouth of the bottle under the tap and fill it back up a half-inch, just in case.
July 2005: I fancy myself in love with a man in my grad program who already has a girlfriend. One night, I wear green seersucker and almost kiss him while he’s cooking dinner. Squid ink pasta with garlic and fennel: it’s good. That same night, I have a dream that I’m tied to a chair and somebody in a Saw mask is slowly cutting slivers, crescents, fronds of fennel, and I somehow know that they are going to shove them into my mouth and down my throat until I drown in that black licorice scent. I wake up; he goes away to a summer workshop; neither of us ever speak again.
September 2007: The metaphorical allure of absinthe comes before my taste for it, but I’d already taught myself to like goat cheese so I figure I can do it again. My boyfriend’s birthday is coming up and I conceive of a clever bag — black velvet on the outside and shifty green taffeta on the inside — to store the absinthe spoon with a skull on that I’ve Ebay’ed for the occasion. Except I can’t sew at all, so he receives some gnarled, frayed little kidney of a sack, but the drink itself is surprisingly okay. It’s difficult, to separate out who I want to be from who I am, but I’m pretty sure I actually like it. I’m just not sure I actually still like the boyfriend.
March 2012: The wind sweeps cold through the Rhone valley, past the white horses of the Camargue. I’d stupidly expected it to be warmer by now, and the French I’d whispered lover-like to Michel Thomas on the L train has abandoned me – we argue like alcoholic toddlers at le tabac about how we want Gauloises Blondes! No! je ne veux pas le nouveau boîte gris bizarre! But fumble-tongue aside, the Marseille harbor looks like a postcard, and when I read and sip pastis on the balcony and the pigeons shit on me and my book with so much more panache than regular old American pigeons, I am overcome with a sudden reckless joy that tastes rather like licorice.
August 2013: I let the Ricard louche into the tap water, add ice, open my laptop and start to type: A History of a Woman’s Attitude About Licorice.
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Tags: food attitudes, licorice, licorice is disgusting, molly i am proud of your personal growth but i cannot support this licorice thing, molly kottemann, red vines suck too, twizzlers forever
Thank you for the smile. My momma always loved black licorice and I hated it, until one day I tried some sort of magically chewy and soft Australian brand and realized what I had been missing out on. I am still waiting to find out if I will ever enjoy eating raw tomatoes.
Go to my mom’s house in northern California, stand barefoot in the dirt of her garden, surrounded by pine trees and mountains and fir trees and 90 degree sunshine, pick a ripe tomato, rinse with garden hose, eat.
Most enjoyable tomato ever.
Yes – this is Darrell Lea Soft Eating Licorice, it is the best! I actually love licorice and aniseed flavour, but if I need a hit or a comfort food, I grab a bag of Darrell Lea.
hate it, hate all of it (licorice, not this story, this story was good!)
the boyfriend whose mother was Dutch, who convinced me to try salted licorice. I don’t think I was very gracious about how truly awful, even more awful than regular licorice it is.
Also red twizzlers are awful, but toddlers will still be bribed by them before tasting them, remembering, and letting them fall on the carpet to be rolled in dog hair.
I liked the red ones when I was little but always hated the black. Disgusting. My mom used to like black jellybeans, but after getting stuck with all our discarded ones every Easter she started to hate them.
Twizzlers’ empty core…my brother loved using them as straws to drink his orange soda.
oh Christ Drop. That’s notorious stuff. There are lots of videos of Dutch people making non-Dutch try it, because the Dutch are mean.
They sell it in Scandinavia too, and sweet licorice aslmost doesn’t exist here. Every time I find a new brand of licorice that doesn’t specify which type it is, I buy it in case it’s sweet. It never is.
I don’t even like sweet licorice all that much normally, but when it isn’t available I miss it so much.
THE TAGS.
I regret only that my commenter avatar is no longer the Swedish taxidermy lion.
God, I love that lion. If I ever have the chance to design an album cover I just want it to be that lion.
Licorice makes me think of my grandmother and therefore sob like a little girl, but
____MOLLY MOLLY MOLLY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!____
EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO AND READ MOLLY’S TUMBLR BECAUSE IT IS FULL OF AMAZING LITTLE SHORT STORIES AND I STILL GO BACK AND READ THE ONE ABOUT THE PENGUIN EVERY FEW MONTHS OR SO.
Missing tag: THIS MOLLY IS THE BEST OF THE MOLLYS.
Everyone save all your grey Neccos and mail them to me!
MICHEL THOMAS. The secret, denture-noise-making French lover in my headphones. He helped me pass one of the translations tests I had to take for my PhD. I swear by him. But now I’m worried that he didn’t teach me enough words about licorice.
Also, I had a similar moment with my mother where she made a big production of giving me roller blades for my 15th birthday, and I was a proper bitch and said, there at the table in front of everyone, “I wanted roller SKATES.” Everyone made horror faces and she was crushed and I wanted to cry, but the crying at that moment wasn’t because I was ashamed. It was because I really, really wanted roller skates.
Wait. Does this mean I’m going to end up liking the taste of black licorice? I love this piece, Molly, but I surely hope not.
MICHEL THOMAS. The secret, denture-noise-making French lover in my headphones. He helped me pass one of the translations tests I had to take for my PhD. I swear by him. But now I'm worried that he didn't teach me enough words about licorice.
Also, I had a similar moment with my mother where she made a big production of giving me roller blades for my 15th birthday, and I was a proper bitch and said, there at the table in front of everyone, "I wanted roller SKATES." Everyone made horror faces and she was crushed and I wanted to cry, but the crying at that moment wasn't because I was ashamed. It was because I really, really wanted roller skates.
Wait. Does this mean I'm going to end up liking the taste of black licorice? I love this piece, Molly, but I surely hope not.
TWIZZLERS NEVER RED VINES FOREVER
Twizzlers taste like I imagine the plastic they use to make Strawberry Shortcake dolls would taste.
As for black licorice I can’t even what is the why are we let’s not no no no NOPE
Very nice. However, in second graph, shouldn’t it be “I request Twizzler…”?
No.
Yes – this is Darrell Lea Soft Eating Licorice, it is the best! I actually love licorice and aniseed flavour, but if I need a hit or a comfort food, I grab a bag of Darrell Lea.
ah, I love the garden hose taste!
Twizzlers forever indeed! Delicious, delicious plastic strawberry flavored Twizzlers.
My mom is the black jelly bean lady, too. Boggled the mind. But she did force me to try and thereby start my obsession with licorice spice tea. IT IS THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD. Even better than Twizzlers.
I will take any and all unwanted black licorice candies/drinks/whatever. Y’all are crazy, red licorice is gross.
Somewhere I have an equally detailed, site-specific love letter to black licorice. With detailed reference to the exact smell of the bulk health-food store where Mum bought chewy Panda candy when I had earaches so bad that “ache” is like unto Ginger’s “just” cramps: the word doesn’t fit.