I don’t like tomato soup. It is a desperation that I have never been
able to escape. I got past my deathly fear of water, result of a
self-imposed scalding where I was unable to control the knobs on the
tub, and learned to swim at least a mile. I got past my fear of dogs,
result of one ugly bitch trying to kill me via the process of an overly
bloody attempt at my scalping, and learned to pet and bark loudly. I
curbed my addictions, stopped smoking, stopped drinking myself silly --
though I love the hint of celery in a tangy Blood Mary after a long road
trip, knowing the next stage is a modest mental dullness -- and stopped
carrying on in the suicidal self-destruction of a post-adolescent ennui.
I grew up they say, some of them kind enough to say, took on the harness
of responsibility and found myself a respected workaholic with family
responsibility. Still, not to mention the obvious too often, one
recognizable flaw in my character is that I absolutely hate tomato soup.

Despite my self-imposed simulacrum of maturity my family continues to
torment me with gifting magazine prints of Warhol and token coffee cups
advertising Campbell. The next Uncle’s necktie or possibly a pair of
unbearable knit wool socks, I predict will feature this vile concoction
as retribution for my writing this confessional of a tomato soup hater.
For once, as you read on, I will be one step further out of the closet
on this culinary topic, as this phobia, that I absolutely despise tomato
soup, remains one last bastion of my secondhand psyche. Sadly, I believe
my family considers once I stop making disgusting facial gestures and
blowing rhubarbs through my lips that their obstinate teasing on this
painful topic is a form of inexpensive therapy.

Variations on the theme of tomato soup never work to bypass my phobia.
Whenever I am served Manhattan clam chowder, a bastardization of the
white purity of New England chowder, it is received with a slight wince
and compulsion to leave a lower table tip or conjure a loathsome
indignity to the evening hostess. I cannot even consent to the notion of
steeping sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl of hot water. I will eat green
tomatoes raw before countenancing this yuppie vulgarity. I cannot stand
the idea of tomato soup flash frozen, reconstituted, parboiled, mixed
with poached eggs, or artfully topped with a floating slices of garlic
bagel, parsley, Gouda cheese or oregano. I am put off by spaghetti gravy
that is too runny with the threat of dripping off the plate and
requiring a steeper form of containment. I prefer my stuffed peppers
topped with a red sauce that is gooey and slightly wiggles. I prefer my
cherry gelatin of ruby redness, and never ever tinted to the tomato soup
shade. I insist my morning libation of tomato juice be well-chilled,
never lukewarm, room temperature, or pre-heated. Though I am able to
subsist on a diet of V-8 juice and slightly toasted English muffins for
weeks the juice must be served directly to the lips from the can and
never with a spoon from a bowl. I prefer a cup of sauerkraut juice to a
bowl of tomato soup any day.

During the summer of 1966 my parents hired a live-in sitter for the
summer to look after my siblings and myself during the day while our
mother worked. I was convinced, at fourteen, that I was mature enough to
not need watching, particularly by an individual I later concluded was
something of an idiot. It was explained to me that my siblings needed
watching and that I might learn something from the experience. Education
from the practical side of life was always encouraged in our household.
I do not remember her name, but she was from Candor, NY, a small farming
town south of Ithaca, and had recently graduated from High School. What
I particularly remember is that she could not cook.

What she could do is sit in the lawn chair in the back yard beneath the
silver maples with her shades and sun hat and read torrid romances. I
suspect there was an autoerotic side to our relationship, for which I
believe she was the primary beneficiary. She must have been bereft of
boyfriend. I do not remember ever meeting any visitors of hers. One
sweltering August day she stopped reading her paperback long enough to
tell me, in my pre-puberty constitution, that someday I would make a
great lover. I’m not sure what the passage was that she had been reading
immediately preceding this revelation, it was a feverishly humid day,
and I cannot say that if she was hoping to encourage a Lothario out of
her idle fantasy that her predictive abilities were very accurate. My
immersion in the sexual mores of the Methodist and Baptist Church, an
experiment in religious hybridization, were fairly complex, and she was
not too divinatory, though otherwise developed, to begin. My youthful
interests ran more towards the budding formation of coral archipelagoes,
studying the behavior of crayfish and water skeeters, disputing the
reasonability of the metaphysical notion of trinity, and the pressing of
marsh mallows than messing with dreamy girls awaiting muscular hunks
with fast yellow floor shifters. My world was then full with the
priesthood of science. Despite my innocence, one evening I saw through
her bedroom window her undressing from a wet bathing suit. She caused me
to consider I may not have been looking for my salvation in the right
place. This meandering all goes to demonstrate that my hatred of tomato
soup is as complex as any mutilations of the Methodist and Baptist forms
of moral abstinence.

Every day for lunch during that summer we were served a bowl of tomato
soup made with water. There was never a variation allowed. We never had
tomato soup with milk or cream. No chili powders, chives, sprinkling of
onions, or hot sauce. Not ever a single ingredient for desecrating the
monotony. Nothing to entice the palate, excite the nostrils, or satisfy
the growling stomachs. On occasion we had saltines, which we were
allowed to casually dip, quite often white bread with margarine which is
what everyone ate before wheat bread was faddish, but never oyster
crackers or lumps of blue cheese. The frugal menu of tomato soup made
with tap water was strictly enforced on every day.

One time, partly for self-preservation but as well to the benefit of my
sensually deprived siblings, after all my brother had not seen what I
had seen that hot night, I offered to make Tapioca pudding. I was
brusquely informed that I did not know how to cook. She would not allow
me to touch the stove for fear I incinerate the entire populace of
Besemer, our small crossroad community. There was a lot of talk then
about the one individual with the hand on the button that could
annihilate the world in a big flash with one single touch of the finger.
I’m not sure anyone was particularly aroused by the prospect other than
our sitter. Regardless, she did not then elect me, despite her
predictions for my future, to practice the solitary chore of turning on
the gas stove. To no avail I insisted that I could easily read and
follow the instructions on the box. Learning to read instructions was an
ability that had come in handy, like tying my shoes, and was something I
assumed happened also in High School. Once again my developing
intelligence was cudgeled with a bowl of tomato soup with water. Nothing
worse has occurred in my education, except possibly for the taking of
piano lessons. Not once were we allowed to break the summer regimen of
tomato soup.
I was able then to cook fairly well from instructions. My specialty was
rising flapjacks -- I was earnest to see how high I could rise them. I
have since cooked monstrous pots of Tapioca pudding in a spirit of
abandoned freedom and bliss, giggling to the consternation of friends
and family as to the state of my cook’s sanity. How much we enjoy
glutting ourselves with that which has been irrationally denied in our
youth.

We lost our sitter toward the end of the summer when, feeling sorry for
the Kinkajou that lived in our basement, she during daylight opened the
nocturnal animal’s cage in order to feed it a raw banana. She felt sorry
for Suzy, the Kinkajou who had large eyes that for some dull witted
people looked forlorn. To me Suzy’s eyes meant rabid insanity. Caged or
otherwise, Suzy had no time for sympathy. Suzy, despite soft golden fir,
the ability to sleep hanging upside down all day, and a prehensile tail,
was the most dangerous of animals. Suzy was an invention of Satan, the
epitome of a small devil to torment your innards with hot pokers and
teeth sharp enough to open tomato soup cans. Even the prairie dog that
bit onto my thumb and would not let go until I hit it against the wall
of the garage a few times was not a rival to Suzy’s dementia. I was
deathly afraid to open Suzy’s cage, even in her shelter of night. I
dreaded the assignment to feed the beast. Suzy would run in circles
upside down in her cage and hiss loudly every time you snuck through to
the basement door. And when the sitter stuck her arm in the cage,
dangling a banana, she got mauled to the bone despite her retreat,
despite her screaming, and despite Suzy not being inclined to let go
once outside her cage.
--
][<en Follett
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