No, better make it “Cookie of the Month”. Or Cookie of Whenever I Can Get Back Around to this Flimsy Notion.

And the inaugural cookie is…………Vienna Fingers!

Simple white cookies sandwiching a sweet white paste. I think I’d eaten them as a kid but the recall is fuzzy at best. It’s akin to making out with a cousin during puberty – it’s not that you’ve hidden from thoughts of the episode, it’s more that you haven’t made a habit of remembering it. You certainly didn’t spend any time discussing it. She was a relative after all and, cute or not, later teen flings and the flat-out twisted trysts of your 20’s were going to blow that little incestuous test of the sexual waters down to the root cellars of memory. In short, more spectacular cookies would swell your history over the years.

   A Vienna Finger is something like a girl you’ve seen time to time in the same place, maybe in a bar you frequent. You’ve checked her out before; nothing wrong with how she looks. Just nothing remarkable either and you’ve had your eye on more exotic treats. The sultry bartender who’s all peanut butter cookie studded with white chocolate, toffee nubs and macadamias. Or another woman, another regular, who’s a bit overweight but stunning nonetheless – a rugelach, with a cinnamon leer and brown sugar/apple butter filling that’s only a short burst of heat from the sleaze of tangy caramel. She’d take you to the moon and back, leaving you sticky, sweetly scented and unable to walk.

   But Vienna is always there. She catches your eye again and again and it sets a pleasing, low static buzz in your torso. She might remind you of that cousin and the minor transgression of an age passed. Or it’s the familiarity of a tacit friend in that replayed, and overplayed, parade of alcohol and friable indulgences on exhibit. But inertia keeps you from crossing the bar to her. Or Rugelach came back on the prowl and she brought a Linzertorte friend with her…

   Then one night, at closing time, you find yourself standing next to Vienna in a downpour. You finally exchange a few words, some niceties and a few curses over the rain. There’s no worse time to catch a cab in the city and before you know it the two of you are quick-stepping it past building facades and skipping over gutter rapids. You blurted out an offer of a dry apartment to kill time while she waited for a taxi. You live nearby and surprisingly she took you up on it.

   Back in the flat, cabs backed up an hour, things took their course. It began in a halting, somewhat stiff manner. But it was nice, non-exhausting and just sweet enough to warrant a second go. And that was nicer still. She left, with a light kiss and a quick note about leaving to Austria for the fall, and you fall asleep amid the bouquet she left whispered on your pillow.

   It was swell but you didn’t give her much thought the next day. You knew she was gone but when you noted her absence in the bar it finally got you thinking. She hadn’t been a bag of tricks but that night’s reruns in your brain began to reveal the nuances: undulations suffusing grace notes through your axial nerves; the perfect snug of her arm winding around your neck terminating in fingers deeply massaging your scalp; skin so impossibly tender it was like stretches of fabric woven from the fibers of shredded angels. There were ethereal flavors diffuse in her hair and satiating fragrance in her tongue.

   The seduction was a time bomb and she was long gone before the craving detonated in your gut. Left without a specimen to reexamine you’re left to analyze the complexity of the chemistry by proxy of a soft-lit memory. But she would be back someday and there was no way you’d ever walk down that aisle again without thinking about bringing some Vienna Fingers home with you. They go with great with some Smucker’s hot fudge softened in the microwave.  Or maybe see how long you can keep her in your mouth.

A Note – While musing over the first nummy biscuit that inspired this dingbat column idea I was caught up wondering how to personify a cookie. Are they feminine? Masculine? Could some be shemales? No, they’re ain’t much kink, let alone transgendered, in the cookie world. Unless you count those little peanut butter doohickeys with the Hershey’s Kiss in them. Puppy dicks poking through crusty rectums. Weird. Anyhow, I settled on cookies as being female, at least as far the Vienna Finger goes.