Feeeeling up the fruit

I stood over a sea of plantains- eight, cardboard boxes of plantains in all stages of ripeness, from the earliest, jungle green through the death throes of yellow and black. I picked over the two boxes of brown-and-yellow ones. I couldn't call myself an expert, but I had cooked my fair share of sweet plantains as an accompaniment to black beans and rice. I had fallen in love with them a dozen years ago at a tiny, Cuban restaurant in Hollywood.

I had been recently burned by some unripened plantains. They left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth that still set my teeth on end whenever I thought of them. This time, I was determined to not make the same mistake twice. As I poked and pinched through the box in front of me, a diminutive, elderly woman stepped up to the second box of ripened fruit.

She looked over the plantains, but I could see that she was checking me out from the corner of her eye. Finally, she dropped the facade. She turned towards me and leaned back to get a good, long look at the towering, indecisive Anglo looming over her. She turned back to her box and picked up a bright-yellow fruit.

"I like to set these out in my home for a few days," she announces in a thick, Dominican accent. I glanced at her with an exaggerated 'Who Me?" look but she is paying no attention to my face. It was my plantains she was scrutinizing and, perhaps, talking to.

"Yeah," I offered in reply and dropped the plantain back into the pile. I picked up another brown fruit.

"That one is no good."

"Well, I was wanting to use them today," I explained, "I don't have time to wait for them to ripen at home."

She reached across and squeezed my plantain.

"Feel that," she ordered. I complied.

"No! Don't peench it," she cried. "You've got to feeeel it! Like this-" The old woman reached into my box, seized a yellow plantain and massaged it with her hand. Had she been 30 years younger, I would have sworn that she was hitting on me.

Kat stood beside the organic produce, laughing as I stuttered to explain myself.

"Well, maybe I have really strong fingers," I suggested.

The little, old woman thrusted her hand into my box, pulled out another plantain and slapped it into my open hand.

"That one is good for eating now," she said.

I opened my mouth to thank her.

"Feel it," she barked. I felt it.

"Oh, yeah," I marvel with a bit too much vigor. They did feel pretty good.

'Is that wrong,' I wondered.

"Those are good ones! Feeel it," she stabbed at the plantains with her finger as I attempted to pleasure her with my plantain-squeezing skills.

"Well... thanks," I said, but she had already turned away to continue her business of plantain shopping. The lesson was over.