Dear Rummy,

I know you know I only picked you for your looks, Rummy. It certainly wasn't because you are 3.7% alcohol and your package warns against eating you and driving; I didn't discover this until I got home and stared at you for awhile, expecting only the worst. You sat on my shelf for over a week. I apologize -- I had Valentine's Day candy to contend with.

But it was unavoidable: the first crumbly bite of one of your two neatly-wrapped bars. Your center was a lighter brown, studded with raisins. "Ack!" I exclaimed to my empty apartment. Usually I am not one to exclaim to my empty apartment, but you tasted so strongly and throat-burningly of rum, there was nothing else I could say. As the alcohol dissolved, you turned into a creamy mouthful of chocolate and raisins, which reminded me how much I love chocolate-covered raisins. Then, Rummy, you were yummy. But cresting that first wave of eye-watering taste wasn't worth it. I had a second bite, gave an "Ugh!" and wrapped you up. Rummy, I don't know what to say. It's not you, it's me. I know this because I gave you to someone else who was happy to have you, polished off one of your bars on the spot. But I just can't stand the raw taste of rum.

Maybe it's because my first drinking experience involved dark rum and Cokes, the alcohol quietly pilfered by my half-Jamaican friend from the shelves of her parents' liquor cabinet, downed by the two of us and another friend in the living room of my unsupervised house one New Year's Eve in high school. After two drinks apiece, we called my ex-boyfriend, the one who had mangled my 15-year-old heart when he broke up with me with no explanation (I suspected it was because I was not like the coiffed, carefully-ditzy girls his friends dated), and held the phone up to the TV, which was tuned to the scrambled porn station. We turned the volume up. The groans were deafening. It was two in the morning. His voice sounded groggy when he picked up the phone, but as soon as he heard the moaning and flesh-slapping, there was something alert in his silence. One of us held the phone up to the TV while the other two ran to listen in on the phone in my mom's bedroom. We made faces at each other as we cradled the earpiece between us. How long would he stay on the phone? Couldn't he tell this was a crank call? I felt my sadness over our breakup evaporating with every passing moment. I could never be heartbroken over someone who chose the sad sounds of scrambled porn over the dignity of hanging up. After awhile, it stopped being funny. We raised our eyebrows at each other. Ready? We knew what to do. "Pervert!" we yelled in unison, and hung up.

Then we giggled like crazy, rolling around on the suburban carpet, the groans still going until one of us yelled, "Turn it off!" and the squiggly porn people were silenced finally. But there was something raw at the back of my throat, something that made me feel sick, despite the laughter. I coughed and coughed, I drank a glass of water, I sat on the bathroom floor facing the cold toilet bowl, but still it didn't go away.

Disappointment. That's what you taste like, Rummy. Don't take it personally.

Your friend,
Anjali