Sweet Secret

My endocrinologist will shoot me if he found out what I had for dessert in Cebu!

I am not a dessert person, which is what puzzles me about having been declared diabetic. Not any of my forbears was, according to my mother and father. But my doctor insists, I must have had at least, from ancient past, one diabetic in my family tree. Well, I will never know now, will I?

Back to the doctor-defying dessert.

I usually have a steely will power to resist sweets no matter how loud those finger smacks coming from friends and family are. But this one time, in a quaint, artsy restaurant tucked in an unknown small street in Cebu, I had an out-of-body experience. A dozen sumo wrestlers couldn’t have brought me back to earth or pried my fingers off my fork for the second bite . . . and the third . . . and the fourth. It wasn’t actually that sweet (excuses, excuses), it was just finger-smacking good.

Durian Chocolate Cake, the menu said simply. And my two Cebuana hosts gushed, with dilating irises, “It’s the best, best, best dessert ever!" They ordered one slice each. I ordered another glass of water.

I don’t jump up and down over durian fruit. There’s something about its smell and texture that somehow makes eating not too, um, pleasurable? So that should have been that.

But my hosts were insistent—reminiscent of that tragic day in Eden—just take one bite, they said, and I, Eve, stared at the brown and yellow concoction. It stared back at me. I blinked.

I’d give you the address and name of the restaurant, but I have a funny feeling the owners want the place a well-kept secret. In between my oooohs and aaaahs, upon entering the place (filled with old Filipino artifacts and antique furnishings), I grabbed my camera and started clicking. Before I could take my third shot, however, I was stopped by a lady. “I’m sorry, ma’am, pictures not allowed.”

“Should I erase the two shots I have just taken?” I asked, disappointed but obedient.

She replied with a smile perfected in customer service seminars, “Well, you don’t have to. But you can’t take any more.”

Okay, so I assume I have been given permission to post the two pictures of the place and one photo of the Durian Chocolate Cake (that one she allowed, as long as it is a close-up shot).

My  photo of the cake doesn’t nearly capture its indescribably delicious taste. So how come I feel like a heel for sharing this experience, but not really sharing it?

I feel like my cousin Benny when he was nine and I was six. He probably doesn’t remember it, but I do! He licked his two scoops of yellow and pink ice cream, perched on a brown, crispy cone, so very slowly—with big melodramatic sounds—while I sat drooling miserably, nursing an acute tonsillitis.

I also feel like I have an acute tonsillitis while dreading my next visit to my endocrinologist. I wish that my blood chemistry results will not reveal the Durian Chocolate Cake I succumbed to in Cebu, and will remain a sweet secret.