The raspberries that made me an asshole

When I was in San Francisco last week, I ate these golden raspberries and they drove me insane. They were so good that I couldn't stop comparing their flavor to other things. Halfway through the pint, I had already determined that, in addition to tasting like raspberries,  they tasted like lemon and seawater and peaches. For real.

After a morning wandering in the Mission, I stopped off to browse Bi Rite Market's famed produce section before grabbing a cone from their creamery, and I ended up skipping over the ice cream altogether in favor of these goddam raspberries. What?

It was a great call. That ice cream trumped raspberries even in my imagination was shocking enough. That my raspberry fantasy could actually come true? Mind blown.

I bought the raspberries. I ate the raspberries. I loved the raspberries to the extent that I called Bi-Rite Market days later to ask who farmed the raspberries. Why do I feel like an asshole?

My aesthetic experience of the golden raspberries was pure pleasure (mixed with curiosity-- can raspberries taste this good? (Yes, they can).  It was my social reaction to those berries-- my need to share that I had  just eaten the best six-dollar raspberries ever- that made me feel queasy with myself. I do not want to be that dude.

I guess I fear that talking about the best raspberries ever will put distance between myself and others, when it's really the sensation of pleasure that should be paramount-- an experience so subjective and internal that it brings the self closer to the self.

As David Foster Wallace writes in his most wonderful essay,  Consider the Lobster, "...these questions lead straightaway into such deep and treacherous waters that it’s probably best to stop the public discussion right here. There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other."

Those raspberries. Fuckin' A. Grown by Yerena Farms in Watsonville. Sold at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco. Immortal forever in my memory. Be jealous.