I have a little ritual when I’m home alone, something I could never do when my husband is here. When he travels for work, I kiss him goodbye and dial the number from memory before the door even closes behind him.

“Two orders of stinky tofu and a side of rice, please. To go. Thanks. 谢谢.”

They say that fermented tofu tastes and smells like blue cheese or sweaty feet or rotting fish. The odour that fills the small restaurant can only be described as fresh baby shit. Diners give me dirty looks as I accept my takeout container from the owner.

“This is the good shit, lady!” he declares, unashamed.

#

Back home, I bring the first cube to my mouth and savour the complex bitter-sour-rot that can only develop over weeks of fermentation. There’s a hidden trace of sweetness that I chase like an addiction. I’m disgusted. I’m delighted. I’m alive.

I finish the whole container in one sitting. My breath comes out in rancid bursts. Sweat drips from my feverish face and mingles with the leftover oil.

#

If you leave a humble soy bean out for long enough, it will transform into soy sauce or 豆豉 or 腐乳. Or miso. Nattō. Doenjang. We’ve built entire cuisines around the possibilities of fermented soy.

I was once full of possibility, too. As new and soft as silken tofu, barely holding myself together, my subtle flavours enhanced by a bath of honey water.

Honey, look at me now.

I’m transformed. I’ve gone bad. I wake up braless and commando, surrounded by reeking takeout containers, sticky with who-knows-what. Not a woman but a lump of sludge congealed into the shape of one. I’m unkissable, unlovable, unknowable. An acquired taste that will never cross over to fusion restaurants.

I’m the mess you get when you ferment that soft, porous flesh in a lifetime of impossible expectations. Old regrets bubble under my pickled skin. My bloated core churns out enough toxic gas to snuff out the world.

I pick up a knife, cut a careful line, and let it all stream out.