“Flesh All Amesh”: Valentine’s Day Gifts Inspired by the ‘My Girl’  Poetry Class

A passing email caught my eye recently, advertising high-cut underwear of the see-through variety, and a phrase came to me as if from a long-forgotten dream: Flesh all amesh. No, not Coleridge or Shakespeare or Barrett Browning, but rather Ronda. You remember Ronda? Pink embroidered halter, low-rise jeans, sun-kissed blonde layers, and a voice made husky by the more-than-occasional toke. It’s the poetry class scene in My Girl (a canonical text, if you will, of early 1990s cinema, starring Anna Chlumsky, Macaulay Culkin, Dan Aykroyd, and Jamie Lee Curtis), and the hippie dream girl (Lara Steinick) is recounting an experience with her boyfriend in verse. She begins by setting the scene (“He covers me like a blanket / From the cold, dark night”), steadily building until that climactic line shudders twice (“Flesh all amesh / Flesh all amesh”). Finally, an exhaled comedown: “I can’t fight it, there’s no point / I wake up and light a joint.” As the impressionistic smoke hangs in the air, Vada Sultenfuss (Chlumsky, age 10) volunteers a poem of her own. Jaunty, charming, rated G, it’s a six-line ode to ice cream, any make or model. After all, the greatest love is without exception: “Vanilla, chocolate, rocky road / Or with pie, à la mode.”

All this—My Girl, Valentine’s Day—is a tad ridiculous, maybe. But isn’t the way to one’s heart (someone else’s or your own) though the loins or the sweet tooth or, perhaps, a double-stacked cone of the two? This mix of lover’s gifts therefore nods to Ronda and Vada both. Surely flesh in mesh lingerie needs a cozy blanket, or an abstract-patterned sweater poetically titled “I Like the Way You Think.” An alluring fragrance might skew sensual (Régime des Fleurs’ Leather Petals) or dessert-course gourmand (Pistachio by D.S. & Durga). There are delights to savor (Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, the best) and smoke (a Margo Price edition of Mom Grass CBG joints), plus lip candy for all ages by way of balms and tints and glosses. As for what’s good in bed? Here, that spans linen sheets and nighttime Chanel skin care and a vibrator tailored for the G-spot (not rated G). Compared to that elusive erogenous zone, the through line isn’t all that hard to find, as Ronda’s boyfriend points out to the class: “Flesh all amesh or rocky road—it’s about desire.”