I first heard about it last summer. There was an item on the newswires, so I did a search and found a picture on the Internet. A restaurant had opened in Hollywood which combined food and sex in the same mouthful. People could now eat sushi off of the bodies of naked women.

Thank God! There’s something I’m glad our species has accomplished. It sounded like something worthy of Caligula, redolent of arcane orgies and mystical rites. I pictured a wine-soaked party, heady excess, dancers, candles, togas. Jim Morrisson sitting on a Persian carpet handing out tabs of acid to puckish deviants. Smoke wafting to the rafters.

But, alas, the millennium has turned and the consumer’s king. True decadence is given an ironic tip-of-the-cap as venture capitalists sterilize even perversion. The real picture, the one you would get at the restaurant, would be former fratboys and cigar-puffing bond traders quaffing single-malts and making puerile jokes while "accidentally" pawing at their servers. After the meal, they tip grandly, loosen their ties, and drive their SUVs back to desolate bungalows where they jerk off to Internet porn and watch ESPN while drifting off to sleep.

But it’s not bad, conceptually. It reminds me of a place called the Foxy Lady in Providence, RI, that regularly has a weekday breakfast-striptease called "Legs and Eggs." It’s crude and the mind retracts. But it’s strangely exciting as well.

I went to "Legs and Eggs" once. I stayed up all night for it. At the time, I had a jazz show on the radio that went from 2 a.m. to 5:30 a.m., so it wasn’t a big deal to stay up the couple of extra hours. I went with Joe, who also worked at the station; a large guy from New Mexico who talked slowly and believed the strippers were in love with him.

I can’t say the eggs were very appetizing. They were all scrambled and had a weird, grayish color. And the strippers seemed to be third-string as well, most of them yawning through their dance routines. But the combination was unusual in a way I haven’t forgotten. It may be gross and unappetizing, but there’s something to be said for the juxtaposition of food and flesh.

This month’s Papotage has similar juxtapositions. Whether one is eating babies or one’s own leg, bodies and nourishment are never far apart. A smorgasbord of humanistic delights and delightful humans. Hopefully, it will leave you hungry for more.