But ALL women love chocolate, right?  No, actually we all don’t.  Sinful, I know, but I’ll take a bag of processed salt and vinegar chips over Ghiradelli’s hot fudge sundae, any day of the week.

“No wonder you’re so skinny!” people exclaim when I pass on a double-chocolate bundt cake or shrug off an order of red velvet cupcakes.  Oh right, since the pound of triple cream brie I consumed instead clocks out at a miraculous zero calories.

I’ve tried to like sweets, I really have.  In Italy I consumed gallons of gelato.  In France, I cracked a spoon over countless orders of crème brûlée.  While I lived in London I was popping squares of Cadbury’s milk chocolate like Tic Tacs on a first date.  I’ve tasted homemade apple pie, straight from the oven.  Fudge, Dulce de Leche cake, panna cotta, crêpes au sucre.  I’ve devoured every confectionery invented, hoping to find the gateway dessert that allows my savory-inclined palate to undergo a radical transformation.  But the fact of the matter is, I only eat jello when it’s been infused with vodka and served as a shot.  I think shortbread and sugar cookies taste like cardboard.  And I know people want to believe that chocolate is an aphrodisiac, but frankly, it doesn’t turn me on any more than you barbarically cat-calling me from your car.

And for the thousandth time, no, I’m not on a diet.

I know the hardest part about this is you want to judge me for it.  Honestly, I understand.  How about this – I won’t say anything when you inhale a tub of Ben & Jerry’s after a bad breakup, and you can turn a blind eye to the fact that when I get a little tipsy I tend to bite out of a Parmesan wedge like it’s an apple.  Take a cue from my best friend – for my birthday party she brought a variety of cupcakes.  And on mine?  A mound of bacon.

“I’m going to make you french toast in the morning,” an ex of mine boasted after six months of dating.  I smiled through my bewilderment – by then he must have known I preferred to wake to peppery chilaquiles.  Needless to say, the relationship didn’t last much longer.

So there you have it fellas.  Thought all you had to do was show up with a dozen red roses and a box of Godiva?  No thanks.  But a bottle of Barbera and a bowl of cacio e pepe?  Now that’s going to make me want to slip into something more comfortable.