By Jim Aquino
Rod Laramie, owner of the Coochie's Cakes erotic bakery at 1725 Meridian Ave., thinks food and sex are one and the same. That's why the former star of such adult-film classics as U-569, Gosford Pork and The Usual Suck-spects recently opened his own erotic cake shop, the first of its kind in Willow Glen.
"I was thinking of calling the place Nine and a Half Cakes, after the softcore flick that brought food-oriented sex scenes into the mainstream," says the mullet-headed Laramie, who looks more like a Jersey plumber than a chiseled babe magnet. "You know, I'm trying to fill a void in Willow Glen. It's time someone shook up a 'burb that makes Peoria look like the Castro District."
Coochie's Cakes offers all kinds of erotic cake designs, from the old-fashioned "post-coital couple" designs to exact reproductions of Penthouse pictorials and nude scenes freeze-framed from hardcore or softcore DVDs by cybergeeks with way too much time and bandwidth on their hands.
"During the first week, I got four bachelor parties asking the baker to design a cake that looks like that three-way in Wild Things," Laramie says. "The other day, this one guy wanted a strawberry banana cake depicting Phoebe Cates when she ripped off her bikini top in Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
Laramie says that Fast Times cake was fun to make, but wishes more customers would come up with requests for kinkier designs.
"That Fast Times scene got me through puberty, and sure, it's hot, but it's still kind of tame for an erotic cake. Come on, Willow Glenners! You can do better than that!" Laramie says. "I'm trying to get customers to request designs that reproduce images that are more hardcore. Like the legendary doggie-style sequence in my sixth movie, Debbie Does Benji. Oh, and it's $14.95. Available at your nearest adult video store now."
Who's the Coochie in Coochie's Cakes?
"Coochie is a made-up name," Laramie says. "Just like my name. I'm retired from the biz, so I can come out with this now. My first name isn't really Rod. It's Herschel. Who would want to rent a porno starring Herschel Larrabee?"
The customers who were ordering cakes at Coochie's on a quiet Thursday evening were clearly enjoying the time they spent there.
"Hooooh. Hoooooooh. Oooooh," says drooling Willow Glen resident Mike Wapinsky, 39, who has never set foot inside an erotic cake store before. "Oooooh. Hooooooh."
"Umf flal morfgrtz uz bzrff," says "Harry R.," 32, who's partly inaudible due to the thick trenchcoat he's wearing. "Mrraff pa jizz blatz."
Coochie Cakes, 1725 Meridian Ave.
Open Tuesday-Saturday 9 p.m.-9:30 p.m. For more information, call
976.WETT.