there's just a lot of fruit
This heat wants my life1 and my hope and to hold my head in a vise not quite tight enough for the wet, merciful bursting, no, only at the aching precipice forever. I wilt I whine I water myself. We got several bags of chips on sale last weekend and I have been eating chips miserably, feverishly, on an impulse shooting from some part of my brain that’s already melted. Nothing wrong with enjoying a chip or forty, of course, but there’s no pleasure in it now with the sun everywhere eating whatever energy a weakling human could muster. Los Angeles in September is a 110 degree oven and last night I felt sure I would die surrounded by rude, damp white people at a Keane2 concert in the hills where small clouds hung up in the dark like soggy croutons in an onion soup fit to kill.
So anyway: fruit. It’s all that makes sense3 while we weather the slow broiling end of the world and try not to burn our toes just letting the dogs out to piss. Below you will find that I have made a very slapdash and capricious ranking of the best fruit to eat whilst sweat pools in the crack of your ass.
Banana. Unlike my love and light my gorgeous girl I actually do like bananas quite a bit, though because of the aforementioned girlfriend I don’t bring them around much. However, they are inappropriate for the heat. Too soft too pale not sufficiently sexy. The gummy, bovine chewing involved just has no place here.
Apple. An apple a day may keep the doctor away but that discrete, portable, stately old girl will make not an inch of difference in the fight against the creeping depression that 100 degrees creates.
Pineapple. I’ve really come to a new place in my relationship to pineapple this year. What was once a bottom tier fruit salad space filler has become—after Megan diced us up a fresh one, the act of which I found alluring and brave—in fact a great pleasure!! It’s insane that such a flavor is of the Earth and just grows like that. Still, too sickly sweet for when I’m red-faced and the night won’t come.
Peach. This, I except, will be a contentiously low ranking and I surprise even myself in making it but the truth is peaches are a bit of an ordeal to eat and by the end you’re sticky all over and while that is plenty fun and fairly flirty in the cheery bliss of a July beach day, by the time the thermostat is rolling over dead from the exertion of keeping count of the numbers climbing high then higher I’m just in no place to be managing all of that syrup.
Strawberry. The strawberry is a foolproof summer fruit and I have no criticisms to make, really. I’ve been snacking on some all week and I thank god and the grocery store for that. For me, though, strawberries are at their best only when eaten a few at a time. I so quickly max out my sweetness tolerance and the proceedings from there—and they all too often do go on from there—are a bit sickly.
Blueberry. Now here’s a girl you can really gorge on. I love her. I need her. When blueberries are bad—too soft and with all the tarty nuance missing to leave behind some baby food approximation of what was once the perfect treat—they’re vile and when they’re good they are so, so fucking good. A fruit ready to be taken fistful by soothing fistful and that’s what I need to get by.
Grape. Huge grape glutton here. I like them in all colors and I like them so cold your teeth hurt and your body goes somewhere far away and frosted.
Watermelon. Perfect food in that it is delicious water you can chew. A bowl of cubed watermelon is the gentlest landing place in the world for my weary eyes. I will eat it cut in triangles. I will eat it in a sort of dated watermelon salad. I will eat a bowl of it myself if no one stops me and no one really can.
Cherry. In the fourth grade I flew across the country to visit an aunt who was living in Seattle. Between playing catch in the park and visiting the preschool classroom where she was teaching, we went to Pike Place Market where she bought a paper bag of cherries and startled me, upon handing it over, because the only cherry I’d yet been introduced to floats proud and candy red in a Shirley Temple. These bloody, pitted beauties captured me instantly and I’ve been a fiend ever since. In times of hideous heat, to suck a cherry loose and deposit the defeated pit in a bowl to your side makes a pleasing diversion and is near to the maximum level of exertion I am equipped to offer.
Plum. Number one on the call sheet and number one in my heart. That goofy poem endures even in the face of intense memeification because a cold plum really is about as close as a person can get to experiencing true bliss. A beautiful black-purple plum was a special treat for me in childhood. I’d take my time examining the delicate pyramid they formed piled all over each other in the grocery store and stain my t-shirt fuchsia on the drive home. There is something animal in me that craves to tear up into a sodden, meaty plum whenever possible and during these days when the world bakes us for our sins or something related more to fossil fuels and less poetic, well, anyway when it’s hot as fuck that beast is driving this boat.
Tragically, the weird and delightful Rachel Bilson fish-out-of-water romcom television series Hart of Dixie did not leave the cultural footprint it should have and therefore I cannot link to a YouTube page where some dedicated teenager has uploaded clips from the episode where Dr. Rachel Bilson oversees the aftermath when an adult woman throws a clock at her sister because it’s too hot out and strange things happen when it gets too hot out. But that’s really where we are at.
sort of adorable men in that band though!! thank you to Tyler who trusted us to be his companions for this event and really it’s not Tom or Tim’s fault that people no longer know how to behave reasonably in public.
Okay, well, fruit AND watching the new season of Selling Sunset in stupefying gulps.