December 12, 6:30
“Sadie took a bite of the fruit. It was mildly sweet, its flesh somewhere between a 🍑 and a cantaloupe. Maybe it was her favorite fruit, too?”
“You are in a 🍑 orchard.
Here is a perfect day. Your high school classmate, Swan, is in town, and he knows a guy who has adopted a 🍑 tree on Masumoto Family Farm, near Fresno. Swan’s guy says that you and your friends can take all the fruit they want from the tree, but the only day you’re allowed to go is Saturday morning.
“People adopt 🍑 trees?” you ask.
“These aren’t ordinary 🍑 es,” Swan tells you. “The fruit is too delicate to be shipped to grocery stores. The farm has been owned by the family since 1948, since just after internment. My friend had to write an essay and fill out an application to be allowed to adopt the tree.”
You tell Zoe, and she wants to go. And she invites Sadie, who invites Alice. And you invite Sam, who invites Lola, the girl he is seeing. And then you invite Simon and Ant, because they should take a day off from making Love Doppelgängers every now and again. The group leaves Los Angeles at 6 a.m. and by 9:30, you’re in Fresno, but it seems like a whole other world.
“The 🍑 es are impossibly large and almost fluffy. They aren’t engineered to survive the indignities of shipping, of grocery store shelves. Zoe samples one, and she says it’s like eating a flower. And then she hands it to you, and you take a bite, and you say it’s like drinking a 🍑 . And then you hand the 🍑 to Sam, who bites down and says, it’s like a song about a 🍑 more than it’s like a 🍑 .”
“And your friends begin to make increasingly absurd similes and metaphors about 🍑 es.
“It’s like finding Jesus.”
“It’s like finding out the things you believed in as a child are actually real.”
“It’s like eating the mushrooms in Super Mario.”
“It’s like recovering from dysentery.”
“It’s like Christmas morning.”
“It’s like all eight nights of Hanukkah.”
“It’s like having an orgasm.”
“It’s like having multiple orgasms.”
“It’s like watching a great movie.”
“Reading a great book.”
“Playing a great game.”
“It’s like finishing debugging on your own game.”
“It’s the taste of youth itself.”
“It’s feeling well after a long sickness.”
“It’s running a marathon.”
“I’ll probably never have to do a single other thing in my life, because I tasted this 🍑 .”
The last one to taste is Sadie. Somehow, the 🍑 —what’s left of it—makes its way back to you, and you hold it up to the tree, where Sadie has been industriously harvesting.
Sadie wears a big straw hat, and she has climbed up the ladder and set a wicker basket on the top step. She looks so fine and wholesome, like a girl in a WPA poster. She is smiling at you, exposing the narrow gap between her teeth. “Do I dare?” she asks.
“You dare.”
“You are in the strawberry field.
You are dead.
A prompt comes up on the screen: Start game from the beginning?
Yes, you think. Why not? If you play again, you might win.
Suddenly, there you are, brand-new, feathers restored, bones unbroken, sanguine with fresh blood.
You are flying more slowly than last time, because you don’t want to miss any of it. The cows. The lavender. The woman humming Beethoven. The distant bees. The sad-faced man and the couple in the pond. The beat of your heart before you go onstage. The feel of a lace sleeve against your skin. Your mother singing Beatles songs to you, trying to sound like she’s from Liverpool. The first playthrough of Ichigo. The rooftop on Abbot Kinney. The taste of Sadie mixed with Hefeweizen beer. Sam’s round head in your hands. A thousand paper cranes. Yellow-tinted sunglasses. A perfect 🍑 .
This world, you think.
You are flying over the strawberry field, but you know it’s a trap.
This time, you keep flying.”
.
Peach rating 🍑🍑🍑, discussion gets a 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
Portland Peaches 