Fruits Anonymous Session

The following is a transcription of an audio recording from July 21's Fruits Anonymous Session. The session facilitator’s words are excluded for brevity. Short statements (mostly limited to thanks) were made between monologues.

Subject One:

[Reading off notecards] My feet are blueberries, lumped in a mound. My toes are little wiggling carrots, poking out of the berries. My legs are sliced celery with cucumber bones.

My pelvis and torso are a structure of strawberries, grapes, apples, and oranges. My penis is a banana that grows green, firm, and ripe with arousal but brown and mushy without. Limes dangle below.

My arms are large carrots leading to lettuce leaf hands with green bean fingers. Small grapefruit sit deep in my chest as rounded pecs. Avocados give my shoulders their shape.

My head and face are composed of 32 different types of berries and fruits. Sometimes, I count them in the shower. My eyes are halved dragon fruits with their cores facing out, my nose a strawberry. Every morning, I brush out my string bean hair, and every evening I rinse off my pomegranate cheeks.

I used to avoid the subject. Everyone around me could see my peculiar features, but few said much. When they saw me their jaws clenched and their eyebrows jolted. But their lips stayed shut.

For 20 years I lived a sham. Today I’m stopping.

There is no human skin on my flesh. I don’t even have flesh. Well, not that kind of flesh.

My name is Jake, and I am made of fruits and vegetables.

Subject Two:

Hi. I’m Eliza. I know you know why I’m here. Everyone can see it. My big, bent, strawberry nose. My lumpy melon ass. Everyone looks. I even saw some of you looking when I walked in.

I’m sick of it. I need to, I want — no — need to say it.

Yeah, I’m just a bunch of fucking produce. Should I keep going? Okay. I first realized something was different when my parents took me to the zoo. I was real little. We didn’t go to like a nice zoo, it was just the free one in kind of the weird part of town, you know? But they had one of those big, like, bird house things, you know? Where all the parrots and peacocks and shit just run loose?

Well my mom wouldn’t let me go in with the birds. And I didn’t know why. She said they may come try to peck at me, and she didn’t want me getting hurt. I still remember the look she gave my dad, it was like “This cannot happen.” And I was so scared. All these other kids were going into the bird room, but my mom wouldn’t let me. Was she just letting the birds attack them? Or was there something wrong with just me?

I’ve been wondering that ever since. Is there something fucking wrong with me? Is there something fucking wrong with all of us? Why are we made out of fucking fruit? My parents weren’t like this. Why did this happen? Why do I have to live my life afraid that some fucking pigeon is going to come around and pluck a berry out of my face? Why can’t I just be fucking normal?

Subject Three:

For a long time I had problems just like Eliza, and I think a whole lot of people do. But now, every morning I get up, walk to the mirror, and I look myself in the grape and I say “My name is Katelyn. My feet are mostly onion, and my tits are literal watermelons. And I am proud.”

Most people like us fail to see the positives, you know?

I used to work in politics, before I turned to health care. I would go everywhere on the campaign trail, because people like us need to have a voice. We need to be heard! We have a history of being oppressed and ridiculed and treated as second-rate beings.

I’m sick of it! I’m sick of feeling like I need groups like this or I won’t be able to keep it all up. Like, I shouldn’t need a damn support group for something that is nothing more than my physical identity! Just let me check a box next to “Body Composed of Vegetables” on my driver’s license and fucking forget about it!

And you know what? I smell fucking great.

Subject Four:

I, uh uh uh, had a bit of an incident at my work a few weeks ago, and, well, this is sort of the way they’re making me go about dealing with it. It’s no big deal, I just need to come to these sessions for six weeks, and it will all be okay.

A lot of my coworkers think that I might have a few fruits in me. They say that my, uh, ears, yes, look like little leaves of lettuce. But, I mean, obviously you can all see it isn’t true. I really don’t want to be intrusive here, but I’m afraid that for my work’s sake that I’m going to need to be coming, yes.

[The facilitator asked the speaker, Hari, if he would like to speak briefly about the incident at his work.]

Oh it was nothing. Really it was nothing, it was stupid! Our cleaning lady only comes in the office once a week, on Sundays. And someone threw out some lima beans in the bathroom trashcan on Monday. So by Friday, those beans were really stinking up the bathroom and there were ants, and oh it was really quite gross.

But they accused me of being the source of the lima beans! They said I was trimming my fingernails in the bathroom and just left them in the trash. But my fingernails are made of keratin just like anyone else! [laughs] Oh, but not like you all, I suppose. But, anyways, things escalated and I had a, um um well, a bit of a moment, yes. That’s it.

Subject Five:

When I was 19, I moved to this city to get away from my hometown. I didn’t really hate my hometown that much, but I felt like I would never truly find a voice there.

This place felt like paradise. I could guzzle beer in roadside bars and stumble my way home down State Street. Everyone was a fucking weirdo, so my body barely even mattered.

But if it really didn’t matter, I wouldn’t really be here tonight, would I?

Listen, all the great movements in this country are started by angry, marginalized groups of citizens. We deserve fair treatment. We should be flying our carrot flags high and staging veg-ins at city council meetings.

And I think we should be organizing at the farmers’ market. It’s tomorrow at 7 a.m.

I say we all show up at 8, we make signs and we start campaigning for what’s ours. Those fruits and veggies they’re selling aren’t just food. They’re people too. And we have rights, dammit.

I’m sick of being ostracized and tormented. Who’s with me?

[William tried to lead the others in a chant of “I’m a fruit. I’m a vegetable. And I’m a person” but none joined in. Katelyn smiled excitedly but stopped when the others clearly lacked her enthusiasm.]

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