NEEDLING

When you get home from work, your feet hurt, you’ve been up and down hills for twenty minutes, the same hills you drive up and down every day, twice a day, once each way... it’s definitely the end of summer, the days are getting colder, the smells in your neighborhood are getting crisper, like a gas heater somebody’s already got going... and you can smell it distinctly. It’s a good feeling but you’re tired, you want to be nostalgic about summer even though not two weeks ago you were bitching and gripping because you couldn’t do anything without breaking a sweat. It was so humid that when you put the fan on in your bedroom, instead of creating a small agreeable breeze, it merely malaxed the air as if you were lying down at the bottom of a large boiling pot of gravy trying to breath.

So what do you do? You open the refrigerator, you take out a small mango, a small bitter orange, a couple of key limes, and you place them on you cutting board. You start with the mango, by skinning it, cutting the flesh away from the pit without crushing it or loosing too much of the juice, and putting it inside the blender your sister just gave you. Then you skin the orange. When you squeeze it as you peal it, some of its bitter sweet juices reach your face and your nostrils. You add that on top of the mango. You cut the two tiny key limes in two and squeeze the life out of them on top of the other two pieces of fruits. On top of that you put approximately three ounces of tequilla reposado 100 percent agave, an ounce and a half of orange liqueur, some 100 percent orange juice, some ice cubes, and you blend the whole guacamole!

Then... you drink it. Sure, it’s not fabulous, it’s definitely not subtle in any way whatsoever. It’s got little crunchy pieces of ice and stuff, like pieces of lime or orange seeds... but that’s not the point. It tastes like summer, like you should be next to a swimming pool. It’s refreshing, it’s healthy for you, and there are no additives... plus, it fills up two pints worth of summer and fruits with just a tiny little bite to help you forget your feet that hurt, the hills which never change on the way to work or coming back home, and the summer most definitely gone now... fallen into the oubliette, fallen for good this time... and thank god, it's about time.