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1---
2title: Peaches
3id: peaches
4genre: prose
5
6project:
7 title: Autocento of the breakfast table
8 class: autocento
9...
10
11"My anger is like a peach," he said.
12He was trying to show how metaphors could be anything.
13I thought it worked.
14I wrote it down in my red notebook.
15
16In my other class, there was a long discussion about the difference between metaphor and simile as they relate to [Prufrock][].
17I could only think about his peaches.
18I wonder if he dared.
19
20A few years ago my friend dressed up as J. Alfred Prufrock for Halloween.
21Her costume consisted of rolled khaki trousers and a peach.
22(I wonder where she found that in [October][].)
23She was annoyed that she had to tell everyone who she was---"At a writers' party!"
24I don't remember if she ate that peach.
25I do remember the main meal was spaghetti.
26
27That party was held in a house in Chattanooga, in the basement.
28There was a big back yard where people drank and talked and sat in the darkness.
29Somewhere someone was smoking weed with a visiting writer.
30
31Earlier that day, [the writer had read a poem about his car accident][sebastian] a year ago, in Georgia, on the interstate.
32It had broken him pretty badly, and his wife, but somehow their child was unharmed.
33He said something about the peach pit being the one place Georgia held sacred.
34He said it was the place where all new things grow.
35
36I can see how anger could be like a peach: its juice runs out of the mouth and down the chin, dropping onto the pants and staining them.
37In the same way, I can see how [anger is like sex][]: they are both heightened states of emotional observation.
38
39In Atlanta, there are something like five or ten [Peachtree Streets][].
40I'm not sure if they all connect at some point, but from what I could see, they would have to do some contorting to get to the same point.
41I like to think a giant peach tree grows there, like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
42
43I was walking down one of Atlanta's Peachtrees with my girlfriend when a man in tight pants, a runner, jogged past us.
44We both agreed he had a marvelous ass.
45I was annoyed, however, when she confessed that she wished I had one like his.
46Later, we ate at a taqueria with peach-habanero salsa.
47
48[My mother][] would read to us as children.
49The first real books I remember, the first novels, are Island of the Blue Dolphins and James and the Giant Peach.
50I don't remember Island of the Blue Dolphins as well, probably because no movie was made of it.
51
52There's an independent video rental store where I grew up called [Popcorn Video][], one of the only stores I went to in my hometown that wasn't a chain.
53Every time we went, my sister would rent two movies: _James and the Giant Peach_ and _Home Alone 3_.
54
55I wasn't allowed to stay home alone, or I don't remember it, until I was fifteen.
56I built a potato cannon out of PVC pipe and a barbecue lighter.
57I would load a potato, spray hairspray into the barrel, and light it.
58Once, the cannon wouldn't light.
59I looked down the barrel and pushed the trigger button to see if I could see a light.
60I forgot that I had already primed the barrel with hairspray.
61I singed my eyebrows and bangs.
62
63In peach season, my father would bring home a bag of the freestones every week or so.
64He always got the cheap ones, so they were usually dry and pithy, with a stone that fell apart and nearly broke my tooth.
65I don't eat them anymore when I go home.
66
67My mother would always eat canned peaches with cottage cheese.
68For some reason I didn't think this was common knowledge.
69I showed people how good it was when we went to a buffet: they said "I know."
70
71To be honest, I'm not even sure what a peach tree looks like.
72I do know what an orange tree looks like, from a backyard in Phoenix, and a fig tree, from a back yard in Chattanooga.
73I also know what a cherry tree looks like, or at least a type of them, from my own backyard at home, as well as mulberry and apple.
74If, for some reason, I find myself lost in a sinister Garden of Eden, I'll at least know a few of the trees I can eat from.
75
76I always heard growing up that the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was an apple.
77Maybe I'll luck out: maybe it'll be a peach.
78
79[Prufrock]: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html
80[October]: axe.html
81[sebastian]: http://www.32poems.com/blog/5158/weekly-prose-feature-an-interview-with-sebastian-matthews-by-justin-bigos
82[anger is like sex]: statements-frag.html
83[Peachtree Streets]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Peachtree+Rd+NE,+Atlanta,+GA/@33.7779425,-84.3843615
84[My mother]: riptide_memory.html
85[Popcorn Video]: http://popcornvideo.net/