Life In the Green House

I closed the greenhouse after an arduous day of picking tomatoes and cucumbers. I had impure thoughts today as I picked cucumbers. Each cucumber was so long and massive and firm – obscene really. I couldn’t even imagine having a member that size. What would I do with it when I wasn’t using it? Where would I put it? I wouldn’t be able to buy jeans that would fit. I’d have to wear a kilt, a long kilt. Women would love me though – at least, I think they would love me. I feel quite undersized and inadequate when I am around cucumbers. What guy wouldn’t feel inadequate? Nobody could measure up to even the smaller ones that aren’t ready to pick. They just hang there. They have to hang there I suppose, because that’s gravity man.

I hear the radio still playing in the distance but I am bagged and don’t have the energy to walk to the other end of the runway to shut it off. I figure it can just play until morning. Besides, it will keep the plants company . . . imagine – if the plants started to shuffle and dance around at night as the radio plays? Sort of like a surreal fairy tale or Toy Story or something. If a person really thinks about that sort of thing – I wonder if there could be enough mental energy to actually make it happen. I mean, Arlo Guthrie was talking about “Celery Consciousness”. I’m not sure what he meant by it – I’m never sure what Arlo Guthrie means by anything he says. Anyway, if I thought about it and the plants did happen to have some sort of consciousness and they added their ‘power’ to the mix, well, who knows? Wow, I am bagged – I’m starting to think crazy things now. Got to go.

It is six o’clock in the morning and I open the greenhouse door. It’s already thirty degrees in here. Pungent tomato aroma wafts on the ventilation currents and trade winds within the dome. In true Magnumian fashion I pinch some of the leaves to get a grander dose. I come to my conclusion. There was tomato sex in here last night wasn’t there? I can tell. They blush bright red in synchronicity at being found out. It is so easy to tell the guilty from the innocent in the case of tomatoes.

I remember the radio and walk to the end of the greenhouse to shut it off. I reach down to turn the switch but notice that it is already off. Strange. What was the voice I heard last night? Maybe the plants were up and at ‘em. Scary thought that – tomato plants moving about at night, dancing around with cucumbers. These plants were huge. An entire tomato plant, complete with fruit, weighs in the neighborhood of one hundred pounds or, in terms of metricity, around forty kilograms. Just think if these plants were marijuana plants – walk up, snip off a bud (and there would be a lot of buds to snip because they are greenhouse plants and they are forced to yield highly), roll it up, take a few puffs and on with the day man, far out and all that sort of stuff. As it is, I find occasion to pull a fruit from the vine and gobble it down, juice and slimy seeds dripping from my chin and down my arms and off my elbow onto my knees. Turgid, stiff cucumber, popping when broken and jettisoning its cool-as-winter fragrance with orgasmic urgency into the hot-and-humid-as-summer olfactory domain of the ripe red tomato.

This is my life for July and August – “inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow . . .” and now my mind is going haywire on top of it. The heat, that’s it – I bet the heat has something to do with it. Last week was so hot and muggy in this place. I thought I could hear the plants moaning from time to time – sort of sensual moaning. It started with just a wispy sort of laryngeal emission and then worked its way through pleasured agony, squealing and out and out crying before it exploded with a full blown wail. Feeling queasy now. Knees are weak, sweating. What’s happening with the floor? Moving up toward my face. Never seen this before. Crunch – oh this is really going to hurt – but I’ll think about all that later I guess – but for right now – it’s seventeen minutes after the hour, the sun is shining, the air is warm, the temperature outside is a stifling 37 degrees (make that 47 degrees for all you poor unfortunate souls working in the greenhouse today) – yeh it’s another hot one alright. But, right now, sit back, relax and listen to the sweet summer sounds of the Bee Gees . . . Hey, where are we going? What’s this? A bar? A vegetable night club? Staying Alive – they’re playing Staying Alive. This can’t be happening. Everything I need to make a glass of V-8 right here, standing up at the bar.

As the first cucumber entered the bar, the music stopped and every tomato, avocado and melon in the joint turned and stared at the sheer size and form of this magnificent specimen. His head was bulbous and his taut green coat shimmered with the characteristic bristle of fresh young produce. He was followed by two of his mates, both of whom were just as large and firm and erect as the first. A massive zucchini squash sat at the bar and ordered a drink.

“What’ll you have?” said the keeper.

“How about some water with a sprinkle of phosphate fertilizer,” replied this fine example of phallicity?

Two luminous scarlet tomatoes of most voluptuous character brushed sensuously against the tight and turbid skin of the squash. They felt his ribbed and pulsating body throb slightly as he cast a casual look their way. At that moment the house lights went down and the music morphed from its disco beginnings. From behind a curtain emerged the roundest, firmest, reddest, most immense tomato anyone had ever seen. It turned and shot an electrifying and evocative glance at the cucumber trio then winked over the other sepal in her calyx at the glistening zucchini now throbbing upright at the bar. Unlike other strippers, a tomato stripper cannot put her clothes back once she has peeled. She becomes vulnerable and defenseless against any advances of any sort manufactured by any in proximity. The first bit of peel fell modestly to the stage floor. Cucs and zucs shuffled and hooted while moving toward the stage for a closer look.

“Peel baby. Take it all off,” they hollered.

Several puffed and inflated to abnormal size, all stood erect. The next peel removed revealed a red and moist carpel. In areas where the carpel was thin, one’s imagination could all but taste the succulent seeds beneath. Several of the Pencil Cucumbers in the back ruptured at this point leaving tell-tale signs of creamy seedism on the bare wooden floor around them. As the music built to a crescendo, the tomato removed the last of her peel and tossed it cavalierly to the audience, exposing her entire carpel. Its glistening texture streamed and oozed promiscuously onto the stage and overflowed onto the apron around. The now massive zuc stood and slipped toward the stage. As his turbid green skin touched the gleaming interior membrane of the tomato, he ruptured. The contents of his tubular and tempered body geysered intermittently onto the tomato. She gasped and uttered the coyest of groans and then writhed, smiling in the aftermath. Several of the other fruits and vegetables in the establishment self-pollinated at that point. The scene was erotic. The whole affair was sensuous and steamy. The experience was . . .

“Damn!! What the hell? My friggin’ nose is friggin’ broken. Look at all this blood.”

“Damn! What the hell happened? Let’s get you out of this heat. We’ll have to write this up. Are you alright? Get this guy some water. What happened?”

“The tomatoes . . . and the cucumbers were in this bar and there was this stripper and then . . .”

“Man, he’s delirious. He must have eaten too many tomatoes. A bad combination – tomatoes and extreme heat . . . Get him some water and a wet cloth. We have to clean him up.”

Wow, what was that? I didn’t make that happen did I? If you think it, does it happen? Could it be because I had thought this very thing could happen? What if I had willed it somehow just by thinking about it? Anyway, nobody will blame it on me. They will just think it’s something really weird. Who would know though? I mean, nobody believes in that telepathy stuff anyway, do they? Got to remember to shut off that radio next time.