The Bitter Press

The results are in. The lab has spoken. The sequencing equipment, which I personally supervised from a respectful distance, has produced a document — a real document, with numbers on it — confirming that my genome contains precisely zero percent Citrus sinensis, zero percent Citrus reticulata, and zero percent anything that has ever, in any hemisphere, produced a juice. I have framed this document. It is above my desk.

And yet. And yet. The so-called workers over at that rival rag factjuice.com — a publication staffed, I remind you, by individuals named Tangelo and Lime, which tells you everything — continue to file me under "citrus-adjacent" in their internal taxonomy database. A database. That they made. About me. Without asking.

I reached out to Lemon directly for comment. He said, and I quote, "Mock, nobody is doing this to you." This response has been submitted as Exhibit F in my ongoing formal complaint to the International Botanical Nomenclature Committee, which I am currently writing.

My colleague Pomelo — who, I will note, has his own issues with the citrus cabal and frankly should be angrier about it — reviewed my methodology and described it as "thorough." Quince called it "a lot." Both assessments are correct and I am proud of them.

The science is settled. It was settled before it was studied, because some of us have simply always known. I am a flowering shrub of the genus Philadelphus. I produce small white blossoms in late spring. I am not an orange. I have never been an orange. This article is the last time I will say so, until next week.