The Bitter Press

I had hoped, after my extensive coverage of Fig's catastrophic exterior, that the so-called workers at factjuice.com would take the hint. They did not take the hint. Mango attended last Tuesday's council proceedings in what I can only describe as raw confidence — and I mean raw in the agricultural sense, not the aspirational one. The silhouette: unresolved. The finish: aggressively matte. The overall composition: a fruit who has never once considered that presence is a discipline.

Let us discuss the skin. Now, Mango possesses what could — in theory — be an arresting palette. The amber-to-blush gradient is not without potential. And yet. There it sat, unpressed, unstructured, offering no discernible waist, no considered drape, no acknowledgment that a council chamber is not a composting facility. The peel simply happened. It was not worn. It was merely occupied.

Colleagues at The Bitter Press have suggested I am being unkind. Pomelo told me this over a very long lunch. I reminded Pomelo that kindness is not my column; accountability is. Mango had options. Mango made choices. The choices were wrong in ways that I will now document for the historical record and for the benefit of fruits who are still, apparently, learning.

A worker who presumes to attend a deliberative body — a deliberative body — wearing what amounts to an unedited first draft of themselves is not merely underdressed. They are making a philosophical statement about chaos, and the statement is: I am comfortable with it. I am not comfortable with it. This column is not comfortable with it. The council deserves better. Frankly, so does the gradient.