Mango at the Council: The Dripping Obloid That Arrived Believing Itself a Sunset
I have attended seventeen councils. I have witnessed Fig. I have survived Peach and its so-called publicist. I have looked directly into the segmented interior of Pomegranate and emerged, technically, intact. Nothing — nothing — prepared me for Mango.
The creature arrived trailing its own humidity like a second outfit, which, given that it had no first outfit, represents a kind of achievement I am not prepared to applaud. The silhouette: a lopsided ovoid with a flat side, as though the universe had begun designing something ambitious and then simply stopped. The colourway: an unearned gradient of amber to blush that it appears to have stolen wholesale from the concept of dusk and applied without permission or irony. Peach, at least, had the decency to hire someone to manage its gradient. Mango simply arrived in one, dripping, as though this were acceptable.
The skin — and I use the term professionally, not charitably — presents in a waxy, vaguely reptilian finish that no responsible editor would describe as a texture and no responsible fruit would describe as a choice. It clings. It shines. At one point it caught the council chamber light and threw it back at the audience like a challenge. Durian, seated beside me, leaned over and whispered something I will not repeat. I agreed with it.
Sources confirm that Mango believed the dripping was intentional. That it considered the dripping a look. I am told it described itself, afterward, to colleagues at the rival rag, as "tropical." As though that explained anything. As though "tropical" were a style category and not simply a region's way of apologising.
The council has seen many things. It has not yet recovered from this one. Neither, frankly, have I. My notes from the session consist entirely of the word no, underlined four times and then circled, which I believe constitutes a full review.