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Henry Miller is going to eat an orange. He is going to prove that it is his orange and that everyone who has said otherwise is wrong because it is his.
He has been planning to eat his orange for a while now and he has a peeler and a napkin, two things which he didn’t have before. He didn’t know they made orange peelers and had to learn how they worked first.
The napkin is self-explanatory.
He is going to start peeling it on the left because it is the easiest — him being left-handed and all. He will then peel up and over and even before it is naked he will puncture it. Sure, they make tools for this kind of uncomfortable act, but he wonders when he punctures it how much scrubbing it will take to erase the smell, the lingering feeling under his fingernail, and the fact that you can never truly fix that kind of fruit.
And then everyone will say, “It’s Henry Miller! He’s the one who ruined that beautiful orange!”
So the word ‘orange’ will become synonymous with ‘Henry Miller.’ Then no one will ever doubt who ruled over this orange completely.
He’ll eat the orange quickly, the quicker he eats it the better. In case he decides that he doesn’t want to devour it. As fast as he can force it down his throat, and once it’s done, he’ll shove the peel into his open mouth and chew it just enough so he can force it down. And as his final act, he will hold out the veiny, soggy pith-stuff so that everyone can see. He knows they will say:
“Oh God, Henry Miller is going to eat the veiny pith!”
But he won’t eat the veiny pith. Henry Miller knows the only way people will remember that he ate an orange — people are always eating oranges now — will be if he does something crazy.
One by one, he puts them on the back of his hand and inhales it, everything. He smells the orange and all its glory and feels the stinging frantic burn of his capillaries bursting. The iron and the sugar and the sweetness. He knows that he has won. That he has eaten an orange.
