I want to apologize for my lack of updating lately. I’ve hit a tough spot in the new book I’m working on- 86ed- and I’ve been spending every moment of my time working on figuring that out. Anyway, story time…

I was dating a girl who lived in a city during my mid-twenties. I did not live in the city, so when I’d visit every other week or so I would make the drive. It was just easier for me to have my car there. At that point in my life I liked to drive. Now I just take the train in like a human.

As soon as I’d arrive in the city I’d be greeted by the same exact homeless person every time. He was a real treat. He smelled like if an onion field caught fire. But he was awesome. He’d walk over to my truck, we’d chit chat for a bit, then he’d sell me oranges. A dollar for one, or two dollars for three. Obviously I’m gonna buy three. Sometimes I’d even give him an extra dollar. It all depended on what I had on me. What can I say, I’m a kind soul.

The first time I bought them I figured I would just give them to another homeless person or maybe use them to fire at cars that cut me off. You know, like a regular person. So one miraculous day on my trip into NY, I didn’t get cut off. And there were no homeless people who wanted my oranges. Whatever, I was kind of hungry so I’d figure I’d try the orange myself. How bad or old could it be? He’s always got a bunch for sale and oranges basically come in their own safety case (the skin).

For some reason these oranges were fucking delicious. I’m not a big orange guy, I love the juice, but I don’t really eat a lot of oranges. It’s one hundred percent out of pure laziness. I don’t feel like sitting there peeling an orange when I could just bite into an apple. I find orange skin to be a huge pain in the asshole.

So from that point on for the next few weeks I’d always bring oranges into her apartment. We would each have one for breakfast the next day or as a mid-day snack. It turned out to be actually kind of nice. She’d make fun of me for mashing up the orange trying to peel it with my gigantic hands and I’d make fun of her because it would take her far too long to peel and finish hers.

Eventually she asks me to bring some different fruit, because even though she likes oranges, there are a million other kinds of fruit. I laugh and tell her that the guy I get it from only has oranges and that I’ll have to actually stop somewhere. This raises her confusion.

GirlFriend: Wait, what? You’re just buying these off some street vendor that only sells oranges?

Me: Not exactly.

GirlFriend: Well where exactly are you getting them?

Me: There is this homeless guy that I pass every day, he sells them.

She then proceeds to scream at me for the next few minutes because I’ve been feeding her garbage food that he probably finds. I explain that he pulls them out of a crate, that oranges usually come in. And while his oranges are probably stolen, we’ve been eating them for months at this point, so who cares. That’s when she drops this bomb:

GirlFriend: Well what if he’s been injecting drugs into them?

At that point in my life, that’s probably the hardest I’ve ever laughed. She didn’t find my laughter funny at all. So I tried to explain to her that homeless people don’t get off on drugging people for no reason. And that he has nothing to gain by wasting his precious drugs by injecting them into oranges and selling them at reasonable prices. She didn’t care. She was all worked up. She definitely didn’t appreciate it when I asked her if she checked her Halloween candy for razorblades and poison.

She yelled and hollered and accused me of calling her stupid. I tried to explain to her that she wasn’t actually stupid, she was just acting stupid which went over really well. Eventually I gave up and just left, not wanting to fight anymore. Five days later we were no longer in a relationship.

But seriously, just picture a homeless guy sitting in a refrigerator box injecting drugs into oranges so he could sell them for reasonable prices at an intersection.

There is a decent chance she is going to read this and call or email me to yell at me.