I had a conversation with a cantaloupe on the walk home from work yesterday. I started to wonder about its particularly muted fruitiness and appearance at parties having been cut into cubes, speared with toothpicks and run along lips as carefully as makeup. It rolled alongside me as we strolled down Thorndike Street. “What’s so special about you?” I said. “I stink like an upwind, day-old, genitalia-steaming flatulence with a long, dry finish, and that makes me almost irresistible to those who spend hours in front of the mirror, touching their face, trying to know that it’s still there,” it said.