Scientists have long known that avocado trees live a somewhat spicy life, changing sexes depending on the time of day. Some open female flowers in the morning and male ones in the afternoon. Others do the opposite.
The Wall Street Journal
I had just finished breakfast, kissed the kids and the wife good-bye, and headed out the door when the avocado tree in the front yard called coquettishly at me.
“Yoo-hoo,” she said. “Aren’t you forgetting someone?”
“You mean ‘something’–don’t you?”
“Oh, come on–don’t be that way.” She had opened a flower and it would have been ungentlemanly of me to pass her by without at least a perfunctory pucker-up.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure our nosy neighbor wasn’t looking, then sneaked a peck on what I took to be the tree’s cheek. You can never be sure with Persea Americana. It’s a lush evergreen plant known for producing creamy, edible fruit–you know how people can talk.
“All right,” I said, as I moved in closer–close enough to touch her rather wrinkly produce. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind older women; in fact, I find silver threads among the gold, or the bronze, or coal–to be rather sexy. But if you spend all your time out in the sun you’re bound to get a little . . . wrinkly.
“That’s it?” she said with disappointment. “You’re so passionless you’d think I was your wife.”
“Well, you don’t make it easy on me.”
She put two limbs akimbo to her trunk and glared at me. “And just what do you mean by that?”
I exhaled a sigh of frustration. “Well, it’s just that . . .”
“Yes?”
“When I came home last night–you were a male.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t swing both ways. And neither should you.”
“Someone’s forgetting the Doublemint Twins.”
“I haven’t forgotten them, but why should I remember them.”
“Don’t you remember their song? Double your pleasure, double your fun, with Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint Gum!”
“Okay, I get it. You’re two times more like to have a date for New Year’s Eve if you’re bisexual, but I’ve got a wife and kids and a job and standing in my bedroom suburb community to maintain.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, can you loosen up just a little. When you come home and I want you to whisper sweet nothings in my leaves you act like I’m on the other side of your property line.”
“And it’s going to stay that way. At least until the kids are through college.”
It was the tree’s turn to sigh, and a passing breeze through her boughs did the trick.
“You know, you don’t have to worry about that, not since Lawrence v. Texas.”
I hate it when my trees and shrubs try to one-up me on Supreme Court precedents. “That case just struck down state laws criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults. Avocado trees can take up to 15 years to flower, for all I know you’re a minor.”
She screwed her face up into a little pouting expression, but I’m the father of two boys; I can win that kind of stand-off without breaking a sweat through my Old Spice “Classic” scent deodorant.
“Well, you might consider a girl’s feelings for once.”
“I would, but by the time I get home you won’t be a girl, so no-can-do.”
Maybe it was the morning dew, but she seemed to get a bit misty-eyed with my brush-off attempt, which I thought I had perfected many years ago at junior high sock hops. Apparently it doesn’t work on evergreen tropical and subtropical trees that thrive in USDA zones 9-10.
“All right,” I said with what I hoped she would understand was a note of finality. “I’ll kiss you when I come home tonight, but it will be a strictly masculine kiss.”
“Like Magic and Isiah Thomas?”
I figured if she remembered those two basketball from the 20th century, she must be of legal age. “Right, totally asexual, just a mutual show of respect before tipoff.”
“Thanks,” she/he said, over an audible lump in her throat. Unless it was a knot in her trunk. “You won’t forget, will you?”
“I don’t think so,” I said as I got in my car. “It isn’t every day I get propositioned by a bisexual plant.”
Available in print and Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Vegetables Say the Darndest Things.”