Phoebe and I are on our way to the elevators when she mentions she has a craving for orange juice. I tell her I haven’t had orange juice in years, on account of my gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD), which flares up from citrus. This conversation lasts until we walk into the teleconference room, where we had a scheduled meeting with Gordon from our Orange County office.
We skip the pleasantries and get straight to business. But soon Gordon finds himself talking about orange juice, recalling a memory of his childhood where he tried and failed to copy that ad on TV where somebody stabbed a straw into an orange and started sucking up the juice. “Oranges don’t work that way,” he says. “You gotta squeeze ‘em to make orange juice.” “That’s funny,” says Phoebe. “We were talking about orange juice just before the call.”
When I’m telling my wife this story later that evening, I unintentionally continue right past the ending and just keep talking about orange juice. “My dad would drink the extra pulpy stuff,” I say to my wife. “When I wanted a glass, I’d have to strain it.” “Honey, your dinner is getting cold,” she says. She’s right. I hadn’t even noticed we’d sat down to eat.
That night, I dream that I’m working in an orange juice factory: loading crates of perfectly spherical oranges into the gigantic mills, pressing the machine on and hearing the whirr of the motors and then watching the pristine juice coming out at the other end, ready for packaging, shipping, consumption, and enjoyment. In the morning, I’m sitting on the front porch recounting my dream to the letter carrier when my son, little Gordie, asks if we have any orange juice. “Check the freezer,” I say. “We might have one of those frozen tubes.” Suddenly I’m waxing nostalgic to Gordie about that time on our family vacation to Florida when I got lost and pulled the car over into an orange grove and he and his mother went picking ripe oranges right off the tree while I figured out the map. When I finish telling the story, I’m alone in the kitchen—Gordie has already left for school and I’m late for work.
I absent-mindedly buy a quart of orange juice from the corner store on the way to the bus stop, and then, in a haze, give it to the bus driver instead of paying my fare. She’s very grateful and starts talking about orange juice over the microphone over the whole ride, not even pausing to announce the stops. But nobody seems to care. Everyone around me is focused on their own conversations, which I can’t help but notice are about orange juice. I plug my ears so I won’t get looped into a conversation and forget to get off the bus. With my pointer fingers in my canals, I hear the steady beat of my heart pumping—and as I listen closely, the familiar rhythm is instead replaced by the repetition of words: orange-juice, orange-juice, orange-juice.
At the office, everybody is talking about orange juice. And then, after talking about orange juice, talking about talking about orange juice. People get worried. Phoebe, taking initiative, makes calls to friends and family: “This may sound strange, but have you been talking about orange juice today?” Yes, they have. Everyone has been talking about orange juice—all day, all over the country. We turn on the news. Top story: THOUGHTS OF ORANGE JUICE SPILL ACROSS NATION.
What seems like just a funny little coincidence becomes slightly unsettling and then dreadfully serious as the days pass. Some believe the fixation is somehow an insidious scheme from Big Orange Juice, but the corporations deny it and suspend advertisements as a show of good faith. Grocery stores drape thick black curtains in front of their orange juice sections as a way of preventing conversations. The Prime Minister, Gord Grajewski, makes a live address as a way to assuage fears, but pauses mid-sentence to take a big gulp of Tropicana and then predictably veers off his prepared remarks—only making things worse.
The mood becomes tense; people are on edge. Just when you think you’re not going to talk about orange juice, you start talking about orange juice. The most popular baby names for newborns are Orange and Juice. People are missing appointments and leaving things on the stove because of the pleasurable trance-like state you go into when talking about orange juice. The only reprieve from this stress is the pleasurable trance-like you get when talking about orange juice.
As the phenomenon continues, some people stop drinking orange juice entirely, no matter how much they love it. Others drink more, constantly, since they can’t get it off their mind. As for me, I still haven’t had a sip. I just don’t want another GORD flare-up. But every so often, in quiet, solitary moments, I think about orange juice—its distinct citrus tang, its deep neon shade, its authentic Vitamin C healthiness—and I imagine pouring a crisp glass, raising it up to my lips, and taking a satisfying gulp. No other thought makes me happier.