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Warrior | Mar 14 2003

As I leave my apartment, I place a peeled banana partway in my mouth and start walking down the stairs. The object of this game, a game I play often, is to finish eating the banana before I get outside (I live on the fourth floor), but without using my hands. My method: I hold the banana in place with my lips and periodically suck it further into my mouth, all the while listening for sounds of impeding departure from the surrounding apartments. My fear, if it isn’t obvious, is that one of my building-mates will step into the hall and catch me with a banana sticking out of my mouth. I’m not sure what I would do in this case: Swallow the remaining fruit in one gulp? Bite off a piece and hold the rest in my hand? Smile, banana in place, humiliation be damned? I’d like to think I’d choose the third option, for that strikes me as the most warrior-like response, the one that requires the most courage and self-possession, but until it actually happens, until I’m actually there in the hall with a door swinging open and a partly eaten banana jutting from my mouth, I have no way of knowing.

I play a lot of games like this.