Blueberry Farm

For the interview, the adult-film actress perches on a stool designated for guests, under harsh utilitarian lights, in a roomful of audio and broadcast equipment, a forest of boom mics, a set of heavy headphones unfamiliar on her head.

The shock jocks, fingers poised on the sound-effects console, lob crude jeers and hornball entendres, impressing themselves, and when asked about her future, the adult-film actress says she would like to have a blueberry farm—I don’t remember if she said “own,” implying an entrepreneurial spirit, or “run,” implying hard work, or maybe just “have,” like a little girl’s dream of a pony.

I only remember she said blueberry farm, the innocence and specificity of it, and how the shock jocks reacted, or didn’t react, made lewd puns, cracked up over the incongruity but mostly steamrolled over it, and how she laughed along, wanting to please but not getting the joke, or why it was a joke.

The interview took place in an awful time when paparazzi dive-bombed pop stars to insanity; that same shock jock had a show in which women with beautiful bodies wore bags on their heads and revealed, at the show’s conclusion, if their faces were also beautiful or if they were something called a “butterface”: everything beautiful but-her-face.

Years later I tried to find out if she got her farm, but I don’t know her name, and that awful time was also a time before the internet held everything, and that shock jock interviewed many adult-film actresses, and not about their craft.

But I can give her this, and give me this: a vision of success, a great deal on a mortgage, a bunch of peaceful acres up north, a cottage-y home, a loyal old dog, a flourishing yield, kind soil, kind skies, kind neighbors, a popular spot at the farmer’s market, all because her berries are so sweet.