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Eve ate the apple because she wanted to; she left because she wanted that as well.

Adam ate the apple and blamed Eve because, let's be honest, he wasn't always honest. (As if Eve could have sprung from his rib!)

Living out in the country is great, but it has its downsides; is lonely.

Eve was bored.

Leaving, at least, held the promise of the new.

Eve fell in love with Samantha, who was sweet-tongued, curvaceous — mesmerizing when she moved — and who knew everything about everything, and who showed Eve the true meaning of pleasure: what radical self-acceptance and self-love could be.

Eve liked the idea of a Bad Girl reputation, even if — as an animal lover — she did not condone leather jackets and pollution-spewing muscle cars.

Eve did not like the idea of a Bad Girl reputation, but gaining one seemed inevitable; she decided to enjoy what fruits of the reputation she could.

Will they understand that? she wants to know now.

"A single bad apple spoils the bunch," she says, with a shrug.

With a wink.

Eve had long ago resigned herself to wearing fig-leaves — broad and flat, five-fingered like a palm, as if she were dressing her body in hand prints: a premonition of the caresses, the slaps, the squeezes, the many kinds of touches to come.

"Apples and oranges," says Eve, reminding herself of their differences.

Except, maybe there were never any apples — not in that subtropical microclimate — there were only oranges and pomegranates, kiwis and guavas, and, of course, figs.

No, actually Adam and Eve were never in a garden; it was a figment of their imagination — heteropatriarchal norms insisting their reality was something it wasn't, insisting YOU ARE HAPPY, YOU ARE HAPPY, YOU ARE HAPPY until the pair complied, hallucinated their own satisfaction and fulfillment, basked in the pernicious innocence of unearned abundance, never asking what else was out there, what else they could be, so that when Eve clutched her pearls, or gripped her vacuum cleaner, or embraced her 2.5 children, all she saw, in any direction, was the paradise of a rote and unquestioned life.

Eve was a natural scientist; she hypothesized, tested; the apple was simply one in a series of experiments.

Or else: Eve had no need for tests.

She ate the apple knowing full well what would happen — all the horror and misery, even the period cramps — because she was trying to prove something.

Eve was trying to prove to Adam that she loved him, even if he never did see it that way.

"Attention-seeking" — that's what he called it.

Okay, so maybe Eve ate the apple because she was angry with Adam, who could be such an insensitive dick sometimes — obsessed as he was with his own singularity — and who never truly supported her career aspirations, at least, not when they threatened his own.

Eve wants to know if you can blame her, really, for eating the fruit; she wants to know this even though she also understands that, yes, you can.

That you will.

Adam didn't leave the garden with Eve, he left with Samantha — he just said it was Eve to justify leaving the real Eve, who is still in the garden and very confused.

Or else — Kat and Birdie ate the apple, having wandered over to the Tree of Knowledge and ignored the numerous signs; Eve got blamed because they were "her" friends, and she should have been keeping a better eye on them.

"You had friends?" says Adam, a touch hurt, but mostly shocked. "I thought it was only you and me in there."

God ate the apple, just to keep things interesting.

God confirms that there were no apples, only oranges, pomegranates, kiwis, guavas —

"Apples and oranges," says Eve, sighing again.

Crying again.

Eve feels that the apple ate her.

Eve feels that the apple consumed her, really, with want, with a desire for a life beyond naked innocence — dumb captivity — even if it cost all the pain in the world, for her and every human being after, because it felt worth it just to know herself, worth it just to know every possibility.