DISPATCH 7.6666: BULL MARKET PART 3
RE: VAGINA PUNCH, BLACK MARKET KRATOM, MY WEEKEND AS A 23 YEAR OLD IN PHILADELPHIA, AND BRENDON URIE AT THE TROPICAL SMOOTHIE CAFE
Someone recently said to me: “Do people still blog?”
From deep inside my breast came a cri du coeur: “YES! People still blog.” I still blog; I am still committed to the art of blogging; there is no higher art or more fulfilling calling.
Why do we blog? Where does that habit form in the mind? You may trace the form back to Tumblr, or to MySpace pages of old, or to GeoCities sites laden with sparkly gifs.
But I see myself continuing a centuries-old tradition: I am reaching back through history to shake hands with the Founding Fathers and their Federalist Papers, with the Jacobin pamphleteers of the French Revolution, with Martin Luther nailing his theses to the Wittenberg Church, and even with Jesus’s apostles and Marx himself, if you really think about it. I am just like one of the apostles but I haven’t met Jesus yet and I’m just gonna keep writing anyways until I do.
The reality, of course, is that I have neglected to blog now for more than six months. But here I am, again.
This is the last1 in a series of three posts about how I came to quit my job at a large chain restaurant. You can read the first part here and the second part here. If you are caught up, you may notice that I am writing about early September, and it’s currently November December January February March April May June.
Yes, this post has now vexed me for the better part of eight months. I know I am the creative director of my own life and could have chosen to simply forgo this burden I placed upon myself at any time. But then the arbitrary numbering system I created for the posts for my blog with a readership of 25 would be messed up, and how could I live with myself?
When I originally drafted this post in early September, this is how I opened it:
Three weeks ago, I wrote about my meek and pitiful life and how everything sucked forever. Two weeks ago, a mouse ran at me while I was lying on the floor eating a sandwich between shifts at my miserable food service job. One week ago, I was officially offered a new job 10 hours away from where I live. Yesterday, I picked up the now dead mouse from where it was trapped in the corner and got ready for my final shift at the terrible job which I’ve been at for nearly a year that’s probably caused me lasting psychic damage.
The mouse merely lost the war of attrition, as it were. This then in turn begat another standoff, between myself and this post.
If I were to diagnose the issue I had writing this, it would be twofold: one, in transitioning from a service job to a desk job, I had a lot less mental space for writing. Two, the ten-day stretch described herein frankly does not serve as very good fodder for a blog post. At the time, it felt like everything in the world was happening to me, and it kind of was, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s interesting to read about. In fact, this post could not hold my attention long enough to let me finish it, which likely means it will be a dreadfully boring read.
But here I am. In my heart I know I will never purge myself of the impulse for posting. We’re so fucking back, baby.
After Labor Day weekend, I had a little over a week left at my job. At this point, I had only recently recovered from some form of mental break. Let me rephrase: it wasn’t a ‘mental break’. I was just in my ‘hermit era’. I was having ‘Emily Dickinson summer’. I was ‘agoraphobiamaxxing’ and ‘isolationcore’. By the time I was near to the end of my employment at my terrible food service job, I was just getting used to experiencing unfettered joy again, so when it occasioned to stop by I still found myself startled.
Slowly, I transitioned from cramped confines of my own head back to the world of the living, once again venturing out of the house to go to such exotic locales as the Planet Fitness and the grocery store. Perhaps it was my renewed capacity for happiness which led me in a giddy fog to get a sandwich from the Tropical Smoothie Cafe one day after going to the gym.
Now why would I get a sandwich from the Tropical Smoothie Cafe? Fantastic question. For some reason, I had it in my mind that I’d gotten this buffalo chicken sandwich once at Tropical Smoothie Cafe and it was fire. In retrospect, I must have been confusing the Tropical Smoothie Cafe with literally any other restaurant.
As a rule, if you go to a restaurant that has a specific food in its name, it would likely behoove you to get that food and not any of the other food on the menu. This is especially true of chain restaurants which one may find in a strip mall. Needless to say the sandwich left me nonplussed.
Later that evening, I called Mary and we ended up on one of our classic “browsing Wikipedia” phone calls. Sometimes when we call each other it devolves into looking at random years on Wikipedia, or various obscure saints, or often the “Personal Life” section for celebrities2. In this case, we were looking at Brendon Urie’s Wikipedia page. This is when we found out that Brendon Urie also had a past life in food service — serendipitously enough, at the Tropical Smoothie Cafe of all places. In fact, not only did Brendon Urie used to work there, but he actually was known for singing at the Tropical Smoothie Cafe customers.
I want you to imagine for a moment: you’re at the Tropical Smoothie Cafe in Utah. You have, for some reason, ordered a sandwich, which contains a dubious substance that verges on chicken. You’re probably a Mormon. And for whatever reason, the twerp handing you the sandwich has decided that this mall food court is actually the Moulin Rouge and he’s belting ‘Jessie’s Girl’ at you in such a manner as to incorporate vocal runs.
I think Brendon Urie singing at you in a Tropical Smoothie Cafe is one of the circles of hell. This is actually such a potent image that the thought of Brendon Urie standing behind a counter at a Tropical Smoothie Cafe singing ‘Come On Eileen’ caused me to physically wince when it attacked me in the shower one day a full month after the idea first crossed my mind.
And yet: not even this traumatizing fantasy could clip my wings. I was coasting on my anticipation of my soon-to-be freedom from my terrible job.
Here is some more information about my job at that time. I started the job 8 days after I moved to a new city because I needed money. I had run out of leads in my chosen field, and had stooped to Googling “jobs for people with no skills”. Google told me I should be a waitress. I applied to this one restaurant, they hired me two levels below waitress, and I worked there for a year.
I held this job for most of my first year out of college, during which time my life took on a strange and unfamiliar texture. When I look back on it now, it doesn’t quite feel real — more like a really long, weird, bad dream.
Here is what I remember from my last week of work.
I remember my creep manager telling me he was going to name a World of Warcraft character in my honor called ‘V Punch’, short ‘Vagina Punch’. I don’t remember the conversation which preceded this but I can assure you it was decidedly unfunny3.
I remember my coworker who I believed was a pathological liar coming in from his other job at Arby’s. He was wearing the uniform and everything, which made me realize that he hadn’t been lying about at least some of the things he said prior, like all the various and sundry places he claimed to work at. Maybe he really had found a horse on the side of the road.
I remember my really loud, misogynistic coworker telling me I was gonna be fine out there.
I remember hugging my pushover manager on the way out, him wishing me good luck.
I remember the last time I walked out the back door and pulled off my hat.
And then I was free.
Well, for all of about four days. The Friday before I flew down for my first week on my new job, my boyfriend and I drove to Philadelphia for a concert with our former roommate. My last day was a Wednesday closing shift, and we really had to spend all day Friday driving, plus Saturday driving back and Sunday preparing to leave, but that Thursday was a really nice rest.
Even the drive to the concert Friday was not without its excitements. On our way to Philadelphia for the show, we stopped at a diner in rural Pennsylvania. There, we heard two truckers speaking either Pennsylvania Dutch or Quebeçois. Very foreign and colorful. Later, we saw a brush fire on the side of the road. What could be more alluring than the beginnings of a forest fire? Later still, we saw a blimp listing to one side and then another.
The blimp was really exciting to me because seeing a blimp is like seeing an endangered animal4. But the way it was moving through the sky Hindenburg-style made me feel like I was seeing a wild critter that maybe had rabies or had been hit by a car. It was sort of rotating back and forth on its Z-axis. Eventually it drifted out of view — to this day I don’t know if it landed safely.
Upon arriving in Philadelphia, we met my former roommate in the lobby of our hotel and proceeded to have what I can only describe as a ‘Weekend in My Life As A 28 Year Old in Chicago’ type of evening. It began at a Philadelphia sports bar which was showing the Phillies game. They gave me my beer in a fancy glass with a stem and gave my compatriots their beers in regular pint glasses, which I assume is because I am a beautiful lady.
From the sports bar, we found ourselves wandering to an establishment called Black Market Kratom. What sort of wares did Black Market Kratom sell? Well, surely kratom, but also those neon gas masks that you can somehow use to smoke weed, and also bongs. I have a theory that no one has their finger on the pulse like the guys who work as buyers at vape shops. For example, when I was in college, the head shop near campus was selling a Squid Game pipe when that was still in the zeitgeist.
In addition to its bespoke weed-smoking tools, Black Market Kratom also had a bucket of stickers. I dipped my hand in, and the first one I pulled out was for the Dream SMP.
As we left Black Market Kratom, a man called out to me in the street.
“She’s the boss, man,” he said. “She’s the boss.”
DAMN STRAIGHT!
And then we went to a hipster bar where I got some kind of sour lemony drink that tasted like straight up lemonade. At the front of a bar, a man was playing guitar, taking requests like ‘Wonderwall’. It felt so right to hang out with your friends on a Friday night at random bars. That’s mostly what I was thinking then.
It wasn’t that far of a walk to the venue, but we were waylaid by finding a plastic raven on a street corner. Junk is everywhere, it’s true, but the raven was positioned in the middle of the sidewalk, as if intentionally. Myself, my boyfriend, and my former roommate circled the raven.
A person materialized at the corner, presumably the owner of the raven.
“Do you want to pick up? You can pick it up if you want.”
“I don’t know, man. I’m worried that if I pick it up there’s gonna be dubious effects,” my former roommate said.
“No, it’s just a bike race and we’re trying to be creepy,” said the person. “Checkpoint?”5
At that point, people started riding up on their bikes to check in with this person. I should also be very clear that this was probably around 8 o’clock at night. The nature of this race is still elusive to me: I couldn’t tell if it was just a regular bike race or some sort of elaborate quest. In any case, we had our own peregrination to attend to.
The show we were going to was JPEGMAFIA with Jane Remover and Rochester legend RXKNephew6. Yes, it did smell crazy in there. It was hype and we did a circle pit and I got really sweaty.
Sometimes you come out of the pit feeling like you’ve hurt someone else. For this specific show, I could tell I conked my head on someone else’s front teeth. While I came away with a sore lump on the back of my noggin, I was more worried about the dental trauma I might have caused with my thick skull.
Before you freak out, you should know that I am actually very cognizant of the potential negative side effects from hitting your head on things. This is probably because my parents both coached youth soccer at some point, and it was drilled into the coaches to watch out for concussions. I am even weary of sub-concussive hits. That I was able to get hit in the head and not freak out is a sign of personal growth because earlier in the year I blacked out and hit my head on something and convinced myself I had gotten a concussion, which led me to an Urgent Care appointment, which I walked out of without a concussion diagnosis and instead a printout from the doctor which described the symptoms of a hangover.
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After the show, nursing my tender lump, we found ourselves at a bar in Chinatown. Then we hit up Bonchon and I ate Korean fried chicken out of a plastic cup.
Then, I was awake and my head hurt and we had to leave Philly, the beautiful City of Brothers. We drove home Saturday with absolutely no blimp sightings, no brush fire, and no Quebeçois. Lame! Sunday, I woke up to a pile of laundry and the looming realization that I had to be in North Carolina by the end of the day.
I somehow got to my Airbnb in one piece. I’ll spare you the rest of the details: how I met up with my family in North Carolina, how airport security threw out my earbuds, how I ended up at a soccer game. What matters is that I was teetering on the cliff above my new life, having narrowly escaped the old one.
I showered. I ironed my blouse. I did the nighttime routine I only remember to do when I have something exciting the next day. And then I tucked myself into bed and prepared for my post-whipped cream girl life.
MORAL OF THE STORY: TAKE NOTES ON ALL THE FUNNY THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO YOU. YOU PROBABLY DON’T HAVE A CONCUSSION. THE RAVEN WILL NOT HAVE DUBIOUS EFFECTS. AND FINISH YOUR FUCKING POSTS!
I promise!
Ted Danson's 'Personal Life' section...now that's a rich text. He has webbed toes! Same with Ariana Grande. The interesting Wikipedia page, not the webbed toes.
I am cursing myself for not writing down more notes at the time other than "V punch (this is the character [ my manager's name ] was going to name after me in his video game)".
I would assume all my readers already know this, but there are only like 25 blimps worldwide.
This is on film on my phone. I know it sounds like I'm making this piece of dialogue up but I have it on film. I think it's bad form to post a video of a stranger from eight months ago but rest assured it exists.
One of the few upsides of my delaying to write this is that I can now link the Neph diss of John Fetterman. Rochester pride 🌸