“Two nights in a row, huh?”
This was the number one thing I did not want to hear from the guy at the drive-through at McDonalds, where exactly 24 hours earlier I had pulled through with mascara streaked down my face after having a complete meltdown while driving. It was the cry of all cries, the kind of cry that you can’t have in an apartment building because people will call the police and give you worse looks in the parking garage than that time you saw your neighbors after screaming “Fuck my ass!” over and over the night before. It was the kind of cry that compelled you to punch the shit out of your steering wheel repeatedly while power-screaming through the pain, the kind of cry that means that even though you are a very blonde, very skinny white girl in a white Volvo pulled over in the wrong part of town, you seem too hysterically crazy to fuck with. It was the kind of cry that compels you to see yourself from outside of the car when you think back on it, like you are a part of a very rainy and tragic and pivotal moment in a movie. It was a serious fucking cry. And after a half hour of some really emo weeping, punching, and screaming, I put on my turn signal and steered the Swedish Tank to McDonalds, because god dammit, I wanted fucking McDonalds.
There was no hiding the fact that I was a puffy crybaby mess about to shove my face full of French fries. I am very blonde. If I cry, it is apparent that I have been crying for hours afterwards. I get puffy, splotchy, and red. My nose actually swells. It's pathetic and I avoid it at all costs. In addition to being blonde I am also vain and don't like being puffy and red. I’m not sure if you know how much therapy it’s taken to get me relatively comfortable with driving through McDonalds (15 years, give or take), but the event is pretty monumental. I’ve been getting better at it, but I can’t say that’s really something to celebrate. Not many people really want to hear about how you have trouble eating fast food. So I got my meal and drove home and realized I’d probably broken my hand, so that was a cool night.
The next day I got x-rays and a splint and a referral to stress management counseling and all this shit and then I went to ballet class, because broken hand or no, I’d had plans to do that. So I went to ballet, and I hadn’t really eaten anything all day and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and my stupid emo broken hand (even though I’d done it to myself, being emo) and I decided that the only thing I wanted to eat was McDonalds. Now let me get this straight: it horrifies me that I ever “want” McDonalds. It’s shameful enough, in my opinion, to have a human need to eat, so to want to eat, much less-- to want to eat McDonalds, is a very difficult thing for me to process. But hey, years of therapy and here we are, wanting McDonalds. Fucking great. So I decide I want french fries again, but the only thing I can think is “Oh my god you pathetic loser. A) you can’t eat McDonalds two nights in a row. B) they are going to remember you and think you are a pathetic loser”. So I use my therapy voice and say, “Hey, you know, it’s been a rough 24 hours. You had an emo meltdown in your car and broke your own hand. The world won’t end if you eat french fries two nights in a row. Also, there is no way you are that important that anyone will remember you. Hundreds of people go through there every day. Are you really that self-centered that you think someone will notice, much less care that you are eating shitty fast food?” So I go. I feel terror that the guy I really like who lives over there will see me going to McDonalds. (The actual fear is that he both saw me go there last night and tonight and will judge me. But that’s crazy. Right? I should probably more concerned that I am someone who breaks her own hand not someone who eats a feeling once in a while.) I feel terror that everyone at McDonalds will judge me. I feel terror that I have become the kind of person who lives on fast food. I. Feel. Terror.
Normally the distanciation that occurs between the ordering process and the actual food-delivery process helps me feel okay about getting fast food. Like, I talk to a box, then I give money to someone else, and then I get my food from someone else. It’s like I’m a passive participant in the exchange. The alienation that occurs with this division of labor suits me (sorry, school stuff). But last night? The fucking box is broken. I have to order from a person. The same person as last night. “Maybe he won’t remember me,” I think.
“Two nights in a row, huh?” He smirks at me. He fucking smirks.
“Shut up!” I hand him my credit card, because that’s how cool my life is right now, fucking charging McDonalds. I hand him my credit card with my broken hand, because that’s the one by the window, and he asks, “Did that happen between now and last night?”
“Yeah. It’s been a bad day okay?” like there is a formula for being allowed to get McDonalds two nights in a row: Cry-of-all-Cries plus Broken Hand plus Ballet Class plus Loneliness equals two cheeseburgers. He laughed at my broken hand, gave me my bag full of shame and said, “You deserve it.” I deserve it. I deserve it. Oh, if only god could have killed me then. If he didn’t have my credit card I would have floored it into traffic, but I just tried to pretend I was just one of those quirky girls in a sitcom about awkward single quirky girls who eat ice cream in sweatpants who get their shame covered with laugh tracks. In the show, it would turn into a little routine, like, “Oh hey, Luis! Me again! The usual! Hahahahaha no he still hasn’t texted me! What? No, I don’t care. No, I’m busy and important and loving life!”
I just let the laugh track drown out the sounds of my soul screaming in absolute mortification, took my credit card, and drove home. But I’m not a girl in a sitcom. The girl in the sitcom doesn’t have to call her sponsor and tell her that she maybe broke her hand while repeatedly punching her steering wheel on a dark dead street in Berkeley because she can’t stop that voice that tells her she’s a worthless, unlovable piece of shit and it seems like no amount of fucking or nail polish or scholarships or any other external validation can ever make that voice go away. It just sucks sometimes. And it feels lonely and sometimes really hopeless. But fortunately it’s funny. So at least there’s that.
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