Fear and Loathing in Mount Rose
By Jade Bové
“Fuck,” You think as you peek through the drapes of your cookie cutter house at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Phil just put up a pink flamingo in his yard.” You don’t know why this gets your blood boiling but it does. Why the fuck should he have a pink flamingo adoring his yard in such a way that suggests he is better than the rest of you. He’s not better than you. “Fuck that. I’m getting five of them.” You think silently to yourself, as if the very idea might betray itself orally without your permission.
At dinner you tell your averagely attractive wife, whom you met after college, in an Applebee’s, about Phil’s flamingo. She nods her head in a complacent fashion, because she either didn’t hear you or just doesn’t care. “Well fuck you too, then.” reverberates and echoes, like distant thunder, in your skull.
The next day you find yourself at Menards, but when you ask at the information desk, the crabby old lady with the bluish hair and swimming in her moo-moo, laughs at you and tells you that “We don’t sell that gaudy kind of lawn garbage here.” Still fueled by the need to continually one-up your neighbors, you head over to the Home Depot. It is less than a ten-minute drive from Menards to the Home Depot. You pass the same fast food joints that are lined up in the same order on the same side of the street in every other suburb, or interstate off ramp. Burger King, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut sit on the east side of the four lane county road like smug little fat kids who have just gotten their favorite snack via temper tantrum. Which reminds you that your daughter, Daisy, needs to sign up for those water aerobics classes at the Y. “God-damned suburbs.” You repeat this mantra again and again till you flick on your turn signal to enter into the massive parking lot that cradles the Home Depot, the Cub Foods, and the Barns & Noble. Who would have thought that these big-box stores would need to accommodate 5oo people at a time? You certainly didn’t when you decided to move out here.
You wander around the parking lot looking for the closest spot. “When did this become my point of pride, my biggest priority, being able to find the closest parking spot? I used to own a god-damned motor cycle for Christ’s sake.” For the millionth time you’ve questioned what the hell happened to you. You remember back to your high school and college days when you were careless and fancy-free. And skinny. God damn, how you used to be skinny. Remember that? Yeah, you do. The remembrance of being able to fit into that speedo and not look like a total schlub, sends you speeding to the nearest Subway exactly two store fronts down from Home Depot.
You order a foot long turkey bacon and ranch sub. Extra ranch, extra cheese, extra bacon. No lettuce because you heard on the news that it has a high potential to carry eboli or ecola or something like that. “Anything to drink with that?” asks the young woman at the register. She’s bored and really doesn’t care what you want. She’s attractive, really attractive, in that perpetual youth sort of way that young adults possess and covet, and she knows it. She wants you to stop looking at her like that. Close your mouth. “Uhh, yeah sorry, I’ll take a large Coke, but could you leave out the ice and fill it with half diet?”
“You fucking moron!” Her eyes scream at you as she plastically points at the self-serve fountain and hands you a cup.
You’re ashamed now and you should be, you don’t even know how old that girl is and you tried and failed to be a little healthy. You hurry out the door and waddle, that’s right you can actually feel yourself waddling now, over to Home Depot. Loosen your death grip on that sandwich dude, its not going anywhere. Look, you’re leaking creamy ranch all over. Greedily, like some starving inner city kid, you start stuffing your food hole with your sandwich while looking around for the lawn ornaments section.
The obnoxious hunter-orange hue of the store is confusing your visual cortex. You stop and admire a 450 drill-bit set conveniently marked down from two hundred dollars to $179.99 “Why the hell is it so hard to concentrate on so simple a fucking task as getting a stupid lawn ornament shaped like a bird?” That’s right. You remember again for the umpteenth time that you didn’t always have this short of an attention span. Remember that paper you wrote in college, the one where you argued Star Wars validity as tasteful literature and not pop-culture trash when examined using Pierre Macherey’s “Theory of Literary Production”? No, of course you don’t. You started watching too much TV, you spend all day in a cubicle staring at a computer screen crunching numbers that don’t mean anything to you any more.
Shaking your head, tying to focus, you find the lawn ornament section. “Ok what the hell all do we have here?” looking around you see lemon yellow plastic sunflowers, pin-wheels of various shapes and sizes in an array of horrible metallic tints, a small ceramic well with a “no fishing” sign fixed to one side. “What a bunch of crap.” You think.
Look, over there, a pear shaped employee, wearing the hideously orange smock that alerts you to their helpful disposition, is making her way over to you.
“Are you finding everything ok, sir?” she says to you while eyeing the ranch dribbles and breadcrumbs that adorn your teal stripped polo. “Uh, yeah, I guess…” you manage to stammer. “Do you have any pink flamingoes? You know, for lawn ornaments?” Jesus, you sound like a douche. You see her muffle a little smirk behind her chubby hand.
“Is it for you mother?”
“What the fuck? My mothe…” you think quickly. “Uh, n…no, its for a, uh, a prank. For one of my neighbors.” You mumble. Idiot.
“Well, we don’t really carry those any more. They are more of a specialty item these days. Have you tried the Wal-Mart?” That’s right, shake your head. Who buys pink flamingoes anyway? You can see her silently judging you and your tastes behind her rimless glasses.
“I guess I’ll try over there.” You manage to mummer meekly. You shuffle out the door to get in your car. The mid afternoon sun temporarily blinds you and you begin sweating immediately. “God-damned weather man was wrong again. A comfey 73 degrees my ass.” you lament as you look upon the TCF bank sign and see the thermometer has reached a scorching 92.
Go on, get in your mini-van. Yeah, that’s it, crank up that A.C. You guzzle down the last of your “healthy-ish” soda and immediately find you self in the midst of the early Saturday afternoon shopping rush hour. “God damnit! Don’t these people have anything better to do than go shopping all the God-damn time? Can’t they see that I have important shit to do? Get the fuck out of my way fuckers!” you scream and pummel the steering wheel with your doughy fists. But its ok, the windows are up and the A.C. is blasting at full bore. No one actually heard you. Wait, what was that? There, out of the corner of your eye. A car full of young people, girls and boys, they look to be… what? 18, 19, years old? They see the rage painted on your face and burst out into hysterical laughter. You have become the asshole. Someone caught you in the moment of a grown-up’s temper tantrum and recognized its absurdity. C’mon man, act you age. You watch them while waiting for the traffic to move on. Your death stare on full power, and you see them pass a joint from the front seat to the back. You get a sudden mirthful thought.
“Oh right, I’m the asshole, well I’ll show them just how much of an asshole I can really be.” Smirking to yourself, you make a great show of waving your arms to get their attention. You look behind you and see that the line of cars has doubled in the last few minutes. You wave at the kids, and hold up you Blackberry. You start giggling in your head but the absurdity and hypocrisy of what you are about to do is too much and you burst out cackling uncontrollably. The kids are watching you in stunned bemusement, laughing nervously, and giving you a thumbs-up, as they watch your finger slowly and purposefully dial a 9, then a 1 and then another 1. You show them that you are definitely punching the send button and watch the color drain from their faces. The driver panics like any inexperienced pot-head would and peels out of the line of cars, driving his nice new Mercedes SUV over the ornamental rock filled median and almost kills a tottering old lady who is trying to get into her dead husband’s ‘87 Cadillac. Never fully intending on pushing the send button you clear the number and put your phone back in your pocket. Smirking darkly, you feel better about yourself but you don’t know why, nor do you care.
“Awright, let’s get this fucking show on the road.” You mutter under your breath. The traffic has moved you up to the light and you know that you will get through on the next cycle. The years you spent as the pizza guy during college left a lasting mark. Watching the opposite light change from green to yellow, you rev your engine, and as soon as the light turns red, you gun it.
However, you temporarily forgot that all of these suburban stoplights all have left turn arrows. “Shit, shit, shit, that was stupid!” you hiss. Narrowly, you miss the on-coming car and cruise through the light amidst a cacophony of violent klaxonating. That thrill of a near miss head on collision seeps into your bones and you hands get all tingly. For the first time in days, you are smiling. There, on the left, you see a Lowes. “Fuck it,” you think. “I don’t care anymore. I’ll go to Wal-Mart and if they don’t have any, I’ll just put a flaming bag of dog shit on Phil’s front door step.”
Wal-Mart. That last bastion of hope where you can buy everything from underwear to guns 24-7. The one place in the burbs where white trash and blue bloods can co-mingle and no one says anything to each other because they are all too embarrassed to be seen there. They’ve seen the news reports, they know and you know Wal-Mart’s track record. Having had your fill of embarrassment for the day you shrug off all modesty and drive into the lot as if you owned the place. And to be honest, you do. You helped approve the zoning for it and were one of 100 people who pitched in an equal share to franchise it. God, what happened to you man? Remember that leather jacket and all the punk rock shows you went to? Now you own a fucking Wal-Mart franchise? You used to be cool man.
Looking around the lot, you decide that everybody and their brother is at Wal-Mart today. You should probably just quit now and accept defeat. Go home to your reasonably attractive wife, cute but annoying kid, and your golden retriever with the lazy eye. Just let Phil win this one. No? You won’t accept this defeat? You mean you’ve grown a pair and you are going to stick it to him this time? You’re going to show him that anything he does you can do bigger and better? Awesome! About frickin time! Oop, there’s your spot all the way at the very farthest away corner from the door. You park and get out. You’ve already forgotten about the obnoxious heat wave. By the time you get inside the sliding glass doors your polo is mostly soaked through, and you are slightly out of breath. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a mother herd her small children away from you while keeping an accusatory eye on you. “The fuck ‘er you lookin at lady?” the thought spreads like mercury till it’s the only thing you can hear in your head. She probably thinks you’re some kind of pederast because you’re sweaty, wheezing and have white stains on your shirt. Go grab a cart.
Inside, while strolling down the lawn care aisle, you see a woman trying in vain to discipline her three-year-old son. You notice her ass and compare it to your wife’s. Her’s is better. “I god-damned told you no touching!” The face slap reverberated off the rubber lawn hoses, dull and hateful. You shake your head as you decide that it’s none of your business how the woman disciplines her kid. Hell, if it was you, you might have just belted the kid for real, instead of that wussie limp wristed action, and taken him home. These kids today are way too spoiled but you know that if you ever raised a hand to Daisy, your wife would dump your ass faster than Obama can say economic reform.
Not caring what kind of response you get this time, you go up to one of the shelvers, and ask where you can find pink flamingoes. The young man stands up and turns around. You see his pierced nose and wonder what your wife would say if you came home with one of those. Then you notice his blue smock. “Why the hell do all of these big-box employees wear smocks?” you wonder idly.
Shhh, he’s speaking. “Pink flamingoes? Geese, uhh, I dunno. Are you talking about the movie? Have you tried the indie film section? But we might not carry it, John Waters might be a little too liberal and controversial for this place…” you walk off in disgust. “Fucking emo-hipsters, and their cool hair and ironically colored shoes and their tight girl pants.” You mutter under your breath as you continue on down the aisle.
Finally, after what seems like hours you find the damned pink flamingos. Look at ‘em. There must be close to a hundred of them here. You dig through them, wondering why you didn’t think to come here first. “Of course Wal-Mart has fucking pink flamingoes. You dig for the ones that have the brightest color, the straightest legs, and the curviest necks. There, you have found ten perfect pink flamingoes to put in your yard. Good for you. That Phil is really going to look like some kind of asshole now. You feel your chest swelling with pride. You did it. You are going to one-up him so bad now. Go to the cashier. You deserve a Hershey bar on the way out too.
You smile nonchalantly at the cashier, a pretty, young blond who may or may not be in high school. “It’s hard to tell these days, especially out here in the suburbs where pop culture rules more than it should, with fifteen year old girls trying to look like they are twenty and eighteen year old boys trying to look like they are sixteen year old girls.” you think to yourself as she bends over to scan the plastic aviary. Good for you, you just had your first original thought in over three months. Keep it up. Just don’t look down her shirt.
“Didjya find everything ok?” she asks in that practiced and obviously fake friendliness.
“Oh yeah, no problem, I knew just what I was going for.” You wink at her before you can stop yourself. Your overly inflated pride has given you an overly false sense of security and self-confidence. Seriously? You’re hitting on this girl? At you age? Your friends have daughters about her age. Pay and get out.
You spend your drive home flipping between NPR and the oldies station, which, sadly, has started playing music that you first listened to in high school. “Has it really been that long? Am I old? High school was only…” you count on your fingers, “…17 years ago.” Loser. Just like the song that’s on the radio now. Soy un pertador baby. It sounds so lame now. You try to remember what the music said to you back then. You recognize vague references to what you believed to be love and rebellion at the time. A twinge of that teenage rebellion ekes its way to the surface of your skin, it tingles for a moment, but somehow it doesn’t seem as important now. It’s not as exciting as it used to be. You have a mortgage to think about and a wife to keep happy. Oh, and don’t forget that you have neighbors to compete with. And that damned dog with the lazy eye.
You turn on Galaxy Drive, the main thorough fair that leads to the street that leads to the turn off to your cul-de-sac, Star Gazer Circle. For the millionth time you wonder aloud, “Who the fuck names these streets?” You check the clock on the stereo that is screaming that song about walking 500 miles. It’s nearly five o’clock. Just about dinnertime. You turn the corner that will put you in your little nook of a neighborhood in less than five minutes and hear the clatter of the plastic birds in the back. “Oh man this is going to so sweet, after dinner I’m gonna invite Phil over for some beers. Then after the wives go to bed I’ll break out the whiskey and get him real drunk, but I’ll cut mine with water and pour him doubles. Then when he’s wasted and goes home, I’ll put these fucking birds up and then we’ll see who has the last laugh!” what a great plan you schemer you. Moron.
You round the corner and head on in. Much to your dismay your field of vision is flooded with a sea of pink. “OH FUCK YOU PHIL! YOU GODAMN ASS HOLE!” you scream at the top of your lungs. Wait. Wait just one damn minute. Why? Why are there about a hundred pink flamingoes in your fucking yard? That son of a bitch! He was fucking with you the whole time. He knew that you would spend the whole day racing around looking for the damned pink aviary. He was playing you from the start. They all were. They were all in on it. Pull into your driveway, right now. Everyone is laughing at you. Phil, Don, Hugh, you wife, your daughter, that weird lady who lives at the end and never talks to any one until she needs someone to shovel for her. Even the dog looks like he’s laughing at you.
“That’s it; they are ALL getting flaming bags of dog shit in front of their doors tonight” is the last thing you mutter to yourself as you duck your head and walk inside to a mediocre lasagna and limp salad with too much ranch dressing followed by a night of bad cable television.
