Pickles are The Bad Food
Look at this thing. Just look at it. This is a thing people claim is “good.” They seem to enjoy that sour, wet crunch of this pukish-green, kinda transparent (?) fake vegetable. People with that bad taste. Trash people. Because this a trash food for a trash person.
Not liking pickles is like being the only single person at the birthday party of a college friend with whom you’ve grown out of touch. Everyone seems to be having fun, and everyone seems to be in agreement that this is a Fun Time. They all know each other, and seem to love each other, but no one knows you. The contentment in the room is conspicuous, almost performative, and it’s pervasive. Everyone wants everyone else to know they are having a Fun Time, because this is supposed to be Fun. People are drinking homemade cocktails, eating desserts. They’re laughing. They’re singing Billy Joel songs, and you don’t even know any Billy Joel songs, and you should probably just add some on Spotify when you get home.
But there you sit on the armrest of a purple-grayish couch, listening to a conversation whose context you don’t understand, smiling when it seems appropriate, every so often stretching your thumb to the top the iPhone Mail app to refresh it, furrowing your brow at your phone and pursing your lips, pretending you’re waiting for an important message but really you’re just looking at the same six and a half emails over and over again. Who even are these people? Why did you come in the first place? You should’ve stayed home. Wouldn’t it have been much better if you had brought her along?
Your cheeks are tired from faking a smile, and you feel bad about it. Everyone else’s smile is coming so naturally. Maybe there’s something wrong with you that you can’t see this party for the Fun Time it seems to be? Are you actually wrong in thinking this is a Bad Time? Or maybe, even likely, everyone else hates this party, I mean pickles, and they’re just pretending to have a Fun Time because everyone else seems to be having a Fun Time, and if only you all could just be honest and open with each other you’d realize that you’re all actually in this together in thinking this is a Bad Time, I mean hating pickles, and realize that you have a lot more in common than just having known the same person at some point in your respective lives, someone to whom you send birthday and holiday texts but really it’s been probably a year or two since you had one of those deep, revealing conversations that came so easily during college, and you know that those probably won’t happen much anymore but in the end you understand that this is just the way of things whether you like it or not, like when the deli guy puts God damn pickles on your sandwich when you didn’t ask for them.
Anyway. Screw pickles, they taste bad.
