Drive-Thru
We drove to McDonald’s to get milkshakes, and when we pulled up to the drive-thru and got asked what we wanted, my mouth, unwarranted, spit out the words:
“Unconditional love.”
As my lowered gaze slowly rose to meet the window, I could only make out the silhouette of the cashier. The fluorescent McDonald’s lights backlit him like a religious portrait.
He responded:
“Have you listened to birds singing in the morning lately? They sing for the day and ask for nothing in return. When you listen to the world, its beauty speaks. Intentionally noticing the world’s beauty is an exchange of unconditional love between you and all that surrounds you. It acts in abundance and is selfless because it exists beyond the self. Maybe, eventually, you’ll see that your very conception of it makes you an extension of it. Maybe try acknowledging that the world’s inherent nature and your own are not separate. Maybe stop asking for unconditional love and start embracing the fact that it’s already in your nature... to be unconditional love.”
He paused for a moment, then continued.
“Also, maybe don’t come to McDonald’s for that. As much as capitalism strives to convince you that consumerism equates to a form of satisfaction adjacent to love, I’m afraid it won’t quite scratch your itch. The schmutz we feed you makes you sick, and when you feel sick, we feed you more schmutz to make you feel better. We live in a country infected with Munchausen syndrome. They like to dangle addiction in front of us like a carrot. Tell us our worth is achieved externally. Remember, the ego asks for justification. With unconditional love, there is nothing to justify. Anyway, anything else?”
You leaned over the center console and said,
“Oreo McFlurry, please.”
It always annoyed me when people said “kids are too young to know what love is”. Love doesn’t have an age limit, assholes. Anyways we were teenagers, not kids.
I knew I loved you. But I loved you with a heart that took the form of an endless tunnel. A big gaping hole running right through the center of it. Your sweet words and gentle embraces felt like the friendly summer breeze from a train passing through, lifting the leaves into the air, only for them to calmly float back down to greet the earth again.
I think you truly loved me too. But your heart was a different shape and texture. Your heart reminded me of a retired man watching a golf tournament in his lazy boy chair while he enjoyed a bar of chocolate.
Satisfied and content.
Two words I could only see through binoculars.
I guess that’s what made us so different.
My mom asked me if we would ever break up. I remember responding, “Only if I get bored”.
That’s not a very nice way of saying that something in me knew my intensity would manifest through an everlasting attitude centered around unachievable ambition over comfort. And you were so lovely at being comfortably happy, comfortably in love.
Being comfortable made my skin itch.
Explaining how I felt to you was like explaining every shade of purple to a blind person.
It wasn’t that you were dumb or had a lack of desire to understand me, I just didn’t think it was possible to ask you to take a walk in my shoes when you had human feet and I had hooves.
Sometimes it was easier to just shut the fuck up and get a milkshake together.
A milkshake’s sweetness paired so nicely with yours. Maybe if I saturated myself in sweetness I’d glaze over: smoothing out all my cracks, filling in all my emptiness. The sugar would melt from my heat. I was fire, or perhaps an exploding star. Isn’t that how black holes are made?
A glazed donut floating through the endless void.
Alone.
I was always alone.
Even when you were sitting right next to me.
Even when I knew I loved you.
How unfair to you.
I’d hold your hand, and still somehow be untethered.
I wasn’t too young to know what love was. I knew exactly what it was, and I loved you, I promise. But our love sat like a pond waiting for a stone to be skipped across it.
And you were ok with waiting.
It was all enough for you. You loved me because I was pretty, and kind and for the most part agreeable. I felt like a character in the script of the life you were told to live. And somehow I stumbled into the role.
I was in love with you but that wasn’t enough for me. It was never going to be enough for me.
Would anything ever be enough for me?
So no, it was not a matter of age. Not a matter of countable days on this earth.
People like things to be quantitative so they can presumably compartmentalize the spinning world around them.
Luckily for them most distances can be measured.
But let me tell you, the distance I held within me was not like most distances.
“Thank fuck” he murmured.
His 8 hours were just about over. He took off his apron, took a piss and headed out to his car to drive home.
“Only A Fool Would Say That” by Steely Dan began playing as he backed out of the parking lot. He tapped his hand on his wheel to the rhythm of the song for a moment, then rolled down his window and lit a cigarette. He was tired. Tired from long shifts, tired from bull shit.
It was pretty late but his phone rang. He answered.
“Sup Mom.”
“Good and you?”
“Yeah well Barbara is a bitch what did you expect?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
“Hm, my rose of the day? Well, some girl got all existential on me in the drive through line and I got to cosplay like I knew some shit about something. But then she asked me if I knew so much why I was working at McDonald’s. It’s like people don’t realize cat litter prices have exponentially spiked.”
“Yeah, I’m still writing.”
“Mostly just for fun.”
“Yeah, I’ll be over for Tuesday dinner. But seriously, Mom, I’m actually gonna do it soon. I’m getting the fuck out of here. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Mexico is actually a lot safer than the media presents it.”
“I know, I know.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
The moon rose over the end of the freeway in front of him. It was a crescent.
He chuckled to himself,
“God’s toenail, huh?”
He took another drag of his cigarette, then kept driving towards the moon.
Simultaneously, on the other side of town, he opened the door so quietly not even a creak could escape. It was Sunday night and he knew his siblings were asleep downstairs.
He tiptoed into the kitchen, threw away the remnants of his McFlurry and treated himself to a few m&ms. A little post-dessert dessert.
After getting ready for bed, he climbed under the covers and looked up into the darkness. After a minute or two he leaned over to his bedside table and sent her a text. A red heart.
Through a sliver in his blinds the light of the soft night bled through.
He didn’t notice it, but he felt it.
He was okay.
But he wondered…
Was anyone ever gonna ask him if he was?
He rolled over and began to count sheep.
The next morning the birds sang a beautiful song for the day.
All three of them separately got up early
and listened.