The Sonic Milkshake Shot Club: Strawberry
It’s 1:16 pm on a Tuesday and my first meal is about to be a Sonic Strawberry Shake. I just woke up like an hour ago and have spent my conscious time so far diligently avoiding client emails.
Sleeping is fuckin’ fun. Not doing shit, fun.
Like a raccoon eating soiled tampons out of the garbage, I have cast off the shackles of societal expectations, and am living in a state of self-indulgent indolent filthiness, and it is in so doing that I have become free.
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Okay that’s all bullshit because food and habits don’t actually have moral value, anything that has some nutrients and can be digested deserves the label of “food” and therefore is not on par with sucking the juices from dirty tampons, there is nothing shameful about periods of rest and self-enjoyment for these are necessary components of life, and if I was truly liberated enough to recognize all that I wouldn’t be writing about how eating a milkshake makes me a dirty raccoon, and oh yeah raccoons aren’t even dirty in the first place.
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I like raccoons. They wash their hands! They can lift heavy trash can lids! They help to dispatch with the huge quantities of food that we all waste each day! Raccoons are the original freegans. They are people. QED.
To celebrate shucking society’s rules and embodying the spirit of the crouching, gnawing, naked raccoon, let’s eat some trash.
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I was not enthused about eating this shake. I’ve already had a taste of strawberry by virtue of the Choco-Covered Strawberry flavor. What new insights could unadulterated strawberry flavor possibly yield? I contemplated getting mix-ins, or bringing the shake home to eat with peanut butter or Ovaltine powder. But I decided instead to honor the integrity of shot club.
I was looking forward to the whipped cream, though.
The same cashier was there as before. She had her hair tied up with a polka dot bandana, and her eyes were lined and cat-eyed like a pin-up. Her lips were carefully tinted a bright, fake grapey purple that looked great on her and helped modernize the look.
I realized for the first time that this challenge means I’ll be coming here for milkshakes a lot and that somebody is gonna notice.
Sonic is busy at lunchtime. There were diligent-seeming, well-adjusted people mulling about everywhere fueling themselves up before getting back to their real life responsibilities. Some guy had a Nalgene water bottle next to his sandwich. Walking out onto the patio with a shake and a face still encrusted with sleep goobers, I knew I was a beacon of sin.
I ate the cherry stem without thinking about it. On the patio, in front of everyone. I am a trash-eating animal with crappy posture and jagged claws who lives in the dark and scurries past normal humans with a bowed head and a mouth full of congealed not-food.
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The shake is alright! It’s very thick, and suffused with a juicy strawberryness. There are seeds and small pulverized bits of real (?) fruit in there, just enough to make the drink really mouth-watering. This drink food trash thing instantly made me very thirsty. But the thickness of the shake thwarted all attempts to drink it down faster. I knew I was gonna be posted up in this place for a while.
I also realized I wanted to take a selfie with the shake, but selfie-ing in public feels really shameful and makes me anxious. I once spent half an hour next to a building plastered with question marks on it, waiting for a break in the traffic so I could run up and take a selfie in front of it without anybody witnessing, then realized I was being boredly watched by a couple in the coffee shop across the street.
I just found a layer of actual strawberry down at the bottom. Just goes to show that sometimes you gotta embrace that you’re a creepy critter, and let yourself go rutting in trash. It could pay off.
Wait nevermind, Jack and Diane by John Mellencamp is playing. This place is hell, I’m in hell, this shit is hell lava, and I deserve to suffer because I am wicked and slothful and gluttonous and bad. Here is a drawing of a raccoon.
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Erika’s next flavor: Peanut Butter Cookie
Originally published at sonicshotclub.tumblr.com.
