Locked in Arby's Feeling Up Meat

I guess I was just getting pretty tired of the whole suburban America thing, having already been exploring the highways and byways of the most powerful country in the world for a few days
-- doing everything from sunburning to kayaking to playing frisbee. Oh ya, and I hitchhiked a bunch too. Well anyways, when you're stuck in a pretty safe place with not a whole lot to do, you end up doing silly, crazy or just downright amazing things. Or you shoot yourself. But despite being in the home of the brave and the land of the gun, I didn't have one. And I didn't really want to gut myself with my deer knife. That would just be way too easy. At this point you gravitate towards other stuck in the same condition. So the only thing left to do was to start breaking rules. As Ryan told me later, "Around here there's not really all that much to do. So we've gotta make up our own stuff to do." And it was in this spirit we squished too many in the car and headed to Arby's.


Now, if you're from New York or Tokyo or Toronto, you're probably familiar with all the hot late night chill spots -- clubs and bars and strip joints and bubble tea shops. But what happens when you live in a place where it's almost considered illegal to be outside your home after dark? Well, you do what we did. Find someone who knows a lot about drugs, and get them to use magical keys to break into fast food joints. You hit a totally different sort of afterhours scene.


"I mean, I was only in jail for drugs. So it wasn't that bad. I mean, it's not like I killed anybody, or anything... at least not that they know of." This is how I met Carrie. Born on the sixth day of the sixth month back in 1976 (on 6.6.06 she turned 30) Carrie was a rarity in the big box wasteland of northern Indiana. Not only was she upfront and humorous about her (supposedly) former drug use ("it'll look good on my resume when I try to get a job as a drug counsellor"), she also had powers beyond what we could ever fathom. In a place that runs by the books, any sustained irregularity just baffles. But she had found a way to make it work. As a sort of fast-food guru who just didn't give a fuck -- she was totally rad. She defied the laws of Arby's and let us in after closing time. Then she locked us in, took our order and forced us to eat tray after tray of free food -- turnovers, apple and chocolate -- baked popcorn chicken -- some sort of calzone pocket dealey. And at the end of it all she just plopped down pounds and pounds of bacon and beef -- keeping hungry kids fed for a very long time. And we filled up our cups again and again with free fountain drinks. We got it all. We were in. Somehow we had pierced the steel-strong armour of suburbiana.

And so we chatted about everything from traveling to film making to blogging to music. And we wished Carrie the best in her upcoming surgery. And we hit on the subject of cultural differences. And I think it might have been Ryan or Andrew who said, "People in other countries kinda have the idea, I think, that all Americans are fat." Of course, I was quick to point out that every single one of the non student-aged people we had seen so far while hanging out were definitely overweight. I made special note of the grossly obese man we saw jiggling at top-speed across the empty parking lot for no obvious reason. And I heard how getting ahold of Fair Trade food, or even healthy food for that matter, is pretty much impossible -- though no one can figure out why, since they seemed to agree it was pretty tasty stuff. And I was pretty interested to hear about the one girl, Hope, who was looking to head down to Mexico in future to help out at an orphanage near the border. Because I might end up hanging out just right around there. So we'll see.

And it all just flowed so easy, and simple, and it wasn't a big deal. If a mall was open, we might have just gone there. But I think we ended up having a little more fun. Or at least I'm pretty sure that's what Ryan was thinking, stuck in the trunk, as we drove back to hang out for a bit in the dorm.

Ryan's "Stud Card".