Thread by @QuinceMountain

I didn’t have GET IN A STREETFIGHT ON THE WAY HOME FROM THE FARM STORE on my 2021 bingo card, but here we are.

So let’s back up to the part where I decide I’m sick of eating my own cooking and it’s time to get some fckin ribs.

Keep in mind that I don’t live in any kind of a city, so things like restaurants are exciting.

Which means that when I’m in town for any reason like picking up ATV tire chain parts, I tend to get some food.

And one time a few weeks ago @Remember_Sarah got us some ribs and they were GOOD.

And I thought, you know what, it’s been a helluva week* and I deserve some ribs again. Effing A.

*Truck is completely messed up in every way. Blowhole fixed the freezer and ruined thousands of pounds of meat we meticulously sliced well in advance of race season.

So I order some ribs. A whole rack because a whole rack is $19 and a half rack is $15.50 and thinking at the margins it only makes sense to get a whole rack and have two meals rather than a half rack and have one meal.

Well, there’s some confusion about how many ribs one guy orders for himself and long story short I end up sitting at the bar at this restaurant waiting for all the ribs to happen.

There’s no one in the bar section of the restaurant except one guy who is across from me and is wearing a shirt related to the local high school sports team and who seems to work there and be single and unhappy and looking for a girlfriend based on his highly audible phone convo.

(It seems like maybe an Upper Midwest Thing that bars here are typically in a U shape or at least a significant L shape or sometimes a C shape, all of which is to facilitate conversation and community rather than staring in a mirror raising a glass to your own despair.)

So this dude is all like Hey Bartinder, come over here let’s take a totally creepy selfie for this person I’m on the phone with you owe it to me Cmonnnnnnn

And the bartender who let me just say is the picture of competence, like, they are currently filming Cocktail 2 about her and @TomCruise is suing to block production so he isn’t upstaged.*

*probably

Anyhow she’s like My name isn’t Bartinder, who are you even talking to.

And desperate single high school tee shirt man is like, No I mean Berteeeender.

And the bartender is like Nope. My name is actually Bartender like a normal human name dude.

And dude still wants a selfie which she eventually obliges when he says the proper name.

Having been here for like 6 minutes awaiting the second half of my rib rack, I’ve already gathered that the bartender quit drinking about 9 years ago when she had her child.

And I’m like “How is it dealing with this ish when you don’t drink yourself?”

Except I said it in a way that I promise was germane and appropriate and appreciated.

She said it was actually much easier to deal with this BS while sober bc it’s so completely unappealing it removes any temptation around drinking.

Basically who ever wants a hangover again. She’s focused on her child who she has had for nine years now.* And this guy [indicating the guy, who is behind her], Grosssss.

*an aside on this in next tweet

Nine sounds like a totally awkward age and the bartender said her child is no longer cute At All and that she doesn’t even like them anymore tho she completely loves them of course. But Nine, she insists—not a good age.**

** I relate to this bc puppies go thru this really awkward phase too. @BlairBraverman told me that puppies reach maximum cuteness at the time when they’re most vulnerable or something so that humans protect them, it’s totally evolution, don’t @ me.

What fight?

Anyhow, this dude over on the other side of the U shaped bar on the telephone... He was talking about how he missed his shot bc he didn’t even know this one girl wanted him til he later found out that she wanted him, it’s so rough being him and being so wanted...

Which. Fine. Close your ears het women, dudes actually talk about whether or not they think you like them. Shhhh it’s a huge secret.

But like I swear he was talking not to one of his bros or whatever but like to A WOMAN WHO IS A LOVE INTEREST.

I would like to at this moment thank @duranduran bc NOTORIOUS coming up on shuffle is the only reason I didn’t just vomit in my mouth while tweeting about this dude.

I ish you not, this guy then talked about OLD MILK. For at least four full minutes. (And that’s after I started timing—who knows how long it actually was.)

SEXXXXY

Let’s just imagine trying to impress a woman by talking about OLD MILK.

I waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited

for the convo FINALLY to turn

to....

Stouffers frozen meals

This time, I began timing right away (using the LAP function on my timer) and it was more than 11 minutes saying over and over again how he eats stouffers frozen meals (I’m sorry @stouffers this isn’t your fault)...

AND he occasionally dipped back to the OLD MILK topic bc clearly he knows a good callback when it hits him in the mouth

If any of u understands this better than I (which is PROBABLE) pls feel free to explain bc I’m just about at a loss. PLEASE TELL ME this is some kind of fetish I’m missing out on and this whole thing can be at my expense bc honestly it would be less destabilizing to my worldview.

We are at 19 MINUTES of old milk stouffers and why can’t I have a mate

The amount of empathy I have for all #uglydogs trying to date reached an ATH this evening.

Knowing that the bartender had selfie-hugged the man despite all this, I felt that I was in the presence of a saint.

For those of you who think I plan these tweets into a neat narrative thread, I apologize bc I have no idea how I will end this effing thing and I’m beginning to worry. I’ll offer as a consolation that “good callback... hit him in the mouth was foreshadowy.

(And I’m sorry if the saint in the GIF above is someone in pop culture I’m not fully appreciating — I have prosopagnosia and every GIF is a leap of faith)

Anyhow let’s keep in mind that I’m still awaiting some ribs and right now I’m on my 2nd old fashioned, which thankfully has little bourbon but the bartender said “just so you know, there’s lots of love in this.”

Which is probably a good thing for Oldmilk, but at the moment I was still kinda feeling bad for him.

I imagined myself hosting a show wherein I disrupt well-meaning but fumbling people as they attempt to date and mate. I imagined this both as entertaining and as a real public service.

I started to tell the bartender this thought/fantasy, but I couldn’t tell her completely bc Oldmilk was still there blathering away so I told her I’d tell her later.

I mention this bc perhaps it was a mistake.

The bartender and I became perhaps a wee bit sloppy in our wonderment slash lowkey mockery of Oldmilk.

Still, I’m saying this as a v distant disclaimer because I’m about 99% sure he didn’t notice our eyerolls, gestures, & comments bc he was too busy loudly stouffersplaining his life to some poor woman hopefully being paid well to be on the phone.

Anyhow whatever. Oldmilk is actually pretty boring to talk about so the platonic ideal of a bartender and I get into discussion about parenting and small town life and tournament pool.

(For those of y’all who aren’t clear, the bartender and I are both clear that we are in a City bc there are multiple thousands of people here.)

We talk and talk and chit and chat.

Ribs come and I am finishing my coke.

(The drinks were hella light on alcohol, but still no matter what if you are drinking more than two, the third drink is a Coke; this is adulting, thank me later.)

(To be completely clear, light drinks are my fave and this is not a criticism. I LIKE drinking but I do not at all like being drunk, much less hangovers. See other tweets I’ve made about this. I wasn’t trying to neg anyone making weak drinks just now—I like to be able to hang.)

How many tweets was @ZolaMovie? It is a SOLID movie and a work of art that I promise will be more edifying than this thread. Feel free to watch it and come back.

Anyhow, I feel like a lot of you know where this is going.

Bartender describes sublimating decade old partying habit into tournament pool. Narrator recalls olden days playing pool which earned him pool-related nickname. Narrator challenges Bartender to best-of-3 9-ball series, offering prize of dogsled tour 4 mom & obnoxious 9-year-old.

I want to finish this tonight but the warden won’t let me plug in my phone and it’s super annoying.

(No disrespect to the warden. I get that it’s his charger and he needs to charge his phone so he can read this Hi Warden lol)

Anyhow like I said I feel like 90 percent of y’all #uglydogs who have ever worked as servers know where this is going. I hope it’s still a good story—maybe validating...

Because Oldmilk goes to the Gents and the bartender says to me, “Did I do something wrong that he didn’t tip me?”

And like I STILL HAD SOME HOPE im like “ZERO tip?! None at all???”

And she’s like “Literally zero.”

And I thought ok MAYBE he’s going to take a whiz and then get his bills out and tip on his way out the door.

Now to be clear both the bartender and I are totally clear that she did nothing wrong and that this dude is a tool AT BEST.

But I’m Having a Flashback.

Will try to make this short:

I never necessarily meant to be a restaurant server but was at the local diner Friday of Memorial Day weekend when owner and her daughter who was working got the word that daughters husband died in Iraq...

So, it being a small town, another patreon and I said that the owner and her daughter shouldn’t worry and should go to Ft Drum and be together bc we would totally take care of the restaurant even tho we had like zero experience and it was about to be busiest weekend of year

Patreon was a typo and I meant patron; but you can totally go to patreon and support me and our dogsled team and we’ll send you cool letters in the actual mail patreon.com/bravermountain

A good letter is coming just saying.

Anyhow so like 2 years go by and I’m still a server at Mountain Bear Restaurant and Resort (RIP) and one day a dude drives up in his fancy car wearing his Literal Rolex and after lots of very normal and dare-I-say Above Average service... leaves with tipping.

WITHOUT tipping gah adrenaline

Anyhow so dude doesn’t tip and Jacqui the owner was like “wait the dude with the Literal Rolex didn’t tip At All, like zero???!!!!!”

And I was like “literally zero.”

And fuck if Jacqui didn’t blast out the door and pound on the hood of that guy’s Audi or whatever and demand that he leave me $$$.

I would like to say here in honor o Jacqui that tho it is an unrelated story, she stood by me completely when an obnoxious dude whose kids had ordered waffles sarcastically said “aren’t you going to ask ME if I want whipped cream?!” [on steak and eggs] & I gave him whipped cream.

(That’s another story but I didn’t get skunked that time at all bc tho the dude asked for the manager (Jacqui, who LOL’d) and then got up and left, his wife and kids left me mad cash.)

(Another aside: whenever I asked Jacqui why she was she was so rad (she employed like 50 queers—ok so maybe it was 3 but its a tiny town—and was generally Dope AF) she’d say, “I divorced a senator.”)

(Before y’all get all Feingoldy on me or whatever, it was a state level senator in another state a long time ago. But still.)

So Oldmilk wasn’t in the Gents fifteen seconds before I was like OH HELL NO and channeling my best Jacqui understanding and I told Bartender, Fuck No He Won’t [skunk you].

I don’t think she specifically believed me, and I don’t know if I did either bc even tho I was WILLING and IMPASSIONED I had no idea how I was actually going to get the guy to leave a tip.

But you know what. Life is short.

Be the Jacqui you want to see in the world.

So when Oldmilk shambled out of the Gents, grabbed his black jacket, and went to leave the restaurant, I was like HEY

“Did you leave her a tip?”

And, to our relief, Oldmilk was like “OMG IM SO SO SORRY I CANT BELIEVE I ALMOST FORGOT TO LEAVE A TIP OMG IM SO SORRY THANK YOU HERES 25% IM SORRY WHOOPS WEIRD”

And that was super rad and empowering and Bartender was like Fuck Yeah and I was like Fuck Yeah

She began speculating on why he skunked her in the first place. She thought it was bc he ordered a beer and they were done serving so she declined selling him a beer but gave him half a beer for free (brilliant!) & she thought he was prolly insulted...

Some dudes feel terrified when women are in control of anything whatsoever. See Freud. See mom having power, boy looking up & seeing no penis, quick looking down @ mom’s shoes, displacing power onto shoes, developing recurring need to return 2 site of complication aka fetish...

I was just like OMG dude Oldmilk didn’t even have the balls to admit he wanted to skunk you!! Omg what a weazel lol!!

And we returned to ish talking about upcoming pool games and whether or not B and Q would be talking the worlds most obnoxious nine year old and their weary but hilarious and hella competent mom sledding thru the woods pulled by dogs.

Anyhow I don’t know how long elapsed bc I didn’t time it bc it didn’t feel fckd up desperate or depraved. Maybe 9 mins?

Finished my coke, grabbed my bag o ribs, and walked out the side door

Where Oldmilk lunged out from the shadows and punched me

In the chest I think

Hard to say bc it’s effing cold and the heat in the truck doesn’t work at all so I’m wearing LAYERS upon layers y’all.

And time slows down at this point so it’s hard to say Exactly what happened in what order but

Oldmilk is like, DONT YOU EVER CALL ME OUT LIKE THAT

(lol wtf hahahahaha)

(sorry lol lmao Oldmilk do u feel Canceled???)

(This is all very slow mo but I had a LOT of thoughts at this poinT; it’s amazing how many thoughts can happen at once)

(One thought was about each and every one of his students over at Local High School....

Can I stop right here and address Oldmilk’s students?

OK Oldmilk student, first, I am so sorry. This person is nominally “in charge” of you. But please don’t think anyone else on earth mistakes this for meaning that he knows more than you or is better than you...

In fact, I am sorry that it falls upon you and your cohort to keep this person occupied for approx 50 minutes each day. Please know that we Other Adults appreciate this and we owe you one.

Please don’t think that we think that this human is an awesome authority on ish. Truth is our system just kinda sucks in certain ways and this 50 min of your day is collateral damage.

Still, it could be worse.

If Oldmilk had no official position, his ego insecurity would have nothing whatsoever to calm it and he would prolly wreak havoc even more. I’m sorry you have to deal with it but until we fix this filthy rotten system them’s the breaks.

But now Longsuffering Oldmilk Student let me say a couple things for YOUR benefit not ours or his.

First of all, believe it or not this @sshole may have something to teach you.

Not that he is an authority on how to live life but

if he has like facts or information or recommendations or tips or whatever

Please take them

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot; it helps no one.

Second of all,

You are not traumatized by Oldmilk’s mere existence in your life.

Let it be a warning, sure.

But it’s not defining, necessarily.

I promise you there will be more aholes who don’t deserve their positions in your life.

Your best revenge is Moving Forward.

There will be no need to look back.

Howfuckingever If you think you’ll want to look back...

Feel free to take notes.

I promise you that if all you do is document facts, the facts of this man and of many other aspects of your life will later be poignant and hilarious.

You’ll be able to feel good about having them even if you never do anything with them.

We all make mistakes, but this man is a sentient breathing testament to a life of doubling down on almost every mistake made.

I did not fantasize about writing this thread while your teacher was trying to beat the shit out of me.

In truth, I’m not totally a digital native and I had other hilarious thoughts.

The first thing I said to him was—and this was intoned as a clear question—“you’re literally assaulting me???!!!”

At first I thought it was kind of funny

Like he might have assaulted me on accident

Like he didn’t wait outside 15 minutes stewing bc I somehow made him feel foolish

*as a trans person I’m here to tell you that people feeling foolish is hella dangerous

(Hang on back in a few all ok. Or at least -I’m- ok)

I’m ok! Phone died and got home to @BlairBraverman and am suddenly exhaussssssted. More of this important saga TK before the new year!

Bed ribs are underrated. Gdnight y’all. Zzzzzz

I just woke up so confused.

Let me back up for a second to the part in the bar where I “called out” Oldmilk...

I want to underscore how smooth it all was and how I provided the man’s weak ego with a giant bouncy castle. It was so non-harsh, y’all.

I wasn’t just like “Yo give this person a tip, you broken tool of a human being.”

What’s the award you win for acting? A Tony? Does one have to sing to be eligible for that one? I did not sing, but I did give maybe my lifetime best performance

(Which come to think of it doesn’t bode well for my acting career bc we already know that clearly the man was not buying it, but, let’s just agree that i did well enough that I made space for us all to engage in the working fiction that he -simply forgot- to leave a gratuity.)

I’m paraphrasing here but basically I said something like “Hey, did you forget to leave a tip? Bc I almost did! I just paid with a card & forgot to sign or leave a tip and Bartender was like, ‘Was I THAT bad that you both didn’t leave me a tip??!’ & whoops OMG I was mortified...”

And like I said before, the guy didn’t miss a beat and he immediately put down a crumpled ten and played all awkward and apologized for having been absentminded.

And I mean it was totally plausible.

I have driven away from gas stations without paying several times & I even know of totally other people who have driven off with the fuel discharge handle/spout still in their truck’s fuel port thereby activating a shutoff mechanism where the hose breaks away, it’s pretty nifty.

I mean that I’ve driven off ACCIDENTALLY without paying.

We all know it was an accident because as the town cop in Gladstone, Michigan noted, “No one would attempt a driveoff at 9am in the clear broad light of day driving a truck with 20 huskies in it and pulling a trailer full of snowmobiles in June. It’s conspicuous.”

So I actually had plenty of room to believe that someone could’ve skunked Bartender on accident and would’ve been glad even if embarrassed to be made known of that fact.

But for whatever reason, I think it’s fair to say that neither Bartender nor I imagined any possible world in which This Man at This Moment had slighted her accidentally.

I do not know why we knew that; we just did.

So like the wave of relief she and I felt when he accepted his role in the working fiction of his own mistake was quite a wave.

(Tho I can’t read facial expressions very well, I applied a GIF to the previous tweet with the understanding that the person in it is depicting a “wave of relief.”)

Perhaps it was this moment in our own working narrative that ratcheted up my vulnerability. I just... the guy was gone. He had left the building. Big Denouement Energy.

(I should have had some inkling this wouldn’t be over so easily bc the man seemed quite engulfed in his own psychological drama... (this next part is an aside and you can skip it but it’s sort of a pet topic of mine.)

When people apply the Karpman Drama Triangle as a framework for understanding the power dynamics underlying dysfunctional social interactions, they sometimes oversimplify it and overlook what I find to be perhaps the key value proposition of the whole darn model...

(Seriously it’s ok to go to the lav or whatever. I know that no one is as interested in the Karpman Drama Triangle as I. I’m just writing thru it...

I discussed it daily during my @NakedAndAfraid survival challenge & @Discovery smartly left every mention on cutting room floor)

In the spirit of brevity, I’m not going to talk about the sunk cost fallacy.

In case anyone needs a refresher:

The Drama Triangle is an unconscious “game” where people in stressful/conflict situations take on the roles of Victim, Rescuer, & Persecutor.

Just my guess but this framework is probably where we get expressions like “playing the victim,” etc.

IANAP

Anyhow it’s real easy to do a sort of off-brand armchair Karpman 101 and put us in these roles, for example:

Oldmilk - Persecutor

Bartender - Victim

Narrator - Rescuer

And maybe we could even note that one person can play multiple roles. In this case, I, the narrator, may play both rescuer (helping the Bartender/victim get $10) and additional victim (getting blindsided and pummeled).

But what’s FAR MORE INTERESTING when using the Drama Triangle is looking at when people -switch- roles. Especially when a persecutor switches roles.

Oldmilk played a whole lotta parts here.

On phone, describing (pers) ingestion of spoiled liquid: vict

On phone, describing (pers) one who got away: vict

& how he would’ve been good for her: sav

Skunking bartender: pers

Hitting me: pers

Discussing stouffers endlessly: pers

The part that most layperson discussions of the triangle don’t explore is that this Switching Roles isn’t just incidental.

It’s actually THE JUICE.

If you can approach an unhealthy dynamic with the awareness that Switching Roles is HIGHLY REWARDING for those prone to psycho drama...

You can seriously disrupt some shit.

Warning: this may unlock your world.

This kind of drama overall sucks & is toxic but if you must use this dark energy, do so with sublime efficiency—

& try to take nothing whatsoever personally. This game has gone on since Eden & they’ll still be playing long after the dust of yr bones has scattered to every wind.

Enough about all that.)

When Oldmilk first slugged me somewhere in the upper torso, I was incredulous and worried about dropping my ribs in the street.

I don’t know what I thought exactly but I know I didn’t think he’d hit me again.

I guess I thought maybe he’d just been loafing around smoking or whatever (alone for 20 mins or whatever in the subzero night?!) and had stumbled upon me quite by accident and had hit me once in a fit of passion that was as startling to him as it was to me.

Probably part of the reason I didn’t get the full picture of being attacked right away is bc he kind of backed away from me after that first punch. Like he seemed scared/disappointed.

The best explanation I have for this is that I was wearing about 6 layers of down and foam. It must’ve been like hitting marshmallows or something.

I had a large-ish uncle by marriage who once stopped in the aisle of Toys R Us and challenged me to hit him in the belly as hard as I could. I really didn’t want to do it, but then I did it, and I have no idea whether it hurt him but hopefully not. He bought me a Mike Tyson game.

Now, I am not a large person. I am not tiny, but I’m definitely not tall and not longarmed. I’m built a bit like an out of shape rugby player.*

* so I’m told

My superpower is that people tend to underestimate me. I hold this in my heart like a shiv.

(Not like it’s cutting my heart but like it’s hidden in there for when someone grabs me in the shower or whatever.)

(Side note: I know that seems a lazy stereotype about what happens in prisons or whatev, but I have been grabbed by multiple people at once in a dark shower & i wouldn’t call it a phobia but I’d call it a lingering concern.*)

*something to think about before joining the military

The best way I can understand this is by remembering my first weekend working at a carnival.

Y’all know the game where you take a big ol maul and smack the end of a simple lever as hard as you can and the lever seesaws a weight up a tube mounted to a tall phallic looking thing and a bell rings, ideally?

So easy to find the proper GIF when it’s a cartoon! Is this why so many of my fellow folks w/ autism seem anecdotally to like gatherings w a lot of people wearing big animal costumes? That would be very cool for me, I bet. Highly legible! Count me furcurious.

Spoily spoiling spoiler

The game works by knowing -where- to hit the lever, not necessarily by how hard you hit it. It’s something you can actually practice & pick up over the course of a weekend with a couple hours of free time when no one is at your own booth bc yr booth sux.

There’s more to say about that game and about carnival strategy and about knowing where exactly to hit people and about stabbing upward into the soft belly under the ribs, up up up, in the dark event of needing to employ a shiv, but that’s all for another time, p.r.n.

What’s something that happens like fifty times a day but people think is original?

If you’re tall people say how’s the weather up there and if you’re a woman people say smile and if you’re working in emergency medicine and say Quiet people say uh-oh don’t say the Q word and if you’re a Scout people say are you going for Eagle and if yr a millennial avocados lol

Well if you’re a big guy at the carnival, like a real bruiser looking guy, and you’re walking anywhere within about 475’ of the dinging dick maul slam game, you are going to have 27 people telling you you HAVE TO do it DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! Cmon Rocco SMACK THAT SHT

They even offer to pay your turn. Friends and strangers alike. They all want to see you ring that bell!

I, too, wanted to see one of those badass mofos in zubaz wreak some havoc and a win a ginormous baby blue fake carebear

They never did tho. Not a one. Never even tried.

The carnie running the dick bell booth explained it:

They can only lose.

Everyone already thinks they’ll win, so if they win, it’s not even really a win—people just shrug like yeah of course the roided up bodybuilder guy rang the bell what else is new.

But if...

If they -don’t- ring the bell. If one of those hulks whose whole public persona revolves around being the type of guy everyone is sure can tear an 1980s Milwaukee phone book in half—if THAT GUY can’t even ring a little bell at a fairground... hahahaha what a wuss.

That big ol boy has too much to lose.

It’s always some slim pasty quiet short kid who plunks his dollars down and picks up the maul.

What does he have to lose?

I feel for those bruisers, going through their days over-rated, bearing an armload of comebacks like, “not today, I’ll go easy on ya” every time they’re challenged to some kind of duel by a smaller guy hungry a f and looking to prove himself.

U guys I gotta be honest here, I just don’t see how I can finish this this year. We have to talk about the power of running out of fcks to give, and I haven’t even got to Oklahoma yet.

Tell me they don’t find Jimmy Hoffa’s teeth in a sled dog kennel someday.

.@BlairBraverman suggested I say something like Goodnight Y’all I love u happy new year thanks for reading see u tomorrow I can’t wait!, which is all true & maybe wasn’t totally clear from last tweet. Blr helps me. Goodnight y’all & thx for making this year bearable. Happy 2022!

Blair also said Who is Jimmy Hoffa?