From our latest issue, Nonsense Goes Soft!
Did I fly too close to the sun? Did I overstretch my grasp? Am I Icarus, raised high only to plummet, wings burnt behind me, into the abyss of an endless, churning sea? Maybe. My god, maybe. Because, Jesus Christ, this is way too much ice cream for one guy to eat.
I thought I had it all figured out. I mean, I consider myself a professional. When it comes to bowls of ice cream scarfed down vociferously in a short twenty-year old life, I’m no slouch. So you could imagine my disbelief when the woman at the combination Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins on the Hempstead Turnpike had the audacity to tell me that I couldn’t buy 86 gallons of ice cream with my Jersey Mike’s free sub punch card. Ever since that Thursday last week, I’ve been plotting my revenge. I studied the blueprints for a day, a whole one; carefully watched the comings and goings of the guards; slowly seduced the sweet young man who sells me the peanuts in the parking lot. After hours of poring over my model of the dread-complex that is the Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Fun House Emporium, expertly crafted from gingerbread and my stepdad Tad’s model train sets, I was finally ready. I steeled myself, put on my special stealthin’ turtleneck, railed a big o’ fuckin line of cocaine, and marched out the door. Ready for history.
I can tell you now - the crime is completed, the deed is done. In a manner that some would call “just dumb fuckin’ luck, my guy”, and what others would call “Manslaughter II”, I escaped from the feared Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Fun House Emporium with approximately three hundred gallons of ice cream loaded into the back of my 1992 Ford Pinto. I drove home victorious, my Pinto’s rusty bumper grinding against the pavement like a belt sander under the weight of my sugary prize. Euphoria and adrenaline washed over me. Despite all my planning, I never imagined I would be...here. Reader, I would be lying to you if I said I was wasn’t slightly aroused.
But my triumph was short lived. I had barely pulled into my stepTad’s driveway when fear stuck me in one innocuous thought:
“Shit, Tad’s garage is a lot smaller than I remember it being.”
God, god, how could I have been such a fool? To have been downed by my own hubris, felled by my own sword. To have pushed myself so close to the veil, only to fall further than ever before, straight into a garage much smaller and also much warmer than I remember it being two winters ago when he made me sleep in there. God dammit, there is no way I can fit all this ice cream in there. Shit. Fuck.
I keep trying to gather myself, to try to make sense of this. But it’s just too much…
Come on Frederickburgson! You’ve gotta snap out of it! You’ve been in worse scrapes than this. Remember Kosovo? This isn’t nearly as bad as Kosovo. There are ways out from this, obviously; I could fence the stuff - the kids on my block are suckers, easy marks. But I’m no Pablo Escobar - and one musn't forget that the pure mass of this stuff is enormous. You know what three hundred gallons of Rocky Road looks like? And yes, it’s all Rocky Road--what am I, a savage? No one could move this much product that fast. And no doubt the police are on my tail now. Why, I can already hear their helicopters, using thermal imaging cameras to track down my frozen fortune. The bastards! Well, you know what? They won’t get it! I’ll take this shit to my grave. I’ve come too far to give it up now, worked too hard. Have you ever tasted the pre-diabetic blood of a middle-aged cone-packer, or watched the life drain from the eyes of a junior cop with everything to lose? I’d rather let it all melt than let you take it away from me. You hear that, Lawman? I’ll drown without a struggle in my melting riches before I give them away! The people will remember my name! IN THE STREETS THEY WILL SCREAM THE NAME FREDERICKBURGSON, AND IT WILL MEAN FREEDOM!
The day you take me and my ice cream, is the day hell freezes over - and trust me, I welcome it.