Congratulations Youthful Divorcee!

Drop top down, hair in the wind, you’ll be free. Free at last, though not from the tremors of racial discrimination that you’ve heard so much about so frequently. Instead you’ll be free from your husband, who never really mistreated you or hurt you or did anything but provide for you but who occasionally pressed you on the fact that you promised him anal at one point or another and that was just too much for you to take. So you had to cut him loose.

It wasn’t easy. Dozens of court dates, occasional pleading phone calls from him late at night frightening off your most recent boyfriend du jour. Once he even sent you flowers (super gay) without consulting you first. But thanks to a restraining order you acquired by blowing a detective and letting an appellate judge fuck you in the back of the classic Baracuda convertible you’re now riding in you’ve been able to keep him off your back long enough to finalize the divorce.

But now you’re free on the open road. At least, as free as you can be when you’re tied down by things like having to have a set address to receive alimony checks and having to remember your PIN number that your fuckface ex-husband won’t be around to tell you anymore. And life is pretty okay, even though the terms of your divorce demanded that you leave the state of California, since if you were to stay you’d most certainly end up doing something so illegal that all the handjobs on the West Coast couldn’t get you out of it.

The only trouble is that life in California is all you’ve ever known. So driving out east, across the desert, into the desolate landscape surrounding Pheonix, you’ll be a bit puzzled. Where are all the personal shoppers? The people dressed like Princess Leia? The droves of dog-walkers doing their duties?

It’ll be powerful strange, and you’ll feel so overwhelmed by this strange new landscape that you’ll need to pull off the road into the first shop you find, which will be a grease stained barbeque shack just off the interstate. The sign will be painted, like by a person or some shit, and it’ll have a picture of a winking cartoon pig on it.

Inside it’ll be mostly empty. An elderly man will sit and stare out at the abandoned road, chewing without anything in his mouth, and a bulky man will stand washing a glass, occasionally spitting on the floor behind the counter where he sits. He’ll be wearing a stained white t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts, and he’ll be looking nowhere in particular before he notices you. Then his eyes will narrow, like he wasn’t expecting any customers.

“What can I get you?” he’ll shout at you over the counter. You’ll be all a twitter at his question, flitting your hand up to your chest and exhaling deeply.

“Oh my. I’m not sure,” you’ll demure, taking in the scene of the store. “What’s good?”

He’ll shrug and scratch his ass. “Barbeque,” he’ll mumble. He’ll eye you up for the first time since you’ve entered the shop, as if he’s looking at a cut of meat. “Any kind you like.”

You’ll smile at him, a million watt affair you normally hold in reserve to get producers to drop ten thousand dollars on a bar tab you’ve run in exchange for something unbelievably fun with their penis, but it won’t make him give you a free meal or make you something he likes. Instead he’ll just stand there staring at you, waiting for you to say what you’d like.

“What would I like?” you’ll ask, overwhelmed by the variety of meats misspelled on the menu over the man’s head.

“This is the question,” he’ll say, fixing you with a disapproving look.

You’ll wither under his gaze, shocked at his brusqueness with you. Years from now, after your second divorce, you’ll think back to this moment as the day you fell in love with him, the moment you saw what you’d always wanted: someone who wasn’t willing to let you be a little piece of shit about living your own life. But by that time you’ll have become an infuriatingly assertive bitch of a woman, full of new problems that a new husband will solve while creating some new ones along the way.

Congratulations Youthful Divorcee!