So several things happened today that either haven’t ever happened before or haven’t happened in quite a while. For example, I’m sure I’ve eaten breakfast INSIDE a McDonald’s before. I’ve never gotten excited about it as I had today, but I know for certain I’ve been sitting there in those purple chairs enjoying a Sausage McMuffin with Egg on previous occasions.
A word: McDonald’s isn’t good for you. Duh. The sky is blue, water is wet. But there are degrees of bad at McDonald’s similar to the degrees of bad that exist in the Catholic Church. Mortal versus Venial, my people.
Sitting down to a meal based of an english muffin with a sausage patty, a disc of egg product and cheese, a heavily fried oval of potato bits and what I can only imagine is orange juice from concentrate. That’s bad. That’s taking the Lord’s name in vain bad, I get it.
So let’s take that floury delicious english muffin away and trade it out for, I don’t know, waffles with syrup and butter already pressed and baked right in. That is slow painful murder bad. But this is also a way to enjoy a second breakfast wrapped around your first breakfast - GENIUS!
Why not skip the bread at lunch time and wrap your double quarter pounder in slices of ham? Or fill the fries with cheese BEFORE you fry them, and then coat them in bacon bits? I know that Americans gather around a large table once a year and celebrate our sloth by stuffing food into other food and then eating until the chemicals in our food literally take our consciousness away - but to have waffles wrapped around your breakfast sandwich, isn’t that too much for EVERYDAY consumption?
Ahem.
I saw three of the largest people I’ve ever seen, two of them unwrapping a second delicious handful of waffles and meat.
AHEM. Sorry.
Today also marked the first time that someone called me a "media operative" since I was in high school and had the Yearbook staff’s CHSAA field credential to get into football games for free.
"Are you a media operative?" a woman said 10 years ago at the football stadium.
"I guess so," I likely squeaked. "I’m on the yearbook."
"Good enough."
Today’s version of "media operative" actually came from two different professional people, both at inpatient drug rehabilitation facilities. (A first time for that sentence too.)
For those out of the loop, everyone I’d imagine, I have recently taken an editor position with a company that publishes literature on Sex Addiction. They publish materials on other things as well, like being addicted to sex, addicted to addicts that are addicted to sex and books on how to have healthy sex after being addicted to the naughty kind of sex.
The first project I’ve landed to work on is a memoir from a housewife in South Carolina about her husband being a sex addict. If you’d like more information send an email asking for specifics about this project. Anyhow - in Tucson there exist several in-patient addiction and rehabilitation clinics ranging in quality from what would be six courses at the Rainbow Room in NYC to the crew meal outside the McDonalds down the road where large people on scooters nearly ingest their fingers mistaking the syrup covered digits as sausage links and more waffle-wrapped breakfast treats.
The publisher at Gentle Press set up a tour for me with the marketing director at 8am. This first one is likely where famous people end up with its ACTUAL hospital facilities and weighty pricetag. My tour was informative, the marketing director obliging with her time and thorough with her answers.
I left feeling a sense of accomplishment as I had been nervous to be a "media operative" not knowing what that was or how one should behave. I made no sex or alcohol jokes, nor did I mention my favorite bit of bumpersticker wisdom: Rehab is for Quitters.
"We don’t usually allow media operatives to tour the facilities, but your publisher explained that the author was a patient of ours and that your sole purpose is environmental research."
"Is Britney here? Can I feed her?"
"Yes, she’s over here in a special room with triple-pane windows. She likes those breakfast sandwiches from McDonalds, the ones with the waffles in them."
"No shit?"
"She loves them."
"I happen to have a bag full of them in my car, excuse me, would you?"
"Delighted to, please take your time."
No. That wasn’t our conversation.
Britney doesn’t eat McDonalds.
As I drove away I realized two things: 1. I was really starting to have an adult career that involved project research. 2. We had arranged for a tour of the wrong facility.
"No, she didn’t go here," I said to the publisher on the phone.
"Yes she did."
"Um, nope. No, she didn’t."
"Yes she did."
"This one is a 30 day minimum stay and is $40k. In her journal entries she wrote about staying for a week. Either she escaped, she didn’t stay here, or the program has changed."
"......."
"I know."
"Well where the hell did she go then?"
"Got me, I’ve been up since 5am, driving around the desert, touring addiction facilities for apparently no reason."
"....."
I pulled over. We traded phone calls and discovered that no, she hadn’t attended that particular facility. The one she did attend was diagonally across Tucson and we couldn’t get a hold of anyone that would give us definitive information as to whether or not a media operative such as myself could poke my head in on group sessions, take a few swings with the pillow baton, whatever struck my fancy. . . so I drove there anyway, figuring that my full morning of media operative training would illicit me the opportunity to talk my way into the facility and sneak around like Sean Connery taking pinhole pictures with a ballpoint pen.
I pulled up to the gate and stated my name, my purpose and the names of any other pertinent person I could think of.
"Sir, we don’t have record of you on our list today."
"That’s impossible, I’m a writer."
"What?"
"Hello?"
I won’t mention the interesting location of this second facility but I will say that nothing is more inviting to stop doing drugs than rolling slowly through a neighborhood where tenants decorate their lawns in barbed wire, truck parts and torn, perhaps bloody, overalls.
"Sir, we’re sending someone down."
A girl around the age of 20 walks through the gate. She is wearing sunglasses and looks completely normal.
"Are you Linda?"
"No, Laurie."
"Mat Snapp, I’m with a small publishing company. One of our authors is writing her memoir and a section of it deals with your facility. I was hoping to take a quick look around, perhaps speak to someone who could answer a few simple questions. My publisher has already called ahead on this matter and has left a message at length for Linda."
"She didn’t get it."
"Ah."
"Yeah."
"So... Laurie. Are we waiting for Linda to check her voicemail or are we waiting for something else."
We share banter. Laurie is likely impressed with my beard as she spends a lot of time with psychiatrists - a beard loving community - and somehow she buzzes my car through the gates and we walk together into the office awaiting my meeting with Linda. I am mentally noting the sizes of the pastures to the left, the main buildings, the sometimes happy and sometimes distraught faces of men and women, all hugging, crying.
"So what do you do here, Laurie? Are you an intern?"
"I’m a mental health technician."
"Oh really?"
"It’s a glorified babysitter," she says. She stops walking. "Don’t put that in your book."
"Oh Laurie, it all goes in the book," I smile, working the angle. "I’ll make someone you don’t like say it if you’d prefer."
"Yeah, do that."
I wait for five minutes in the office. Linda comes bustling down the hall towards me, a tall version of Zelda Rubinstein. (Look her up)
"I don’t know who you are or who you work for or who is supposed to have left me a message, but we don’t allow media operatives on sight without specific clearance. Take a brochure and Laurie will escort you off the property."
"Fair enough."
Outside again, I turn to Laurie who is no longer smiling or even making eye contact.
"Linda, she’s a sweetheart, huh?"
"I’m not at liberty to disclose that information."
"Oh, okay. This place looks big, is it big? What like ten acres? A hundred?"
"I’m not at liberty to disclose that information."
"What are you at liberty to disclose?"
"I’m not at liberty to disclose that information."
And so, friends, I leave you with that for now. I’m writing something difficult, and I would tell you all about it, but I’m not at liberty to disclose that information. I will lovingly bash COTTONWOOD DE TUCSON if anyone or any situation calls for it. . . Rehab is for Quitters.
