Letter to 7-Eleven by Roy Coughlin
“whatever that shriveled thing is spinning, spinning, spinning on the rollers”
+++
Dear 7-Eleven Corporation,
I don't understand why you want me to hate myself. Wasn't it enough to be convenient? Now you want control? You have to let me go.
So many 2 AM Saturdays just staring at the cupcakes. Just staring at them. The bar spits me out but you wait with bright open arms. At my weakest you break me. You know I have to have a bean and cheese burrito before I can think of sleep, before I stumble home, before I even leave the goddamn store. One hand on the door, one holding the scorching plastic-wrapped lump to my stupid face.
I can't see my toes any longer and I don't even want to. All I want is to do keep buying two Mike's Harder Lemonades for three dollars and drinking them both in one sitting. My pants don't fit but my mouth will never not be the absolutely perfect size for cramming in Spicy Bites. I don't even like you. I hate this “food.” But you are always open and I am not a strong man.
I try to figure out your marketing tricks. Nothing you do appeals to me in the least, yet there I am every day at lunch, whether I've already eaten or not. I buy a lottery ticket. I can't wait to give you my money. Is there something in the air of the cooler that makes me buy twenty-four ounce cans of the worst tasting high-gravity lagers to ever be sold for a mere buck seventy-five?
Is that it? You're cheap? It's cheaper to not leave the house at all, to cook some vegetables, maybe do some sit-ups, but there I am pulling on the bare minimum of clothing to practically run into your sick fluorescent light and wander the aisles looking for just the right jalapeño-chedder crackers to give my stomach a little padding while I chug a bottle of Andre. On sale. You son-of-a-bitch.
There is fresh fruit at your store on 47th and Columbia. What the hell are you up to, you sick bastard?
Let me go. Please just go out of business, or raise your prices, or accidentally poison a few people. Whenever you read this, I'll likely be in one of your stores quietly trying to convince myself that whatever that shriveled thing is spinning, spinning, spinning on the rollers, it's not for me, not at any price, never. It doesn't even look edible. Unless maybe I put mustard and sauerkraut on it . . .
Yours in perpetuity,
Roy Coughlin