We were up for whatever.
We were all up for whatever. That’s the one thing I keep coming back to. What were we up for? Whatever. Were we up for it? We were.
In the end, there is no one to blame. When you’re up for everything, sooner or later, everything will happen.
We were up, once. Are you up for whatever, they had asked us, and to the ones who said Yes they had said Then come.
What’s the first thing you teach children, about what happens to everything that goes up?
We were Whatever, USA. Let me tell you a story.
***
We’ll take over a town, they said. As if it were that simple. As if the town existed merely than to be taken.
As if there was nothing that would take us, in return.
***
The Mayor was a useless figurehead, a blue-suited obsolescence. He was one of the first to die. I saw him wandering the streets, without hands, mutely stretching out what remained of his arms, as if to catch the blood that vomited forth from his stumps. He died without words. He had always been weak, but we had pretended not to notice because it suited us at the time.
***
When you’re up for whatever, you consent to everything. There is nothing forbidden. A yes cannot be traded for a no.
***
We had promised each other that when the time came, we would hold each other, if we had eyes left to see one another and arms left for holding. She had died screaming. “We agreed to this,” she screamed again and again. “We agreed to this.”
I wanted – I wanted her to die faster, so she would stop screaming it. I couldn’t bring myself to hold her, and she was too busy screaming to ask.
***
There are enough of us who have been left relatively alone that I fear we are being saved for something.
Whatever it is they have planned for us, I will have already said yes to it.
Tags: advertising, business, fiction, the glory that was rome, whatever usa
Related Posts
The Dough: AB Chao’s New Job Is Being Herself
Selling Sneakers with Feminist Poetry: An Interview with Janet Champ
Everything You Can Buy in a 1977 Archie Comic, in Order of Desirability
Dear Businesslady: We Think One Of These Letters Is Fake
Ex-: An Excerpt from A Portable Shelter
Decide: A Short Story
They surgically removed No from my vocabulary.
Who needs coffee? Having read this I doubt I’ll ever sleep again.
Oh Jesus Christ. It’s just so brutal.
Cheap beer usually does lead to a Purge, doesn’t it.
The ghost of Shirley Jackson just read this and was like Jesus Christ Mallory it’s not even 11 am.
This is one of the best replies to anything that has ever happened. Bless you.
This is exactly what unnerved me about those ads.
Also, apparently they did call people up and ask if they were “up for whatever,” although with slightly less disturbing ambiguity–things like, “are you up for a weekend in Vegas, but we don’t tell you what you’ll be doing or which you’ll be staying at?” That is not the intro to a great time. That is how you get drafted into pay-per-view human cockfighting rings or framed for the murder of a president of a foreign country.
But why male models?
So last year we planned a wonderful, quiet vacation in the mountains of Crested Butte, Colorado only to find out just a few days before that it was chosen as Whatever, USA that year, and (lucky us) during that exact same weekend we were going to be in town. The entire downtown was closed to the public, which meant we couldn’t go to the cute bookstore, take the kids to get ice cream, or get pizza for that first night when we’d all driven for hours and nobody wanted to really cook. It was also really weird walking around the town the morning after with the giant boombox stage, gorilla statue, and hot tubs all over.
In other words, this delighted me utterly and completely.
Lol “Crested Butte.”
I may not be mature.
Never be ashamed at giggling at things that make you giggle. Immaturity keeps you younger longer. (Or at least I tell myself that whenever I laugh a the words butte and duty.)
Also “dongle.”
Our youth group made a yearly trip to good old Crusty Butt, CO. (I’m 30 and I’ve been giggling about that since age 13)
I spent the holiday weekend at the Bong Recreation Area in Wisconsin. I first saw a sign for it on the freeway 13 years ago and it still makes me giggle. No shame!
As a slightly different mode of humor, but that makes me giggle, and I’m fifty: The Donner Camp Picnic Area. I would have sworn the Park Service had no sense of humor till I saw that.
Also the Sierra Buttes 🙂
This is terrifying and normally I don’t love terrifying things but I so hated this advertising campaign that I loved this story. Thank you, Mallory, for using your awesome (in the old testament sense) talents to so beautifully and succinctly show what is so wrong about that campaign.
My daughter, age twelve, has exactly the same reaction to these ads. “What if you change your mind?” she says. “Can you stop being up for whatever? That doesn’t sound good at all.” A sensible child.
I like your daughter. She has a good head on her shoulders.
Your daughter = everything. She is clearly the chosen one. I aspire to that kind of parenting. I sincerely hope to raise my daughter to wield ball-shriveling skepticism and boundaries made of lasers as her sidearm.
JESUS CHRIST MALLORY
So I know most people are viewing this with fear, but I had a really dreadful morning and this made me so happy. It was like being wrapped up in a spiderweb composed of bones and that’s nice.
This morning really did suck.
Now I’m glad I didn’t book the vacation to Crested Butte for next weekend.
That you had a good firm grip on whatever form of ID you were holding up to show them?
I was 43 when I was last ID'd, in a province where the drinking age is 19. I doubt it was due to youthful looks; I think Sketchy Old Guy @ Register was trying to see my address.
The whole Whatever ad campaign and event has always struck me as horribly-conceived. Thank you for taking their pitch to its illogical conclusion.
Between this and the Room That You Really Should Go Inside Right Now, are we absolutely certain that Mallory isn’t moonlighting on Night Vale Community Radio?
The world of Night Vale has a lot less blood and a lot more people being vaporized without a trace.
Mallory’s world is if Night Vale had witches, and TEETH.
Hah. It took me a day to read this because I kept thinking it was one of those ads pretending to be a Toast piece (and I was not. going. to. fall. for. that. AGAIN).
Hah. It took me a day to read this because I kept thinking it was one of those ads pretending to be a Toast piece (and I was not. going. to. fall. for. that. AGAIN).
Which is a terrible reason, you slacker. Now pick up that sousaphone.
Your daughter = everything. She is clearly the chosen one. I aspire to that kind of parenting. I sincerely hope to raise my daughter to wield ball-shriveling skepticism and boundaries made of lasers as her sidearm.
How perfectly delightful.
How perfectly delightful.
This is one of the best replies to anything that has ever happened. Bless you.