Arm The Package Store Ladies

Yesterday was the first day of Fake Summer on Cape Cod — that unseasonably warm day in May that convinces you to pull your bathing suits out of the chest upstairs, buy Mexican beer, and finally hang your winter coat in the closet. It’s fake because there will invariably be more chilly spring days to come, more goosebumps the second the sun ducks behind the horizon, and some outfit choice regrets. 

But yesterday? Yesterday was summer. 

I popped into a package store to buy those first, precious Mexican beers, and saw the two women in their late sixties who work there standing over a pile of beer boxes toppled into the aisle, cooler doors left hanging open, screaming at the man who’d just left for throwing some kind of fit, acting like an animal, and leaving them a mess. I asked if I could help them put things back together, pile some cases back on top of each other, as I walked around closing the cooler doors. They thanked me but said no, that I should grab what I wanted and one of them rang me up. 

“Everyone behaving themselves in here?” I asked. 

“Do they ever?” One of them replied.

“Just wait until May 29th,” said the other, “then you won’t even be able to tell them to wear a mask.”

And that, my friends, is how I learned that yesterday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced that on May 29th, 2021, the state will lift all COVID restrictions on all industries. In case you had to read that sentence a few times, I want you to know that I did too. In case you thought, “wow that seems really soon,” I want you to know that that’s because it’s in less than two weeks. This was originally supposed to happen on August 1st, 2021, but now it’s been bumped up to just before the most leanly-staffed Memorial Day weekend in Cape Cod history. 

I told the ladies at the package store that I own a sandwich shop in Provincetown, and that we’d decided we would probably be take-out only all summer. They said they were considering having to return to curbside-pickup only, if people continued to behave badly. I told them that next time I came to see them, I’d bring them a baseball bat, just in case. 

This news comes juxtaposed against a beautiful week on Cape Cod, where those of us who are fully vaccinated have been trying to reckon with what that does and doesn’t mean, what we are and aren’t allowed to do, what is smart and what is stupid, and how unbelievably amazing it feels to get to hug our friends again. My brain has been torn all week between wanting to run down the street licking doorknobs, and asking everyone to please just slow down a teeny, tiny bit. 

A friend from New Orleans came to town, and couldn’t believe people were still wearing masks in the street here, even after the mandate had been lifted. He’s been vaccinated for months (in New Orleans, you can get a free shot of whiskey or a free pound of crawfish for getting vaccinated, because they are, in so many ways, worlds ahead of us when it comes to civility). I had to remind him that most of us only got our second doses two weeks ago here in fair New England, and that some folks were still waiting on their first. 

If you still feel more comfortable wearing a mask outside (or inside the grocery store, for heaven’s sake) and someone tells you to take it off, I hope you tell them to fuck right off — or at the very least read Lyz Lenz call them a dingus and feel some validation: “The sight of a mask is a marker of what happened, when everyone would simply just like to forget.”

But remembering what this pandemic has cost us, of course, is the only way to learn a single goddamned lesson. Just like we have to remember what last June felt like in this country. Like we have to remember how long the Israeli apartheid against Palestinians has stretched on for. Like we have to remember how the global south was abandoned by western countries while they were begging for vaccines. I’m sorry, I’m a Jew and I was raised this way, but remembering that acute pain is the only possible prophylactic we have against repeating our mistakes. 

So look, I’m going to keep a mask in my pocket for the foreseeable future. Not because I’m addicted to following obsolete rules, or because I’m virtue signaling (if I never hear this phrase again), or because I want to shame folks who aren’t. I’m keeping a mask in my pocket in case it makes me feel more comfortable to have one on my face at any given moment, in case it makes someone around me feel more comfortable for me to cover my mouth and nose for two minutes when we interact, in case this guidance ends up being premature. And I’m going to do my best to enjoy walking around outside without one, and hugging my friends, and eating outside at a restaurant soon, my god. I’m also going to do my best not to be judgmental when people disagree, or feel more comfortable more quickly, or just can’t do this anymore (except fucking Charlie Baker, obviously). Because we’ve all been through a wild collective trauma with almost no emotional support infrastructure on either end, and frankly, it’s easier to just be nice. 

But if I see you terrorizing older women working in package stores this summer, I want you to know, I’m arming them. Good luck. 

You might have noticed that Flynn and I took a week off last week. The truth is that she was on TV, and then she got to go to a basketball game, and I re-opened my restaurant and got to hug some friends who were back in town, and it all felt like too much to handle at once. It’s possible there might be some gaps in covering the soup and despair beat this summer, but obviously these times are still going to be dark as fuck, so we won’t be gone for long.

In that spirit, I give you the cocktail recipe of our times:

The Summer of Our Discontent2 oz. tequila1 small bottle of Ting (Jamaican grapefruit soda)

Fill a Collins glass with ice. Add tequila and Ting, stir. Add a wedge of lime if you can be bothered. Sit in the sun.

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!