My Gentrified Cookie
a short story
from the zine vol. ii
I woke up with a gnawing sense of guilt. That, and a ghastly headache. For weeks, I had been reading Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams to try to induce myself to sleep deeply enough to have convoluted Freudian dreams…like the one where he dreamt of the M2F who peed on a fence while an old lady attempted to hand him her business card (no cap bro look it up it’s in there frfr). Alas, my insomnia persisted. Yesterday, I sauntered down to the nearest Duane Reade to pick up some Unisom.
I know what you’re thinking. “You heartless prick! Who do you think you are, patronizing a chain store owned by a megacorporation?!”
Mea culpa…what can I say? I was too cheap and lazy to walk another four blocks down to the family-owned pharmacy. But in my defense, at least I bought the generic brand. The one whose packaging looks just like the leading one, but not enough so that it infringes copyright laws…you know, the one that says “compare to UNISOM brand sleeping pills.”
And like an old divorcee who is determined to catch the attention of her younger, pretty-boy neighbor, my insomnia persisted. Rather than immerse itself in a Freudian dreamscape, my psyche was plagued with pangs of guilt for having supported yet another sinister corp that further fuels our nefarious neoliberal regime. My headache was my divine punishment, I gathered, as I skulked off back to Duane Reade to buy some ibuprofen (yes the brand name one…the generic one was never powerful enough to kill off my guilt-induced headaches).
Once I downed my daily cup of loose leaf Earl Grey tea and blasted an additive-free, non-BigTobacco-brand ciggie, I made my way into the bathroom and peered into the mirror with hesitation. My hair was giving lazy-ass-millennial-layabout-with-an-email-job-who-is-far-from-reaching-his-full-potential-but-has-a-valid-excuse-but-does-not-want-to-have-to-explain-himself-to-you-rn. In simpler terms, my hair was a mess. Surely, I could walk into one of the numerous barbershops in the neighborhood. Support local. Bloom where I’m planted. But the harsh truth was that the Moroccan barbers, who seemed to have a monopoly on the neighborhood’s barbershops, never cut hair with artist-like precision and passion as did my Dominican barber in the Heights. (There was one Dominican barbershop in the neighborhood, but they never really tried very hard since the locals’ standards were so low).
Going to see Yovanis in the Heights was always an experience, to say the least. As soon as I step off the 1 train, I am greeted with the voice of fruit vendors marketing their goods to passersby, the alluring aroma of mangu wafting out a restaurant’s kitchen window and waitresses asking “q quieres mi amol,” and men–clearly not realizing what century we were in–cat-calling the females who crossed their path (some of whom they did it to just for the hell of it, as these lasses were—quite frankly—mid af). Upon walking into the shop, I’m greeted in the entrance by a set of free weights, a bowl of condoms, a Bible opened to Leviticus propped up on a stand, and the sounds of either classic merengue or a fiery Pentecostal preacher blasting out of the speakers. Yovanis would periodically take breaks from working laboriously on my fade to engage in theological debates with a enigmatic lady dressed in a white gown and turban whose mission was to preach the good news to the heathens, or alternatively to dance with the lady whose job it was to sweep up the hair scraps strewn around the floor.
I prolonged having to make a decision about taking the hour-and-a-half-long ride up to the Heights (further evading my “work” for the day) by scrolling through reels on my suggested page: a video of a devout Muslim cat named Sister Minnie preparing to make salat in her new, “very halal” Ferragamo hijab; an ad for a new hipster coffee shop down the block featuring their fair trade strawberry matcha cold brew with raw macadamia milk and a vegan organic dark chocolate chip cookie (“Filthy gentrifiers!” I shouted aloud, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t actually aroused by such a crude display of food porn); yet another ad, featuring a moderately famous microinfluencer after having gotten a haircut at the barbershop two blocks away, proclaiming, “my boy got me righttttt.”
A sign, I figured, that God was tired of my lackadaisical commitment to being on the right side of history. It was time for me to abandon my convenience, my vanity and sense of self-importance.
“Habibi! What can I do for you today?” I knew from his greeting that the barber was being overly friendly to compensate for his lack of skills. A half hour later, I walked out in misery, avoiding catching a glimpse of my decidedly unfresh cut in the window of the store next to the barbershop.
I continued dragging myself down the block until I happened upon the gentrified coffee shop. “Oh look, another sign,” I mumbled to myself aloud (much to the disturbance of the stroller-pushing-mom walking past me). Abandoning my morals to the wayside, I dished out an amount of money I’m too ashamed to specify for the cold brew latte and cookie. Surely, my horrifying haircut burned me enough calories in purgatory to make up for the punishment I earned for indulging my weakness for sweet, delectable, perfect-combination-of-chewy-and-crunchy, gentrified cookies. Yet the guilt, as well as my headache, creeped up on me yet again. I sneered at the girl wearing a nose ring and those cheap Amazon over-ear headphones who was typing away on her laptop. So much for “local community.”
To distract myself from my misery, I pulled up the barber’s Google Reviews and left a nasty 2-star review under my anon account, citing that his good customer service was a facade for his lack of skill as a barber, and suggesting he either learn how to cut hair right or just be rude to his customers for transparency’s sake. I then searched for the microinfluencer’s page and left a comment on the reel of him leaving the barbershop: “you got me tight af rn with this false-ass advertising my guy. Hella misleading.”
I went back to my suggested page and started doomscrolling til I found another Sister Minnie video. I decided to binge-watch until I learned a thing or two from her about submitting to the Almighty’s will. Astaghfirullah.