THE AMERICAN DIET LIFE WARS
Twila was born upside down and had always suspected she might have been born backwards.
She remained quietly skeptical from the beginning.
There was the formula her mother tried to give her.
Then the vaccines that were supposed to keep her healthy.
They hurt.
The lesson stuck.
Things that were good for you could taste bad.
Things that were good for you could hurt.
Things that were good for you could be forced upon you by caregivers who loved you.
And because they loved you, you owed them obedience.
If you refused the thing that tasted bad and hurt, you might receive other things that tasted bad and hurt.
This seemed wrong to Twila.
Not necessarily the medicine.
Not necessarily the caregiver.
The bargain.
I love you, therefore you must obey me.
Twila would not accept that bargain into her heart.
Then schooling began.
And Twila began to understand what the American Diet Life Wars were going to be like.
There were desks.
There were lines.
There were bells.
There were bathroom permissions.
There were correct answers and incorrect answers and appropriate times to speak.
If you were hurt or bullied, do not speak, as this was whining or tattling.
Don't give too many right answers or you were a show-off.
Don't give too many wrong answers or you were an idiot.
Fuck, this was hard.
And don't say fuck.
There were stars for obedience and consequences for wandering.
And every morning there was the Pledge.
Stand up.
Face the flag.
Hand over heart.
Repeat.
Twila looked around.
Everyone was doing it.
Which, naturally, made her wonder why.
She was always so wrong, so she stayed quiet.
But she couldn't take this into her heart either.
...
Later, older, she was expected to vote.
Neither side ever seemed to do what it said it would do.
There were scandals involving girls, money, murder, war, and power, and life didn't appear to improve much one way or the other.
She voted with her nose pinched.
Then a man came along who gave her hope that perhaps things could be different.
Other people decided he was the WORST president and a HORRIBLE person.
Not even American.
The election was a sham.
Naturally, he won twice.
Twila hated politics.
She hated all the forced rituals and coercive rules surrounding it.
People started shouting MERRY CHRISTMAS!, but it sounded like it meant something else.
Not merry at all.
More like:
OBEY OR ELSE.
She trudged from city to town, from beach to countryside, being forced to read bumper stickers and signs.
People put them up in businesses.
It was clear.
You were not welcome unless you were like them.
And again, this felt like OBEY.
Twila didn't like to obey.
She didn't even like the word obey.
She had worked hard to train herself so she could take tests and write essays and someday get a good job that was enriching.
She got none of these things.
She got classes with lectures and large expensive books and exams that seemed to be based on neither.
She even got a trick exam.
Write your name and then turn this in.
She did it.
She still disliked the professor.
And the college.
She heard a Dean go on and on about his connections.
He knew a bodyguard for Taylor Swift.
He had met the president!
He was Important.
He could write letters and get people into programs that were Exclusive.
He lied.
He bragged.
People surrounded him and praised him for the lying and bragging.
Twila, upside down and backwards, hated the man on stilts with his megaphoney words.
This was not college.
This was a scam.
But she got through it too.
Then she got jobs where time was exchanged for money and no one trained her or asked what she wanted to do.
She problem-solved.
Always.
Mostly she troubleshot problems created by the systems themselves.
And if she spoke up about the systems, HR was notified and she was put on probation for something unrelated.
She was reprimanded.
Put on probation.
Then fired for something someone else had done to her.
Her reaction, after being harmed for three years at a job, was grounds for firing her.
It was one of the best things that had ever happened to her.
Unfortunately, it did not change the signs.
The signs only got larger.
And more people began carrying megaphonies in their hands.
They called them Pairaphones.
They were actually tracking and megaphoning devices designed primarily to sell a new soda:
EZFREEDOM SODA COLA ZERO!
The plastic bottle was colorful.
The plastic bottle was magical.
Purchasing it guaranteed acceptance.
Drinking it guaranteed acceptance.
And everyone was doing it.
Except Twila.
Again.
Poor stupid backwards upside-down Twila.
"It tastes wonderful!"
"It doesn't have a taste."
"I feel so hydrated."
"It's a dehydrant."
On and on.
Twila didn't say these things aloud.
She quietly thought them while watching the country split itself into two enormous teams and enter a drinking contest to determine who could buy and drink the most EZFREEDOM SODA COLA ZERO!
The answer was right there in the name.
Nobody.
Twila saw this and said nothing.
But everyone noticed.
She didn't come to meetings that required the Pletch of Obeyance.
She didn't decorate her house and mailbox and dog for Obeyance Day.
She was conspicuously
NOT BUYING ZERO!
She was doing what seemed perfectly logical.
Not buying nothing.
She worked but had no title.
She biked but entered no marathons.
She swam but sometimes floated for no reason and looked at clouds.
People speculated that she was a witch while maintaining that believing in witches was crazy.
But not drinking ZERO!
That was unpatriotic.
That was against freedom.
It showed that she didn't have love in her heart.
Yes, Twila thought.
Why would I?
What had they done to earn love?
And why was she the disloyal one?
She kept all these questions inside her own skull.
Unfortunately, that was apparently not far enough hidden.
Had she only understood the assignment.
Drink ZERO.
Find acceptance.
Poor, stupid, disobedient, disloyal, unloving Twila.
She was a terrible person.
She was a horrible person.
She was the worst.
They all agreed as they talked about her but not with her.
Boys on a golf cart shouted:
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
She hung up a prayer flag made by Buddhist nuns.
A neighbor reported her to the police, the sheriff, and the neighborhood association.
UNPATRIOTIC was underlined in a folder.
ANTS was noted in another.
She didn't know what ANTS meant.
That was in the Cake Plate Shortie, which she had not read and hadn't been part of.
People monitored her trash.
What was in it?
NOT ONE PLASTIC BOTTLE!
They left bottles around her house.
They left them around town.
They put them on her desk at a job she was later fired from.
Thankfully.
Twila breathed freer with each rejection.
Being unincluded was great.
Freeing.
Maybe being upside down and backwards was the answer all along.
And as the ZERO WAR continued, she didn't participate.
She knew without seeing names which candidates she would vote for in each election.
Definitely not the ones who seemed more ZERO-presenting.
She held her nose and voted for, yes, smaller megaphonies.
It was all she was offered each cycle.
Eventually she stopped caring while continuing to participate.
Voting was her ZERO.
It meant very little to her.
Because Twila had finally figured something out.
She didn't want Diet Freedom at all.
She wanted the wine.
Full-bodied freedom.
Freedom with calories.
Freedom with sediment at the bottom.
Freedom that stained the tablecloth.
Freedom that occasionally left you sunburned, tired, overeducated, underpaid, laughing too loudly, swimming too far out, or awake at midnight because the book was good and nobody was making you put it down.
She wanted education without a return on investment.
Work without having to turn a job title into her identity.
Exercise without medals.
Swimming without laps.
Art without branding.
Love without surveillance.
Safety without surrendering independence.
Friendship without membership.
Community when she wanted company.
Solitude when she did not.
She wanted to drink actual wine and sparkling things and water because she was thirsty.
She wanted to eat things with butter.
She wanted to wander through museums without proving what she learned.
She wanted to ride her bicycle without joining the cycling committee.
She wanted to float beneath clouds without tracking the float on her Pairaphone.
She wanted to live without constantly demonstrating that she deserved to be alive.
This was apparently the most disobedient position imaginable.
Not revolution.
Not protest.
Not even resistance.
Disinterest.
Twila stopped attending meetings about the ZERO WAR.
She stopped listening to people explain which side was destroying freedom.
She stopped checking which neighbor had put up which sign.
She stopped trying to understand why people screaming about liberty spent so much of their lives monitoring everyone else.
She put her earbuds in.
She rode her bike.
She walked outside.
She swam.
Sometimes she worked.
Sometimes she read.
Sometimes she learned something that would never make her one dollar.
Sometimes she drank wine.
Sometimes she sat still.
She lived on the outskirts because life on the outskirts was preferable to life in their in-skirts.
She hated their in-skirts altogether.
They bound their knees together in a permanent kneeling position and called it loyalty.
They called it faith.
They called it love.
They called it belonging.
They called it freedom.
Twila called it uncomfortable.
Then she put her earbuds back in.
Behind her, the ZERO WAR continued.
People waved signs.
People shouted.
Pairaphones megaphoned.
Bottles accumulated.
Each side declared itself the winner.
Twila did not hear them.
She was riding toward the water.
The air smelled wonderful.
The sky was enormous.
Her legs were strong.
She had nowhere she was required to be.
Poor, stupid, backwards, upside-down Twila.
She was free.
