Nothing is Dangerous or Sexy When You Drink it in a Denim Jumper

(photo courtesy of bigredmug.com)


Yes, Dr. M(mmm), there is a connection between the first half of my last post, about Tab, and the second half, about reconnecting with some friends from my undergrad days at BYU this weekend. College Roommate and I drank a lot of diet coke when we were friends. I'm not sure what it's like now, but when I was up to the "Y" we drank diet coke constantly. Not the caffeine-free stuff they sold on campus, but the real stuff, which you could get anywhere off campus, at mind-bogglingly cheap prices, in dangerously copious amounts.

Really, drinking diet coke was about all my friends and I did my first year of college (remember, we couldn't/didn't drink alcohol), beating out apparently less-compelling activities such as reading, studying, going to class. Our favorite place to buy it was Hart's, a convenience store across from our freshman dorm, and later, a quick walk from the humanities building, where I spent all of my time my last few years in Provo. Hart's had the best diet coke by far--way better than Circle K, whose fountain was so syrupy that it tasted more like root beer than diet coke. People drink soda compulsively in Provo; the entire back wall of Hart's was a soda fountain. You could get anything, even red cream soda. And of the two diet coke fountains at Hart's, the one on the left was much better than the one on the right. But you couldn't just dispense it: you had to pump the spout, so that you'd get an even distribution of soda water and syrup. We used refillable mugs, like the one pictured above, which cost about a quarter to refill, and we went about three times a day. That means we were drinking 96 oz of diet coke per day. Which meant we knew all the best gas station bathrooms up and down I-15, Utah's main highway. It's kind of weird to think that we built our lives around diet coke. Weird and embarassing, because I almost flunked out of college my first two years.

So did my friend. She took a year off between sophomore and junior year, the same as me. Only she worked in an Ann Taylor in San Francisco, and I worked for my dad's pneumatics and hydraulics business.

First I was the receptionist. "Hello, P & H. How may I help you?"

Then I was a secretary. Then I was a secretary and accounts payable. And payroll. And accounts billable. And benefits. And then receptionist, too. What I didn't know when I went to work for my dad for a year, was that his company was going bankrupt and he was involved in a bunch of lawsuits. As he laid people off, I had to take over their jobs. That sucked, but not as much as it did when his employees still worked there. They HATED him, and they didn't trust me because I was his daughter. But because I was his daughter, my dad showed me no mercy--no favorites in his office, you know. He hated everyone equally.

It was the worst year of my life. I got a second job at a gym and spent the evenings I wasn't working there, working out there. I taught myself how to lift weights using those big, glossy Joe Weider books, with Gladys Portuguese or Joyce Vedral. I used my refill mug at the WaWa around the corner from work. I lied and said I was going to Philadelphia for church, where they had a special parish for "young adults" (how else are you going to mate the ones who didn't go to BYU?). Really, I was exploring the city.

My friend's year wasn't much better. I'm not sure when she went back to school, but when she did she didn't go back to BYU.

The weekend spent with CR and family was perfect. We had perfect weather, the city was filled with music from the Gospel Fest, and as we walked through gardens and around fountains, and under bridges, and yes, drank big, ice-filled glasses of diet coke with lemon, we fell in and out of conversations easily and naturally. As gf reported on her blog, their daughters were smart, sassy, and completely wonderful to be around. I loved them instantly, even though being with them made me a little sad, because they reminded me of other brilliant and amazing children I've loved and lost contact with in my peripatetic life.

In the comments on my last post bw described Tab as dangerous and sexy. I love that. It's saucy and so, so queer. But Diet Coke is just sad and personality-sucking, gender normativity posing as transgression.

My friends told me that while Hart's is still a Utah chain, the one across from the dorms is gone. RIP, Hart's Food and Gas, University Avenue, Provo, Utah.