Burger King Blues

Feb 13th, 2010 | By Roxanne | Category: Verbal Vomit

Summer time in Estepona pretty much guarantees a hussle and bussle out on the streets until at least 2am. The promenade is filled with tourists and families, the playgrounds are filled with screaming brats and sleep deprived parents and the shopping streets are filled with Guiri’s all sporting the same shade of pink. Every where you look there is some kind of commotion. Yet the Burger King sits deserted, dark and silent and rather freaky looking.

We step inside and walk straight to the counter to order a menu consisting of soggy burgers, toxic cokes and salty fries.
My feet feel like led and being slightly intoxicated isn’t making standing on them any easier. I rest my elbows on the counter while Mooner stands with his back to it checking the scene. In front of me just beneath the soft ice machine stands a white plastic bottle. A cream white plastic bottle with a brown frame, and in swirly brown writing within this brown frame it says: “ Strawberry Cheese Cake Flavour”. Just that: “Strawberry Cheese Cake Flavour”, cream white and brown. Oh yeah and the lid was brown too. It was deeply disturbing. It reminded me of this little kitchen set I had when I was a kid. Entirely made out of plastic it had a sink, an oven which also made do as a fridge and some shelves attached to it. With it came lots of little bottles and boxes of Ariel and Heinz Beans and stuff like that. And all it would ever state on these products was the name: no ingredients, no sell by date. I thought about how I had perceived this as a kid and you know what it didn’t bother me in the least. Sell by date? For what?! Ingredients? Well if its says Heinz Beans, then its Heinz Beans. Simple as.
But now with 18 more years to my name, it did bother me. What was in this Strawberry Cheese Cake Flavouring? What the hell did they put in this flavouring to make it last forever, and what’s with these E-331 and E-300’s and extra aromas? And even more so, if the product didn’t state anything, not even the E- Numbers and aromas…Well what the fuck does that tell you?
Hmm..

I turn around to join Mooner’s point of view. He doesn’t seem fazed by what is presented to him at all. Mooner has left this world and is no longer part of my train of thought. I wonder what he is staring at and what kind of observations he is making and whether he has any kind of explanation to go along with these observations. But as I am trying to find his angle of focus, I find my own. And it scares the living daylight out of me, so much so, it takes me back to a childhood trauma. A childhood trauma still some where lingering in my deep subconscious never having been allowed to fully develop into a extensive phobia…

Back in the day when McDonalds was still the place to be (aged 5-10), you couldn’t get any fucking cooler than if you had a Birthday party in the Ronald McDonald Party Bus.
It was a big yellow school bus, with Ronald McDonald sitting in the driver seat. A few tables and chairs, a ball pit and a slide.
You got to eat as much as you wanted and make yourself nauseous by sliding up and down and jumping around. It was great. Once all of our food lay half digested in the pits of our sore, poisioned stomachs one of McDonalds staff came to pick us up and lead us to the “behind the scenes” part of the restaurant.
I had no idea what was awaiting me; McDonalds was such a magical place as a kid with all its playground facilities, party buses and junk food, I couldn’t possibly imagine what was behind these closed doors.
Our first visit was to the cold room. It was a big heavy, white plastic door which seemed to have a million bolts keeping it locked in place. When it opened this strong indescribable smell hit me. Now I have always been rather sensitive to smell so I wont deny the fact that I may have perceived it a lot worse than any of my class mates stood behind me. But to me it was the strangest odor I’d ever experienced. A mixture of decaying plastic and stale milk maybe. And this part might have been the exaggerated version of my six year old memory but as the doors opened, there was smoke all around, from a humidifier somewhere hidden in the depths of this room of course, but nonetheless it was smoke which gave this place even more of a freaky aura. This combined with the bright fluroscent green, yellowish light of the room had the same effect on me as every David Lynch movie or any scene of Lost in the hatch or likewise places.

Even as a kid and even though the staff leader was telling us all types of pretty stories about how the meat was all taken from happy, jolly cows and the lettuce was picked from beautiful organic fields, I sensed something seemed odd about it all.
To be honest, if it wasn’t for the promise of being allowed to make your own burger with your very own ingredients after the guided tour, I would have legged it right there and then when the big bolted door opened to a smoke filled and toxic green room.
The fact that I had all my peers behind me unfazed by their surroundings as is Mooner now, made it a little easier for me to keep my shit together and stick around. But it didn’t change the fact that from that day onward I sustained a strange relationship with the likes of McDonalds and Burger King. It gave me the creeps; everything behind the counter of this restaurant seemed like it should be part of Dexter’s Lab or the Dharma Initiative rather than a kitchen dynamic.
I’m not going to lie. I still paid the occasional visit to these fast food chains, but most of them were with the core idea of being sick afterwards (i.e on a Hangover/ Burnout).

So as I am standing there with Mooner images of the green smoke filled room pop into my head again and I feel the momentary need to do a runner. As I really take my time to take in my plastic surroundings, I am on the verge of tears and hysteric laughter.
The entire restaurant is empty apart from Mooner and myself and ironically a cleaner. Everything from the tables to the chairs, the floors to the ceiling, the cutlery to the posters screams plastic. Fakeness. Artificial Nuclear Burgers.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

Roxanne Sancto