There is something I need to get off my chest, and its not that thing from “Total Recall”. Something much more terrifying than being eaten by 4 large (possibly gay, think about it…) hippos; something that shook me to the core. I think I lost my faith in humanity at Rand Brunch.
If a person from outside the Vanderbubble were to walk into Rand around 12 o’clock on a weekday, they would probably mistake it for a Tokyo Subway or a Moroccan Spice market. I know for a fact that most of the meat used there is retired (and I say retired because those animals had goddamn careers) circus animal. So, just like in a Moroccan spice market, there is camel meat being consumed. But lunch at Rand barely glows when juxtaposed to the inferno of human depravity witnessed at Rand brunch.
Girls walk in covered in paint; Guys have massive tears in their shirts. It smells like Beer 30 and bacon with a hint of bodily fluid. A baby is crying in a corner and that puppet from the intro of “Are You Afraid of the Dark” is chillin’ on a swing by the salad bar. You just know he’s there, ready to knife you between helpings of baby corn. Basically, the place looks like the aborted love child of “Dawn of the Dead”, “Emeril Live” and a Lacoste Catalog. A devils threesome of the worst kind.
As I wade through the chaos, a one eyed women comes up to me and says, “Turn back before lose your soul!”
“Why are people from Belmont here?” I shout out, hoping for an answer. Instead some girl throws up, her vomit bracketed by the phrases “Oh my god” and “Like, totally”. She’s pretty thin though, and looking good, so I don’t judge her based on the obvious eating disorder. I shove my way to the front of the line, throwing elbows as I go. Marcy, the girl behind the counter is covered in what I assume is food. I look into her eyes; cold, soulless, black. Eyes of a person who’d lost faith in humanity long ago.
Being the Good Samaritan that I am, I decide to help. I go over to the pastry table. Picking up a piece of cheesecake, I walk back into the cafeteria and get in line. Surely this will save her from the throes of apathy, I think as I inch toward the counter. I’m going to show her something she hasn’t seen before (once again, not the alien from Total Recall). All I want is a reaction. I brace for the moment of truth.
“Can I please have some gravy on this cheesecake?”
The moment seems like an eternity. It’s like waiting for pandas to mate.
Nothing.
No reaction.
She didn’t bat a fucking eyelash.
In one swift motion, the ladle goes down into the speckled gray mass, comes up with the terrible goop, and “plop!” right on the cheesecake.
“You have a good one,” I say, mid-shudder.
She responds with some guttural sounds.
I sit back down among my friends, all of whom are busy eating Alice (she had five humps). But I am changed. What I’ve seen I now have to take with me for the rest of my life. I say this in all seriousness: for all of you that have ever had Rand Brunch, may God have mercy on your soul.
But seriously, try some gravy on cheesecake, it isn’t good, but it isn’t terrible.
