Party In A Cup
the highs and lows of being a person
The menu was identical to the one I remember. I already knew what I was going to get. In college I could only afford a Mac Cup, mac ‘n’ cheese in a cup. But now I am an adult, and I am getting a Party in a Cup.
Officially, I was in Oneonta for a concert. Zara Larsson was performing at my alma mater. I was supposed to come with my best friend, but we aren’t talking right now. I don’t know why, yet I do know. We’ve outgrown each other.
So instead, I brought my boyfriend.
We both went to Oneonta and somehow never knew each other. We even worked at the same Mexican restaurant at different times. (Invisible string, eh?)
I carried a fantasy with the idea of coming back to Oneonta. I imagined returning rich and successful, scouting locations for the screenplay I wrote about this place. The one where I am the sympathetic hero and everyone who wronged me is a villain.
The concert was a blast, but the night was still young.
We wandered downtown toward The Red Jug.
I could never get into The Red Jug in college. It was the one bar that didn’t accept fake IDs, making it impossibly desirable. By the time I finally turned twenty-one, the world had shut down, so I experienced The Red Jug several years too late.
The vibes were foul. Crowded and stale. By the time we got drinks, we were ready to leave.
I waited in line for the one bathroom, the girls in line were building comradery over the shared experience of expelling liquid waste. They wanted to include me. They thought I’d like that.
“You’re dressed how I wish I could dress,” one girl said, nearly leaning her head on my shoulder.
“It’s what happens when you graduate,” I shrugged.
“I am graduated.”
The same insecure thoughts used to run through my mind. So much effort to look cool and hot, only to feel like a clown standing next to the girl in sweats. Now I was the cool girl in sweats at the bar on a Saturday night. Funny how that works.
Too old for the fun bars—breeding grounds for underclassmen with fake IDs and something to prove—my boyfriend and I sat on a bench outside our hotel, finishing one more drink before getting food. Food was the main event anyway.
For a tiny city in the middle of absolute Nowhere, New York, Oneonta has amazing food.
And if I’m honest, I was already thinking about The Gooch.
The Gooch kept me alive in college.
The Gooch
The spins were gone, but I still felt dizzy. Loud and messy memories from the night before flashed through my pounding head. My eyelids felt puffy as I pulled them apart to see the last bites of a hot dog, covered in mac ‘n’ cheese and chili, beside me in bed.
Back then it parked outside the freshman bars that happily accepted fake IDs. Greasy salvation beneath fluorescent lights. Now it sat across from The Red Jug, serving legal adults instead of aspiring ones. A level up.
The promise of Party in a Cup hovered in the back of my mind while we sat outside.
From the bench, I watched the city pulse in front of me, feeling nostalgic and wise.
A man with a camera stood nearby, hands tucked into the pockets of his peacoat.
A girl, teetering on the edge of her freshman year, stepped into frame, angry already. Drunk and top-heavy from the pointed finger she aimed at the photographer, she began to yell at him. Entrails of drunk ramblings, “You fucking perv! Fucking faggot!”
The man with the camera gave her no reaction, which only made her more angry.
Her friends, notably quiet, dragged her away. My boyfriend and I sat there stunned. We had finished our drinks and were ready for food, when the drunk angry girl reappeared.
She had found her balance, and she was walking fast. She got uncomfortably close to the man with the camera.
“Hey, hey,” we called out. “Easy there.”
Then she spit on him. She had not much saliva to muster, and only hit the shoulder of his coat, but still. A human being spit on another human being.
“What is your problem?” my boyfriend asked, seething. He hates unkindness.
The girl lurched toward us.
“You know what’s fucked up?” she slurred “That man takes pictures of people and posts them!”
Her friends returned to coral her at last. The three of them waddled away into the night.
Still reeling, my boyfriend grabbed napkins from the food truck and helped the man with the camera clean himself off. Neither of them had much to say.
My boyfriend was upset we didn’t do more. I tried to tell him it was good to be a sympathetic witness.
“OMG! Will you take our picture?“ A group of girls approached the man with the camera. He was a man of few words, he didn’t direct them, just moved his camera to capture them where they stood.
The girls squealed and awed when he showed them the photo. He wrote someone’s number in a small notebook, and the girls moved on, feeling sweet and sentimental.
Then it all made sense. The drunk girl wasn’t mad he was taking pictures, she was mad he wasn’t taking pictures of her.
I recognized the feeling. Not the slurs, not the spitting, that’s atrocious. But the hot humiliation of feeling invisible in a place where everyone is desperate to be seen.
College towns run on that kind of insecurity. Everyone performing some version of themselves— hotter, cooler, drunker, less drunk, less afraid. Attention feels like proof you exist.
I remember how angry insecurity used to make me. I remember throwing a Mac Cup from The Gooch at my ex-boyfriend’s feet because I hated the way he spoke to me. I remember how easily embarrassment curdled into cruelty.
Suddenly I was starving. Still digesting the interaction/assault we’d witnessed, I was desperate for some sustenance to make it go down easier.
The Gooch sat right across the street, glowing like a lighthouse.
Party in a Cup consists of mac ‘n’ cheese, chili, cheese sauce, and crushed Fritos layered into a paper cup with a plastic fork stabbed through the top. Hot and gooey, textured and heartening. The cheese sauce had a kick that sharpened the spice of the chili. The juices dripped into the spirals of macaroni, turning every bite rich and messy ending on the salty crunch of Fritos: a symphony of taste and texture.
The food was steaming, keeping us warm in the chilly spring evening. We passed the photographer on our way back to the hotel. He tipped his hat politely at us. My boyfriend and I looked at each other. Then we turned around.
“Will you take our picture?”
I love you from my head tomatoes,
Gareth