Table of Contents for the Meat for Tea scrapple issue. It's actually Pappalardo. I know that guy. But Poppa Lardo sounds like a totally jovial character! It might be annoying to read a story this way, but I'm gonna post it anyway. I couple small edits thanks to Poppa Lardo.
ULTIMATUM
We four were sitting on the patio, enjoying the Sayulita evening. There were a few lights down by the town and beach, and a fire burned in the dark hills above us. We’d just finished eating a grilled chicken we bought from locals a few houses down. Condiments and sides twisted closed in sandwich baggies. We ate on the patio and drank icy cold cans of Mexican beer.
Dylan started it: What do you think of ultimatums?
Kelli joked: Dude! What I done wrong? Ain’t we having fun? I have to stop talking or you’ll what? What?
Tina asserted: I love them. Just get to the point. I’m busy. Make things easier for me!
Drew cautioned: Well, not everything is so black and white. There’s a lot of grey area and sometimes an ultimatum kinda, ya know, shuts things down.
Kelli: Dylan, why you asking? Can you give us a hypothetical?
Dylan: It came up talking to some colleagues. My friend works with a guy who got an ultimatum from his girl so he proposed to her. My friend thinks it’s a totally bogus way to start a marriage and that the guy is doomed.
Drew: If you would have given me an ultimatum, I wouldn’t have married you.
Kelli: Sure you would have. Oh, youda bristled, but then settled down and figured what the hell, she here, I’m lazy.
Drew: I love your confidence. But really, ya never know. Sometimes you make the right decision; sometimes you make the wrong one.
Kelli: Thank god you got that one right!
Drew: Right. I’ve been blessed.
Tina: Ultimatums on big decisions is stupid. Too much drama.
Kelli: It’s a fucking ballsy ass move on her part. Cuz yer man gonna walk away or he gonna step up. If he walk away, you look dumb. If he step up, everyone always gonna wonder if he done it because he weak.
Tina: Right. The girl comes out of it looking like a controlling bitch however it turns out.
Dylan: Kelli, is you drunk? What wit da hood talk?
Kelli: Psssh, I likes to be loose, when drunk, in Mexico. Why you hatin?
Dylan: No hatin’, I say we all tries to talk like we somebody else.
Kelli: Sweet! But seriously, if the guy proposed after an ultimatum, I think that’s a pretty noble thing. It’s so easy to walk away from an ultimatum. Practically everyone will be on your side. Proposing means your girl done served you and you said, I’m not willing to lose this. Maybe he’d been on the fence, waiting for the perfect sign, the perfect time. Ain’t no guarantees. He chose standing with her. Fuck y’all. These sound like smart people who deftly navigated a decision you never have a guarantee on. Good for them.
Drew: I suppose, but did the guy stand by her or just give up? How can she know who she’s getting?
Dylan: Right. The ultimatum forced a decision. Whether the decision made was a brave one or a fearful one is anyone’s guess.
Dylan opened the wine for Tina and Kelli and grabbed beers out of the cooler, tossing a can to Drew.
Drew: Thank you sir. I will accept this beer because you leave me no choice. Beer tossed, is beer drunk.
Tina: It would be rude to refuse. Plus, you gotta help Dylan out or he will be tossed to the couch.
Kelli: I was given an ultimatum once.
Drew: But I thought you wanted to do it!
Kelli: Drew, you know I always wanna do it. Anyway, my first boyfriend and I went through rocky times as all dumb young love does. We were doing some stupid taking-a–break-trying-to-figure-things-out, thing. It was all dumbness and bullshit, but what’r ya gonna do? That shit always ugly, sad and dumb.
Tina: True dat. What? I can’t be hood?
Dylan: Nope. You definitely can not.
Kelli: So my love says to me, we either get back together right now, or you leave and we never talk again.
Dylan: Shit. That’s pretty serious. Obviously you walked away. Did you feel like you were making a smart or a stupid decision?
Kelli: At the time I thought it was totally unfair. I cried a lot. All snotty and but you’re my soulmate-y. I wish I had been cooler, but I didn’t want that decision forced on me.
Drew: Right. He ultimatumed and you walked away. If he hoped you would choose him, he blew it.
Kelli: Blew it or wisely made us come to terms with what we probably already knew. Maybe it kept things from some long ugly humiliating trying and failing foreverness suck void.
Drew: Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it would have worked out, so cutting to the chase was sorta like pulling a band-aid off quickly.
Kelli: Of course I didn’t like it at the time, but now I consider it a gift. Right then and there, in that moment, was I going to stand with him or stand alone. You can’t know what you don’t know. You can’t see what you can’t see. It was a scary and heartbreaking drive home. Fuck, I didn’t even really have a home. I was staying in my parents’ basement while they were going through a divorce. I wanted to go someplace and sob my little heart out, get drunk, read old notes, look at pictures of us when we were in love. You know, study my pain. But I wasn’t ready to explain shit to my parents.
Drew: What did you do?
Kelli: I stopped crying, drove to my parents’ house, grabbed a beer, threw on a bikini, jumped in the pool, then lay wet and shivering until the sun warmed my body.
Dylan: Did you feel brave or scared?
Kelli: Scared as shit. But when you’re faced with two options, you gotta trust your gut. What else can you do? I guess it felt scary and exciting. Maybe that’s what brave feels like. I dunno.
