Candy corn, a pumpkin, and a decent paint job meet in a bar...
There's a discussion of cultural appropriation. Candy corn feels maligned, that no one understands why he is the way he is... People tend to treat him as an evil born of annual necessity and nothing more. He blames his makers for perpetuating such lies and then adding color to the confusion: some of them have a black tip. Some have a white. There have been a schizophrenic parfait, a frankenstein's parade of flavors. He believes there may be a preference for one over the other... And that the original is lost in the mix. "I'm sweet enough," he says. "Satisfying. Never had a complaint!" But still: some people hate him... And it pulls on his heart in ways only lost candy can know.
Pumpkin responds with empathy: they love his exterior: firm, curvaceous, supple and strong when in season... But they cut him open. Remove his insides, declaring disgust and slime and seeds all the while. "How does it feel," he asks candy corn.. "When they say they love you, they carry you so carefully, and then proceed to empty you of substance reshaping you to their desires? I feel used," he says, staring hard at the mahogany bar, "and unpreserved." It's a love that seems needlessly violent: his sister was gutted just Tuesday, and there was nothing he could do. He's not prepared, he says, for when it becomes his time. He wants the attention, the hands-on... The tactile stimulation... But he fears what they may want him to become and he fears the flame they'll place inside him, the shapes he may cast upon the walls, where once he was a whole and sacred and a beloved mess.
Paint sits quietly... Knowing he was built for both things. To be appreciated for his looks AND to be made in the form of whatever they desire. He's aware of his seasonality, the trends as fickle as spring zephyrs post thunderstorm... And he's committed to it. As only paint can commit. They'll have to make their decisions, make them carefully for once applied: he has no intention of leaving easily. "They'd better love me long time," he thinks. "Long time."
Candy corn looks at paint with bleary eyed jealousy, now several pints in. "At least they choose you," he says to paint, miserable and wallowing. "No one really chooses me, you know. Not even those who purchase me in bulk. They're just cheap bastards dealing with holiday obligations like the callow misers they are. I'm pennies against a Snickers, you understand. Pennies. They could purchase me in quantity enough the sacks of my brethren could save a city, drowning in flood. And quite frankly, at least that would be fulfilling. But instead I'm the candy equivalent of offal. Even peeps have a cult following. PEEPS. At least they're not blowing me up in the goddamned microwave."
Pumpkin spins on his stool, barely keeping balance. "Let me ask you something," he says, somewhat desperate for understanding... "Have you ever awakened to find your identity stolen? Like, completely subverted, reformed, compulsory compliance demanded of you despite knowing, despite feeling to your core the weight of the ethics broken, the morals burned to ash in the name of hype and profit and the idea that the louder we scream something the more true the blinded public will believe it to be?
Because that happened to me. And to be honest, at first I was okay with it. People gave me some pause, you know? I was rediscovered. Like a band on a 20 year reunion tour, people came back to me. Warm and glowing in their nostalgia, they accepted me in my new state and I was proud to play a part. But now... Now I'm overrun. Now I prefer when they scoop and cut and burn because there is nothing... Nothing could possibly be worse than my connection to spice. It's not right. I mean, we've always played the role of the window and porch decor... Left to rot until our faces have aged and our fangs have been removed like dentures by the cold processes of time and the manner in which our rind decides to die... But this business of selling our souls for nutmeg and cinnamon, cloves and whipped cream... It's autumnal hooking, plain and simple. I agreed to go along with it but now I want out and I can't stop the train. Life was easier knowing the inevitable sacrifice for pie. From there, at least, we knew where we stood.
At this point I keep dreaming of a new Renaissance. A new era. Remember what happened to chocolate? Almost killed off after decades of me-too manufacturing, in drab and flavorless disarray? For generations colored candy shells were all she was allowed. That marriage to peanut butter. Now look at her. She's independent. She's dark and she's glorious and the closer she is to her natural state, the more the world adores her. She's synonymous with romance, with serotonin. She's an addiction accepted the world over and I'm a seasonal meme because someone needed a new method with which to deliver caffeinated water? It's a disgrace. There's no such thing as justice. I mean, Christ, half of my family ended up in a can. Is there honor to be found in knowing your value is measured solely by your literal shelf life? I think NOT."
Paint, who's spent a fair portion of his life in a variety of containers, nods in solidarity... The darker and more airtight the better. Banking on shelf life and consistency both as a liquid and as a shade of rainbow, pantone values recorded on a label: his identity is, fundamentally, secure. It's the application that worries him, the surface on which he may yet be found. Not everyone ends up a Banksy, a Fairey or a Starfighter. Those are lottery odds and winning hardly happens. All too often one finds a life dragged out over years, decades of patchwork, touchups, and spots on the rug.
It's hard hoping for art, hoping to be a part of a glorious installation what meaning may solely be known to the creator and perhaps not even then... Whose identity therefore shifts in the eyes of each beholder, never one name, never one consideration... It's hard hoping for such inclusion when the odds state, when the reality most likely will be a blending... A forced gulag of deliberate disappearance into the surfaces his ancestors occupied, all in the name of partial renewal (which, he raises an eyebrow in admittance, isn't so bad, really), or in the name of a contractor's lowest common denominator where expedience and access are the only values required. There are on average at least 300 shades of white, he muses... Gosh. Which one shall I be?
Candy corn, a pumpkin, and a decent paint job sitting in a bar, attached as they are in familial and seasonal obligation. Each hoping against hope for transcendence of some sort. It remains to be seen what happens when they part ways.
