Of all the phrases that the Lancer RPG books and the community has somehow brought into my lexicon, the phrase "Don't worry about it." in response to something unexpected or unsettling is probably my favourite.
"Sneaking into the Gold Class Experience by paying for it"
Alternatively: Experiencing the briefest bout of the rich lifestyle made me realise just how poor I actually am.
Long read under the cut.
My husband (Toky), my sibling (Sigma) and I went to see the Five Nights at Freddy's movie at the cinemas. For The Bit, we decided to try out our local cinema's 'Gold Class', because Toky thought it would be really funny to go really high class and fancy to go see the FNAF movie (and it would avoid having kids in the theatre). My sibling, who has a membership with the cinema, facilitated us buying tickets so we got them for a whole like 5 dollars cheaper each. Not too shabby.
But as we left the tiny, luxurious cinema, it suddenly dawned on us - in Sigma's words, "the vibes were off".
And they were well and truly off.
We arrived at the cinema through the generosity of our father, in his little white box of a car with chipping paint, and were dropped off outside the cinema. Neither of us had eaten for a while, but that was okay - I am on a pseudo-diet, Sigma had a soylent shake not long before we left, and Toky doesn't eat nearly as much as we do. Since Sigma had our tickets ready on his phone, we just meandered near the place where we were supposed to hand in our tickets.
One of the staff approached us, and in that friendly tone all customer service staff who have to deal with asshole clients used, greeted us. We were obviously polite and friendly back, inasmuch as our collective autism-generated social awkwardness would allow it. She asked if it was our first time, and I, eagerly, said it was. So she ran us through how it worked.
We were invited to sit down in a lounge with some tacky but not unpleasant couches and some armchairs that I'm sure weren't comfortable, but they could have been, and we were given menus to peruse. She informed us that she would take our orders, and during the movie, she would bring them out to us. I had already resolved not to purchase from the menu if I could help it, such is my allergic reaction to spending money, but I was curious.
The last time I had ordered cinema food from one of the more 'luxury' types of deals was when my brother insisted that I see the movie 'Belle'. I forget how much the mediocre three chicken strips we had ordered costed, but it was far more than I would consider reasonable - the movie was excellent though.
The menu I saw gave me little hope of it being different. Certainly spending $5 (AUD) on a quality hot chocolate at a restaurant is one thing, but I was certainly not going to do so here, tempted as I was. $9 for a milkshake. It was $21 for a halloween-themed Baileys cocktail, which, sure, booze is expensive, but when you're already paying double the standard ticket price, seems outrageous. I think I even saw a menu option that was about $25, which I have no doubt would have been smaller than ordering something from a nearby restaurant.
I briefly, oh so briefly, considered getting a milkshake or a white hot chocolate (the chocolate being white, not the temperature). But my resolution was firm, and thankfully neither Toky nor Sigma wanted anything else - Sigma, maybe, but due to financial circumstances I have to cover Toky's expenses (which is fine because Toky only asks for the occasional snack or dinner and doesn't play Warhammer).
The woman came back with a menu, and asked if we were going to order anything. We, awkwardly, told her that we weren't, with Toky commenting 'we're too poor to be rich'. She nodded in a way which told us that she knew the feeling too well. I felt sorry for her, having to deal with the types of people who could spend so much on a movie ticket and all this overpriced mid food.
When we were escorted - escorted! - to the cinema and to where we wanted to sit, she informed us that there were buttons on our seats that we could use to summon someone to take care of our whims. I had seen a dashboard outside the cinema where there appeared to be little lights between seats - now I knew their purpose.
We sat ourselves down, Sigma, myself and Toky, in that order. The seats had little switches that we could use to make them recline, so I did the first thing I'm sure everyone does and find out how far back it would go. As it turns out, it went so far back that had I decided the movie was so bad it wasn't worth watching, I could easily sleep through it.
Sigma had earlier checked to see if we had the cinema to ourselves - we did not, a group of four had gathered in the back corner. No problem, we thought, likely someone else had decided to commit to A Bit when seeing the FNAF movie.
Nope. It was a family of four. A mother, a father, and two kids. I never got much of a look of them - looking at people fills me with a paralysing fear of being looked back at - but they certainly didn't seem of a lower economic status than us. Toky was disappointed that the one thing we wanted to avoid - children - had managed its way in. I had wondered who in their right mind would spend $40 a head for anything other than The Bit.
The advertisements we saw showed more than ever what kinds of people would do that. People that I would consider 'rich' by my standards.
The first advertisement was extoling the grand benefits of Gold Class and all the benefits it would bestow. We got an advertisement for some kind of expensive alcohol, or perhaps another Gold Class thing talking about the signature cocktails. There was another advertisement for a... car owner membership club? I forget which manufacturer it was, I want to say Lexus, but one of the cars they showed, proudly, was one of the ugliest luxury cars on God's Green Flat Earth. I think there was another alcohol advertisement - we also got to see ads for the new Wonka movie which I have zero interest in seeing, and a brief snippet for a movie I was 100% certain I had seen as a fake trailer in a Quentin Tarantino grindhouse special (Thanksgiving, if you're curious).
Eventually, the movie began, and the vibes returned to normal, as Toky and I would nudge each other and point out the references, and I would occasionally repeat comments Toky told me to Sigma. This is not a review of the movie, but if I did have to briefly summarise it: 7/10, I had fun, set designs and costuming was amazing though.
During the movie, I noticed that the family had occasionally summoned the workers to cater to their whims, which was fine? That's part of the service I guess, and I was too busy enjoying the movie and needing to pee to worry so much about that.
The movie ended and I felt satisfied with what I had seen - I was expecting absolute dogshit bad but I was happy with what I got. We gathered our things and limped our way out and to the toilets. Something, however, caught my eye first - the leftovers from the other family.
They must have taken, like, a bite or two out of everything, because there was so much stuff left behind. Most of a basket of wedges, some uneaten pieces of chicken, popcorn littering one of the seats, and I'm pretty sure I saw a half-melted, half-broken choc-coated ice cream.
The sheer waste of it all shook me. If I had spent what looked like roughly $100 on food alone, I would have made sure not a single crumb of it left. But no, it was just... there. Part of me wished to scoop it into a bag and take it with me, but I didn't want to risk infection, especially in this post-covid world. So, begrudgingly, and with great sympathies for the crew who would have to clean it up, I left it be. At least we had no waste of our own.
We left the cinema with little fanfare and made our way to a nearby burger joint that Toky and I had sampled during our Barbenheimer excursion. We knew the food was good, but we hadn't tried the frozen yoghurt part of it, so we had resolved to do that to.
As we munched down on our burgers - Sigma and I with our plain as hell meals and Toky with his spicy one - we discussed our experience. The movie, we had agreed much before, was fine, nothing special but better than we were anticipating, and the art direction was incredible in it. But more importantly, we discussed the Gold Class affair.
Toky summarised it in the most beautifully succinct way - he felt like he had snuck in, jumped the fence so to speak. We all agreed that we had felt out of place, and we mused on the parts that hit us the worst. This is/was also during a time of great financial awkwardness, between me not getting my Centrelink payments due to not having enough hours at work because my boss literally can't give me the hours because ???, and discussions of maybe, potentially, being able to buy a cheap flat somewhere nearby if our father does some shenanigans with his money.
We were feeling really poor as of late, and this Gold Class experience had shown us the kinds of things people with a great deal of disposable income can do. Like, for instance, pay double a standard ticket price to get basically the same experience, with a slightly comfier seat, and the capacity to spend more money on buying food and also to bother minimum-wage staff to bring you more food in the middle of a movie.
It was eye-opening for us all, I think, seeing how people we could only aspire to have the income of lived. And we decided, collectively, to never do it again, because there was no way we could live like rich people do.
It was poetic, really. We started the experience off sampling the life of the well-to-do - blasted with advertisements of things only the wealthy would even consider - only to take a bus home because as we currently are, none of us can afford a car, and only one of us has had the time to get a learner's permit.
Maybe one day, I'll be able to afford being able to go to Gold Class for every single cinema experience, but I know for a fact that if I had that money to burn, I'd just go see twice as many movies. Because even if I have the money to be rich, I don't think I could stand to see myself waste $100 worth of perfectly edible food yes I'm still mad about that holy shit!
Anyway, that's my long ramble done. Hope you enjoyed the read!
[in an extremely casual voice, as if talking about a craving for a type of food] I could really go for a moment of self-actualisation that will allow me to define myself in a way I can feel happy about right now, y'know?
You know what I love about google docs and google sheets for mobile? You suffer one glitch, and suddenly that specific sheet doesn't work any more on the device.
One document I have simply says I don't have permission and for me to check my internet connection and try again. Sure, it's a massive document, but it works fine on desktop.
Another sheet I have was working perfectly fine, then I unlocked my phone with the sheet open, it wigged out and had to start loading, and now every time I open it up it's stuck on an infinite loading screen.
I've been hit with the urge to, for want of better phrase, burn everything down and start from the beginning. Namely in regards to my online social media presence and... persona? I guess?
In all actuality it wouldn't be much of a 'cut-and-run' but more of a 'rebrand' - new username, new icon, that sorta thing. I've made a lot of good friends throughout the years and I don't wanna lose them, but I'm... I don't know, tired of being Badger the Thirteenth. Of feeling like I have to keep the vibe of the person I've portrayed myself being. I'd probably still be posting the same things, when I get back to actually making art of course, but it feels like there's a somewhat inconsistent image I want to set myself. Flickering between letting myself be unhinged and willing to post/share more spicy works on main, and sequestering that part of me to a containment alternate account so that people who don't like smutty things don't have to engage with that.
The problem is is that I have invested a lot of effort and time into this 'brand' of myself, and if I burn it down, it feels like it would be a waste of all of that. Therein also lies the issue of what I would even rebrand to. So much of me is tied to all of this, that thinking of what else I could be is almost more daunting that cutting ties with what I am. The other thing I'd want to figure out is just how 'professional' I'd even want to be. Would I compartmentalise, or would I go all in?
Maybe this is all downwind of my various gender and identity issues. Been going through a lot of those in particular lately. Or maybe I just need to dedicate some time to being purely alone and by myself. There's no space in the house right now where I can truly isolate myself, and I think it's starting to take a toll. Maybe I should go out more.
Me: I want to make a character that has [cool ability/personality trait/design element]
"Oh so like [character I don't know]"
Me: No you fool. You cretin. You buffoon. I do not know this person of which you speak. There are only so many ideas that exist with the consciousness of human experience, and I simply pulled one and exaggerated it for my own enjoyment. To imply I stole from an idea that I was unaware of is a grave insult and my opinion of you shall be forever tarnished.
---
Me: I want to make a character that has [cool ability/personality trait/design element]
