GrosSoaps, LLC

Dear St. Misfit:

Since we don’t talk anymore, and there are still stories I want to tell you, I’ll just put them here for you instead if that’s cool. I guess you thought maybe I was a little stupid and that’s why you quit taking to me. But I assure you I am fine with this. We didn’t have much to say. Anyway.

This is a story about the time Bryce and I went on a shopping trip. Bryce used to live here but now he lives in Boston with the love of his life, fifty-seven Master’s degrees and a penchant for drunken noise music composition. It was his taste in music that sent us on the Wild Kiddie Piano Goose Chase of ’06.

We started our quest at PTA Thrift Shop in Carrboro. We did not find one single toy, much less a toy piano. The only cool thing I saw was a Food Dehydrator, and dammit, I wanted it. But I am trying to get better about “things I *want*” vs. “things I *need*” so I passed it up, albeit unwillingly.

After PTA, we went to the Club Nova thrift store. Alas, it was closed, but in the field next to it, there was a Halfway House Picnic Event in progress. There were scruffy, long-haired men sitting lonely and in lawn chairs with their legs splayed and their soulless eyes staring and their fists gripping Shirley Temples and Ginger Ales and Frescas. There was a folding table set up with untouched finger sandwiches and fruit plates and little party meatballs (!!!) and there were flies buzzing. There was music playing, too loud, as if to compensate for the lack of conversation. No one was really talking to one another comfortably sans alcohol. I hated it. But I bet they hated it more.

Since it was Friday ArtWalk, we detoured to the Wootini gallery. There were corpses under sheets and you could pull the sheets back and look at the decimated bodies made of plaster and clay, death in mixed media. Each body had a real toe tag from the real Durham Morgue. There was a DJ and a table full of goat cheese and a flock of important and cool people, and I quickly purloined a fistful of grapes to snack on. I brought my grapes down the street to the Metalshop’s opening which featured dead sock monkeys in jars of formaldehyde. There was a door in the Metalshop that said “Brain Plaster” in menacing stenciled letters. Brain Plaster! Oh my God! WTF!?! I was so intent on figuring out what happens in the Brain Plaster it took me fifteen minutes to realize that the door in fact said “Brian Plaster.” Brian. It was the proprietor’s office. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t disappointed.

Bryce and I got back on track and ventured to the toy store in Carr Mill for our piano. We didn’t find a piano, but we did find a set of plastic Mexican play food. We decided it would be cool to make our own play food, but make it so that the food was rotten, so we’d have, like, Refried Beans-and-Maggots play food. We were thinking maybe we could get our play food featured somewhere in the next Friday ArtWalk. Well, this started a whole frenzied discussion on how to go about making the molds, how to cast the play food, what kind of bugs we would incorporate, who it would be marketed towards. We went to Open Eye and sat there, drinkless, using their free internet to look up prices for plastic resin and plaster sets.

I happened to stumble upon a soap-making site, and then it hit me. . .we would go all Fight Club and make maggot soaps. We would make roach soaps. We would make rat soaps and dead things soaps and spider soaps and worm soaps. We would sell these soaps for cheap. You could buy these soaps that looked like roaches, and you could sit them on your bathroom sink, and your friends would be all like, “Dude! A roach!” And you could be all like, “No! That’s Soap!! HAHAHAHA!” Somehow sock monkeys were thrown back into the mix. I don’t know how.

And you know what’s funny? This one soap expert says the best way to set your soaps is in a fucking FOOD DEHYDRATOR. Jesus. Why don’t I trust my shopping instincts?

So that’s our calling in life. Co-Presidents/Supreme Rulers of GrosSoaps, LLC. We’re kicking ass and taking orders. Sort of. Do you want a soap? Just come and let us know. As soon as we figure out how to make it, we’ll put you on our waiting list.

Love,

Mandey

P.S.: You don’t happen to have a toy piano we could use, huh?