The Peanut Butter Faction

don't know why i keep writing stories instead of normal posts...

Sorry this one’s late—even though it was written and completed freakishly early by our standards (90 minutes before noon), we just forgot to schedule it. Whoops. Not one “where’s my low lift ask 😭” text message came through, so I guess we just didn’t notice. Hm.

Hortense was in the kitchen at a crowded house party in St. Louis when she met Olebi. “That’s a really nice name,” she said. “Is it African? I mean, you’re not—I just—it seems like, etymologically, it sounds like names I’ve heard, from like Nigeria or something. You know, like Olufemi.”

“I’m Filipino,” said Olebi. They were yelling in each other’s faces, really. No one had introduced them. They were crushed in the kitchen together and about the same eye level. It was a we-can’t-really-move-situation. If you’re wondering about whether or not they’d clocked their reality, and whether or not their conversation represented tacit acknowledgment of their shared constraints, and whether or not a knowing eye roll was deployed to start the conversation, fret not: the answers are yes across the board. “My parents named me after Jollibee, the fast food chain. But they shortened it.”

“What?” said Hortense. “That’s crazy. They shortened it just by cutting off the first letter?”

“Yeah, and they fucked up the spelling kind of bad too.”

“Damn. I was named after a plant,” said Hortense, rooted, branching, flowering.

“That’s cool,” said Olebi. “I like plants.”

“What’s your job?” asked Hortense.

“I’m a gardener!” said Olebi, grinning.

“Oh, so you really do like plants!” said Hortense, smiling big back. It was a lame interaction on its surface, but the last bit of it actually made it extremely playful and flirtatious and awesome in a way that kept both of them thinking about it as the crowd moved them in directions they couldn’t foresee, and they found each other on the couch soon after.

“I’m going to tell you something kind of weird and dumb,” said Olebi, one hour later as three guests walked out, leaving only fifteen people left at the party, the host of which neither of them knew that well. Hortense leaned in. “I’m really obsessed with this one online subculture.”

“Are you a furry or something?” said Hortense. Big suit, sweaty, creepy eyes, all swept through her mind. That’s not right. Don’t make assumptions. This person is cool. She locked back in.

“No! No, nothing sexual. It’s—we’re—sort of obsessed with this one peanut butter.”

The confession made Hortense tingle inside. A small moment of recognition and wonder.

“Okay, basically,” Olebi started, nerves dripping out of her. Yes, Olebi was a beautiful and perfect she/her, just in case it wasn’t clear. And seeing how nervous she was, obviously, made Hortense like her even more. “Basically when I was a kid, at some point, I think when I was seven or eight, I tried this insanely good peanut butter, just one time. It was so good, and then when I got older, I started trying to find it online, because I wanted so badly to have it again. And then, after googling enough, I posted on Reddit, like /r/tipofmytongue, and /r/findchildhoodfoods about it. And there was a guy who said he’d had the same exact experience. Down to the purple label on the jar and everything.”

“Purple label?” said Hortense.

“I mean, yeah, that’s like the one thing I remember. A purple label. The jar covered in purple, and the best peanut butter, or really food, I ever ate. So this guy DM’d me a link, and added me to a Discord, and there are hundreds of people out there who swear by the same experience. Purple label, life changing peanut butter.”

As Olebi spoke, Hortense felt a strange light feeling run through her body. “Me too. Wait. Me too. I’m remembering…”

Olebi looked at her, eyes wide. “You…”

“Yes. Yes. I guess I’d forgotten. But I remember a purple jar. And I remember having peanut butter, and then thinking about it a lot for a long time, and really missing it, and feeling very alienated from everyone else who was just living life and dealing with everyday problems,” Hortense said breathlessly. “I think I tried the same peanut butter!”

“We call it Peeb. In the Discord. It’s shortened to Peeb,” said Olebi. “Wait, I have to add you. Sorry, I can’t believe I’m meeting you.”

“No, I know. I know. It’s actually insane,” said Hortense, tearing up. “I can’t believe someone else had the same experience.”

“Ohhh,” said Olebi, and embraced Hortense, who began to sob. “I know. It’s powerful. I’ve cried over it too.”

“It was so good,” said Hortense, tearfully. “I don’t even really care about peanut butter otherwise. This was just so transcendent it broke the bounds of the genre.”

“No, I know,” said Olebi. “I need to say something that sounds crazy. But I think eating Peeb was probably the best experience I ever had. And I would basically do anything to experience it again. Like, it might be the most important thing in my life. This quest. I even became a gardener to experiment with peanut cultivars.”

Hortense kissed Olebi. It was welcomed. “Me too. Me too. Nothing else has ever come to eating… Peeb.” She hit one more huge heaving sob, out of the blue, and then was done. “I can’t believe I found you.”

Years of obsession passed. Olebi and Hortense moved in, Olebi working around the clock to elicit the exact texture and taste of Peeb from batch after batch of peanut butter. Nothing hit. People in the Discord said it was creamy, fluffy, crunchy, fatty. All kinds of words were used to describe it, and eventually it was agreed that there was an ineffable and unnamed quality to Peeb that made it special. There was an attempt to name it. This started as Peeb Quality, then became PQ, then Pequod, then Queequeg, then just Queg. Olebi spent her time in search of Queg. Queg was a binary quality of peanut butter. If a peanut butter had Queg, it was Peeb. No Queg, no Peeb. Capisce?

The history of Peeb continued to be a mystery—everyone had tried it in a different place, at a different time. A purple jar brought home once, and never again. Bought by parents at Kroger, Fairway, Publix, Winn-Dixie, Shaws, Wegmans, Price Chopper, Hannaford, Kum and Go, Albertsons, Safeway, Whole Foods, Western Beef, Ralphs, Gelsons, Sam’s Club, Roundy’s, and Vons. Trader Joes didn’t have it, but that make sense. They have a more vertically integrated business model. No one ever had ever gotten more than one jar, no matter how much they begged their parents. And there was no record anywhere online.

Membership in the Discord peaked, then waned. People began to drop off. Peeb was a fool’s errand, some said. Yes, having it again would be life changing. But it was never going to happen. Better to pull up anchor / trou and move on to greener pastures, farm for happiness somewhere else. Maybe one could forget about Peeb.

Hortense was starting to feel this way. Her and Olebi’s friends had long since fallen away, and she missed a more diversified and active social life. Their obsession was maybe going too far, she said one day.

“Too far? What the fuck are you talking about?” exploded Olebi. “We’re in so fucking deep on this thing. Everyone else fucks around and just, like, does shit in the hope it will make them happy. I know what’ll make us happy. It’s all I want and sort of all I ever wanted.” She got really close to Hortense. “Ever since I tried Peeb, the feeling of Queg, ever since I experienced that, it lodged itself deep inside. This is my core, dude. There’s nothing else. This is the scaffolding for the rest of my personality. You might think it’s sad, to just have peanut butter be the core of your personality, but that’s based in some dumb abstract idea of how people should be.”

“It is an obsession,” Hortense said sadly. “It’s your religion.”

“Peeb is not an obsession. Peeb is just Peeb. Queg is just Queg. They don’t need to mean something more than what they are to be the foundation of my life. It wasn’t spiritual, it wasn’t about God or belief or faith. It’s just about this being, probably, the best food on earth. Like, the apotheosis of food. Like, food is just food, y’know? We’ve always eaten food. Animals eat food. Food doesn’t have to map cleanly onto some literary metaphor. It’s FOOD. And I don’t even care about it that much, except that whatever drive was set into motion by the taste of Peeb is so strong I don’t even try and fight it. I just let it control me and don’t question it,” Olebi said. “I need to have it again. I won’t be happy until I do, not deep down. And if I die without having tried it again, I’ll be fucking miserable in the afterlife. But it’ll have been fine, because I will have lived authentically to my desires.”

There was something wise-feeling in these words, but Hortense bailed anyway, and built a life elsewhere, and was more or less okay. Thirty years later, she got a Gleb (this is a future messaging protocol) from Olebi that said “I’m coming over.” Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang, and Olebi stood there, ever the beautiful she/her. She was smiling huge.

“What’s up?” said Hortense, somewhat testily.

“I did it,” said Olebi, and pulled out a jar with a purple label.

“Oh god, fucking Peeb?” said Hortense. “You got Queg?” She was aware of how dumb as fuck she sounded, having re-entered normal society and given birth to kids who roasted her mercilessly.

“I got it.” Olebi dipped her index finger in. A beautiful dark brown. She licked it off. “It’s perfect.”

Five minutes later, they were sitting at Hortense’s kitchen table, a sandwich being assembled in front of them by a Gleb (it’s a conglomerate) kitchen helper robot.

“Are you sure you don’t want to try it raw first?” asked Olebi, skeptically.

“I had it in a PBJ the first time,” said Hortense. “I guess I want to recreate the experience.” She took a bite.

Olebi waited as she chewed. She saw the change in her eyes. “So?”

“Yeah, wow,” said Hortense. “It is really… wow.”

“I know. I know,” said Olebi.

“You found Queg. You found Peeb,” said Hortense.

“I know. I know,” said Olebi again, dumbly.

“Wait, so what was it? How did you make it?”

Olebi smiled. “Okay, you’re never going to guess the secret ingredient.”

“What, what is it?” Hortense looked at her expectantly.

“Slow Loris cum! Gallons and gallons of it,” crowed Olebi.

“Huh,” said Hortense, chewing thoughtfully. “Nice.”

“They’re all uncircumsised, too. So maybe some bacteria in there. Assuming they don’t clean that shit much, y’know.”

“Right,” said Hortense, munching.

looks like he’s saying “shh”

Nabeel’s Footnote

Huh. Well.

Will let y’all handle this one—I think I’m calling in a vacation day! See you next week!