Was it all a dream? Did it actually happen? A hint of cinnamon lingering on my tongue the only indication that, yes, that which you perceive to be real in fact is. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time my work life bled its way into the sleep realm, contorting reality into some grotesque simulacrum, like the time I won US Cup Tasters by slurping from a diner mug. But this one feels different in a way. Far-fetched, but tangible.
Here’s what I know for sure: last week I wrote about 7-Eleven releasing a pumpkin spice-flavored Slurpee, or “PSLurpee” as Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman correctly dubbed it. The PSLurpee came out August 1st, and was limited to just five 7-Elevens locations nationwide. One of which just so happened to be in my own backyard. Being the Chicken Little constantly clucking about the tyranny of the pumpkin spice, this seemed like a good chance to indulge myself in the seasonal encroachment. Maybe the sky isn’t falling and a little autumn in summer is fine. So that’s what I did. I made the 30-minute drive to give the pumpkin spice Slurpee a fair shot.
Or at least I think I did. Like an alien encounter or a bout of hypnosis, the dream logic of what ensued became an amalgam of all my previous PSL experiences, scrambled out of place like a four-dimensional Rubik’s Cube.
Finding the 7-Eleven was a bit of a hero’s quest unto itself. Mapping to the address given in the press release returns not a convenience store but the company’s Irving, Texas corporate headquarters, a nondescript four-story grey building located in the west Dallas suburb. Brutal, but not Brutalist. All access roads into the HQ are guarded with a security checkpoint, straining all credulity of the “convenience” in the process. Does the store even really exist?
Undeterred, I circled the building checking for a weak point in their defense (or at least a place to pull over and see if there were any other 7-Elevens nearby that may fit the bill). And there it was, on a back road behind the building: the telll-tale orange, green, and red stripes. A hidden convenience store. A 7-Eleven speakeasy.
Inside, it had the look of other 7-Elevens, but something was off about it. It was too clean, too sterile, too perfect. As though some eccentric billionaire had meticulously recreated the convenience store down to the last detail—the Slurpee machine, the rows of candy, the backdrop of cigarettes framing the cashier—so they could partake in normal daily human activities without having to come near any actual humans. A fully functioning collector’s item to which I was an uninvited guest.
Everyone else in the store appeared to be employed by the company and this was their own personal commissary and test kitchen. Business casual 7-Eleven-branded polo shirts picking up deli sandwiches, a promotional interview video taking place in the chips aisle with a claustrophobically tight close-up of some regional management figure, and me. I could feel their eyes as I hurried toward the Slurpee machine. Is this one of those dreams where you forgot to put on pants before going out?
Decency be damned, I push ahead and there I finally see it: the pumpkin spice Slurpee, tumbling in orange technicolor. I was happy to find that this was one of the old-school Slurpee machines, the analog lever-type with the shiny black knob that you can really drive, not the soulless digital touchscreen that farts out whatever color combination you select. I make a straight up PSLurpee, then a second one, this time a combination of PSL and Coca-Cola, which had been discussed previously as potentially being really good. I pay and hightail it out of there as quickly as I can, lest they force me to join their corporate cult.
Back in the safe space of my car, where I definitely did have pants on—suspiciously in the same pumpkin spice color palette—I get my first chance to actually taste the PSLurpee critically (as might be expected from a dream Cup Tasters champion). The first sip was just so cinnamony. Just cinnamon and cold until your brain freezes over and you have to press your tongue to the roof of your mouth. It’s not that Red Hots-like cinnamonesque candy flavor, but rather, a wallop of real, actual cinnamon flavor with a syrupy sweetness. It wouldn’t be entirely out of place in a latte on some specialty shop’s fall menu.
As the slush melts and dilutes the drink, the cinnamon flavor dies down and new notes of nutmeg and vanilla begin to emerge, and the drink becomes—dare I say—good? Maybe it was the 100° heat, but I found myself continuing to reach toward the cup holder, first out of journalistic integrity, then morbid curiosity, then bona fide enjoyment. Now on to the Coca-Cola combo.
This was delicious from the jump. The pumpkin spice provided the richer bass notes, the back beat over which the trebly Coca-Cola could wail. It’s the dream pairing and the perfect use of the pumpkin spice, and I’m flummoxed as to why Coca-Cola hasn’t created a version yet.
Whether either of these Slurpees actually ever existed who can say. Parsing what was real from what was a dramatic-reinterpretation-as-fever-dream of a previous article would require a deep understanding of the film Mulholland Drive, perhaps the entire Lynchian canon, of which I simply do not possess. But maybe the point of the pumpkin spice Slurpee isn’t in the overwhelming cinnamonness of it all, it lies not in its truth, maybe it’s really all about the Slurpees (we think) we had along the way.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
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Zac Cadwalader
August 14, 2024
