I told myself I’d go to Costco, and now I want to promptly die young in the parking lot. Like an idiot, I decided I needed turkey, which famously, cannot be purchased at any other retailer so now it’s time to voluntarily siphon all the vigor out of my body as I role-play Dante’s descent through hell with every living card-carrying member of AARP. LED ceiling lights, industrial shopping carts, a man eating a rotisserie chicken using a tire as a plate. What could be more conducive to feeling normal.
Each time I force myself to go to this budget-friendly Bacchus festival, the overstimulation creeps up on me around the 4 minute mark. I start sweating. I need water. My socks need to be fixed, NOW. Calming me down from “the Costcos” is the truest litmus test of character: which is why I’ve ranked each Baldur’s Gate 3 companion based on how well they’d treat me while I’m freaking out on a Kirkland futon. Costco is a place of betrayal, survival, and ultimately sacrifice, much like the Sword Coast. Who will, at my lowest, buy me an emotional support hot dog?
11. The Dark Urge
Hey, man, I get it. I too wonder what I was like before (I went to Costco). But easily, The Dark Urge comes in dead last. He most certainly will not ask me to name 5 things I can see while I’m tweaking in the dairy freezer. If anything, he appeals to the worst parts of my id, and I’m not strong enough to fight that influence right now.
10. Minthara
Minthara doesn’t like weakness, and at Costco, I’m the girl equivalent of a labradoodle in a piping-hot Subaru Crosstrek. She will make me cry in front of the guy in the bakery, and he’ll probably offer me a muffin as consolation – which will cause everyone else in the bakery to swarm me, asking where I got that sample. The walls would cave in. Minthara would laugh.
9. Lae’zel
Look – I’m not in a place to receive Lae’zel’s honesty right now, and to be fair, if she doesn’t see anything wrong with her upbringing, she’s not gonna see anything wrong with the adult woman that just bit into the plastic of a pork belly bao package AND PUT IT BACK IN THE FREEZER. I’m not saying she wouldn’t be useful: she would successfully complete the Costco trip, turkey in hand, but only after she left me sniffling in front of 1,000 copies of “Becoming” by Michelle Obama. But I am saying she’d call me pathetic.
8. Astarion
I, more than anyone, know that Costco teeters confusingly on the spectrum of morality. I once saw a person spoon hummus from a sealed container and leave it open on a boogie board. The boundaries between good and evil run thin and Astarion would absolutely be part of the problem. If I went nonverbal, he would roll his eyes at me, steal my Xanax, and join in the malarkey. However, I do think he’d get me my turkey, in the chaos there’s no doubt in my mind that he’d successfully charm a receipt checker out of noticing his obvious shoplifting.
7. Jaheira
I’m not saying Jaheira couldn’t lighten the mood, I just know she wouldn’t go out of her way to comfort me. She’d want me to stop crying, because it isn’t productive, but it doesn’t work like that. It would feel awkward and forced, and I’d probably just bottle it up and break down crying on the way home. Potentially, she’d offer me a chicken bake as a valiant reward, but she wouldn’t give it to me unless I promised to toughen out the rest of the trip, which really isn’t an option right now.
6. Shadowheart
I have this dream that, when Shadowheart sees me zoning out in front of the frozen Angus cheeseburgers, she learns a new, softer side to me, and eventually, she’d be surprised by her own empathy towards my infernal suffering. My feelings may be stupid, but she’d know they matter. My thing is that she’s someone I’d want to comfort, not someone I want to be comforted by. I don’t really need that guilt on my shoulders right now, especially since Costco is full of proverbial rabid wolves, so really, I know we’re both suffering.
5. Minsc
Minsc is kindhearted. He’d make me sniff-laugh. But he isn’t doing anything to solve my breakdown. Minsc would just pop in at the end of the trip, samples in hand, and sure, he’d push the carts out of the way for me, but at the end of the day, he’s still gonna confuse “dairy” for “diary.” And let me be crystal clear: there is no way that damn BOO is going to be of any aid to me as I audition for the DSM-6. I don’t care if he’s from space. I don’t care if he has good intuition. If I see a rodent right now, I’m gonna go ballistic.
4. Halsin
Older and wiser, Halsin can keep it together when I don’t. Upon my first nervous wrist-tapping, he’d buy me a baggy Hanes tee from the men’s section, lead me inside of a camping tent display, and whittle me a duck. He doesn’t want to be there, either, so I feel bad for making him do this all for just some turkey, but I think we’d take peace in closing our eyes and envisioning the woods together.
3. Gale
There’s no world in which Gale was not, in a former life, an Executive Costco Card member. He knows the ropes. Every aisle, every loading bay, he has a technical working memory of this brutalist nightmare and he not only will expedite the trip, but he’ll minimize conflict throughout the store, making for a more peaceful experience for all. The days of bickering over returning half-eaten ravioli will be long gone with Gale in tow. And I will be better for it.
2. Karlach
First I hear it, then I feel it: I just got body-checked by a cart full of dry-roasted almonds. But I know I don’t have to turn around because Karlach will deal with this for me. She gets it. We’re both overheating, and she too is familiar with hell. I have enough rage for the both of us so she can carry the love. Karlach will give me the Princess treatment I deserve for doing a basic human task: she’s gonna carry me outside, buy me a pizza, and wipe off a table for us to share. She believes I can get better, so I will.
1. Wyll
Code red: I just watched an old man discard a whole salmon filet in the soap aisle. A wave of existentialist melancholy hits me: that fish died just to rot here. It’ll be tossed, in hours to come, and his body will be deemed unusable for all else. Costco, as my clothes shrink around my numb body, becomes yet another Sartrian reminder that life is inherently meaningless. I cry.
Enter Wyll: caring, in-tune to the struggle of others, and unstoppable in the face of his goals. He desperately wants to be a hero, and who better than me to boost someone’s martyr complex. Empathetically and reliably, he assures me that somehow, other parts of the salmon will not go to waste. I know he’s wrong, but I believe him anyway. With Wyll by my side, suddenly, I don’t care that there’s a 35 cart backup to sample half of a tortilla chip. I won’t say things like, “Have you people not ever, in your entire lives, had a tortilla chip before?” I maybe even want them to…enjoy themselves. With Wyll, I am liberated. I am free.
