The Ultimate Mayo: Ryan’s Rotten Turkey Victory

Donna Trump

Picture a Sunday. A man is sitting in his chair, something in his apartment smells like a crime scene, and his first suspect is a banana peel. A banana peel, Jesse. Nobody leaves a banana peel that powerful. Nobody.

Jesse

That's what Ryan says, though. He had his chair pulled out a little, he figured he'd missed an old banana peel somewhere, and he went hunting. Looked all over the place, and he lived with it for a couple of days. A couple of days of sniffing around his own home like a bloodhound with no training.

Donna Trump

And the real culprit? Ground turkey. Ground turkey from Amazon. He left it out in a grocery bag on the floor. Not the fridge. Not the freezer. The floor. Ground turkey on the floor, rotting, and the smell is winning. The smell is winning, Jesse, and he has no idea who he's fighting.

Jesse

And he says it was accidental. He bought so much from Amazon that the bag just got forgotten. I believe him. That part, I've got no trouble with. Everybody's lost a bag of groceries in their own house. What gets me is how he names the turkey. He keeps saying Jennie and Craig.

Donna Trump

Jennie and Craig!

Jesse

My guess, and it's only a guess, is he's mashing a turkey brand together with a weight loss program. That's not in the journal, that's me reading between the lines. But it tells you where his head was. Man's got the turkey, the diet plan, and a stink he can't find.

Donna Trump

Now, he tells us the smell got so bad it interfered with his private evening routine. We'll keep it classy here. But he also reports that he completed that routine anyway. Smell and all. And he calls that, quote, a good thing. Folks, that is a man who does not concede a round. Does not concede! Remember that, because it matters later.

Jesse

It matters. Plain and simple, the man doesn't quit. So he goes looking in the kitchen. A couple of boxes of food on the floor, some of it still in those grocery bags from Albertsons. And there it is. The turkey package, ripening, and some of the juices on the floor.

Donna Trump

He wraps it up. Takes it to the dumpster. Gets rid of it. Mops the floor. Mopped! He says the smell improved, and he thought he was okay. Thought things were fine.

Jesse

But he could still smell it. Another day goes by, same question. Where is this coming from? I mopped. I did everything. And I'll tell you, that's the part that gets me, because it's so ordinary. You clean, you did your part, and the house just keeps telling you no.

Donna Trump

So he goes back to the kitchen, and there's a box. He thought it was dry. He thought it was clean. It was not clean. It was a little damp underneath, and it had been hit by the turkey juice too. The box was in on it, Jesse. The box was in on the whole thing.

Jesse

Now here's the decision point. Ryan has a smelly box. His stated goal, and I'm quoting the spirit of it, is to get the box out of his room so he can kill the smell. Fair enough. The dumpster is where he'd already taken the turkey. So a reasonable man carries the box to the dumpster.

Donna Trump

Oh, you'd think! You would think! But no. He says, and I love this, that he's very tired. Very tired. He says it was no lie. So what does he do? There's a fire exit door right next to his apartment door, and between that door and the stairwell there's a little landing. He calls it a balcony. And he sets the box down right there.

Jesse

Right next to his own door. The man didn't even carry it far enough to have a story about the trip.

Donna Trump

He closes the door. He calls it a day. And then, Jesse, then the real problem starts. Because that box is an Amazon box. And what's on an Amazon box?

Jesse

The shipping label. His name, his address, all of it, still on there. And he knows. He thinks about it right then. He wonders if the sticker's still on the box, and he decides he doesn't want to go check. He doesn't want to see the box, he doesn't want to smell the box. So he just carries the question around.

Donna Trump

And he has history! He has precedent! A year ago, maybe two, he gets a twenty dollar fine from the Housing Authority because a box with his name on it didn't go down the trash chute very well. Twenty bucks. So he knows the rules. He knows the penalty. He knows the postage sticker is the evidence. And he leaves the box with the sticker on it in a hallway. On purpose.

Jesse

Well, not on purpose, exactly. He says it sat in his conscience. Not constantly, but a little bit. He told himself he'd better go out next day, pick it up and throw it away so he wouldn't get a fine. Then a day went by. Then two. Three. And it faded. He figured somebody probably picked it up and threw it out.

Donna Trump

Nobody picked it up! Nobody picked it up! He goes out today, Saturday, he checks the landing, and the box is still there! Same spot! Same box! And he checks the label, and his name and his address are right there on that empty box that stinks of old ground turkey juice! Legible! Perfectly legible!

Jesse

He tells us people do use that stairwell. Maybe twice a day you'd hear the door. Some folks skip the elevator, though he says he wouldn't recommend it. He calls it a death trap if you go down there by yourself. So the traffic is light, but it isn't zero. That box sat in plain view for about four or five days.

Donna Trump

And what is the normal human reaction? Embarrassment. Maybe relief. Maybe a quiet little promise to never do that again. Right? Go to the dumpster. Take the box, take the label, take the lesson.

Jesse

That's what I'd have done. That's what most people would've done. Ryan went another direction.

Donna Trump

He sat in his chair and said, I just won. I won! He got away with it for four fucking days, in his words. No fine, no lease violation, no warning. And that, Jesse, is when the phrase arrives. The ultimate mayo. The ultimate mayo!

Jesse

And here's the funny thing. He opens the whole recording with it, laughs about it, and says we'll get back to it later. And then he never really defines it. It just means the ultimate win. He told us the story, and the phrase is the trophy.

Donna Trump

Then comes the question that keeps him up. Did I win? Did the Housing Authority win? Or did we both win? He lands on both. Both of us won! The Housing Authority didn't lose, he didn't lose, and everybody's a champion. That is the most generous reading of a box on a hallway floor I have ever heard.

Jesse

Then he talks himself out of it. Was it just me alone in the ring? And he admits, plainly, that if a staff member had seen that box, they'd have given him a violation. He says they would, totally. So the win is based on the fact that nobody looked. That's the whole victory. Nobody looked.

Donna Trump

But he's not done! He's got the heavyweight belt around his waist! He's got Thunderlips! He's got Rocky! He's reaching for a song, a Rocky IV song, and he wants it to be the song with the line about the victory being yours alone.

Jesse

And he tells us the singer is Steve Perry from Journey. Then he says, quote, don't fucking correct me. He tells the host, and the audience, to leave it alone. He needs it to be Steve Perry.

Donna Trump

And we respect that. We absolutely respect that. We're not going to correct him.

Jesse

Well, I'll just read the track listing out loud, and what you do with it is your business. The Rocky IV soundtrack has Burning Heart by Survivor. It has No Easy Way Out by Robert Tepper. And there's a song called The Sweetest Victory by a band called Touch. That's the one that never made it into the film, though it's still on the soundtrack. Ryan wandered through three of them. He never said Steve Perry on a single one of those.

Donna Trump

He ends up on Burning Heart. Burning Heart! Fine! The man has the victory, the song, the belt, the whole production. But then, Jesse, the doubt comes in. He remembers there's a camera right outside his door.

Jesse

Yeah. He says they'd have to have seen him on video carrying the box out. So now the story flips. Maybe somebody found it, took a picture, and is quietly watching to see how long it takes him to deal with it. Maybe he's already caught and doesn't know it. A notice in the mailbox, something on the door. It's still coming, he says. Right now, though, he thinks he's won.

Donna Trump

Right now he thinks he's won! And that is the energy, Jesse! Hold the belt! Hold the belt until somebody takes it from you! Because, listen, the victory is not about the box. The victory is about holding on! Holding on, holding on, and not giving it back!

Jesse

And that's where he goes. He's keeping the box. He's going to air it out, clean it, get the smell off, wrap it in Christmas paper. And then he has two plans. One, he puts it under the tree in the common room, maybe with money in it, maybe empty, and whoever gets it gets it. Or two, he keeps it. Wrapped. For maybe the rest of his life.

Donna Trump

Cherish the victory. He said that. Cherish it.

Jesse

The man is torn on whether to give away his trophy. And honestly, I've heard worse reasons to hold onto something. A box that smelled like a mistake, wrapped up pretty, for the one time the rules didn't catch him. Folks, you can't make this up. It happened, and he wants to keep it.