Oh my God, no one at this potluck is eating the Dr. Pepper barbeque chicken ranch casserole I brought. It’s sitting there at the back of the table with a layer of congealed dust forming, while all the other sexier dishes are half empty and glistening with dripped Pavlovian saliva. This is unacceptable.

What should I do? If that dish is untouched at the end of the night they’ll link it back to me and never invite me to a potluck again. I’ll be blacklisted from the potluck community and spend my evenings scrolling through their Instagram party pictures with a gun in mouth. I should have just brought wine and Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips like that lazy fuck Pete. Everyone likes wine and Sun Chips, but no, I had to marinate chicken in my homemade Dr. Pepper barbeque sauce and toss it with ranch pasta salad. And now it’s sitting there on the stage like the only actor with no spotlight on him.

Clearly I need to flip over the table and yell, “Fire!” but perhaps there’s a better way. Should I storm out with the room temperature casserole and eat it while crying alone in the car? Do I stand on the table with a lampshade on my head and drunkenly piss onto the other more popular dishes?

No, prudency is needed here. I must find a way to get people to eat that horrible fucking casserole I made. Perhaps they don’t understand that the dish is actually edible food. Maybe they think it’s a paper weight or sculpture or an old laptop with stickers on it. If I pantomime eating the food like you would in front of a baby or dog to get them to eat, that might inspire a little casserole action.

Geez, that couldn’t have gone worse. I said, “Boy this casserole looks good,” a little loudly to the savages around the snack table, and then ate some too quickly and coughed it up against the wall, where it’s slowly sliding down to the floor like a dead worm. But only a few people saw that.

I need to start a grassroots campaign for my shitty casserole dish and create potluck buzz. It’s probably too late in the evening to get the local weeklies to list my Dr. Pepper Ranch Casserole as one of the hottest eats in the city. And I only have 12 followers on Instagram, so filming myself eating it like a food influencer won’t work either. In-party word of mouth is likely best. I’ll make my way around the room and ask people if they tried the casserole, making sure not to have this fake conversation with anyone who knows I brought it.

Jeff told me he’s full, and Sarah says that casserole looks like the shredded lettuce you find at the bottom of fast food burger bags. I told Bill that the casserole was Better Home & Gardens’ most popular online recipe, and he belched and walked away.

“Have you tried that casserole?” I said to everyone approaching the table like a motion-detecting sales robot, “I don’t know who made it but I need to get the recipe.”

Most just politely nodded and went for the taquitos. Except Estelle. She stared right through me.

“Didn’t you make it? Don’t you bring that crap every month?” But I denied it. Then I asked her out as a distraction and she said no. Hopefully she only remembers that part.

Wait a second, that fat fuck Bryan is leaning over the casserole and considering it. He’s grabbing a plate! He’s scooping some of it onto the plate with a furrowed brow! He’s chewing like a suspicious cow in a cartoon! He’s coughing, he’s holding his chest, he’s down. Fuck.

“Does anyone know the Heimlich maneuver?”

No one did. I asked the ambulance guys if they wanted some casserole but they waved me off and kept trying to resuscitate Bryan. So I picked up the casserole dish and slowly walked out while everyone stared at me.

Maybe no one ate it, but at least they’ll remember it. And that’s all that matters. That and Bryan dying.