Hello, [Wendy / Mary / Sherry / Sandy / Kitty / Candy / unnamed “little girl”], and welcome to Rosalita’s.
No doubt you were brought here because Bruce Springsteen wrote an incredible song whose sole purpose was to convince you to [quit this scene / drive deep into the night on the highway in a car / drive deep into the night on the highway on a motorcycle / go down the shore]. Here at Rosalita’s, you will find validation and support in the company of like-minded women and girls: the residents and employees of Rosalita’s are women from New Jersey named Wendy, Mary, Sherry, Sandy, Kitty, Candy, or, of course, Rosalita, who is our founder and CEO. We know exactly what you’re going through.
The good news is you have been liberated from your stultifying small-town working-class existence. The bad news is after you broke out of your town and tore out across the highway, you soon discovered you’d been dropped off somewhere far from home with no connections and no skills, having abandoned everything you know to follow a man whose eloquence about [his loneliness / his longing / the older generation’s empty promises / the American mythos surrounding the link between hard work and economic mobility] ultimately devolved into a series of [na-na-nahs / sha-la-las / woo-hoos] by the time he got to the [musical / literal] bridge.
Listen, sister, you don’t need to feel embarrassed with us. As we know all too well, this charmer came packing a lot of insight. It’s true that your daddy [never did understand / was not home, having gone and left you all alone]. It’s true that you were worried about [the economy / your fading youth / the town’s death-trappiness]. You had no way of knowing that Bruce had groomed an entire stable of women and girls with disyllabic names ending in “-y.”
Maybe you started to get some sense that you were heading the wrong way down Highway 9 when Bruce mentioned that [respite from the grind of working-class life is always temporary / he’s not a hero / the union (literally and metaphorically) isn’t as strong as anyone had thought / his desire is “strange” / there is no happy ending awaiting those who rebel against the status quo, because the American dream is and has always been an illusion]. But by then, it was too late.
Don’t worry: you’ve made it to the right place, and you’re going to be fine. At Rosalita’s Boarding House, we’re here to prepare you more realistically for life outside the stifling town you’ve been liberated from. We’ll focus on your transition from a symbolic accessory to Bruce Springsteen’s rejection of [capitalist injustice / small-minded provinciality / suburban suffocation / restrictive sexual mores] to a fully realized person in your own right.
We have experts who teach classes on the following essential topics:
- Harnessing your waitressing skills for upward mobility
- Child/parent communication beyond screaming, “I’m leaving with Bruce!”
- Obstetric care and/or abortion providers in the state of New Jersey
- How to have fun at places other than boardwalks
If you [see ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away / hear all the boys you sent away screaming your name at night in the street], we can refer you to the appropriate psychiatric care providers.
If you choose to return to the town from which Bruce liberated you, you should know that there are more productive ways to enact change than [leaving / joining the union at the exact moment that globalization has rendered the bargaining power of unions obsolete / snarkily suggesting your peers’ glory days are behind them]. For example, rather than calling it a “town full of losers,” you could run for local office and advocate for policies that provide a generous safety net and free job training for displaced blue-collar workers.
Whatever direction your liberation takes, we at Rosalita’s invite you to carry our daily house affirmation with you: I am a beauty, and hey, I’m all right.