Vanilla Box Toiletry Set

Ultra rare 1/1 never to be produced again Vanilla Box toiletry set

Yeah you could right click + save image on the Bandcamp profile pic and make one yourself on Zazzle.com but it’s a small photo and it’ll come out pixelated and everyone will know how desperate you are to seem like you own a $400 toiletry set. But when you show it to your friends they’ll be nice to your face and congratulate you for having it and then probably change the subject but then they’ll all talk privately about how you went through the process of faking something so trivial and what kind of person that makes you seem like. And then they’ll make a separate group chat with all of the same people except you and it’ll probably have a funny group chat name like “100% Authentic $400 Toiletry Set” and you’ll wonder why the group chat hasn’t been as active lately because they still occasionally send stuff to the group chat that you’re in because they don’t want you to realize you’ve been cut out which is honestly shitty too and they have their own problems to deal with if we’re being frank. But eventually the group chat will peter out completely and you’ll know they’ve moved on without you and you’ll spend a lot of time thinking about what happened between you and the people you used to call friends and one day, in a moment of uncharacteristic clarity, you’ll realize things were never really the same after you pretended to have that super cool toiletry set. And in your misplaced anger and regret, you’ll begin to hate the record label that offered you the idea in the first place, which isn’t fair, and you’ll turn the fake toiletry set around on your bathroom counter so that the logo isn’t visible because you don’t want to think about it when you brush your teeth and you can’t be troubled with buying a new toiletry set, not because you’re an especially busy person but because you only got this one to show it off and you were basically fine with getting soap out of the plastic container it comes in and leaving your toothbrush on the little tile alcove above the countertop. And after years of stunted confidence and fear of the vulnerability that allowed you to get hurt so bad, all of which you blame on a record label’s stupidly expensive, yet elegant, toiletry set, and thereby the label itself, you decide that the only way to get closure and move on from the traumatic event that seems to have thrust you on to this lonely road, is to buy the very toiletry set that served as the initial domino. But the website is down because I’ve moved on to Italian disco and I don’t think about punk or this label much anymore and I’m very busy with my son, Koto, and my daughter, Radiorama, and I don’t get back to your email right away, because even though I’ve forwarded the emails from the email address associated with this website to the one I use for my Italian disco label because I’m ultimately a pretty responsible person, I just don’t get a lot of time to check my email much anymore since I read that article about staying in the moment a few weeks ago. But when I do see your email I go digging through my old punk label merch and I chuckle to myself because no one ever bought the $400 toiletry set I made and I return your email telling you that I’m glad someone is still thinking about it after all these years and that you can just have it and not to worry about it. But then a few days later your mother, of all people, emails me back on your email address telling me that unfortunately you’ve taken your own life and I’m absolutely horrified, because you seemed like a nice person and your email was well written and relatable, but also because I didn’t respond to it right away and maybe if I had gotten back to you quickly enough we could have developed a back and forth that eventually lead to a friendship that could have helped us both. But then your mom says you actually left me a note, which is surprising because, like I mentioned I didn’t respond to your email quickly enough so we never had any contact, but then I think maybe you were someone who I met a long time ago and forgot, which is sad but possible because you meet a lot of people and there are some people I still think about even though I didn’t leave any lasting impression on them at all and I’m positive they don’t think about me so hey, it's possible if this guy was asking about a $400 toiletry set years and years after I was selling it then maybe I was one of those people for him and that’s extremely flattering, which clouds my judgement, and I agree to rent a car and drive to upstate New York to read the note your mom said you wrote for me in person instead of her just sending me a photo of it over email, which seems like a bad thing to ask a bereaved mother to do. As I’m walking up to the porch I start to realize that I never got any solid proof from your mom that you were dead, or that she was even your mom emailing me, and I start to worry that the guy who wanted to buy my $400 toiletry set may be actually luring me to his average suburban home in Rochester to murder me in a horrific or annoying way. But to my surprise a mother, coincidentally very similar looking to the one I had imagined before I feared you’d kill me, answers the door and solemnly leads me through a tidy home to your room, a room that hasn’t seen a visitor in some time, I imagine as I push papers around your desk, unsure of what else to do in a dead stranger’s room. After a moment of silence your mother points me to the supposed note you wrote me sitting folded, undisturbed on your nightstand and I approach it with excitement and unease, hesitating as I unfold it to fantasize what it might say and how I would have responded if you were still here. Were you a friend that I never really clicked with but still felt a genuine connection to that faded when people stopped using social media so much? Were you an enemy that hoped to make amends after years of toiling over a past transgression that didn’t seem so bad in retrospect? Could this ripped, folded notebook paper possibly hold the answers to the questions I had after responding to something so innocent and odd as an email from an unfamiliar person who wanted to buy a toiletry set from me? I notice your mom is watching me as I stand motionless holding the note you wrote to me, so I begin to unfold it hoping that somehow the words you’ve written will illuminate this extremely strange situation I’ve found myself in, words that will hopefully change me as a human and push me into a new way of being, words written by a stranger that speak so clearly to me personally that I finally comprehend that we must all be the same, but instead the words read: “$400 really isn’t that bad for a nice toiletry set.”

(TOOTHBRUSH NOT INCLUDED DON'T BE CHEAP)