I watched the clock today with the intensity of a dysfunctional bird trapped in a beige-tone plastic coated cage. The sale descriptions on the boxes for latex underwear have the closing line, feel the forbidden sensuality of its stretchy caress. I wondered briefly, when I noticed, if that’s a technical term, because why else would anyone be attracted to the term stretchy caress? This is the same store that sells an item named someone’s Salsa Pussy. Every one of these tawdry products was made by people. Multiple people. There were entire meetings and production facilities and conversations at three in the morning involving asset pitches to different time zones. Whenever I think of people bringing home a product as banal as Inflatable Fat Fanny, something shrivels inside my glands. My conclusion is that working in this love shop is strange and deadens my soul to random desire like hammered lead. People ask if anyone ever buys some of of our more extremely large dildos and I tell them to look it up on-line. Every toy in the store is likely in a video somewhere, and no, women can’t use that, our bone structure won’t allow for it, suckers. Take that. All twenty by nine inches of it.
A highlight of the day was sitting alone and writing in my black book, my feet on the counter between the tiny packets of silicone lube and the love dice, (place and position), while the other employees went to point at Al Pacino across the street. They were thrilled, but my personal moment of well being came from hearing R.C. on the radio orating poetry like the rumbling of a chop-top hotrod with candy pinstripe detailing just over some mythical hill of mocking english majors. It was like a light of sanity in the new glo-in-the-darkness. Right, I thought. I know this man. This wonderful intelligent man. I know him enough to want to hug him when I say hello. Suddenly my life wasn’t as bad as reading a magazine in a waiting room. It had been upgraded to sitting like a mannequin on stage, listening for my next line, remembering that I’m scheduled to be human soon.
Flirting with me was a slight fantasy about going trick or treating. Putting a sheet over my head with holes cut out and hitting up all my friend’s houses. If I had a vehicle, I might have done it. Gathered my courage and knocked on doors to say “Trick or treat, I haven’t seen you in awhile. Happy birthday in case I missed it. Do you have chocolate? I’m hoping for chocolate.” then laughed and hugged them, pulled them close to kiss them on the cheek. I could have dragged as many people as possible over to Main and fourteenth for the maze and fright houses set up by the local gods of spooky and collected treasure heaps of candy to live off of for the next few months. (For a sugar hound, I have an admirable habit left over from a dirt poor childhood of hoarding my rare and precious sweets.) From all reports, it’s not like the local kids went out to brave the neighborhoods for candy. I suppose I should have stood up to my psyche and run with it. Ah well, regrets and hindsight. The movie was pleasant enough and the company comforting. Graham came as some sort of proto-goth, Beth was a string fairy, Herminia was a preppy, and Eugene might have come as a straight boy. I couldn’t tell.