The last two days have been interesting in a Seinfield-ian fashion. Yesterday marked an ominous occasion: the return of Joey. Joey is a tall, scarecrow-like man. He has a scraggily Old Testament salt-and-pepper beard and long stringy hair. He looks to be in his early 60s. He is also, sadly, mentally handicapped. He has the attitude and demeanor of a six year old.
The first time I encountered Joey was the most excruiciating hour and a half I've ever had to deal with at work. I was putting away books in the Performing Arts section, gazing fondly at a copy of Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming" (an excellent book) when a most foul and unholy smell drifted into my nostrils, coming from behind me. I turn and see the source of the smell: Joey. In a high-pitched garbled voice (garbled as though the inside of his mouth was ringed in peanut butter) he asks me where the bathroom is. The stench is un-mistakeable: freshly squeezed human feces. As soon as I direct him towards the bathroom, he turns around and goes back to scoping out our vast array of crappy VHS tapes. My eyes dart down and fix themselves on the back of his grayish jeans: there is a giant brown stain spreading out from the seat of his pants. The stain had an amoeba-ish shape; staring at it for too long almost caused me to be trapped in the world's worst hypnotic state. At this point I need to point out that I have an EXTREMELY sensitive sense of smell. I can smell horrible things before most people can; its like a Spidey-Sense, only instead of detecting danger, I detect rancid odors. Just being a couple of feet away from this guy was nauseating. I go back to shelving, trying to act professional, trying to ignore the overwhelming stench of mud-butt. 'Twas not to be.
"Have you seen Carrie?!" He thrusts the tape in my face. "Should I buy this?" The look on his face is one of intense concentration: he really, really cares about my answer. Not being a huge fan of Carrie (not a bad movie, just never really got bowled over by it), I wasn't quick to say "yeah" to either of his questions. I didn't have to: he kept asking more. "How much is this"? I tell him, to no availl; he will ask that same question about the same tape for the next hour in roughly 10 minute intervals. "Where is this from?" How the fuck should I know? Milwaukee, perhaps? Maybe Maine, as Stephen King is crazy about Maine. "Did this happen? Is this real?" The avalanche of stupid questions continues. It doesn't take me long to make the guy as a (PC be damned) retard, and a part of me felt genuinely awful seeing him in the state he was in, but all sympathy was drowned out by the godawful, soul-destroying smell wafting from his jeans. If I were to walk down the street and bump into Gandhi, I would probably hi-five him and idly chat about the weather. However, if his holy robes were full of shit, I would slap the pacifism out of him. Ditto for Mother Theresa, Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus H. Christ, and any other genuinely kind and decent soul. Bottom-line: if you shit yourself, don't talk to me. Don't come near me. My nose hates you in ways that only the Hatfields and McCoys could understand.
I try to dodge him by switching from shelving to manning the register. Big mistake: now that I'm in a stationary position, he is free to hit me with even more questions. When I try to play it smooth and say "sorry sir, I have to help some customers on the other register", one of my co-workers (a professor of animation and used to work for Fox Studios, an all-round awesome guy) slyly says "don't worry, I'll handle it" and grins evily as he mans the other register, thus depriving me of my exit strategy. At this point, Joey's mom walks into the store and gets in on the action (she looks a bit like Dr. Ruth, only even more wrinkly). He keeps asking her for permission to buy Carrie (and by asking, I mean he jumps up and down, pumping his arms in the air in a piston-like fashion, shouting "I WANT CARRIE! I WANT CARRIE!!!!"). To give his mother some credit, she keeps saying "no Carrie, let's go to Target and buy you some underwear!" To which I mentally shouted "YES JOEY! LISTEN TO MOTHER! GET SOME CLEAN DRAWERS, YOU BROWN-STAINED STRING-BEAN MOTHERFUCKER!" Eventually, after 45 minutes of this, they buy Carrie. They start walking towards the door, and I silently give a shoutout to whatever deities that had decided to answer my prayers. 'Twas not to be: Joey makes a mad dash away from the exit and heads back to the movie section. He picks up an I Love Lucy tape, and the comedy begins again for another 15 minutes. Once his mom (Mademoiselle LaPruneface) caved and bought him Lucy, they FINALLY left. The scent of him would not leave me for another half hour, though. Everywhere I turned, I was assaulted by phantom smells of Joey dookie. The horror, the horror.
This is the backstory to what happened yesterday. He comes back in (minus his mom) and luckily his bowels are doing their job and he smells minty fresh (as minty fresh as an old school California gold prospector-lookalike can smell minty fresh). He's scoping the VHS and I'm starting to sweat: he's going to ask me a question, please God/Satan/Eris/Cthulthu/Christopher Walken, spare me the horror. Sartre keeps running through my head: "hell is other people". In that case, Joey would qualify as THREE CIRCLES OF HELL. He sees me and darts towards me, my heart is thudding out of control, and he asks me a question. But inspiration strikes me and I do the all-American thing: I pass the buck. I stick my finger out and point to another one of my co-workers (Chester, a burlesque loving, theater-appreciating, paperback-collecting, Wallace Shawn look-alike) and with my biggest shit-eating grin say "that man over there knows EVERYTHING about movies, ask him anything, he'll know what to do". Chester hears this and mouths "fuck you, asshole" to me. But it works: Joey Brown-Eye drifts over to him and bothers him for half an hour. Me? I go on break, leaving him to his fate.
Today:
Work is long. I bought and finished the final volume of Mike Carey's Lucifer (awesome).
I've got company to entertain now. Later, gators.
The first time I encountered Joey was the most excruiciating hour and a half I've ever had to deal with at work. I was putting away books in the Performing Arts section, gazing fondly at a copy of Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming" (an excellent book) when a most foul and unholy smell drifted into my nostrils, coming from behind me. I turn and see the source of the smell: Joey. In a high-pitched garbled voice (garbled as though the inside of his mouth was ringed in peanut butter) he asks me where the bathroom is. The stench is un-mistakeable: freshly squeezed human feces. As soon as I direct him towards the bathroom, he turns around and goes back to scoping out our vast array of crappy VHS tapes. My eyes dart down and fix themselves on the back of his grayish jeans: there is a giant brown stain spreading out from the seat of his pants. The stain had an amoeba-ish shape; staring at it for too long almost caused me to be trapped in the world's worst hypnotic state. At this point I need to point out that I have an EXTREMELY sensitive sense of smell. I can smell horrible things before most people can; its like a Spidey-Sense, only instead of detecting danger, I detect rancid odors. Just being a couple of feet away from this guy was nauseating. I go back to shelving, trying to act professional, trying to ignore the overwhelming stench of mud-butt. 'Twas not to be.
"Have you seen Carrie?!" He thrusts the tape in my face. "Should I buy this?" The look on his face is one of intense concentration: he really, really cares about my answer. Not being a huge fan of Carrie (not a bad movie, just never really got bowled over by it), I wasn't quick to say "yeah" to either of his questions. I didn't have to: he kept asking more. "How much is this"? I tell him, to no availl; he will ask that same question about the same tape for the next hour in roughly 10 minute intervals. "Where is this from?" How the fuck should I know? Milwaukee, perhaps? Maybe Maine, as Stephen King is crazy about Maine. "Did this happen? Is this real?" The avalanche of stupid questions continues. It doesn't take me long to make the guy as a (PC be damned) retard, and a part of me felt genuinely awful seeing him in the state he was in, but all sympathy was drowned out by the godawful, soul-destroying smell wafting from his jeans. If I were to walk down the street and bump into Gandhi, I would probably hi-five him and idly chat about the weather. However, if his holy robes were full of shit, I would slap the pacifism out of him. Ditto for Mother Theresa, Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus H. Christ, and any other genuinely kind and decent soul. Bottom-line: if you shit yourself, don't talk to me. Don't come near me. My nose hates you in ways that only the Hatfields and McCoys could understand.
I try to dodge him by switching from shelving to manning the register. Big mistake: now that I'm in a stationary position, he is free to hit me with even more questions. When I try to play it smooth and say "sorry sir, I have to help some customers on the other register", one of my co-workers (a professor of animation and used to work for Fox Studios, an all-round awesome guy) slyly says "don't worry, I'll handle it" and grins evily as he mans the other register, thus depriving me of my exit strategy. At this point, Joey's mom walks into the store and gets in on the action (she looks a bit like Dr. Ruth, only even more wrinkly). He keeps asking her for permission to buy Carrie (and by asking, I mean he jumps up and down, pumping his arms in the air in a piston-like fashion, shouting "I WANT CARRIE! I WANT CARRIE!!!!"). To give his mother some credit, she keeps saying "no Carrie, let's go to Target and buy you some underwear!" To which I mentally shouted "YES JOEY! LISTEN TO MOTHER! GET SOME CLEAN DRAWERS, YOU BROWN-STAINED STRING-BEAN MOTHERFUCKER!" Eventually, after 45 minutes of this, they buy Carrie. They start walking towards the door, and I silently give a shoutout to whatever deities that had decided to answer my prayers. 'Twas not to be: Joey makes a mad dash away from the exit and heads back to the movie section. He picks up an I Love Lucy tape, and the comedy begins again for another 15 minutes. Once his mom (Mademoiselle LaPruneface) caved and bought him Lucy, they FINALLY left. The scent of him would not leave me for another half hour, though. Everywhere I turned, I was assaulted by phantom smells of Joey dookie. The horror, the horror.
This is the backstory to what happened yesterday. He comes back in (minus his mom) and luckily his bowels are doing their job and he smells minty fresh (as minty fresh as an old school California gold prospector-lookalike can smell minty fresh). He's scoping the VHS and I'm starting to sweat: he's going to ask me a question, please God/Satan/Eris/Cthulthu/Christopher Walken, spare me the horror. Sartre keeps running through my head: "hell is other people". In that case, Joey would qualify as THREE CIRCLES OF HELL. He sees me and darts towards me, my heart is thudding out of control, and he asks me a question. But inspiration strikes me and I do the all-American thing: I pass the buck. I stick my finger out and point to another one of my co-workers (Chester, a burlesque loving, theater-appreciating, paperback-collecting, Wallace Shawn look-alike) and with my biggest shit-eating grin say "that man over there knows EVERYTHING about movies, ask him anything, he'll know what to do". Chester hears this and mouths "fuck you, asshole" to me. But it works: Joey Brown-Eye drifts over to him and bothers him for half an hour. Me? I go on break, leaving him to his fate.
Today:
Work is long. I bought and finished the final volume of Mike Carey's Lucifer (awesome).
I've got company to entertain now. Later, gators.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
signalnoise:
i was just *this close* to getting rid of a bunch of my playstation games as part of a whole "cleaning out the closets" purge. but they made the cut after all.
quanta:
your writing is phenomenal; tell me you've been published. 