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 I try not to talk to strangers, or friends, or family, or anyone (really) about my job. It’s not that it’s boring. In fact, most people I know think it’s a dream job, working at a porno store. And it isn’t because I’m ashamed, even though my own mother claims that I’m working for the devil now. It’s just that the real story, how it happened, it’s too much. They aren’t exactly stories that you tell to make people laugh. And they aren’t the kind of stories that you can retell if they weren’t somehow yours to begin with. They’re just little pieces of people’s fucked up lives. I guess they’re funny, in a way. It’s hard to believe sometimes that it really happened, to someone, to anyone. And the little stuff? It’s like everybody else’s job, everybody else’s life, I guess. There’s just nothing, really, to tell. What seems strange to me is how people are always asking what it’s like, as though they already have this idea, they think they already know.  So I tell them, and it’s never quite what they wanted. It’s as if they didn’t expect it to be quite so serious. Or they never thought the people in the stories would be flawed or damaged, or they felt that no one should let that sort of thing show.Is it just that it never occurred to them that I had seen things there that made me think, or feel? Maybe I could start cutting them down for public consumption, just leaving out the parts that are about something real. But it seems to me that those are the parts, the only parts really, worth telling. I think it would be a mistake to try to make the people or the place seem more glamorous, more desirable—that somehow, trying to cover up or fill in what they lack would take away what they really had. I’ll tell you. You’ll see. The latest edition to my drama log is the story of a couple, a pretty girl and a nice-looking boy, probably 23 and 25. Let’s call them Jenni and Alex, even though the guy, at least, didn’t think twice about saying who he was, and even where he worked, at the time. I remember I was doing actual work and it irritated me when these two came in, asking question after question that they could have answered for themselves if they had just looked at things one at a time. I help them for a few minutes and then they wander off. Some time later, I happen to notice Jenni, standing alone, looking anxious and irritated. Without thinking, I ask if she needs help as I pass by. She asks me to “page” her boyfriend, Alex, so I go into the back room, where there are little booths for watching movies and I yell his name because that’s the paging device that we have. Apparently, Alex has been back there quite some time and Jenni wants to go. So I yell that he should hurry up!  He doesn’t appear and she asks me to try again. This time, on my way in, the janitor warns me not to disturb Alex because he is with another guy.I call his name and say, “Jenni’s tired of waiting. If you don’t hurry, I’ll tell her what you’re up to back here.” I wait and nothing. On my way back past Jenni, I ask if she knows what he’s doing and I tell her that he’s with another guy. I really didn’t want to be the one to tell her, but there was no-one else and I thought she probably needed to know. She starts towards the booths and I follow to make sure things don’t go any more wrong. When we get there, a crowd has gathered and someone—who was previously uninvolved—opens the door that Alex is behind. We first see him hunched over with his ass against the wall, at about waist level. I explain that he needs to get his shit and they both have to go. He seems to understand, but decides he wants to finish jacking off first, which could have taken all night, considering his equipment was completely flat. I explain that actually, right now is an ideal time for them to leave. While I’m trying to help him decide to put his pants back on, Jenni begins inspecting the glory hole located directly behind the spot where Alex’s ass had been just a minute ago. They both freak the fuck out. She starts yelling in non-English at the person on the other side of the hole, who isn’t making any move to come out (smart). Alex, pants now on, decides he’s going to get high before he has to go and begins to smoke crack from a jaggedy, charred, and really quite dangerous looking piece of pipe. I feel like I want to disappear. I’m beginning to regret thinking I would be helping her, or them and I just want not to involved in it at all anymore. I’m maybe 30 seconds from just running away and/or, preferably and, smacking the two of them. I start yelling that I’m not waiting for him to get high and the drama needs to leave, now, with them. It then takes about three minutes for him to collect every tiny speck of crack from the chair, in which god only knows how many have jerked off. It seems I should feel sick, but the whole thing is just making me tired. It’s like I’m being forced to babysit people my own age. And for free.  Finally, they leave. And it’s over. I tell my coworker the whole story, then go for a cigarette break. Guess who I run into? Yes, them.They are fighting, she is crying. But they stop to follow me to the liquor store and back. The whole way, Alex is telling me how he didn’t do anything wrong, right? Because she knew he was bi. And when I ask what he said he was going in there to do, he says he told her he was just going to jack off, and yes, that may seem like lying to you and I but apparently that’s not wrong. I am also informed that it shouldn’t count at all because the other guy’s dick wasn’t actually long enough, and poor Alex didn’t have any fun. I fight the urge to tell Jenni to run away. I feel really bad for her but I give her the benefit of the doubt and figure she’ll ditch the guy soon enough, hopefully later tonight—you know, like, in the next five minutes. Back at work, everything goes really smoothly. It’s a perfect day besides the drama, if that makes any sense at all. After work, I go to meet a friend up the street from the store. We chat for about an hour and I decide, at the bus stop, to go back to work and use the bathroom before I start heading home. I walk in and there’s Jenni, and I think I’m having deja vu, only she’s real. I can’t believe it, and I can literally feel my sympathy for her turn into something rotten and angry, perhaps disgust. Just to make sure, however, I ask the clerks on duty if she’s there with a guy before I just assume anything. And, of course, she is. And that’s it. It seems slightly less outrageous now, but the key word there is definitely slightly. I just don’t get it. I mean, for one thing, before the back room, they had me thinking they were—I don’t know—exponentially more “normal”/functional people than they, in the end, turned out to be. And, they both had no idea how to communicate what they wanted, whether it was sex with guys or not to be left waiting in the porno store while the person you’re with goes and fucks someone else, or themselves, or whatever. I guess the most awkward part of it all is that, in the moment, I was so full of emotion—for all of us, them and me and you and wonder at the idea that some of us want so much and give ourselves so little—and yet, now, I feel none of those things. I feel nothing about those two people who took up so completely one night of my life with theirs.
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