Customers 9

A man, gray, crew cut hair, khaki shorts, polo shirt, came up to the registers and seemed to be looking around at all the other registers.

"What are you looking for?", I asked.

"Any of those paper bookmarks. Got any other ones?" The only free ones we had were featuring Lucy Monroe's 50th's book, Close Quarters.




"I don't want one with some guys pecs on it," he said.

I laughed. "Unfortunately, that's the only one we have right now. Sorry."

"That's okay," he said. "I know I'm not the target audience for that one."

"So, not gay, then?" (I wanted to say, but didn't)

********************************

A young guy in his early 20's, came up to the register. His hair was in his face (as is the style these days), he had a knit cap on his head, lots of tattoos, was wearing a t-shirt and carrying a messenger bag. He was purchasing one of the Last Man graphic novels.



I asked him if he was part of our store's member program, which works best if people shop with us fairly regularly.

"Um, no. I don't buy books that often. I'm just getting this one 'cuz I lost a bet."

"A bet?," I asked. "Was the bet related to the graphic novel?" I was curious.

"No. My friend is going to be surprised that I am even following through in getting this for him. He said he was going to call this girl and I bet him 'cuz I didn't think he would. And he did. So I lost." He looked a little sheepish.

"And now he gets the book. Well, good for you. And good that he called the girl, right?"

"Yeah." He smiled.

Sobriety, Finally

I just finished Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp.

               

Caroline Knapp is a good writer and writes about her relationship to alcohol, as well as to her family and her various partners while she was drinking. She talks about how she couldn't rely on herself and her own experience when she was drinking...

"There's something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia, that disabuses you of the belief in externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even though it's painful and you're afraid.

"When you drink, you can't do that. You can't make the distinction between getting through painful feelings and getting away from them. All you can do is just sit there, numb and sipping, numb and drunk."

And she remembers her thought processes before she stopped drinking...

"...but by and large I saw growing up as something that happened to you. In some ways giving up an addiction involves reversing that equation, understanding finally that growth comes from the inside out, from trying and failing and trying again. When you quit drinking you stop waiting. You begin to let go of the wish, age-old and profound and essentially human, that someone will swoop down and do all the hard work, growing up, for you. You start living your own life.

"Circumstances - in particular, my parents' deaths - had been chipping away at my childhood for some time, but most of these had been out of my control. Choosing to get sober may have been the first truly adult decision I'd ever made, a step toward growth taken on my own behalf."

Knapp's journey to sobriety is a compelling one, made more so by the knowledge that she died from cancer in her 40's. Her descriptions of how alcohol kept her bound in unhealthy ways of thinking and acting were powerful and effective. I felt as though I got quite a glimpse into the life alcoholic.

Disturbing Reading

I just finished Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, a satiric look at our (perhaps) not too distant future.

Shteyngart doesn't have to reach very far to project where our obsession with all things digital might take us. In the book, everyone has something called an apparat (in the book all the 'a's in that word have umlauts over them, which I can't figure out how to do on this blog page). These devices are mini computers which stream constant media and news as well as texts. It also constantly reads your own blood pressure, weight, credit score, personality quotient, and 'f---ability', and projects all of those readings to anyone else in the room as well, so anyone at any time can see all these things about you, just as you can see it about them.

Media, Image and pursuit of Youth (all highly sexualized) is the name of the game here. Working Retail (yes, that's Retail with a capital "R") is highly valued. Corporations have merged, as have our political parties (becoming one Bipartisan party), which in this book, do not serve us well.

Shteyngart has created quite a world, one which doesn't seem that implausible. Lenny doesn't seem to fit in it, though he does try. He falls in love with Eunice Park, a petite Korean woman who embodies what the culture deems as valuable, youth, beauty, hipness, and digitally connection. They are an unlikely pair, and at times I didn't find the love story completely believable, though mostly I just went with it.

The chapters alternate, one chapter is Lenny's diary entries, the next chapter is Eunice's 'teens' (emails or texts) to her family or friends. I sometimes found Lenny's chapters a bit boggy, never so with Eunice's.

I really liked how well Shteyngart describes this possible future, so incredibly digitally connected, how the corporations have changed and merged, how books are obsolete. (Lenny has a "Wall of Books" in his apartment, which he loves and others find distasteful.) Shteyngart captures how people still crave physical and emotional connection with other people, though they don't always know how to express it, often using their digital devices to connect with other people in the room rather than 'verballing' them, face to face.

Not necessarily a cheerful book, it has been compared to 1984 in its look at what we might become, though this one seems so much closer to what actually could happen, given our penchant for digital connection and valuing youth and media.

Where are we headed?

*********************

One of my co-workers just finished reading Jenn Ashworth's A Kind of Intimacy, which he described as part Stephen King's Misery and part Bridget Jones's Diary. He conceded that using Bridget Jones makes the book seem lighter than he wanted to convey. "Incredibly disturbing", is how he describes A Kind of Intimacy. No redemption, no hope. I have a few friends (including Therapist) who like to read darker books than I usually prefer. They may like this one.

Another co-worker, who said she might read A Kind of Intimacy, told me about Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child, which she said is also disturbing, about a family that has four perfect children and then the fifth one comes along with almost goblin-like features and a personality to match. Things don't go well.



Interesting stuff!

Dragons, Extra-Terrestrials, and Stolen Candy Bars

A man came up to the Information desk, where three of us were standing. "Should I get Chariots of the Gods for my 24 year old daughter?"

"Chariots of the Gods? I asked. "The one about beings from other planets coming to Earth?"

"That's the one!," he said.

"Well," one of my co-workers said, "Is she interested in that kind of thing? Or are you interested in it?"

"I'm definitely interested in it. It's her birthday. I want to get her a book."

We talked a little more, trying to figure out if she is (or might be) interested in something like that, or if he just WANTS her to be interested. He wasn't too clear about that.

I took him over to the New Age section and handed him Chariots of the Gods. He said, "I have to think about this. I need to come back when I have more time." He handed me the book and left.

**********************

A man came to the register with a Penthouse magazine. He seemed a little bit embarrassed to be buying it from me (a woman). I ask every customer if they want a bag, except I always put "men's sophisticates" in a bag. I put his magazine in a bag, gave him his change and said (just because it's habit), "Have a good night." That was a stupid thing to say, I thought. It's a Friday night, he's alone and buying a girlie magazine. How good is his night going to be?

**********************

Remember the woman who was going to the bachelorette party and was trying to find something not too racy to take for her goddaughter? She came into the store yesterday, and I asked how she was doing. She mentioned the bachelorette party and I asked her how it went.

"It was good. What I gave her was the least racy out of everything."

"Well, maybe that's good," I said, "Since you are her godmother. Maybe 'racy' isn't the message you want to send."

"Tonight I'm not looking for anything like that. I'm looking to see if there is a number 8 in the How to Train Your Dragon series."



I checked, and there is not.

"Okay, well, I thought I'd check. We're almost done with the seventh one, so we wanted the next one."

**********************

One of my co-workers came over to me with a few books and magazines he'd found on one of his store sweeps. He also had a crumpled candy bar wrapper, one of the candy bars we sell. Evidently there is someone who comes in every other day or so, steals one of our candy bars (milk chocolate or milk chocolate with almonds), heads to a remote area of the store, and stashes the wrappers in the same place, behind the law books. As a joke, I presume.