This morning I came in to work. The front walk is a ghost town of debris, old windblown news pages, fallen ash (still!) from the wildfire that raged through the county last month, overturned shopping carts, squashed cigarette ends -- all the detritus of a depressed urban landscape. The window glass is smeared with greasy hands and rain-damp backsides from bus-waiters seeking shelter. I unlock the door, and the alarm is nearly drowned out by the smell. I turn and disarm the noise, still overwhelmed with the noisome odor of cat piss and mildew -- smells I will always associate with poverty. Groaning, knowing that I will have to burn sniffle-inducing incense and run the industrial air conditioner, I make my way through the not-open-yet gloaming of the store to the bank of switches that control the overhead fluorescents. With a stuttered clank, circuits 5, 6, 8, 12 and 17 come to feeble life. Each circuit powers at least one tube that is striated, darkened or flickering, and the back corner flicks from light to dark, light to dark, with a frequency liable to cause seizures and a sound like sporadic bacon. I hunt and find the right circuit, circuit 8, and turn it back off. Better to have a dim corner, I figure.
The place feels like depression this morning. X-mas decorations are pallid, dusty, empty. Faces passing by the windows squint, drawn, into the interior, gauging whether we might sell pipes, or just killing time until another bus swallows them whole. I sniffle and polish the doors as well as I can. I do the morning accounting and grumble. I turn on the coffee pot to rewarm the days-old dregs from last time I worked. The stereo plays a morose blues, and this cheers me somewhat. Holiday fare would drive me right ‘round the bend.
I limber the whip I will buy one day and rewarm my plans for the future. If only ... When I can ... Someday ... Beginnings, like roots too weak to support the tree, that bear no good fruit. The smell reasserts itself, and rummage until I find a spray bottle of something fruity and spray it over the part of the carpet that got wet from a plumbing leak days ago and has since been emitting hellish vapors that are at their strongest when they’ve been allowed to hotbox in the closed store overnight.
Tired, tepid, gray, wan, it’s that sort of day, and when Pepe brings a dolly of boxes in the door, I see his day is the same. Unload the boxes, trade off the appropriate papers, and he’s gone, back to the warehouse that the store is beginning to resemble. Porn. Dildos. A new kind of blow-up doll. A -- jeez -- a disposable camera? Why the hell are we carrying these now? I draw the curtain on the dressing room where these new arrivals must wait until someone has the spare therbligs to process the tedious paperwork that accompanies them.
Crack! The sound of the whip is loud, but does not echo. Leather chaps, lingerie, and the tired, tepid, gray, wan air absorb it. Crack! A little more alive, now that the air and my blood are moving. Crack! Like a circus lion tamer now: Crack! The lady who leaves her bag in front of the door smiles when I push it open against them and tell her “no”. It is the smile of a culture that is easily embarrassed. In my mind: Crack! Obey! Ungawa!
It is almost noon. My face is red and I am panting, and I’ve striped my throwing arm once or twice, but I am alive. There was one customer, “Christmas shopping”, who bought a naughty panda plushie with a big dick. Otherwise, it’s been me, the blues, the cracking of the whip, and that smell, tempered by a faint chemical orange scent now. In an hour a coworker will arrive and I will be able to go to the bank. Maybe I’ll buy some more spray.
12/9/2003 11:51:49 AM