My friends thought it would be a good idea if I wrote these stories down and after some reminiscing as to how fucked some of these stories were, I caved.
I'll start from the start. It goes something like this: "Twenty something unemployed dirtbag. Seeks part time / full time / night / day / desperate / anything work. Extracurricular activities include drinking 40's of Colt 45, bmxing all night, vandalism, and listening to Slayer. Not in that order." Applying at the porn store started out as a joke. Being unemployed for so long and striking out job interview after job interview, the slums start to look pretty appealing. You drive past the store every couple of weeks. You notice the ' help wanted ' sign . You begin to think to yourself "How bad could it be?" I thought it would be funny at the time but little did I expect it to turn into a job I would stick with for 6 long months. "Hey dad! Guess where I applied for work!" I could hear the gears grinding and coming apart in his head just because of the way I said it. Was he really that surprised? No. No he was not surprised. Nor was he as excited as I. Hired on the spot! Look at me go! My impressive unemployment streak has at last come to an end! Look at me with my brand new jobby! What an exciting day! The dry spell is over! Cash will flow again! Nothing but easy street and good times and tranny porn and DP and ATM and rubber fists! I really had no idea what I was getting myself into....
My first shi(f)t: My manager was a rather portly woman with a heavy peachfuzz beard and brown teeth. But a total sweetheart nonetheless. After so graciously hiring me on the spot, she instructed me to come back in the evening for my first shift, a shift which she would be working beside me to help me get comfortable in my rather new and revealing surroundings. The graveyard shift was 11pm to 7am. Which translates to 8 hours in a dirty, subway sandwich bread smelling void (more on that later) that most people spend sleeping or watching late night infomercials. My evenings were now going to be spent serving hot dished pornography to the sleepless, excitable and inebriated. Hurting for a job as I was and having no money for such a long time, I was ready. Ohhhh boy was I ever ready. Or was I? I showed up fifteen minutes early and Fuzzy greeted me with that chocolate grin. One of the other workers was there closing out her 3-11 shift. She was a short gothic girl wearing heavy makeup and a neon wig with multicolored dreadlocks. She was behind the counter commanding this warship of erotic pleasure, dealing with customers in a very nonchalant and sometimes crass manner. Watching her I realized how badly I longed to be the commander of said warship....*sigh*.....My stupid daydream was interrupted as Fuzzy led me though some paperwork and business formalities and after an awkward introduction to the 3-11 girl who I will now refer to as 'The Clown' the "Late Shift Handbook" was my new bible. I studied it while the Clown and Fuzzy went through the paperwork of the 3-11 shift. I don't remember much of my first day. Other than the terror I felt running the cash register. Standing at the forefront, the final step the customers would have to take in order to fulfill their dirty desires. Here's an example of a typical customer interaction: a customer comes in and spends hours looking at all the dirty little items for sale. He or she carefully selects the DVD or other item which panders to their current lusts. The customer then waddles up to the counter and is greeted by a stone faced young man avoiding eye contact at all costs. Money and some unimpressed small talk is exchanged. Hand customer black, unmarked bag, and as customer leaves, end with a line like "have a good one" or "see you soon". Not as easy as it sounds when you have to handle a phallic shaped piece of rubber that you know is going to be inside of them when they get home. But you know what? It got easier. I became more and more comfortable with these kinds of situations. Its not like I haven't seen the things contained in the walls of that store before and being closely exposed to them on a regular basis is not what had such a nervous impact on me, rather it was the people who subscribe heavily to the pornography industry that expect service. S-E-R-V-I-C-E! SERVE ME GODDAMNIT! I WANT MY PORN AND I WANT IT FAST YOU HEAR ME!?! No fucking around. Hahaha? No, Seriously. At least that's how it felt for the first hundred or so transactions. It took some time to loosen up. All I had to do was just desensitize myself to the erotic surroundings. The 70+ magazine. The rubber faces. The wall of cock rings. The 'ram bone' (more on that later). It was just a matter of time until these things were nothing to me. Think about the first time you saw someone getting punched in the face. And I mean a nose shattering, broken fist-knockout. Think about how your stomach sank. I bet you watch UFC without even breathing heavy now. Now compare that to the first time you saw a flash of skin on late night television as a child. Bonerzone. Now think about how as you've grown older, the degree of sexual imagery, the violence and gore, the disturbing situations, they've all had to have been pushed, expanded upon and in some cases pushed to extremes to get a rise out of you. The older you get the stronger your tolerance towards sex and violence grows. Pure and simple desensitization. We just need stronger doses. Thankfully we have the Internet and its never ending links to videos of grown men squatting on jars only to have them shatter inside of their colon, thank Fox News for its daily updates of child abduction, murder and conspiracy. Thank shitty R rated movies with the scene where the supplementary character gets his face cut right off by the knife wielding, chrome faced psychopath. Seriously. Thank them. These images change you.... Despite my sweaty, shaking hands, the nervous feelings started to dissipate and the cash register eventually became a part of my body. The helm of this pornographic behemoth was slowly succumbing to my ever expanding knowledge of the dirty, slimy workings of the graveyard shift. I was becoming a worker of the smuttiest caliber. And of course there was work supplied to you when you weren't busy helping a customer rent out a copy of 'Fatter, Balder, Uglier : 2'. Oh, yes there were many things to do to pass the time. Facing the movie boxes was a good way to kill an hour or two and to familiarize yourself with the various actors / actresses / genres / horrible, horrible things. My first night working there and preforming this task I remember thinking to myself "Don't get a boner. This is the last place in the world where you want to get a boner.....or is it.....?". Being a hormone charged man-boy and working in the porno industry is a recipe for jizzaster. Whether in front of the camera, behind it, or in my case, selling/renting the finished (and sometimes sticky) product. The worst part about it was trying not to get aroused when you were fulfilling your work duties. Hell, cleaning the washroom was a task within itself. Amidst all of the overstock items (various boxes of sex toys and DVDs) precariously stacked and leading into the bathroom, signed posters from 'famous' porn actors and actresses were proudly displayed on the walls of the bathroom stall. There truly was no escape from naked human bodies. Suffocating in this void of skin I was forced to adapt and change myself. Numb my mind from the images I was to be surrounded by for 8 hours a day 40 hours a week. Working the till and keeping busy was one thing. Getting accustomed to the customers and their strange and scurvy habits was a completely different bag of assbeads...
