Crush

The boy was clearly on a mission. Unlike most six year olds who come into the store and must be told repeatedly "don't touch that! Put it down I said!" this kid scanned the room until he located the greeting cards and made a beeline. He looked back at his father, a tall, Asian man man in his mid to late thirties with a neat haircut, long arms and the look of someone who seems surprised that instead of going out to the Meat Packing District for beautiful drinks in Armani he is going to t-ball games and parent-teacher conferences in J. Crew.

"Go ahead, pick one out," the dad said with feigned impatience. Feigned because the father is a repeat customer who, I know, really enjoys looking at all the stuff in the store. He's a gadget guy and we carry... gadgets.

The little boy stared up at the cards and began to contemplate with his left index finger on his chin and the right hand supporting the left arm at the elbow. He wore a red baseball cap that was cocked ever so-slightly to the right. He was a small Asian kid with a large head and fragile neck, even features, a little bow of a mouth and large, perfect black eyes. He looked kind of delicate but I guessed he was pretty competitive... kids with that kind of focus are looking for perfection and that means winning, but with manners. He was unbelievably charming. The father began to wander around. We made small talk about a hard-boiled egg shell cracker he had been looking for and could not find. Time passed. The boy made calculations. Finally the dad sighed.

"Okay, kid. Pick something," he said. The boy pointed to a card out of his reach. His father retrieved it. "That one says 'happy birthday'," he reported. The boy's face fell and then, undeterred, resumed staring. "Can I help you pick something out?" I asked. The boy looked at me with shy muteness and slowly shook his head. He motioned for his father to stoop down and whispered something in his ear. Then his dad straightened and the boy pointed at a card with a picture of a bicycle built for two on it and a caption that said "I love you."

"Are you looking for something for your mom?" I asked.
"He's looking for a thank you card for his teacher," the father informed me. "And he's in love with his teacher." I shot a glance at the little boy, sure he would blush or exclaim, but he wasn't phased at all. I, on the other hand, was overcome with a warm, gushy feeling- earnestness in children makes me melt and I started grinning like and idiot.

"Well that one is pretty perfect then," I said. The boy looked. Then he pointed to a card with a red flower on it. "That says 'Happy Birthday' too," his dad said. The boy stared at him as though his father were doing this to him on purpose.

"What?" His father protested. "It does! See?" He took the card down and showed the boy the words. He sucked on his lower lip. He looked from the bicycle card to flower and back.
"Look," said his dad. "Here's a flower card that says 'thank you.' Let's get this one." But I could see right away this card would be unacceptable. The flower was blue, not red and as we all know, love is not blue... it's red. Duh.

The boy stared at the blue flower ruefully and I kept grinning like a dope and thinking "if I had a kid like this, I could be okay with being a mom. I could." The boy held the blue flower card and the bicycle card and conferred with his dad for a while. "Well why don't we ask her? She's a lady. See which one she likes better," said his father.

The boy approached me, and held up the cards and just looked at me. "Well, don't just stand there, ask her!" His father rolled his eyes good naturedly. "Which one do you like better?" the boy whispered.
"Hmmm.." I said. "Hmmm. Well, I like that the bicycle says 'I love you,' but you know what I like about the flower?" He shook his head. "The flower is sort of like a coloring book picture, and you could color it red." His eyes lit up. "And I really like it when someone draws something just for me. I bet your teacher will too." The boy looked back at his father. I knew he couldn't quite picture a blue flower colored red and he still had his doubts, but I also knew that he did not think a bicycle was romantic enough. They discussed buying a card that said "happy birthday" and had a red flower versus buying a card that said "thank you" and had a blue flower that could be colored red. I was so absorbed in their decision making that I did not realize I was staring... and ignoring other customers until I heard a woman clear her throat (when had she come in? had she been there the whole time?) I apologized and rang her up. When I turned back the boy stood there with his choice. A dog.

"Um," I said. The card did say 'thank you' on it, but...
"He's going to color it red," the dad sighed. A red dog? I liked this child more and more. "Excellent choice!" I said. "I'm sure she will love it!" And if she doen't she's dead inside.

The boy didn't smile but he looked pleased.
"Okay, tike, give the lady the money." The boy handed me a bill and was ready to run out the door.
"Don't you want your change?" I asked. He ran back and held out his hand. I handed him his change. "Thank you," he whispered. "You're very welcome," I whispered back and winked at him in a way that I hoped was friendly and not creepy. I think kids can tell when you want to kidnap them. But maybe that's giving them too much credit.

.......

About an hour later, father and son were at the door again. The boy was clearly fighting back tears and the father was genuinely annoyed.
"He thinks he messed up the drawing," the father apologized.

The boy handed the card to me and I nearly absconded with him. He had created an amazing drawing around the picture of the dog (which was now two shades of red and totally awesome). I couldn't believe he was so disappointed. Most kids twice his age couldn't draw so well and I said so.
"This is a wonderful drawing, kid," I said. "I'm sorry you don't like it, but I can promise you that your teacher will not only like it, she will love it." The boy looked a little less upset, but there was no way he was giving that drawing to his true love. He retrieved a new card. And a set of heart shaped magnets. I looked at his father who still seemed a little annoyed, but amused. Clearly he liked seeing a stranger admire his son's drawing skills and I was so happy to oblige. I charged them half for the new card. I would have given them away for free if it hadn't seemed wierd or if the father would have let me, which, of course, he would not. "Thank you," the boy whispered. "You're welcome, kiddo," I said and silently wished him really wonderful things in life.

The Dildo as Big as the Ritz

Please note: this is an explicit, moderately disturbing story. Please don't get mad at me if you get grossed out. Also, it' s after 3 am, and I'm pretty out of it. Forgive the typos and stiltedness..Now go ahead and read it because I know you're just dying to.


I lived in Baltimore in the late 90's.

I'll let that sink in.

Baltimore, in the late 90's was still the smack capital of the United States and the city slogan was "Baltimore, the city that reads." The pride and joy of Baltimore at that time was John Waters, Martin O'Malley, Homicide: Life on the Streets and crab cakes.

I'll let that sink in too.

In the midst of all that high brow culture, I worked in a sex shop called Object. I can say, with as little irony as the city's slogan, that Object was a truly classy sex shop. You think Babeland is nice? It's okay, but it's about as sexy as a small town library compared to Object. Object was barroque in it's sexiness. The spiked paddles and flavored lubes were ensconced in 19th century glass- fronted, dark wood cases. There was an original Tiffany stained glass skylight in the middle of the ceiling of the anteroom and a huge crystal chandelier in the back room. The curtain to the dressing room was heavy red velvet, and of the six people who worked there, not one of us had a coke habit. The owners were two very cute, very young gay men, who we called the Boys, and their tiny chihuahua, named Igor, slept in a very large, gilded bird cage.

Most of the customers at Object were strippers, pleasant gay men, and goth kids trying to get a handle on the whole S&M aspect of gothiness before they were even able to find a partner with whom to use the rhinestone encrusted nipple clamps. There were also a number of very wealthy, married men, corporate executive types who were closet cases who narcissistically believed they were totally alone in the world as closeted, kinky, corporate executives. They often came after hours for private spanking sessions with one or both of the Boys and they all shared a weird passion for lederhosen. You would be amazed what a common fetish lederhosen are for corporate executives. Don't ever let anyone tell you those men are not Nazis at heart: there is just something about the Teutonic youth culture that those guys just find.... hot.

But among these mostly milquetoast clients, there were a few real perverts. Some were not at all what you would expect from a perv. For example, more than a few were women, and of those a handful were lesbians, which if you had asked me then, I would have thought was physically impossible. But I'll talk about them another time. This week's perv is a giant man-child named Gregory.

Gregory's face was so smooth I think he might have waxed it. He had straight, thick, blonde hair, cut in a sort of prep school boy's style. He wore steel rimmed glasses and a large guage silver earring in his left ear. His lips were red as cherries and wet. He had a fine nose, ruddy cheeks, and squinty eyes. He might have been something approaching good looking except that Gregory was about 6'7" and big and blowsy as a Golden Girl caftan, shoulder pads and all. He couldn't have weighed less than 300 pounds and he just emitted an air of creepy. And sweat. I'm not sure if being a perv causes people to sweat a lot or if people who sweat a lot happen to be pervy. It's a correlation worth looking into.

He spoke with that wierd accent that people in movies from the 40's speak with and he liked to think of himself as a connossieur. I don't know of what, but if he spoke, at some point he would say, more or less apropos of nothing, "I like to think of myself as a connossieur." His speech was abrupt and non-sequitous. It was clear that he was having lengthy conversations in his head and we were just granted useful snippets here and there. His fat lips were constantly smiling and grimacing and he was often closing his eyes and either supressing some emotion about the people around him, or smelling something.

My co-worker, Johnathan - a tall drink of Shirley Temple- and I would suppress squeals and jab each other with our elbows whenever we saw Gregory's bulk floating towards us. Gregory preferred to be waited on by males, even girly males like Johnathan, but he was more likely to buy something quickly and leave if I helped him, and since his presence in the store made other customers uncomfortable, we tried to get him out of there as fast as we could. Gregory never did anything outwardly crazy and he had lovely manners. He was not a bad guy, at least not in a way that we or the customers could directly observe. And frankly, the only really weird thing he did to employees was make passes at the good looking gay men who worked there, which would be perfectly understandable (if not welcome) except that Gregory was not gay. If you'd looked at him, you'd think he was, with his pastel polo shirts and cable knit sweaters tied, just so, at his shoulders. He was so preppy and he had that guaged earring, he just had to be gay, right? Nope. Gregory didn't crave another human, male or female. What Gregory was into was toys. Very, very large toys. He had "outgrown" almost every toy by almost every novelty company in existence by the time I met him. There was just one company that could still help him and it catered to leather daddies and made terrifyingly giant dildos. Over the year or so that I worked at that store, we special ordered every giant dildo this company produced until finally, to our shock and awe, there were no more dildos to order. The fellow who informed the Boys of this did so in a tone of voice that had a hint of chastisement to it. If a man who peddles ball gags and castration kits as sex toys for a living is chastising you for asking for something too big, you have left the world of kinks and fetishes and entered the world of perversions.

The Boys informed Gregory that we couldn't help him, he would just have to make do with the dildo collection he already had. Johnathan and I were relieved. As the year had progressed, we had both become extremely uncomfortable around Gregory. It wasn't anything he did, he hadn't changed his manners or habits or anything. I think we were just becoming aware that we were dealing not with a slightly weird, sex positive man, comfortable with his predilections, but with a man who was broken. There was a good natured raunchiness, a frank humor that floated around the store and made the weirdness of Baltimore and the depressing lives of many of our customers bearable, but Gregory's case was not funny anymore. And for my part, I had come to this job as a bit of an outsider. I was not into the world of sex the way my coworkers were. I came from a more academic approach: my father taught human sexuality and so I was privy to such racy information as textbooks provide; like the fact that many men experience "nocturnal emissions". I was sex positive, in theory but in practice, I didn't see what all the hubub was about. (And in case you were wondering, why, then, did I get a job in a sex shop? I was one of those goth kids who regretted that corsets had gone out of style, and this store, with it's genteel setting and terrific assortment of hand sewn corsets had seemed totally innocuous at the time.) Gregory was so out of my frame of reference that even the idle chit chat that accompanies any retail exchange - even that kind- was impossible. When you cannot discuss the weather with a customer it becomes difficult to not confront them as a real human being.

Alas... Gregory was not to be thwarted. He was smarter than us all. Where we had seen a wall, he saw a window. Where we had said "We're sorry, but the world simply does not make what you are looking for" Gregory said, "I have a vision." He then offered the Boys an absurd amount of money to create his perfect dildo. I believe I gasped. One of the Boys, I'll call him Brains, said "Honey, don't think I don't want to take your money, because I do, but do you really want to be known as the guy who sat on a dildo and died?" Gregory laughed. "I'm not kidding," said Brains. "There's a reason they don't make them bigger and it's because no one was meant to fit a baby into their asshole." This was a very long way from diagrams of fallopean tubes.


Gregory turned red then, which is funny because a guy like this, one would think, would be pretty much done with shame. I mean, he never tried to hide what he wanted, he never whispered or shrank from his requests. He would just walk in and say "this is what I want, here is my money. Thank you very much." But after this statement, Gregory and the Boys talked in private for a long time about size, waivers, materials, notaries, diapers, lawyers and money. In the end, Johnathan and I, as artists, were given the task of making a dildo roughly the size of my thigh, . A "head" was requested but we flat out refused to do it. We made it out of wood, chicken wire, plaster and many, many coats of wax. This seemed like a bad idea to me, since it had no give, but that was what Gregory had requested: rigid. When we were done, it was shaped like a bullet and dark brown. It was 12" around and 18" long. We put the giant dildo on display for a while as another Baltimore oddity, like the ratty, fur-covered triangle that was the sign for a dyke bar in Hampden called the Pelt Room, or the shrine to the dog-faced girl that someone in North Baltimore had built into the side of their house and was regularly visited by people leaving votives and flowers. We savored the similarities to Pompeiian art and A Clockwork Orange. People looked at it, and though it was displayed with other dildos, pointed and said "what is that?"

"That," I said, "Is an enormous fucking dildo."

A week or so after it was completed, Gregory came for his giant dingus. His eyes registered delight, but he didn't stop and wonder. He didn't look at the monstrous, somewhat lumpy phallus and exclaim "what was I thinking?! I can't possibly use that! It's huge!" He said "It looks great. Thanks guys," and plunked down the balance. He asked us to wrap it up for him and we found a large box in the back to pack it in. He made idle chit chat with the Boys and then smiled and waved and wished us a nice day. He never came back.

I didn't like to think about Gregory, about why he wanted to do this to himself or how he had come to be on this particular path. I didn't think about his outwardly respectable appearance and the diapers he wore under his Brooks Brothers shorts, about where his money came from, about whether or not he really did want to die this way as Brains had said. I was young and crazy when I worked at Object. I was learning that people do all kinds of things to themselves and to others for the sake of pleasure and love and I now I guess it was a delusion to think that Gregory's fetish was just another facet on that rock.

White Linen and a Wheeled Suitcase

"You've been here, right? You're an original?" "Excuse me?" A tiny woman stands in front of me, wearing an outfit of white linen. The kind that's sort of see through, and when there's no discernible panty line, I become uncomfortable. She has salt and pepper hair in a fashionable, severe style. She is pretty, well made-up, pointy in features, caucasian and with a hint of the artsyness that says "I'm not a native New Yorker, but I pretend to be." "The store, I mean. This store used to be up the block, right? You're not new to the neighborhood." "Right." "Oh good. I just came from that little... mini-mall. And, well," her voice dropped. "It's kind of tacky. You know? All those shops are so, just..." her pointy face scrunched up like she was being asked to taste dog shit. I like the tiny stores and stands that occupy the ground floor of the building next door. They house an array of local artisans and junky antique places. It's not exactly classy, but I think it's better than, oh, say, a Gap or another overpriced boutique with a name like Bella Sparrow or Pearl Tweets. "It's like a, like a... souk," she said and by the way she said it, I assumed that was another word for cesspool. "A what?" "Souk."

"Soot?"

"Souk."

"Sook?"

"Yes." "I don't know what that is." I don't. "A souk?" She seems surprised that I, who had been admitted into her little world, do not know what a "souk" is. Doesn't everyone know what a souk is? "It's um, like a market. In Turkish... Arabic. In all different kinds of Arabic... I think, they have souk in the, um, different Arabic languages. It's, you know, one of those... markets." I get an image in my head of a combination of something mysterious like I imagine the Casbah to be and one of those really awful flea markets in the deep south where they sell Confederate flag beach towels and mud flap girl jewelry. This is not what the stores next door are like and I assume that mud flap girls do not exist in the Muslim world, so I decide this woman doesn't know what she was talking about. "Yeah the whole neighborhood is so... different now. Gentrified. Not like when I worked around here, three years ago. I like Barts. When Barts was here. You remember Barts?" "No. I've only been working here six months. But yes, the neighborhood has changed." "Oh yeah. I used to work here. It's veeeerrrry different now," she sniffed. She wandered around with her wheeled suitcase, her earrings clinking. "It's good the old timers are still here though,"she says. "Lovely store." "Thanks," I say and smile. "Everything changes, I guess," she sighs. "Yes, it does." I reply. She sighs again. "Barts was a better use of the space." "Ok." I say.

She pokes around some more, picking up a $200 serving platter, examining a $210 corkscrew. She is muttering her appreciation under her breath as she moves from object to object. Abruptly, she walks to the door and pushes it open. "Keep up the good fight!" she says as she leaves and pumps her fist in the air. I have no idea what that means.

Imelda

In the summer of 2000, I worked at a now defunct health food store on the Upper West Side. Both places- health food stores and the Upper West Side- are typically full of lunatics. But this store occupied a unique corner in the space-time continuum in that the staff, customers and upper management all seemed afflicted with a particular kind of insanity that was probably responsible for the place shutting down... in spite of no competition and a growing consumer awareness about and willingness to buy organic foods, even among the intractable and irascible population of pot-head Jewish intelligencia that formerly occupied the prewar buildings and put Zabar's on the map.

I was staying with my mother and stepfather a few blocks from the store while I looked for apartments in Brooklyn, and I paid my way by bringing home deli leftovers and stories of the people I encountered on a daily basis. My favorite was Imelda.

Imelda is one of those tiny old people who, no matter what the weather is, she is wearing a black shearling coat with a round collar and faceted, shiny black buttons. Her lipstick merely serves to highlight that she, at one point, did have lips on her face, and she has gamely tried to trace a path to them, but, alas, they have once again eluded her. Her eyes are a bleary mish mash of ancient mascara and eyeliner. She moves between looking terrifying, comical, sad and more than a little dashing. Imelda had clearly once been a lovely young woman, fashionable, desirable and hilarious. She reminded me of a Yiddische speaking Phyllis Diller. Without breasts.

Imelda shuffles in, her overcoat stinking and worn, with a shopping cart filled with the empty bags of other markets in the neighborhood. She walks with a cane that does not match her style- such as it is. It is heavy wood, the kind that typically accompanies old men wearing those abbreviated fedoras they've had since they came from the old country. Imelda, small, frail and hunched, can barely seem to lift such a cane, and really, she doesn't use it for support, she just sort of drags it along behind her.

When she comes into the store she sorts through her bags as though looking for something, but what she is doing is unpacking them, arranging them into neat rows. This done, she looks around furtively, as if no one has seen her, though everyone has seen her. Then Imelda starts to stroll through the aisles, picking up various packages and boxes, bottles and jars. Some she returns to the shelf, but most go surprisingly swiftly into one of the many open bags in the cart. She looks out of the corners of her eyes, sometimes slyly, sometimes with a look of glee, feeling she has got away with a wonderful crime. It completely escapes her that not just the employees, but many of the customers are staring at her slack-jawed. Suddenly, as if she has just realized where she is and what she is doing, she snaps to.

"Vare ees he? Vare is my boyfrent? RRRRaphael!!! Vare is RRRaphael!!" She is waving her cane high above her head and shouting with glee. "You kennot hide frem me!!! Vare are you my disgusting Latin lover?" Raphael is the fat, sweaty, mustachioed store manager. He is Mexican, swarthy Mexican, but somehow, shockingly, he speaks Yiddische. (I love this town.) Raphael made the mistake, years ago, of talking to Imelda in Yiddische, and now she is in violent, angry, evil love with him. This is Imelda at her brassiest broadiest. This woman does not take no for an answer. She comes at Raphael with all the subtlety of Mae West drunk on tequila and wielding a rocket launcher.

"MY LOINS IS BURNING! I HEV NOT BEEN LAID SINCE 1943!! Come to momma!!!"

Raphael, for his part, is hiding behind a stack of Garden of Eatin' boxes. He is sweating even more than usual, and though he's smiling, there are tears at the corners of his eyes. He is muttering, and I'm pretty sure he's praying.

"YOU FUCKING SPIC!!! I'm going to find you and give such a beatink! Hiding from an old lady! Who would do such a think? Bastart!!" Imelda is tearing around the store searching behind counters, cursing in customers faces, laughing and shrieking like a harpy. She stops in front of me. "I know you are hidink him. You are all against me. Afraid I will steal you boyfrient. Look out! I vill find heem and rip that disgustink mustache from that rrrrotten punim." She looks in the deli case. "I'll take a haf pount of salmon." I shudder and measure it out for her. "Gif me extra onions. And the lemon. Ach! Add it after you weigh, dummy!" I glare at her. "Fish is good for you, yes? You are a skinny, pretty girl. You eat lots of this fish, yes?"

"No." I say. "I'm vegan."

"So nu? You can't eat fish? This is not meat. It's good for you, yes?" I tell her it is not: she'll get mercury poisoning and go crazy. She looks aghast. I tell her it will give her bad breath. She stares at me steadily. I tell her it's disgusting, it's dead. She says nothing until I print out the price tag and then she says "Give me a little more."

"Okay, but it'll cost more." I say.

She says "NO! Just give me a little more!"

"No."

"What is this? I'm an old lady. I'm starving. I need to preserve my strength."

"Okay. But you have to pay for it."

"NO!NO! No. Iss fine. Just gif me that. Stingy!" She puts it into one of the open bags and ties the top shut. "I bought it somewhere else," she says, and looks at me with a broad wink. "It comes from the Key Food." She pauses. "Our secret, yes?"

I shrug. I don't really care if the old lady steals the fish. Or anything else for that matter.

But this is too much for Raphael. He leaps out from behind his boxes of corn chips and screams "BITCH!"

"AHA!" Imelda is nearly apoplectic with joy. He took the bait.

"THIEF!!!" He hollers.

"You love Imelda!" She shouts and throws her arms around his neck, which is as thick as my thigh, and smears her lips across his jowly cheeks.

"GET off me you old bag!" He pries her claws from his shoulders and literally runs away. And Imelda, god bless her, waves her cane, lets out a whoop and gives chase. They pass through aisles, hollering, cursing, alternately kidding with and hating each other in Spanish, Yiddische and English.

Finally, Raphael stops, clutching his chest and wheezing. He turns to face Imelda who suddenly looks like a chastened child.

"GET OUT!!" He shouts at her.

She juts out her chin, and retrieves her shopping cart, full of hundreds of dollars of unpaid for groceries in the bags from other stores. She tries to walk past Raphael, but as she heads for the door, he siezes the cart, and she nearly loses her balance from the force.

"Vat is this?"

"Get the fuck out of here, what kind of idiot do you take me for?"

"The fat kind!"

"Hag!"

"I bought these foods at Fairway! I would not buy any of your drek!"

"No, you would steal it!" She smiles. "Why do you come here? For the view? To torment me?" Amazingly, Raphael seems genuinely unsure. He might actually be convincing himself that she did buy all those groceries at other stores, even though he watched, saw with his own eyes, as everyone else did, that she had plainly stolen this food here, at this store. And she had far more food than one person could hope to finish in a month. And god knows, she came in twice, sometimes three times, a WEEK!

In the end, it always ends the same way. She pays for two apples. That's it. Two apples, and these she complains are overpriced, but for Raphael, her poor tubby boyfriend, she will pay these unspeakable prices.