Your local convenience store is literally a haven for the dispossessed masses of society. Though not just any store will do, you know the one — the store without the gas station. It’s got deals on a variety of unnecessary indulgences. The proximity to a large amount of affordable housing is key, because anyone worth meeting in the confines of cigarettes, energy drinks, and fried chicken will not want to walk far. There is never a beginning and never an end in this realm, only closing and opening and the constant flow of in and out, in and out.

I am the gatekeeper to this dominion, a master of cigarette brands, lottery tickets, and shortcuts on the cash register. Here is a mosaic that your local politician will not champion. It is a culture with no heritage, merely habits.

Black Cherry

“Your Candy Ass Is Next” reads the shirt of the oversized ice cream eater. Her lips can’t work out consonants properly and this makes for quick words, making her look overeager in every situation. Hearing the sound again and again as if this time is the first time, “Bluak Churry!” Almost right. She is so close to closing her lips around the words “black cherry” but just never quite there.

Scooping ice cream. Goddammit I hate scooping ice cream. I go to community college for chrissake. This is beneath me, this sticky mess is either too hard or too soft. I swear if one more asshole asks for ice cream I am going to quit, walk out, leave forever.

Excuse me?

Oh…you want that on a waffle cone?

Feeds The Birds

I will never understand Feeds The Birds although I always see her coming. It takes a good ten minutes from the time she leaves Glacier View Apartments to when she enters the store. I leisurely wipe the coffee counter, organize the chocolate bars and return video rentals to the shelves. I slowly meander towards the cash register when she arrives.

The predictability of her purchases is obscene. She is in and out two or three times a day, each purchase consisting of a gallon of milk and two butter tarts. She runs like a dilapidated Cadillac, burning excruciatingly large amounts of gasoline over a short distance. Vomit stains trail down the front of her rollicking belly and the whiskers on her face still cling to the remains of her last visit.

She lumbers up to the front and cracks a smile. I do not feel good, only perplexed; her mouth is just too small to induce that kind of weight. The fistful of change is always sweaty, gripped so tightly from her journey it may as well have fallen in a puddle. I reach for the hand sanitizer before her laborious exit. She does not notice, although she doesn’t notice much. Her smell lingers after she leaves. It’s like a nauseating ghost, reminding me of her self-induced squalor.

If she buys chips, she is going to feed the birds. Scattering the potato composites across the lawn is the only thing I see her do aside from her walk to the store and back. The madness of the bird’s frenzy mirrors her own, but hers is a delirium that manifests in a tempered and sedated fashion. Raggedly fluttering, she stands in their midst. When the Lays bag is empty on the ground, she will turn and begin her untimely walk home.

The customers and I are both here for the same reason: it’s close to where we live.

When I first met Roger he seemed like any other customer I saw twice a day: odd. Eventually he became a complete anomaly in the culture of the convenience store: a regular customer-turned-employee. Roger, a twenty-nine-year-old man taking his second part-time job, was a cautionary after-school special in the making.

Roger lived across the street and would often watch the store at all hours of the day. He patrolled the neighborhood at all hours; walking around to make sure that nothing shady was going on (there was always something shady going on). He would often boast of his sexual “conquests” at work. His proudest moment: sleeping with his friend’s forty-year-old mother at the age of nineteen.

Roger has the distinction of being the only man I have known who has been abused by his wife who, incidentally, was also ten years his senior and former babysitter. Roger spent the majority of his time watching recorded television (commercials and all) on VHS. I could look past most of these flaws in a co-worker, but Roger was a horrifying Doppelganger of a functioning worker. He still came in just as often, even after he started working and he never stopped talking about himself. It was as if a giant cardboard cutout of Godzilla would boast to me constantly of cities he had leveled and people he had eaten, when it was obvious he would only grow soggy in the rain. I wanted to feel sorry for Roger; to open my arms wide with compassion; I failed.

A typical comment from Roger, when reading about new preventative measures against STD’s: “Guess I can start sleeping with all the whores again.” I knew Roger would have been fine with or without these measures. The only action he had been getting were messages from bottom of the barrel dating sites like Plenty Of Fish and Lava Life.

Eventually, Roger was fired. Just as Marty McFly could not live in the past, Roger could not exist as an employee.

I am not better than anyone who comes in here. Sometimes I have to remind myself. Though I don’t have shit on my pants or waste a fortune on lottery tickets, I am no better.

CIBC

I will never forget the day I saw a bush. It was nowhere near the intimidating majesty Moses experienced at the foot of Mt. Sinai. No, this was the bush of one jittery, disconcerting, bankcard-misplacing customer. She strolled in; fly down and completely oblivious. While Moses had to remove his sandals when walking on Holy ground, CIBC just forgot to put on her underwear.

My brain raced quickly. I thought back to the most pertinent information I could that corresponded to the situation. The best I came up with was my experience from high school. In 10^th grade sexual education, we had to piece together a model of a vagina and insert a diaphragm. The diaphragm was too big; the model busted apart, not to mention the fact that it was hairless. I knew I had to act; so I did.

I acted as if nothing was any different.

I get paid minimum wage for this shit. It would be one thing if my pay reflected my actual job description. “Babysitting Crack Heads” I don’t see that one on the sheet.

Bill The Roofer

“He’s lonesome cowboy Bill, he rides the rodeo/Just a lonesome cowboy Bill/You got to see him yodel ay-hee-ho!”

Lou Reed’s voice drifts through my head; it must be Bill the Roofer. He is the portrait of the destitute bachelor, not swinging in style but swigging from the bottle. His demeanor: never sullen, even when he urinates on himself. Excretion soaks through his pants and leaves a telltale trail of his highest ambitions, running through the crevices of the tile floor.

Bill is not the typical misanthrope who stumbles in drunk on Saturday mornings. In fact, he is down right amiable. Always polite, he uses solely the store phone to further his roofing career. At least I assume he is polite. I can never understand a word he says, despite our lengthy conversations. I am not sure if conversation would even be the right word; perhaps interactions. Bill’s interactions with local law enforcement are not favorable, judging by his stunning portrait in the “Crime Stoppers” section of the local daily. “For failure to appear in court” read the small black letters, like a graduation quote in a yearbook for the middle-aged.

Bill is not a lonely man. Whenever he can be seen from the street, he always has a lady in tow. The greatest treasure from my convenience store employment is a letter recovered by a co-worker from a Jane Doe to Bill. She wanted to make it work despite the problems and she was staying with her mother until they could work things out. I don’t see Bill catering to anyone, but maybe he realized he needed her. Maybe he just staggered off into the sunset.

I wonder what it would take for me to be exactly where the customers are. I am in their shoes; we are both searching through this life. It is not them and I, it is us if they are completely hopeless, then so am I.

Slayer Kid

With dreams of B.C. Rich Warlocks dancing in his head my favorite bespectacled youth saunters in whenever he pleases or more specifically, whenever his Mom gives him a ride and he has finished his paper route, rocking his dull gray JVC headphones and a translucent Discman.

I always make sure to ask what he’s listening to.

“Oahhh—Metallica,” or “Oahhh—Iron Maiden,” or most prominently, “Oahh—Slayer,” is the response, as if each time he verbalizes what music he’s playing the ecstasy of it all comes in intense waves. Every shirt he wears has the varied and always-epic graphics of Huntington Park, California’s finest.

Much like the controversy of the speed metal gods, Slayer Kid does not leave heads unturned. There were instances in the hallowed candy section I could hear some children whisper (in what I would like to think was awe) at the majesty of “the” Slayer Kid.

Eventually he receded to myth. His Mom got evicted from their apartment building and he had to move across town. But as I was walking one day, I passed a rather sad looking poplar and saw “Slayer Kid” scratched into the bark. Even though he probably had to get another paper route and would no longer be picking up his usual two liters of Pepsi and fried potatoes, he had Slayer and I knew he would be all right.

I am still looking for a Slayer.