One day, a large woman behemoths her way into The Big Bookstore.
After doing her shopping she comes up to the register to buy her book and as I ring her up and tell her the total she reaches into her ample bosom, digs around and brings forth a wet, smelly $20 bill.
Part of my soul died at that moment.
I don’t care if it was a bosom I wanted to see, I wouldn’t want to take wet money from it.
Cash money is probably one of the most disgusting, filthy things that can change hands. Think of all the horrific things people do with their hands, where they put them and what touches them. Then they touch money. And give it to you.
It’s probably one of the reasons the people who labor in retail are sick all the time. They touch filthy, wet money. So if you see a sick retail worker you go ahead and deal with that shit. You probably made them sick.
As bad as, if not worse than, Bosom Lady was the Jogger.
He comes into the store, still covered in a sheen of sweat and funk, dressed in too short shorts and tank top, looking like an extra from an 80’s music video. I’m almost forced to wonder what pops into one’s head that causes them, mid-jog, to run into a bookstore, but I don’t care enough to keep the thought up.
I’m more repulsed by the fact that when he comes up to the register to pay for the book he reaches into his sock and retrieves a folded, wet $20 bill.
My friend is there with me that day, is forever amused by the fact I peered over the counter at the fellow prying the damp sock from his skinny ankle and uttered, “Oh, no you don’t.” When he reached his hand out to me and offered me the wet money I used two pens as chopsticks and took the cash.
Immediately, I had the manager on duty change it out for me with a fresh bill from the safe.
Wet money was one of my great annoyances at that job and all retail. I don’t know how money gets so wet in one’s wallet, I’d rather not know. I only know if all you have to offer someone is wet money then you’d best pay with credit.
Take your wet, diseased money and get the fuck away from me.
* * *
“Maybe the book will help.”
I don’t care about the customers. How can I? I meet these people for five or ten minutes while they tell me this aspect or that of their lives. How do I know anything but what they tell me? And why do I want to know? I got my own problems to contend with. I don’t need cancers or girlfriends with strange diseases on my mind. I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but what if they deserve these things that are happening to them? I’m only seeing them in this moment, when the cancer has torn them apart, when the girlfriend is getting sick, when the memories of the war come flooding back, when the thought that offing themselvesf might not be the best of ideas comes to the forefront of their mind and they reach out looking for help. How do I know they aren’t absolutely horrible people? How do I know they don’t piss on the homeless or beat their girlfriends or run over small animals for pure pleasure? You see what I mean? And supposing they really are good people under bad circumstances, what good would it do me to care? I can’t care. Odds are safe I’ll never see these people again, so why should I care? What possible good would that do? So I care, and I never know what becomes of them. I don’t know if the guy goes out with the sick girl. I don’t know if the guy will ever show his grandkids the picture of his ship. I don’t know if the woman ever survives cancer or succumbs to it. I don’t know if the depressed teenager ends up putting a gun to herself. I’ll never know these things. I don’t want to know them, I don’t need to know them. It does me no good. I know more about them than I have any right to.
But they can’t help it. That four foot high counter with the computer on it, somehow it hits their eyes and ends up in their brains looking like a confessional. And they stand there, leaning over the counter, giving it all up to me. From their childhood to their love lives, to their jobs and their deaths and so on and so on and so on.
I stand there, on the other side listening to them, hearing them spilling their guts out, telling me in extreme detail not only why they’re in here buying the book on that counter but everything that led them to the point where they had to come in there and buy it, giving me all their sins and confessions, all their needs and wants and desires and disappointments and everything in between.
And me, as always, standing there not caring, taking it all from them, my silence absolving them their guilt and sins and burdens. Me, a bookstore clerk serving as some kind of bizarre, post-modern Jesuit.
I guess you could make a point that I’m not much better than them, spewing my guts out here on these pages for you all to read. But there’s a fundamental difference. You bought this, you’re asking for it. You wanted all this. In that respect you’re better than I am. You, even if only a little, care.
Maybe the book will help.