It was 1989.I had left my job at the Italian restaurant for a job at a health food store run by Seventh Day Adventists. “A geriatric insane asylum” one of the customers used to call it, motioning with his head at the workers. I couldn’t disagree with him, so I didn’t. I was hired for the register. I stood all day, banging those keys and trying to smile at the customers and greet them according to store policy. I was a phony and they knew it. I was good though. The second fastest checker and I hadn’t been there long. I remember one particularly busy evening, looking for a second at the long line at my register. It spilled down the aisle. The other cashiers had much shorter lines and as I hit the keys, I contemplated that. Then I overheard two women in my line talking about me. “Why are we in this line?” one asked the other. “Because she’s so gentle with my fruit.” the woman answered. Well it made sense to me. I had always hated going to the store, carefully picking my apples and other produce items and then having some one slam them down on the scale, bruising them all anyway. So gentle with the fruit was I.
The best part of the job, other than lunch, breaks, and quitting time, was when they would release me from the register and let me stock the shelves. In to the back I would go, loading up my cart with boxes. To the front then to price them and place them on the shelves in neat little rows. It was an easy job that left my mind free to wander wherever I wanted it to go. One such day I was stocking the shelves and longing for my Grandfather. He was sick, dying of cancer and heart disease. I was stuck in Portland while his days were numbered in N.S.W. I knew that I’d never get back to see him alive, not working away my days for $6.00 an hour and eating the produce that they threw out, declaring it inedible for human consumption.
So I’m placing the cans on the shelf, cursing geography, when I see a man walking towards me. Not walking really, it’s more of a shuffle. He is thin and his face is heavily lined. His coat cracks me up. It is puffy and looks quilted. On it is a map of the world. It reminds me of my shower curtain at home. I watch him with his little red basket as I work. When he gets to the cereal he tries in vain to reach a box of this sugar free crap that is supposed to taste like Cap ‘N’ Crunch but actually tastes more like the cardboard that it is packaged in. He can’t get it. I walk over and take a box down for him. We begin to talk. He tells me that he is taking a break from work to get some shopping done. I am instantly curious; I mean he appears to be up in his ‘80’s. Where does he work? So I ask him. He runs his own business. “Really,” I reply. “What sort of business?” “Well, um, I, um, oh, you probably wouldn’t be interested”, he stammers. Interested I am. I mean, what this little old man could do that is making him blush. The possibilities! So his story was told as I stocked those shelves. He is 88. Single, with no kids. His name is Glenn. He owns and operates an “Adult Store” if I know what he means. I do. This is where he starts to really open up to me. He tells me where his store is, how it used to be mainly a male customer base he was attracting, although now the females are frequenting the store as well. “The ladies love to stop by late and pick up a video and a vibrator on their way home to their husbands.” I wonder to myself how many of them are going home to men, but it really doesn’t matter. I am called to check and to the front I go, leaving the old man that doesn’t remind me of my Grandfather any more behind. He pays in my line, reminds me of his store’s location once again, and leaves.
I don’t think of Glenn again that night. It is busy and the hours are spent at that damn register, banging those keys, smiling at the strangers and trying not to bruise any fruit. Right before closing I hear my name called over the intercom. I’ve got a phone call, line two. Not unusual, my boyfriend often calls me late to say hello, he misses me, when will I be home? I answer in an overly exaggerated sexy voice, “Hello Baby.”
“Hi, this is Glenn”, I hear. Oh Shit, I think. He continues, “I have a couple of plane tickets to Hawaii here. We can stop by my store, pick up some videos and sex toys and take off tonight.” I stand there in my 17-year-old body, speechless. Uncertain of what to say, I tell him thanks but no thanks, I have a boyfriend. He doesn’t care. We’re going to Hawaii anyway. We argue this point back and forth for awhile until I say goodbye and place the phone back in its cradle. I tell the manager not to take any more phone calls for me.
When I hit the time clock, I am scared. I think this man might be waiting in the parking lot. He is not. I walk home alone. Sitting here today in my 33 year old body, I wonder about Glenn. What ever became of him? The only thing that I’m certain of is this story would have been a whole lot different had I jumped on to that airplane that night, and flown through the sky, on my way to make love with an 88 year old man that couldn’t raise his arm up to get a box of cereal off of the shelf, and shuffled his feet when he walked.