“Another one got rowdy last night,” Winnie said.
“Made trouble?” I replied, eating my cereal.
“Are you okay?” said Max.
“Fine,” said Winnie, “but I’m getting tired of Friday and Saturday nights at work after the damn bars close.” At that point, Winnie looked at me. “Are you doing anything important after midnight?” she asked.
“Ah,” I said. In truth, I wasn’t sure. On the other hand, I didn’t quite know if I wanted to go to work with Winnie and hold back the ravening horde of drunks, either.
“Please?” said Winnie. “You’re large and hairy and if you wear your biker jacket, you look like a biker and if you say ‘get the hell off the counter,’ the drunk will get off the counter long enough for me to get to the phone.”
“Ah,” I said. I’ve done bouncer duty. I didn’t much like it. Getting a faceful from a belligerent drunk who is convinced he could stomp Bruce Lee is less than pleasant, and the main thing I learned from it was that (a) it’s pointless to argue with a drunk, and (b) one should never shake a drunk. They leak. Often violently. Even when they’re the ones doing the shaking.
“Please?” asked Winnie. “I’ll buy the sodas, and I’ll give you store credit.”
That got my attention. “Winnie,” I said, "whatthehell am I gonna do with store credit at a porn shop?"
*********
Winnie wasn’t a radical feminist, but she coulda played one on TV. She refused to shave her pits and legs, had loud feminist viewpoints, and insisted on having metaphorical testicles. I liked 'er. She was an interesting person. She was Max’s girlfriend, and the three of us shared a house.
And when a job opened up at the porn shop, she pounced on it. It would provide useful background information on the objectification of women, and be an adventuresome ride. The owner liked it, because Winnie was good looking, and a good looking woman working in a porn shop is an asset.
99% of the guys who walk into a porn shop are NOT looking for trouble. They barely speak to the clerk. Eye contact with ANYONE in a porn shop is … meaningful. Every porn shop I’ve ever been to has been as quiet as a church, unless the clerk had a video playing with the sound on, or Muzak, or somethin’.
But then… it was a college town. And this meant bars, bars aplenty. And this meant that when the bars closed, certain other businesses braced for impact. Up until now, I thought this only went for all night groceries and coffee-and-pancakes joints (every waitress who’s ever worked the graveyard shift has horror stories of What Happened That Time After The Bars Closed.)
'Parently, this goes for porn shops, too. Winnie had had two separate incidents in one week where some drunk got a little too lively for her taste. If a couple of her regulars hadn’t stepped in the previous night, she wouldn’t have had time to get to the phone… and if the drunk hadn’t been afraid of getting arrested at a porn shop, the threat of calling the cops might not have been enough. He apparently didn’t understand that the clerk wasn’t for sale or rent.
And so, Winni asked me to stand around and look dangerous. Sigh. All right. ONE night. And *you’re *buying breakfast.
And thus, my learning experience began.
A couple of drunks showed up that night, but they didn’t do much more than stagger around and giggle and point at things and speak a little too loudly. No harm done. But you know what? If you pay attention, it’s durn hard to get bored in a porn shop.
For one thing, there are the Regulars. Winnie knew a lot of them by name. These were guys who came in regularly, particularly on weekends, to cruise for oral sex.
“Oral…?” I said. “What, are there hookers here?”
“Tell you what,” she said. “Go in one of the booths in back. Here’s some tokens. Just go sit in a booth and watch a movie for five minutes.”
I took the tokens, but I did not go in a booth. I stood and looked at the Big Board. There must have been half a dozen guys hanging around the Big Board, the showcase with a bunch of different movie boxes in it, showing what movie was showing on which channel. They looked at the channels, and did not make eye contact with each other. No one said anything.
One guy detached from the group, wandered into a booth, and closed the door. I heard the click of tokens being fed into the slot. A video started. Distant muffled porn music and sounds were heard.
A moment later, another guy detached from the group and ambled down the aisle, past that booth. He brushed the door, perhaps accidentally. There was a click; the door was shut and latched, apparently. So the guy stepped into the next booth, and closed the door. Click of tokens. More porn music.
This went on for a while. I didn’t get it. I went back outside.
“Did you see the hole?” asked Winnie.
“Hole?”
“GLORY hole, nitwit. In the wall of the booth.”
Glory hole? Wall of the booth? I wandered back into the darkened room of booths in back, and this time I went into a booth. And yes, I locked the door. I fed a couple of tokens in, sat down, and began to watch the movie.
A moment later, I saw a flicker of light to my left. I glanced down. There was a hole, some two and a half inches in diameter, in the wall. I was seeing light flicker from the video screen in the booth next door. Someone had gone in, closed the door, and was watching a movie.
As I watched, I saw his fingertips appear, resting on the rim of the hole.
I don’t think I glanced at the pornucopia on the screen for the rest of the time I was in there. I stared at those fingers as though they were going to erupt through the hole like snakes. At one point, he began drumming them, impatiently.
I got the hell out. I got back into the shop proper. “What the hell was THAT all about?”
Winnie giggled. “Someone was lonely, that’s all.”
“And what the hell was I supposed to do about it?”
“He probably wanted to know if you wanted to give… or to receive.”
My mouth fell open. Thinking about it, I immediately closed it again.