I almost wrote this sentence before I realized that in the world of just truly f@ked up stories, what percentage of them start out exactly like this:
“So I was going to Wal-Mart…”
What accounts for that? Math, on some level. More walmarts. More people going to wal marts. More f’dup shenanigans. (I feel like coining a phrase today). Walnanigans. (Feel free to use it at your leisure.)
But the walnanigans have more to do than just frequency. People go to the grocery store at LEAST as much as they go to (this one is going to be more removed) discount-Pink Floyd*, and I rarely hear anyone say “So I was on my way to Albertson’s…”. It’s always Walmart. Hence, Walnanigans. (Last time.)
*The Wal.
I park far away from places, because it simultaneously minimizes the number of dings my car receives, and gives me just a microscopic increase in daily exercise, which is better than no increase at all.
(“Phil. The amount of life longevity that you’re adding by walking across the parking lot, is instantly subtracting walking across said parking lot. You are effectively adding days of parking lot walking to your life. If you just parked closer, you could spend more time doing whatever the hell it is you wanted to do after you were done at Wal-Mart.”)
(“That is a brilliant point, inner/schizophrenic Me. I will take it into serious consideration.”)
(“That’s all I ask.”)
So. I pull in to my spot, faaaar away. Too far. Did you know how long it takes to get totally freaked out, have an awkward interaction, and risk jail time? About fifty yards.
There’s a lady standing in the open spot next to mine. Shortly you’ll see that she’s not a lady, she’s a woman, and she’s staring at me. She is grilling me. Hard. I can tell we’re going to have an interaction, and I can tell by her dirty blue sweatpants, and weird pink sweater thing that it’s not going to be an interaction I need to have.
“You.” she says.
“Me?” I answer. One word in, and the conversation is broken. A record.
“Are you… is that you?”
“Uh. Yes, I don’t know who else I ..er?”
“From this morning…”
By this point, I just really wanted to tag out of this conversation. If only I had a conversational teammate who would periodically jump in from the top-ropes and save me from these things. I just feel like I’m drowning. I explain to her that I am almost certainly not whomever from this morning. I don’t tell her how I know this, because I don’t want to seem like an elitist, but she just doesn’t look like my circle of friends.
“Damn. You look JUST like him.”
Then we start walking to Wal-Mart. I say we, because she decided the walk with me. I don’t know why. Feeling the need to strike up a conversation, I decided to go with the obvious choice, and I asked her how she knew my doppleganger. (I didn’t actually say doppleganger)
“I fucked him this morning.”
“Oh.” I replied.
We walked in what was an awkward silence for me, as I tried to figure out what to say, aside from “Oh.” Meanwhile, her brain was simultaneously thinking of what to say, this was apparently her first choice:
“He took a long time to come,” she added ruefully.
WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS? I thought, but did not say. Instead I brainstormed, and offered the only bit of wisdom I had for that one.
“Well, uh…er… yeah, condoms’ll do that to you, but… you know… gotta wear ‘em.”
She instantly insisted that they definitely used condoms in a way that told me that they most definitely did NOT use condoms.
The Wal-Mart was about 40 yards away.
Most football players can run a 40 yard dash in something like 4 seconds.
I thought I could do at least six, and get a little cardio at the same time.
(“You’re only adding time running across park…“ yeah yeah yeah…)
…but I worry about looking like a purse snatcher, plus how else could this conversation go wrong? She said, again, that I looked JUST like him. I decided to steer the conversation into safer waters.
“Oh.. that’s uh… cool. So what was his name?”
She paused, and thought for a while. Not a long while. Just longer than she should’ve, given the question. Either she was about to lie or…
“We didn’t talk names. We talked dollars.”
Holy s@#t I am walking into Wal-Mart with a whore.
I am fascinated with the practical realities of whoredom. I’ve never understood why someone would ever pay for sex, because it seems that there’s always someone who is willing to give it away for free. Someone told me once that for some people it’s the fact that they had to pay for it that makes it “hot.” That seems pretty stupid, to be honest.
But, one thing I’ve always wondered is “the going rate.” Not the Spitzer/Fleiss going rate. The “I am hollering at you from the inside of a dark and dirty car, and it’s 4am. And maybe there’s a baby seat in the back. And a baby.” going rate. So I had to ask.
“So uh… just out of curiosity, what does that cost?”
She looked at me and said “For you? Twenty.”
I tend to be encouraging of people. If someone says something to me that is a little bit off, or emotionally raw I tend to respond encouragingly, just so they don’t feel… you know, uncomfortable. If someone exposes a part of themselves, and you give them the ol’ “OH MY GOD WHAT?!” then maybe the next time they won’t tell someone.
Not that this hooker needed encouraging, but I just want you to know where the instinct comes from. I turned to her and said:
“Wow. Sounds like a deal.”
Which she (mis?)-interpreted and said.
“Okay, where do you want to do this?”
Oh my God I just (successfully) negotiated a deal with a hooker in a parking lot at Wal-Mart. I tried backpedaling, but this was a grown-up bike, so there was no stopping, just endless awkward spinning.
“Uh, I mean, er it sounds like a deal. Like for him. Like a bargain. You know, a good deal. Because it was. I mean not for me. I mean not that it wouldn’t be a good deal for me, it’s just not. I’m not. You know. I’m not looking.”
(during this paragraph, a young, non-whore-looking lady walked out of wal-mart, past us. And while there’s no way that she could’ve had ANY idea what we were talking about, I swear she was looking at me with disgust)
My “friend” (the whore who screwed some guy who looked just like me this morning, for probably around twenty dollars, in case you missed part 1) sensed that I was most definitely not going to buy, and started prattling on about how she was homeless now, cause she couldn’t afford her rent or lease or something.
I wasn’t paying very close attention, because (she was a hooker. You can’t listen to hookers, or you’ll end up like them. Right? Is it okay to mock whores? I hope so), but I wasn’t paying close attention because I was worried a cop was going to arrest me for soliciting sex from a prostitute.
In the back of my mind I thought: This is the real untold terror of the sub-prime lending disaster. Whores at wal-mart.
Bonus story:
I walked over to Books-A-Million to buy a book by someone I’d read as a kid. To cleanse the palate. I was looking for something by Piers Anthony, when I was younger he spoke at the Alachua County Library, and I met him. He was very nice, and signed my book. It was a happy place, and I needed to go. He’s written about a hundred books, and I couldn’t find one, so I settled on something by R.A. Salvatore, and a moleskin. As I approached the checkout, I noticed that the cashier had an eyepatch.
(The verb notice shouldn’t be used in this case. “Noticing” implies that you might have otherwise missed it. Unless you are very stupid, or very blind, it is very hard to miss an eye patch. The proper sentence would read: “I saw that the cashier had an eyepatch.” or, even better “The cashier wore an eyepatch.”)
This bothered me. Not cause I have a thing against patchies (as I’m almost 100% sure they would HATE to be called), but because if the person I’m speaking to has a ‘weakness/deformity/missing-something’ I will ALWAYS refer to it, by accident. And this wasn’t a “temp” eye patch, made out of cotton, from a procedure he had that day. This was a perma-patch. Nice. Leather. Something a pirate would wear. Something he probably hangs near his bed (or maybe just near the front door, because you wouldn’t mind your socket being exposed when you were at home. It wouldn’t just be a sleep thing, would it?). This indicated that it was serious.
“Did you find everything okay?” he asked.
EYE answered “Yes.” And then I decided I was just lying to him because of his patch, and that that was messed up, so I should tell him the truth “Well, do you have any books by Piers Anthony? I looked and looked and looked but I just couldn’t seem to see it.”
F#@k.
“Uh..er..yes. One second.” He said. Maybe he noticed. Maybe he didn’t. I would’ve.
The shopping center on 13th is an awful place.