True Porn Clerk Stories - Ali Davis [32]
I used to have pretty good conversations with one of my customers a few months ago. He was a nice guy, and we had similar-though-not-identical tastes in movies. We had some pretty good debates, chewing over things like why I ended up hating Fire Walk with Me and why he ended up loving it. He started sort of flirting and I started thinking about it. Thinking favorably, in fact.
He's African-American and I'm white, which suddenly became relevant on the day that he came in, browsed and chatted a bit, flirted a bit, then went downstairs and came up with five porn titles, all from Black Dicks in White Chicks and other similarly-themed series.
I told this story to a few friends, all of whom had the same reaction: "Did he realize what he was doing?"
I don't know if he knew what he was doing or not when he brought the tapes up, but the minute I glanced at the tapes we both knew it was the wrong thing. It was just too weird. We'd destroyed the impersonality of his porn rental by chatting, and made the chatting way too personal with his porn rental.
It's the polite fiction again. Sure, flirtation or an invitation on a date implies at least some sexual interest, but there's something to be said for a little mystery.
He didn't come back to the store for a long time, which I think was more comfortable for both of us, and now we don't chat anymore, which is too bad.
So as I said, I don't think dating my customers is ever going to happen, largely because I get to know them in reverse -- I learn about their deepest kinks first, and then I get around to learning their names a few months later. It's just as well. When it comes to the porn section, it's more comfortable for everyone if I stay disengaged.
Mr. Hazy
Mr. Hazy was one of the first customers I got to know at the store -- certainly the first name I learned. Like anywhere else, the first people I learned at the video store were the complete nightmares and the really nice ones (we have lots of normal customers; I just don't need to write about them) but Mr. Hazy was an exception to that rule. I learned him first simply because he was at the video store all the frigging time. Like Mr. Buddy, he spends literally thousands of dollars a year in porn rentals.
He's like clockwork: In, six hardcore porn videos, and then back again within a day or at most two. He does have to stagger his schedule a bit -- Wednesdays and Fridays are New Porn Days and he can't miss those, so it's tough to fall into a strict two-day rhythm what with these darn seven day weeks we insist on keeping.
Besides, sometimes he gets through six videos in a day just fine.
That six videos in a day thing used to astonish me -- it seemed superhuman -- but then I got clued into the fact that many of the heavy renters are doing a lot of fast-forwarding. They have to burn a lot of video to get to what they want.
At least I hope to God that's what they're doing. How could you spend twelve hours a day, every day, masturbating? Wouldn't you get bored? Would calluses eventually become a problem? Some of our six-a-day customers, obviously, are just pirating our tapes, but not all of them. I know. Trust me.
I don't know why five or six videos a day creep me out but not, say, three. Why should six solid hours a day of masturbation be a reasonable amount of time? I have no idea. It's something internal that I can't seem to logic away: I have no problem with three or four hardcore pornographic videos a day, but five or six is excessive. Perhaps I shouldn't have children.
Anyway, Mr. Hazy is definitely not pirating. As I mentioned, Wednesday and Friday are New