***
Flash forward 15 years, where I found myself in the parking lot of a porno shop called, “Adult Galaxy.” I had never been in a porno shop before. There was always something to keep me from going inside of one, like the fear of being secretly videotaped by the local news, a picture of my face with a thin black bar over the eyes. The voiceover: “Perverts infiltrate suburbia! Is your family at risk?”
I had to calm myself in the parking lot, repeating to myself, “People do this kind of thing every day, people do this every day…” Which is something I usually say when I’m about to go into any store, pornographic or otherwise.
There were plenty of cars in the parking lot: a BMW convertible, a couple Chevy Cavaliers, a Honda Accord, even a family-friendly mini-van. “There’s normal people in there,” I thought. “Law abiding citizens. Pillars of the community, even.”
According to my mother, on her first night working at the Video Theater 15 years ago, a family friend came into the store. Recognizing my mother, he walked over and made some small talk. After a few minutes of that, he went behind the saloon doors and picked out 3 pornos and brought them to the counter to finalize the transaction with my mother. Whenever my mother recalls that story, she shudders.
But Adult Galaxy would be different. It was an entire store dedicated to the room with the saloon doors. It wasn’t a front for sexual gratification. It didn’t try to hide itself behind some legitimate Hollywood movies, only to reveal a secret passageway of nudity. It told you right from the start that this place was not meant for kids.
In order to get out of my car and into the store, I needed to find a comfortable mental plane so I wouldn’t go hysterical and have a panic attack. I needed to be as casual as the guys from Video Theater 15 years ago. When I hung out at the video store after school, I would sometimes be sitting on a barstool behind the counter, and the presence of my 10 year old self did not deter male customers from going to the back room and coming back to the counter with a hearty stack of pornography. They’d just plant those absurdly thick VHS cases on the counter, and as my mother would tally the total, the guy would just look at me and say, “How you doin’, kiddo?”
I’d just slowly turn away from him on my barstool and say, “Fine…”
I was never taught by my parents to judge or discriminate, but even at that age I was thinking, “There’s something not right about this…” But the guys were so casual, like they weren’t renting pornography at all, more like just buying some windshield wipers, or a pack of smokes or…cantaloupe.
Yes, cantaloupe. I was going into Adult Galaxy just to buy a cantaloupe, nothing more. There’s nothing wrong with cantaloupe. People buy cantaloupe every day. With my mind prepared, my body entered the store.
Despite all of the cars in the parking lot, there were only two other customers inside the store. Maybe the cars were rented by the store to make it more inviting to people like me. Clever. The front register was occupied by a very tall, very heavyset woman, and if her birth certificate read anything other than “Big Momma,” I’d be shocked.
Big Momma was talking to a female customer over a broken cantaloupe that needed to be replaced. “There’s no refunds,” Big Momma told her. “But maybe they can do something for you in the back.” I followed Big Momma’s pointed finger over to the far wall and saw what I thought had gone extinct years ago: two wooden saloon doors, leading to another room. A room containing what, I had no idea. The sight of the doors excited me, scared me, and confused me all at once. My mind began racing. I was standing in the store that was supposed to be the room with the saloon doors, but now that store has its own saloon doors containing even more sexual debauchery that I couldn’t even fathom. Where did it end? How far down did the rabbit’s hole go? It was a shock to my system and it took me a moment to collect myself. While I stood at the entrance gently clutching my chest, the female customer walked through the saloon doors and I never saw her again.
I took a breath and got my focus back. I decided to walk the perimeter of the store and avoid the cesspool of hardcore movies in the middle. There were just too many movies to count, too many varieties; stuff I never heard of like, Milk Squirting or CoEd Amputees. So many movies. So, so many. I don’t believe in angels, but I now believe that every time a bell rings, a porno movie is made.
On the wall before the cantaloupe selection began was a poster of a porn movie called “Not The Brady’s,” and it showed 8 profile shots of people in their own little cube with a light blue background. So immediately, I thought of “The Brady Bunch,” but that was a show about a family with children as young as 6! How can they make a porno movie based on the story of when a lady met a fellow and formed a huge family? But the porn was called, “Not The Brady’s,” so I guess I was the pervert. My mistake. I guess the scenes of the movie always started like, “Hi, I’m not Greg Brady, and you’re not Cindy Brady, so let’s screw.” Can’t wait for “Not ALF” to hit the shelves, I thought.
There was absolutely no music playing in the store. The only things that could be heard were the slow creaking of the floorboards like an antique store, along with Big Momma’s cough. She was working on a really fierce cold, and even as she politely covered her mouth with her hand, the sound of the mucus ripping out of her lungs and snapping at her throat was nearly unbearable.
While perusing the many varieties of cantaloupe, I saw the other male customer appear a good distance away to my left. He was standing in front of the “Not the Brady’s” movie poster, and was probably contemplating the perversion the same way I did. He was an older man, a bit past middle-age with a mustache, dressed in a full suit. I continued looking at the cantaloupes. I noticed that whenever I moved further along the perimeter of the wall, the man in the suit did as well. He kept the same distance away from me, but I could see that he was always standing where I had previously stood, looking at the same cantaloupes I was inspecting minutes prior. I came up to the saloon doors at the back wall and began to sweat. Was I allowed? Could I do it? What was back there? I took a quarter out of my pocket and “dropped” it on the floor. I bent down to pick it up, but saw nothing but a hallway that made a sharp turn to the right, making it impossible for me to see more. I moved on. So did the mustached man. And what did he do when he reached the saloon doors? He dropped a coin and picked it up! At first I thought maybe his actions were just coincidental with mine, but not anymore.
Who the hell was this guy? What was he doing, mocking me? Why mock me? What did I do to him? He was distracting me from the cantaloupes. Maybe he was a mirror image of my future self, an apparition brought forth by the universe to warn me of what I may become if I hang out in the store for too long; a porn addict, getting his fix by rubbing his mustache and admiring the cantaloupes. I’m going to turn into a loser, I thought. And this man is here to tell me exactly where I went wrong in life: by entering Adult Galaxy. That’s what I thought. Either that, or this guy was just a total creep. Big Momma coughed a good hack. After concentrating on the man’s mustache, I went with the latter.
I finally came upon a cantaloupe on the wall that would work. It was a simple one. It was the type of cantaloupe Tom Petty or Chef Gordon Ramsey would buy for their wives. It was simple, basic, pure, and the label bragged that it got the job done. It didn’t have the frills the other cantaloupes possessed. It didn’t have any spikes, bumps, extensions, levers, pulleys, straps, secretions, dials, or power boosters. All you needed were 2 AA batteries and you could hitch a ride to Pleasure Town. Population: You!
I picked up a cantaloupe of the pink variety and brought it to the counter. Big Momma let out a hack and grabbed the case. She opened the package and said, “There’s no returns, so we have to make sure it works.”
“Oh, that’s not really—”
“Now, now, we have to make sure,” she said. Then she coughed on her hand and grabbed the cantaloupe, unscrewing the bottom of it with extreme crudeness. She reached under the desk and got out 2 AA batteries and s
hoved them in. Twisting the bottom back on, she felt the shaft of the cantaloupe, and shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said, “Maybe it’s the batteries.”
I could feel the presence of the mustachioed man standing behind me in line as Big Momma coughed a wet one and got some more batteries and shoved them in the cantaloupe’s anal cavity. She gripped the cantaloupe tightly and said again, “Nothing. See?”
She held the object out for me to touch, but I just shook my head. She grabbed a walkie-talkie next to the cash register and spoke into it. “Gene, get me some double A’s, I got a dildo here that won’t work.”
“No, we don’t need Gene,” I said, but he had already responded and came from the back with a pack of batteries. Big Momma and Pony-Tailed Gene gripped the cantaloupe as I looked away in embarrassment. The mustachioed man made eye contact with me, then looked down at the cantaloupe he was going to purchase, identical to mine, only purple, then back at me. I darted my face towards the register again, watching Big Momma’s sweaty mucus-drenched hands work the sex toy.
“Aha, there we go!” she exclaimed while holding the cantaloupe up like Excalibur. “Took a while, but we got it,” she said proudly.
She offered me to touch it one more time to confirm that it was vibrating, but I declined. She rang up my total, and I collected my change, receipt, cantaloupe, and walked out the door.