True Porn Clerk Stories

Here. Below is an excerpt from a post called “Lube Warning” from “03-02-2002.”

All of us abuse the hand sanitizer. I know that over-the-counter antibacterial products are bad. I know that it actually develops hideous resistant strains of bacteria. I even did the high school biology experiment where you put penicillin in a petri dish of E. Coli, then watch the zone of inhibition get smaller and smaller as the bacteria learn to eat the stuff for breakfast. I know it is bad, and I don’t think it should even be legal to sell it. All of my fellow clerks agree with me, but we all abuse the hand sanitizer. We can’t help it.

Contamination is everywhere. I see people sneezing onto the tape cases. They cough wetly into their palms right before handing me change. They squeegee out their ears with their pinkies. They forget about the security cameras downstairs and pick their noses with wild abandon and astonishing force. Still, the only thing that realy freaks me out is the semen. Well, OK, the lubricant freaks me out too, but I’m pretty sure that’s because of the implied presence of semen.

The only thing we can do is use the hand sanitizer. I use it so much that I lose all finger traction and can’t open our plastic bags. I’ve had days when I’ve used it so much that I can’t even make fingerprints on the glass countertop. It freaks me out, but the thought of not using it is worse.

Sometimes people get animalistic about the tapes. For the real addicts (I’m convinced that porn is like alcohol: some people can stop at just one every now and then, some people just binge on weekends, and some people get genuinely, horribly addicted) the reptilian brain kicks in. They hit the magic portion of the tape and they’re done. They pop out the tape and slam in another one, and the next day the stack comes back, unrewound and covered in goo.

Repeat offenders get a note on their file that says “LUBE WARNING”. Management policy is that for $6.50 an hour, clerks should not have to deal with the bodily fluids of others. The first time we discreetly but firmly remind the customer that the tapes need to come back clean. The second time we hand him the tape, the Windex, and the paper towels and tell him to clean off the tape in full view of whoever else is at the counter. …

…The polite fiction of the porn section is that, while people do generally use porn for the purpose of masturbation, there is no reason to believe that this particular customer will be doing so. He could be using them for his Master’s thesis. Hell, he may not get around to watching them at all. We all like to believe that. When it becomes all too clear to everyone involved that said customer did, in fact, not only lube up, watch the tape, stroke himself to orgasm, and then grab the goddamned thing without even taking the basic courtesy of washing his goddamned hands first, we all get uncomfortable.

On the other hand, he gets angry because he’s ashamed of something that was entirely avoidable and his own fault. I’m supposed to keep my temper even though I’ve just put my hand in a wad of his semen.

The destruction of the polite fiction is what creeps me out about one of my weekend regulars. He comes in when I open at nine, then chooses and rents two movies. He leaves for exactly two movies’ worth of time, then returns them before four to get the matinee special. I hate it because there’s no way to pretend he’s been doing anything else. I just hope to God there’s been a hand washing between him and me. I think there is, because his tapes are always clean, but it still gives me the shivvers and sends me straight to the hand sanitizer. It’s just too much to know.

Mr. Glasses is the very creepiest, though. He’s always very friendly, even courtly. He’s too friendly, actually – he’s always doing stuff like announcing “It’s THAT kind of personal service that sets your store apart from the Blockbusters!” Yeah, whatever. The over-friendliness itself is creepy, as is the way he sort of doesn’t blink enough and doesn’t know that most business transactions don’t really involve sustained eye contact. (No, he’s not hitting on me. He’s gay.) But of course what puts him over the top is that he’s our biggest repeat lube offender. I hate seeing him coming. It’s like Russian Roulette.

Rainy days are the worst. He just plunks a wet bag on the counter and we have to reach in and get the tapes. You know that initiation ritual in Flash Gordon where the guy has to stick his hand way, way down a hole and usually it’s fine but sometimes there’s a venemous beastie at the end that stings him? It’s like that. Actually, it isn’t quite. The tapes are always a bit wet on rainy days – it’s just that my brain can’t stop churning about what they might be wet with.

We all abuse the hand sanitizer. And I am deeply grateful that it exists.

Via Unfogged. The rampant availability of Internet porn and fast Internet connections has probably improved the lives of video store clerks somewhat. Don’t think I’ll be buying any used computer keyboards, either.

–Ann Bartow