Separate Rats

 Animals, Humor, News of the Weird, Relationships, Sex, What's the Story? Wednesdays  5 Responses »
May 042011
 

One of our reg­u­lar cus­tomers came into the store last night, and shared with us how she had just pur­chased a new male rat and brought him home, while other cus­tomers browsed the shelves of the bookstore.

“My female rats went crazy,” she said.  “They started mak­ing this high pitched squeaks and their ears flut­ter like but­ter­fly wings.”

“Did the females jump the male?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t intro­duce him to the same case as the females, but they kept sneak­ing out of their cage.  They’d stand at the edge of the table on which their cage sat, and would try to deter­mine if they could leap the dis­tance between the table with their cage on it and the other table where my male brief sat.”

“So you have to sep­a­rate the male rats from the female rats?”

“Oh yeah,” she began.  “You can’t leave the females with the males, because they can jump on top of a female and impreg­nate  in a blink of an eye and sex is all over with­out you notic­ing a thing.”

The quiet lady with the bob and severe makeup who was brows­ing the biogra­phies, turn to us and said, “Speak­ing from my expe­ri­ence, I can attest that’s true.”

We all stood there, jaws on the floor, as she won­dered back up to the front store and checked out.

Why was she so bit­ter?  What are your theories?

Greek Sex vs. Roman Sex

 Bookstore, Essays, Humor, News of the Weird, Retail, What's the Story? Wednesdays, Work  No Responses »
Apr 272011
 

Though most peo­ple have never heard of it, book­seller E.S.P. exists.  It usu­ally goes off when the book­seller is work­ing in the book­store alone.  A cus­tomer enters who causes the bookseller’s sixth sense to tin­gle.  The bookseller’s inner book­seller shouts, “Dan­ger, Book­seller!  Dan­ger!  Dan­ger!”  But book­sellers can’t let it be known that they’re freak­ing out inside; they must appear calm and helpful.

Such was the case one win­ter evening when a pear-shaped, bald man entered the store.  He was wear­ing only a black turtle­neck sweater and glasses–no coat–and moved furtively around the store as if he was con­sid­er­ing dis­mem­ber­ing me and hid­ing the pieces in his bread maker.

I looked directly at him, smiled, and gave a cheery hello.  He turned his head in my direc­tion, but he seemed to look through me.  He said noth­ing, so I con­tin­ued leaned for­ward and con­tin­ued work­ing on the bookstore’s e-newsletter.

After a moment, I felt some­one star­ing at me, then a soft, high-pitched voice asked, “What’s the dif­fer­ence between Greek sex and Roman sex?”  I lifted my head up and saw the man stand­ing beside me.  His eyes seemed glazed.  I won­dered if he was high.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

He pulled his thin lips back into a smile.  “What’s the dif­fer­ence between Greek sex and Roman sex?”

I didn’t under­stand why he was ask­ing me this ques­tion.  Did I some­how carry myself in a way that sug­gested that I was a kinky fel­low?  Then again, wasn’t Greek sex an euphemism for anal sex, and French sex for oral sex?  But it was usu­ally mod­i­fied by the adjec­tives “active” or “pas­sive,” so as to indi­cate whom the recep­tive part­ner is.  Or was I think­ing of Aus­tralian rules foot­ball …  Finally, I decided to ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion before I made a fool of myself.  After all, I didn’t want to give this guy any ideas.

“Um, in what context?”

The man turned and pointed toward the sex­u­al­ity sec­tion.  Things were not look­ing good.  “I noticed that you have a book enti­tled Greek Sex and one enti­tled Roman Sex.  I won­dered what might be the dif­fer­ence between them.”

I wan­dered back to the sex­u­al­ity sec­tion and pulled the books off the shelves.  I flipped through the pic­tures of pot­tery with lit­tle doo­dles of Greek men sodom­iz­ing one another.   “Well, one is about how the ancient Greeks got it on, and the other is about what the Romans got up to when they turned out the lights.”

The man stared at me, like I just told him the secret to the Uni­verse was Ben Vereen.  “Sold!”  He snatched the books from my hand and car­ried them to the counter.  I rang up his pur­chases and he was on his way.  “Have a nice evening,” I said, as he opened the door.  He paused and his fin­gers squeezed the books in the plain brown sack.

“I will,” he said, and then he was gone.

How to Spot a Surly Buddhist

 Bookstore, Humor, Surly Buddhists, What's the Story? Wednesdays  1 Response »
Mar 092011
 

Surly Buddhist“I tell you,” the owner of the book­store that I man­age said, as I shelved zom­bie books, “It was a near wrath experience.”

“A near wrath expe­ri­ence?” I asked.

“He nearly bit my head off.  I thought spir­i­tual seek­ers were sup­posed to be peace­fully, but this guy … he was … a … surly Buddhist!”

I rolled my eyes and picked up new vegan cook­books to shelve in the veg­e­tar­ian section.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked.

“Look, I believe that you believe this man was a surly Bud­dhist,” I said, paus­ing to give the sweet potato french toast on the cover of Give Me Vegan, or Give Me Meth a sec­ond glance.  “But maybe this guy’s just an intro­vert and he came off a bit terse.”

The owner yanked the feather duster out from under the counter and pointed it at me.  “One day, you will believe.”  Then he turned his back on me, and pro­ceeded to dust the clear­ance cart.

I didn’t really give our con­ver­sa­tion another thought until sev­eral months later.  I was alone in the book­store on a beau­ti­ful May after­noon, when a 50ish bald man with glasses entered.  He  wore long, orange robes that flowed behind him, which reminded me of that scene from Priscilla Queen of the Desert with Guy Pearce rid­ing on top of the bus in the Out­back with the sil­ver trane of his gown flap­ping behind him.

I smiled at him and asked, “How are you?”

The man stopped and jerked his head toward me, then pursed his lips between his ample cheeks.  “Do you have books on Bud­dhism?” he said in demand­ing tone.

“Right over here,” I said, and led him to our reli­gion section.

The man snatched a book off the shelf and flipped through the pages.  He sneered as if were a Tijuana bible and tossed it back on the shelf.  “You call these Bud­dhist books!”

Star­tled by his out­rage, I had to take a deep breath before I answered.  “Well, they are books about Bud­dhism, so, yes, I would call them Bud­dhist books.”  Cring­ing at slight edge to my tone.  I forced myself to smile and asked, “What exactly were you look­ing for?”

“I don’t have to answer to you,” he said.  He swung a piece of his robes that hung down in front of him over his shoul­der, stuck his nose in the air, and stormed out.

Sud­denly, I heard the owner’s voice in my head:  “One day, you will believe.”

Oh my gosh, I thought, I’ve just had a near wrath expe­ri­ence with the Surly Buddhist …

To this day, I often find myself try­ing to fig­ure out this man’s story.  How did such an angry man become so enmeshed in such a reli­gion of peace, going so far as to shave his head and wear the tra­di­tional cloth­ing of Bud­dhist monks.  Some­how, my mind kept wan­der­ing back to the image of this man bent over a glass cof­fee table and suck­ing up lines of coke through a rolled up twenty dol­lar bill, then going berserk in a mini man­sion out in Stone Moun­tain, destroy­ing the inside with a prayer scroll.

What do you think his story is?