The reality of working at a bookstore is not as romantic as you may think.
Like, OK. You can agree that it’s pretty fucking sick to be in close proximity to the modern Library of Alexandria, VA, also known as Barnes and Noble, at all times, susceptible to their common overstocks of obscure shoujo manga that they so dutifully pass onto you when no one buys off the last few bits. It’s pretty sick to have a cafe that serves Starbucks in-store. It’s pretty sick to work in a store so large and so full of labyrinthian shelves.
The aisles are excellent hiding material, actually. They’re how you spent a solid third of your shift today, the part not occupied by dealing with customers who either misread your nametag and called you Dick instead of your proper moniker, Dirk or who not-so-subtly flirted with you and casted salacious glances at your admittedly fat ass. Well, maybe not fat. More like… muscular. “Fat” is better reserved for someone else.
Anyway, the back of the children’s section is a pretty comfy area; usually sparsely populated. The rugs are expectedly softer than the carpet and hardwood around the rest of the store, and make for a nice cushion substitute to plant your ass on while you adroitly defile another poor copy of Pony Pals with glittery neon orange gel pen for your personal enjoyment.
THE LABELING MACHINE: stolen.
MAISIE FROM THE REGISTERS: aggravated.
PAST YOU, THOROUGHLY AND WHOLLY IMBUED WITH THE HEAPING SPIRIT OF SCHADENFREUDE, HALFWAY THROUGH A CRUDE DEPICTION OF EQUINE YAOI ROMANCE: Crocker is going to fucking love this.
Plus, unwelcome encounters are typically kept to a minimum while you’re implanted in the furthest ring of the store. There’s the exception of the little girl with great taste who stumbled upon you and asked what the blatantly phallic shape you were drawing was, and you had to pass it off as a flower in training, but you didn’t really mind her at all. She was chill. Amaya, good luck with your horseback lessons on Saturday at 9:45 AM. You can wake up early. I believe in you.
You’re better suited for the back, anyway. Try to walk to the front, and your shitty manager, this dumbass camp gay man named Broderick who walks around with his collar popped and guns out like it ain’t no thang, will put you on greeting duty with zero chance of argument. It’s to add a welcoming atmosphere to the branch, apparently, and to strengthen relationships with the shops around you because the total Adonis from GameStop just loves smiling at you and trying to be the best distraction he possibly can for whatever fucking reason. This is where your problem begins.
See, every man and woman and person of unspecified gender identity has their basic human needs. You are not exempt to this, as much as you would like to be. They are as listed.
You, DIRK STRIDER , have needed to urinate since approximately 10AM. That was around four hours ago. There are no working restrooms in this realm of literature due to somebody taking a shit equivalent to a weapon of mass destruction in the men’s restroom, so the only comfort rooms nearby are outside the front doors and settled in a corridor in between a GameStop and a Uniqlo. Stepping within 30 feet of the entrance leading in from the mall will no doubt result in your boss appearing the fuck out of nowhere like he usually does and peer pressuring your poor ass into being the store’s resident People Person, which you, by all means, most definitely are not. You don’t feel like putting on your shittiest “Cheesed to meet you” grin and saying hello to every disinterested schmuck who happens to so much as stick their nose past the divide between the mall’s concrete and the bookstore’s hardwood floors, so you’re left to the harrowing duty of developing a kidney stone.
Holy shit. You’re not into this stuff. Wetting your pants. Watersports. Omorashi, as some of notably exotic/poor tastes may call it. The good ol’ golden shower is not your preferred mode of ablutions. As you sit up against a shelf of SAT/PSAT study materials with a vandalized copy of The Girl Who Hated Ponies (Pony Pals #13) by Jeanne Betancourt clutched to your chest and your eyes trained on the clock on the opposite wall, the aching pain of pee held in for the past century and then some begins to permeate your abdomen. You reiterate: you are not into this stuff. Maybe if you were just half a percent kinkier and physically able to, you would pop a boner at this. But you are not.
THE CLOCK, TAUNTINGLY: tick, tock.
THE CLOCK: tick, tock.
THE CLOCK: tick, tock.
YOU, PAINED: On the clock; DJ, blow the speakers up.
Oh, how you wish Ke$ha could save you now.
You should start wearing adult diapers. This incident by itself is going to force you to go through the rounds of geriatric bed-wetting prevention at the age of twenty. Maybe this is your mid-life crisis. Maybe you’re gonna die of kidney failure at forty from a stone the size of a golf ball. No, that’s undershooting it. A baseball. A football. You’re going to get stuck in the casket with extraneous flabs of skin jutting out of your sides after your abdomen’s been stretched like a keloid scar and you’ll look like Violet Beauregarde. No offense to the gal, but you are not up to becoming a blueberry. Inflation is not your thing. You’re into some weird shit, some weird, weird, completely depraved shit, but this is n--
YOUR PHONE: Bzzt.
You almost piss yourself right there, but then you’re up and out, label maker left haphazardly on the floor and Pony Pals tucked under your arm while you make a mad dash to grab your shit and leave. That’s it. You’re gone. Fuck you, Maisie. Your shorts look like shit with that shirt. When will you learn that purple doesn’t go with green? Jesus Christ. Greg better stop giving you that look. He’s gotta switch out his shitty little skinny tie. Fuck that guy. He might be cute, but that’s no excuse.
The exit is in your line of sight. Name tag off, your belt bag slash fanny pack, as it’s known colloquially, slung over your shoulder, and you’re off to the urinals, the WC, the--
BRO: bro.
Sweet fuckin’ Jesus on the goddamn cross. Christ’s impaled hands and feet.
You’re met with Bro[derick]’s stone-cold complexion, long nose jutting into your point of view. Dude’s leaning down at you, staring at you through his Kamina shades that you unashamedly copied. Reclaiming them like a slur, you think. You pull them off better than he does, anyway. Young and sprightly versus his aged cheddar cuckery. He’s unreadable, as usual, but you purse your lips up at him and wait for further address.
BRO: you signed out.
YOU: Yeah.
BRO: got all your shit.
YOU: Yep.
BRO: got nothin under that arm.
YOU: Yeah.
PONY PALS #13: *Under your arm.*
BRO, STARING AT IT:
PONY PALS #13: *Pretty fucking frightened.*
YOU, SHUFFLING PONY PALS #13 CLOSER TO YOU WITH PATERNAL POSSESSIVENESS: We done here?
BRO:
BRO, SUSPICIOUSLY: yea.
A psychologically distressing encounter with the one and only Broderick Noname is not exactly how you wanted to end your shift at work, but so be it.
…
Who the fuck are you even kidding? That’s how this shit always ends, now that you think about it. The guy clearly has no social sense, not even a little bit, and you have literally zero idea how he worked up the B&N ranks with this kind of constant passive aggression. Maybe… bookkeeping is more hardcore than you thought. Or this is his weird way of showing that he cares about you. Or maybe this is an example of his passion towards managing a fucking mall bookstore.
Weird dude. But you can respect his taste in puppets. He’s got a transcendent design on his lanyard.
Alas, ye olde water closet resides right over yonder, and you are MOST pleased to become reacquainted with the john. Your bladder’s getting overexcited, though, and you refuse to piss your pants. You absolutely refuse to let it drip - hell no, you left the Beyblades in seventh grade.
You crash through those blessed doors, into the realm of urine and shittery, the former of which you’ll be indulging in on this very day, hopefully within the hour. There’s one (1) dude stationed in front of the urinals, but you, being a man of alternative preference, decide to make yourself at home in the furthest stall from the door. You stride (pun intended) down there with no shame, slowing your pace for the sake of a single masculine upnod at the dude with his fly unzipped, and once the door is closed and locked…
You’re at work with your belt. The tip of the leather comes out. The buckle, unclasped. Both ends, hanging limp at your sides.
Fuck yeah, baby -- it’s piss time.
You opt for the classic, functional everything-down-at-once move: skinny jeans, briefs, and your fine ass onto the toilet seat (after you place the disposable toilet seat cover down, obviously). You’re a multitasker. A modern working man. You need efficiency in your life in all realms, and that includes pissing.
The thing is, when you do that outside the safety of your own home, you have a few more priorities to take care of. You, in this instance, forgot about these priorities.
YOU FUCKING HALFWIT: (OH FUCKJFLJDDSJCDSF.)
You watch in horror as your packer tumbles out of your briefs onto the ground.
Naturally, you try to make a break for it, lunging forward, but your body has betrayed you and jumped forward to the act of relieving itself. You’re… somewhat? Relieved, but. You know.
I mean -- or, well, you mean, your dick just fell out, basically. And it’s rolling away. Into another stall. And you don’t know if the other stalls are occupied, and frankly, you’re too fucking scared to check, because imagine seeing a silicone cock roll past your feet and then someone’s face peeking at it from a stall a ways away. That would out you, and while you’re not that concerned about whether or not people know if you’ve got a schlong or not down in your extremities, you also don’t know anyone here. For all you know, the hypothetical dude in the stall next to you could be a raging queerphobe, and might kick you in the face at the sight of your ludicrous, faggoty ass.
You watch your masculinity slip away before you. Your heart wrenches. Goodbye, Little D. </3
Holy shit.
You are a parody of yourself.
You’re still pissing while your cock runs away from home.
It occurs to you that this is your first piss of the day. What a pitiful thought. Is this how you live? Waking up in the morning and leaving for work, without even the blissful, customary wake-up routine of emptying the radiator in the AM? You always wake up late as shit and have approx. 30 minutes to get dressed, grab a bite, brush your teeth, and head to work. It’s not even like you can’t help it, either -- college fucking sucks , yo. Classes. Assignments that drive you up until 3 AM and then some. It’s just rinse and repeat every single goddamn day. Is this how it’s gonna be until the day you die? Staying up late and waking up a little too late and then not even enjoying a nice hot piss until the end of the work day? It’s two in the afternoon. Are all of your premier pisses going to be at two in the afternoon?
Wait. Wait, wait, wait.
Are you even going to have a job after you inevitably quit/are fired from this one?
Fuck.
You slap your hand over your mouth and grimace at the door of the stall. There’s a plethora of curse words scratched into it. A cross. A stick figure. A slur or two. And worst of all, penises. So many penises. Just… penises, littered all over the door. In paint. In ballpoint pen. In knife scratches. In substances that are dubiously… well, they look like they were sticky at some point, but they’re pretty pale and opaque now.
Fuck, are you looking at jizz dicks?
You wheeze into your palm. It’s a pitiful sound. It’s like something just died, and you’re the something, but you’re also simultaneously watching the scene, and the funeral, and a clip of the thing’s friends and family mourning its death in monochrome with some shitty Smiths song playing over it. You’re envisioning your funeral now. Dirk Strider, dressed to the T in the tuxedo-printed t-shirt you requested that Dave bury you in, probably with some kind of wizard memorabilia in your hands in lieu of flowers because Roxy’s just an upright 1337 haxxor grl like that. Jane is, of course, sniffling into a handkerchief the way she’s been raised to: prim, proper, not too dramatic for the sake of not bringing those around her down, but also just enough to show that she’s not a coldblooded bitch with no regard for one of her besties for the resties. Roxy, on the other hand, is waterfalling it up like a Six Flags waterpark. Fuck yeah, it’s the Pacific Ocean in the making over here. You could make a creation myth out of this shit, what with all the saltwater pouring out of her eyes.
God, you could cry. You could leak fluids out of several orifices right now, and only one of them is on your lower half. This is what’s gonna happen. This is what your shitty pissing schedule is signifying. Holy shit, your fucking pseudodi Um.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT: Excuse me?
HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
YOU, ELOQUENTLY SIGNIFYING THAT YES, THERE’S ANOTHER PERSON THERE: Nnnnh?
HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS THE WORST DAY EVER: I.
A thud, which you assume is a kick, and Lil’ Dirkdick comes rolling back into the scene through stage left. You stare incredulously.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE WITH BUCKTEETH AND A DAZZLING SMILE/YOUR NEWFOUND SAVIOR, FROM ONE STALL OVER: I believe you mightve misplaced your willy?
You. He. What. Wiener. He said wiener. He said wiener? And he just kicked your silicone peenie weenie back to you without a second thought. You summon the deepest voice you possibly can to reply to him.
YOU, MANLY AS FUCK: Yeah. Thanks, bro.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE, WHOSE SMILE YOU CAN HEAR THROUGH HIS VOICE HOLY FUCKING FUCK: Oh! Right chipper then.
You’re feeling pretty kaomoji right now. Here’s an adequate descriptor:
（ﾟﾛﾟ; 三 ;ﾟﾛﾟ)ﾋｲｲｲｨｨ（ﾟﾛﾟ; 三 ;ﾟﾛﾟ)ﾋｲｲｲｨｨ
You pick your dick up off the ground and, as you’re bending over, catch a glance of a thumbs up from about three partitions away. His pants are not bunched up by his feet. Dude isn’t even shitting. Why are you paying attention to that? He’s giving you a fucking thumbs up.
You return it, and subsequently have a miniature asthma attack as you stuff your rubber willy back into the pocket in your briefs. You don’t even have asthma. But -- but can you blame you when resident utility pants-wearing accent-having GameStop should-be-an-incel-but-isn’t tanned-to-perfection beefy-bucktooth dreamboat from Homo Junction, Sodomite Republic just kicked your goddamn packer back to you? Really. Really.
Again, you are a parody of yourself.
You sit up straight and trace the curve of a particularly detailed phallus inscribed on the wall in front of you. It’s grossly veiny. Incredibly long and thick. The balls attached are purposely grotesque and wrinkly as all hell. Wrinklier than your biological grandfather’s festering corpse six feet deep in some cemetery in Houston. The text under it describes the following:
d.s. succs dicc on the d.l.
346-555-3714
txt dont call
You know that handwriting and that phone number.
You’re in the fucking sunken place.
Yeah, alright. Fine. In a short enough amount of time (with a passable number of 4-7-5 method breathing exercises, and a spunky little GIF you have saved on your phone for when shit gets tough and your lungs decide to quit their job), you’ve got all your shit back together: belt bag, secured; belt, buckled; Pony Pals #13 , under your arm; artificial penis, in pant. It’s all good. You’re all good. Now to exit the stall and return back to the world of the living. Right.
Your fingers drift above the lock. You gulp.
Nah, but what if he’s out there?
Your entire hand trembles. Ok. Yeah. So what if he’s out there? You’ll be fine. You’re a grown man. It was a slip-up. That happens sometimes. Sometimes people just see your schlong because you dropped it on the ground in a public restroom. That happens to plenty of fucking people, so use the balls you purchased from Amazon dot com and get the fuck out there, soldier. Take it like a champ. You’re not a soyboy pussybitch, Dirk. You’re not a fucking pussy.
You open the door, and he’s, like, leaned up against the sinks, and makes eye contact with you for half a second, maybe, before turning away and doing a weird little thing with his lips, and you kind of, sort of, maybe want to cry. Just a little bit. Just a tiny little bit.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE, TURNING AWAY: *Whistles a jaunty little tune.*
YOU:
YOU: Uh. Thanks for that, again.
He looks back at you and has this heartrending little grin on his face, like he didn’t just hand your dick back to you, and nods. Ever so politely. You approach one of the sinks, consciously selecting one a little ways away from him, but he’s got either the gall or general puppy-like cluelessness to move a little closer to you. You decide to focus on the water and how ridiculously fucking hot it is. You receive your allocated quarter-sized dollop of soap from the automatic dispenser, and scrub your hands. First, you jack off your thumb. Next, you interlock your fingers and sort of squiggle them around there. After that, you rub your palms on the backs of your hands, and then work on your wrists.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: De nada, amigo.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Sooo.
YOU, TURNING INQUISITIVELY: ...?
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Hows about we make a deal.
Oh shit.
He’s gonna blackmail you. This is the end of all things.
You’re out, mostly, to the rest of your coworkers, Broderick included, and you’re happy to say that your workplace is extremely queer-friendly. It’s not a problem if he tells them. It’s cool. You guys literally went to Pride together last June, and it was there that you learned that it wasn’t your thing, as expected, but it was worth knowing that even Maisie - that fucking conniving, insincere, Maisie - isn’t homophobic. It’s cool. If he decides to rat you out to them, that’s fine. That’s a non-issue.
The issue is that if he does threaten to blackmail you, it’s because he’s a cunt. Like, a cunt . And the dude is nice, you’re 100% sure he is, but you never know with men. Especially cis men. Cis men like him. He’s so… gruff, you’d say. Even when he’s smiling at you like that, all colon-end bracket with kawaii shoujo sparkles all up in his frames. He’s got scruff on his chin that he hasn’t bothered shaving, and ungodly amounts of hair all up and down his forearms and some peeking through the unbuttoned top of his shirt, which you’re pretty sure is against the GameStop dress-like-a-virgin unspoken dress code. Besides the utility pants, he looks like he gets mad bitches. Enraged bitches. Furious, loony, nutty-ass bitches.
… You know, maybe you’re assuming. Tune back in.
YOU, IDEALLY CALM AND COMPOSED, AT LEAST ON THE OUTSIDE: Sure. Shoot.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE, LOOKING LIKE HE’S GONNA THROW UP: Right.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: I mean.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Well seeing as i retrieved your gutbuster for you.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: WHICH, BY THE WAY, I HAVE *NO ISSUES WITH* I JUST NEEDED TO PREFACE THAT.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: **WITH EXTRA ASTERISKS AROUND IT**!!!!
YOU, SPEECHLESS:
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Ahem anyhoo.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Perhaps you could pay me back?
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Return the favor??? Someway somehow. *If* its convenient for you that is.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: *Tugs at shirt collar sheepishly*
Transphobic has been crossed off the list. Chronic dumbass is circled in bright, glittering orange.
YOU: I’m not sending you nudes for this, FYI.
YOU: You gotta pay for that.
YOU: I can text you the link to my Onlyfans if you want. It’s only $5 for a shit ton of content.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE, BRIGHT RED: ***NO***!!!!!!!!!
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Whew that is RIGHT THE FUCK NOT what i meant. At all. At all!!!
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Not to say that it wouldnt a total wonder seeing you sans la-di-das but um. Mooooving on.
YOU: Snrk.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: I was actually thinking more along the lines of baked goods.
YOU: Baked goods.
GAMESTOP EMPLOYEE: Pretzels?? :)
YOU:
YOU:
YOU:
YOU: ...Bro.
Auntie Anne’s frozen lemonade mixers are good. Specifically the mango ones.
You’re about twenty dollars less wealthy, but the horde of vital information you’ve obtained is priceless.
You find out that the Discord mod heartthrob is named JAKE ENGLISH , and that he hails from New Zealand and moved to the States for college last year. He doesn’t actually enjoy video games all that much -- more of a film guy, apparently. You manage to wrestle an admission of cerulean-philia from him after he went off on a tangent about the Avatar franchise, which you denounced forthwith. He pouted at you and called you a party pooper, and you revealed that you carry that title with an unhealthy amount of pride.
This is going much better than you expected. He’s not awkward. Mostly. Usually. At least not more than you are, and that’s good because if he was, you guys would have spoken in circles like one of those mini spinny carousel shits at the playground that Roxy made you hop on last week and spun you around at Mach 10 until you felt like your brains were blended and that there was a strawberry smoothie fresh in your cranium for the slurping. Stick a straw in that bitch and Jamba Juice would have its newest rival in terms of sugary drinks. 1k calories, but you get an instant transformation into an alpha male because of it. Dope.
That metaphor ran away from you. You cross your legs and lean back on the couch that you guys are seated on in front of the Auntie Anne’s kiosk, and watch him dip a pretzel bite into caramel sauce. He’s somehow gotten sauce all over his fingers. He licks it up. Nasty. What has he touched with those?
He’s nice, though. Sweet. Not cis, either, from what he hinted at when he said that you two are of the same strand, but he rushed to clarify that he does have a weenie, but he’s not exactly a man. You’re just not gonna question it. What matters is that he fits into your T4T preferences.
You have other pressing questions, though.
YOU: Hey, if you don’t mind my asking -
JAKE, BUCKTEETH LATCHED ONTO A PRETZEL BITE: *inquisitive hum?*
YOU: Why were you chilling in that stall with your pants on.
YOU: Don’t you need to free the goods to get anywhere good with ‘em?
YOU: Kind of illogical.
JAKE: :o
JAKE: I wasnt in there to relieve myself as a matter of fact.
JAKE: More like.
JAKE: Escaping things?
YOU: Escaping gamer musk? Escaping the scent of eight hundred AXE bottles all contemporaneously spritzed in your face?
YOU: Escaping the heat of battle? Escaping the crust on that Zelda Funko pop at the register?
JAKE: !!! Thats LINK actually.
YOU: I know. I was kidding.
JAKE: Right.
JAKE: To answer your question,
JAKE: Theres this one fellow that comes in every now and then to speak to me during my shift and hes rather unpleasant.
YOU: How so?
JAKE: Well.
JAKE: I fancy hes taken a liking to my.
JAKE, POORLY IMITATING A TEXAN ACCENT: *air quotes* choice ass *air quotes*?
You slurp up the rest of your freezie, take the ensuing brain freeze like a pro, and take out your phone to text your fucking brother.
