shopping spree

The beginning of the end was pretty tame.

He walked into the local Food Lion to buy some Pop Tarts before heading to work. The aisle was blocked by three middle-aged women fighting over a jar of mayonnaise. He stopped to watch this spectacular spectacle unfold in front of him. While he stood there, he wondered why anyone would use spectacular spectacle to describe something.

The first woman was big. Not tall, but fat. Her arms were larger than his thighs, but none of it was muscle. She needed mayonnaise like he needed reminders of his ex-girlfriend.

The second woman was tiny. Twiggy tiny. Her legs were as wide around as the cardboard that a roll of paper towels is wrapped around.

The third woman – who happened to be holding the jar everyone so eagerly wanted – had on a Pixies t-shirt and nerd glasses. Her curly hair looked like an afro that hadn’t been combed in weeks.

“I have three kids!” the fat woman said loudly. “They need this more than you do.” She said directly to the skinny woman.

“Well, if we’re going by need, I’d say I need it the most!” Twiggy yelled right back.

“Well, I got to it first, so I’m taking it,” afro woman said.

“Ladies, why are we fighting over a jar of mayo?” I said.

All three looked at me curiously. Then back at each other. Then back at me.

Twiggy spoke up.

“You haven’t heard?” she said.

I stared back in silence.

“He hasn’t,” the fat one said in disbelief.

“Do you not have television?” afro added.

“I have not heard of anything, and no, I do not have a television. They seem so…pointless.”

They laughed at me and went back to fighting. He ambled his way through the melee.

Suddenly, he noticed that the shelves were pretty vacant. As always, the Sex Pistols churned through his mind at the mention of those two words together. He got to the Pop Tarts and saw one measly box of Vanilla Ice Cream flavored ones.

“I guess it’ll have to do,” he said, taking the box in his hands.

Walking to the cash registers, he noticed another thing, no one was paying.

“Odd,” he thought to himself. He found the short, balding manager of the store. He had glasses and a whiny Irish accent – if such a thing is even possible.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

The manager looked up at him and started chuckling.

“Here’s two bucks,” he said to the now hysterically laughing polo-shirted man. “You can’t say I didn’t pay whenever the cops show up.”

The two dollars dropped from his hands to the floor.

“They’re worthless kid,” he finally spoke. “You have no idea, do you?”

“Not at all,” he said, not waiting to find out the answer. Why? Because it dawned on him that he needed to get some beer.

He got in his car and drove 20  miles west. There was a small mom-and-pop beer craft beer store down the road. He got there and it was still closed. Lucky for him, he got up early this morning.

Getting out of his car, he noticed a din of activity everywhere. It seemed like the day before Christmas, but it was August 3. All the shops were buzzing.

At the door, he knocked. He knew the owners and knew they’d be there. Gracie came to the door, peered outside and saw who it was and clicked the door.

“Inside, fast!” she said in a hushed, but excited tone.

He slinked inside the door, and looked around. All the shelves were empty, but the floors were full of boxes. Each one filled with bottles and cans of beer.

Finally, his interested was piqued.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked Gracie, who was by now joined by her husband Jeff.

“It’s the end, my friend. The end.” Jeff said.dd

“The end of what?”

“Life as we know it.”

“You’ve got to explain a little better.”

“You really haven’t seen?” Gracie asked as she grabbed two boxes of beer and walked over to the basement entry. He was one of a select few people who knew about the basement storage site under the store. It was an old bomb shelter, built in the 1950s, that Gracie and Jeff didn’t know about until one day when the termite man showed up and asked if they wanted it bombed as well.

“No, I haven’t. I woke up this morning, wanted a Pop Tart and watched three ladies fight over a jar of mayo. Now I come here to get some beer, because some kind of run on stores is happening and I don’t want to be unprepared.”

“We’re all unprepared.” Jeff said. “And if you want some beer, just take a few cases. Pretty soon, it’ll all be gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“The roads, they’re all closed going west,” he said. “The military aren’t letting anyone leave.”

“Wait a minute. I drove west to get here.”

“From the island?”

“Yes, from the island.”

“It’s only the main highway. But I’m sure they’ll get to your road soon enough.”

“And there’s a curfew at 5 p.m. tonight,” Gracie added.

“What?” he said incredulously.

“They’re shutting down the entire east coast, my friend. Go home, get ready for the shit to hit the fan.”

He grabbed six cases of really good beer. Put them in the back of his car. Going back inside, Gracie and Jeff were almost done putting the beer in the cellar.

“How much do I owe ya?” he asked.

“Nothing, my friend. Money doesn’t mean anything. It’s just friends and enemies now. I consider you a friend.”

They shook hands and he left.

He had one more stop – the old Roses department store. If things were really about to get “shut down” he knew something else he needed.

Getting to the store, it was oddly open. Cashiers stood at their posts. But they weren’t paying attention to customers, they were watching a television. The president was speaking.

“My fellow Americans,” he began. “This is a time of unprecedented action. We don’t do this lightly.”

He decided to go finish what he came to this store for. He got a shopping cart and headed to the outdoors section. There, he grabbed as many fishing poles and pieces of tackle and fishing line as he could find. If the supermarkets were going to be empty soon, he’d need a way to get food. Fishing was about it, on an island.

Lastly, he grabbed seeds. He took the entire display of vegetables. He found it odd that no one had hit up Roses yet. I guess being in a bad location was good for him today.

As he exited the store, the president continued:

“These are your friends. Your family. Your spouses and your children. But for the good of the rest of the country, North Carolina’s coast must become a quarantine zone.

“I wonder what the fuck is going on?” he thought after those words. But for now, he just wanted to get  home. Call his girlfriend and make sure she was on her way home.

“Looks like I won’t be moving out afterall,” he chuckled as he started up his car. Full tank of gas and Lucero playing on the stereo.

“Punk rock girls and Lone Star beer,” Ben Nichols bellowed. “Tonight’ll be ok…”

take your credit card to the liquor store

Christmas night. Just pulled a double shift. Me and the rest of the guys who don’t have wives club, as I’ve kind of coined it. Not that I’d say it out loud, don’t want to let everyone in on the fact that I’m depressed.

I walk outside. It’s cold. Brutally so. The roads are covered with a slim layer of slush. I’m sure underneath much of it is black ice. It’s 45 miles home. I decide that’s a bad idea. Gotta be at work in the morning anyway. Same skeleton crew of misfits will meet up again and put out a newspaper that has no relevance.

But what to do for the next six, seven hours? I get in my car. It’s cold inside. As much so as outside. Just no wind. I crank the engine. Thank goodness for a new car. The heat is still on from when I drove to work 13 hours ago. However, instead of pushing out a nice gusher of hot, warming air, I get a face full of cool breeze. It may be a new car, but the heater is still not the top of the line unit. “Get what you pay for,” I think to myself.

After a couple of minutes, I put the car in reverse. Ready to find something to do. I point the car east, the way home. I figure maybe something will pique my interest. Hopefully.

I see a co-worker walking home. It’s 3 in the morning on Christmas. I pull over. Honk. He looks at me, not knowing who the fuck I am for a moment, then bends down and opens the door.

“Thank ya partner,” T.J. says in his southern drawl. “It’s cold as a witch’s titties out there.”

“Yes. It. Is,” I reply. “So, where you headed.”

“I was going to hit the Driftwood before going home for a few,” T.J. murmured.

“The Driftwood? That Marine strip bar?” I asked incredulously.

“One and the same. You oughta come with, partner. You can meet my daughter.”

Well, that’s an odd invitation. Gotta hand it to T.J., he’s quite the character. Also, exactly who I’m slowly but surely becoming -- a single, old, toothless journalist. Holding on to some bit of the past in a job that doesn’t look kindly on those doing exactly that.

“Sure, why not,” I say. Feeling neither joy, nor pain, over this turn of events. Of course, now I have that song “Joy…and Pain…” by Rob Base and Ez Rock, but it’s fleeting.

The drive to the Driftwood is about a three-minute one from the office. And that’s only because of the numerous stoplights that fill Lejeune Blvd. There aren’t a lot of people on the road tonight, shockingly. I guess everyone’s at home with their families and friends.

Or more likely sleeping.

I pull into the parking lot of the Driftwood. It’s 3:13 a.m. There are exactly two other cars there -- a 1987 Sunfire and a 2009 Kia Sorrento. I don’t think much of it.

We go to the door. A tall, fat black guy is sitting inside the door on a stool.

“Well, Hell-OOOOOOOO, T.J.,” he says as we enter. “It’s Christmas, so you and your buddy, you get a free pass.”

“Much abliged,” T.J. replies with a wink and a no-tooth grin. He makes a sort of quack, quack, noise. I just keep walking. Inside, Motley Crue is playing. “Dr. Feelgood.” Can’t stand that song, so I don’t care to see who would dance to it.

There aren’t any folks in the place. In fact, I don’t even seen girls wandering about. I guess when there aren’t customers, there’s no need to troll around. I head to the bar. T.J. to the head.

“You want anything?” I ask.

“Just say ‘Give me a T.J. They’ll know what it means.”

Not surprised at all that he’s a regular. It turns out a T.J. is a whiskey sour. That actually does surprise me.

At the bar, all the girls that are working are huddled about. Just watching television or playing silly bar computer games. They all see me at the same time, and start making an effort to put on their game faces. That is, until I say “I’ll have a Shiner. Oh, and a T.J.” It seems his name, and his drink order carries some kind of weight here. Not good weight. The girls all turn back to their Tvs and video machines.

I grab my beer, take two long swigs. The music stops.

“And now, for your enjoyment. Eeeeeeveeeeee…” the announcer says.

Nightrain by Guns and Roses starts to play. This interests me. While I understand the attraction of the song to certain elements of society, including hookers, drug dealers and such, I never thought of it as a stripper song.

“Eve” is a redhead. Pale as the fog on a spring morning in the mountains of Tennessee. She loves the song. That’s about all I can tell from her dancing. I’m mesmerized for four minutes and 26 seconds. So much so, I find myself walking up to the stage and actually sitting in one of the chairs that lines it. Kind of gross in an empty strip club.

She sees me and doesn’t pay me much attention. Works the entire stage, despite the fact that I’m there and I’m the only one there. This is cool. I think. She doesn’t give a shit.

After the song, “Eve” disappears behind the stage. T.J. comes out of the bathroom.

“Where’s my drink, partner?” he asks.

I don’t realize he spoke for a second.

“Hey, kiddo, you in love or something? You need to stop staring at that door. She’ll be back, sooner or later. They all come back at some point.”

“Huh? Oh, here’s your drink,” I say, handing him his whiskey sour. He downs it in one long sip. Slams down the glass on the stage and bolts for the bar. Less than a minute later, he’s got two more.

“Two drink minimum, bah!” he says slumping into his chair. An Asian stripper comes over and starts giving him a lap dance. “Well, kiddo, I’ll be seeing ya.”

T.J. disappears to a private room. I don’t see him again until the next night at work. Doesn’t even mention a thing. Not surprised.

A blonde comes up to me, starts doing her thing. I look up, smile and say “No thanks.” This repeats itself four more times. Another blonde, in a black piece of lingerie first. Then a black girl with freckles on her butt. And then a brunette with blue eyes that have way too much eyeliner on them, as well as glitter, glitter everywhere. Finally, “Eve” gives it a go. She doesn’t seem to remember me. I just stare as she talks, not hearing a word. She takes my hand and we go to a private room. I know this is a mistake. I’ve got $58 in my bank account and $45 in my wallet. But I go anyway.

In the room, I just ask one question “Why Nightrain?”

“Because it’s my favorite song. But I only dance to it when no one is here.”

“But I was here,” I said.

“Yeah, at first I was pissed. But then I noticed you were mouthing the words. That means you weren’t just lustily leering at me.”

“Well, I was a bit.”

“Me too.”