Autoerotic...

To truly appreciate the eeriness of this story, you have to know a little bit about the location of the porn store in Mankato. Not only is it located on the edge of a college town, its parking lot is right along the railroad line with just a thin, wooded area in between the parking lot and the train tracks. The store convenient for people coming in from the outskirts of town, but it’s also a perfect target for transients riding the rails looking for god-knows-what.

Considering this, I suppose it’s nothing short of amazing that I haven’t been robbed or even harassed all that greatly during my time here.

But back to autoerotic asphyxiation…

I had been working nine days straight while covering shifts for a coworker who was taking an extended vacation to visit family in India. Nine days of work straight at a porn store wasn’t a thrilling experience, but I have to admit that I didn’t have to work that hard sitting around reading (non-sexual) books for 90% of the shift. It’s always fun staying up all night, it’s the constant nocturnal schedule that starts to mess with you.

After the last of my overnight shifts, I had to come back in later that same day to work the evening 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift. It was a short night’s sleep, but not really all that demanding in the scheme of things. What really surprised me was that the parking lot was filled with cops when I arrived back at the store, a mere seven hours after my overnight shift had completed.

Apparently, the person working the morning shift found a dead body while she completed her daily cleanup of the parking lot. A man was hanging from a tree with a noose around his neck and his pants around his ankles. Authorities were not able to determine if it was a suicide, an autoerotic asphyxiation game gone wrong or if other people were involved. Honestly, it’s really hard to tell. I could see all three as possibilities given the location.

The really creepy thing about this story is that the police estimate that the guy strangled sometime between midnight and 5 a.m. the night I was working. This happened while I was sitting behind the counter or mopping the floors less than 100 feet away!

Part of my cleaning responsibilities includes me to check the parking lot before the evening shift person leaves for the night. Usually, I get annoyed by finding a pile of empty nitrous oxide containers someone dumped out of their car after getting high in the parking lot, but now I have to worry about finding dead bodies!  

As expected, the entire staff started making jokes about people ‘dying’ to get into the store, but you could tell everyone was pretty uneasy about it. The owner was at the store when I arrived and said that he was installing a “buzz-in” system to let customers in between 1 and 6 a.m. Overnight workers are now forbidden from going into the parking lot when working alone in the store. Nice gestures, but a little too late for one unlucky gentleman.

You never know what will take your breath away at the porn store.