Reality check...

Since starting this blog and connecting it to Twitter, I’ve been tremendously pleased with the number of fantastic people that I’ve enjoyed connecting with and receiving encouragement from. Just when I think I’m a little odd, my world view is thrown open to reveal an entire population of delightful freaks I didn’t know existed. (Please understand I use the term “freaks” with the utmost love and respect.)

The other day, I posted a tweet asking people for seductive and erotic suggestions for me to blog about. In return I would mention them in the Jizzmopper Chronicles and be forever grateful. Only @VilenaPose and @LilyCrash9 participated, but they did give me some great situations to start working from. However, I’m still a little uncertain about the quality of my erotic fiction, so instead, I used these ideas to examine how lines of reality can get blurred when working at a porn store.

When you surround yourself with any environment, it will eventually start to seem normal. Whether it’s the adult industry (porn stores, strip clubs, etc.) or working in a bar (alcoholics, sleeping in until 3 p.m.), sooner or later this population of people will start to look and feel like the norm. This isn’t always a bad thing. I’ve heard of (lucky) BDSM couples who are able to commit full-time to their lifestyles. But when you’re dealing with a section of the population that obsesses about pornography and drugs, your world-view can get incredibly negative.

While I’d love to be able to tell stories about crazy hedonism taking place in the store after-hours, with the exception of the attempted sex in the video booths, nothing like that ever occurred. Only two things happened that are worth mentioning. The first was being propositioned by a rather unattractive man buying a swinger magazine to meet him and his wife for a drink after my shift was over. The other was getting flashed by a woman in the passenger-side seat of a car while her husband sat behind the wheel and grinned. It was dark out and it took me a while to figure out what I was staring at inside the dimly-lit car window. I don’t know if they were trolling for potential sex partners or simply getting a kick out of flashing strangers from a distance, but I just waved, got in my car and drove off to make the daily deposit.

Being surrounded in this environment did make me look at things differently. There was once instance in particular when I ordered a pizza and found myself surprised that the woman delivering the pizza didn’t start taking her clothes off as I reached for my wallet.

The darker side of this skewed world-view was that I started looking down at anyone I thought used drugs. Ministry has taught us to, “Never trust a junkie,” but I think it’s unfair to look poorly upon anyone who uses drugs recreationally. I could just as well feel the same about anyone who drinks alcohol. Generally speaking, if a drug has taken control of someone’s life, it’s pretty obvious and you’ll know you don’t want them in your life. But as I continued to sell products to junkies and potheads whose lives revolved around getting their next high, I felt more and more glad my drug days of high school were long over.

Every once in a while, my assumptions and held stereotypes would get turned on their ear. There was the guy who I recognized from campus that always wore a suit and bought one-hitters a few times a month. (I don’t know if he was a professor or admin staff, but he certainly looked like he had his shit together.) Additionally, once in a while a couple would come in for some toys and movies to spice up their love life, and it was always reassuring to see people actually happy to be in the store.

One Thursday evening, I spent most of shift with a couple trying to find a vibrator to replace one they had purchased in the mid 80s and used constantly. They wanted an exact replacement, but after it became clear this product wasn’t produced anymore (I checked several catalogs), we spent the rest of the time testing out the vibration functions on products that interested them. This experience could have been annoying and long, but their enthusiasm and openness made me feel privileged to be helping them with something so intimate.

Then there was the guy who smelled like shit and bought our molded fist dildo. He couldn’t stop giggling as he pulled out bill after crumpled bill from his disgusting trench coat pocket. For every warm fuzzy there’s a repulsive antithesis ready to creep you out to the core.

But these experiences were important for keeping me grounded and taught me that while some people are crazy perverts who only receive joy from shoving molded plastic fists up their asses, there are also people who use these products as an occasional treat in their lives.

Everything was put into perspective one day when I went to the mall and saw a group of young men hanging out in the Game Stop discussing video game news with the clerk behind the counter. This group was always there whenever I stopped by and I realized that the only difference between these geeks and the perverts at my store is that these guys were getting their sex fix virtually.

We all orgasm in some fashion, make sure you’re getting the most from yours.