Friday, May 4, 2012

12.5 Hours in a Porn Store


Usually I work the 6 to 10pm shift, but today I covered for the coworker who works the 10am-6pm day shift. This means I was looking at a 10am to 10pm shift without breaks behind the glass counter of a porn store.  The coworker I was covering for regularly worked the 10am to 10pm shift at the store, so I knew it could be done, but this was the longest consecutive time I have spent in a porn store (even including my time working at an adult bookstore during college).

If you’re anything like me, you face a challenge like this with an amusing theme. In this case, I decided to spend the shift listening to the complete discography of Bob Marley and the Wailers. From African Herbsman to Uprising (I decided to go alphabetical instead of chronological), it was to be a Reggae day.

The first thing I noticed was that being around sexual-related items put a new twist on some of Bob Marley’s classics:
  • Anal Sex – No Woman No Cry, Exodus, TRENCH Town Rock
  • Masturbation – Lively Up Yourself, Stir it Up, Crazy Baldhead
  • Sex Toys – Positive Vibration, Kinky Reggae
  • Sex in General – Is This Love, Could You Be Loved, Jammin’
  • And I’m completely convinced that I Shot the Sherriff is an analogy about being a top in anal sex (sheriff), but now allowing yourself to be a bottom (deputy).

This experience also gave me a new appreciation for the Wailers as a live band. Songs that were recorded on a bare-bones budget in a studio outside some Jamaican slum take on a renewed energy when performed live by a band with high-end instruments that put the crowd’s energy directly back into their music.

Only one customer commented about the music playing in the store. It was a man in his twenties who gave me a smile as he asked, “Cool tunes… they let you play stuff like this in the store?”

To which I replied, “Nope.”

I wasn’t supposed to be listening to anything other than the 4 approved radio stations, but I man has to have something to get him through the day.

Sometimes it’s fun breaking the rules and being naughty in a naughty store.

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