The Porn Shop - By Bitter Crank
MOVIES XXX MAGS XXX BOOKS XXX the strobing neon shrieked. OPEN 24 HRS
No false advertising here: Chicago Book had it all. Straight sex - 77%; Gay sex - 13%; BDSM, 7%; the really disgusting stuff a measly 3%, and if they didnt sell much, the mark-up was a lot higher.
Furtive lust was in the air. It was squeaky-snow cold outside, and the store was overheated. There were 7 men in the storea crowd, really. Mike was watching intently from his cash register perch for a magazine to sneak into a pocket.
A good looking young man had been been browsing the gay shelves, along with another young guy. Porn shopping is a very quiet business, but they had said enough to head for the door together.
Selling porn is a lonely business. How many times had Mike seen single men leave together, and wondered what sort of comfort and joy they found, if any. (A porn shop clerk is never a bride.)
As it happened, highly effective comfort and joy were obtained with low cost, efficiency, and conveniencejust as God intended.
At 11:30 the night shift arrived to cover the night's darkest hours.
No false advertising here: Chicago Book had it all. Straight sex - 77%; Gay sex - 13%; BDSM, 7%; the really disgusting stuff a measly 3%, and if they didnt sell much, the mark-up was a lot higher.
Furtive lust was in the air. It was squeaky-snow cold outside, and the store was overheated. There were 7 men in the storea crowd, really. Mike was watching intently from his cash register perch for a magazine to sneak into a pocket.
A good looking young man had been been browsing the gay shelves, along with another young guy. Porn shopping is a very quiet business, but they had said enough to head for the door together.
Selling porn is a lonely business. How many times had Mike seen single men leave together, and wondered what sort of comfort and joy they found, if any. (A porn shop clerk is never a bride.)
As it happened, highly effective comfort and joy were obtained with low cost, efficiency, and conveniencejust as God intended.
At 11:30 the night shift arrived to cover the night's darkest hours.
Comments (28)
Love? Emotional attachment? Idolization of a special one? To the heck with that.
Brilliant.
Magnificent :100:
Disclaimer: I have no inside knowledge here and am just speculating.
Edit: I wonder if this is a bug or a delay because now ten minutes later, I'm seeing 7 votes.
Quoting Caldwell
I was wondering the same... when I see the polls it looks like not all the readers are voting on the polls. But it seems that after some hours, the votes increased in numbers.
You mean the customers, or the inanimate products for sale?
Quoting Baden
People are still in the competition mode, I think. They are weighing the ranks of the papers in terms of their own liking. Maybe, I mean. Maybe they are saying "this is a good story, but if I see three much better stories, I'll give this one an "okay" and if I see stories much more not as good, I'll give this one a "like".
Each story has their own quality. I am not commenting on what is the "best" story but respecting the effort from the authors.
At least that's how I see it...
Quoting Caldwell
This is a really effective scene-setting hook. It grabs the reader's attention, fits with the title, provides some nice foreshadowing ("OPEN 24 HRS" foreshadows the later focus on time and the reference to the night shift), and is very well constructed as a literary sentence in terms of rhythm and balance. Note the triple threes of the main content words>> 1)Movies 2)Mags 3) Books / 1) Strobing 2) Neon 3) Shrieked / 1) OPEN 2) 24 3) HRS. Three is the magic number, baby!
And the centre of the triplet flows whereas the edges punctuate. Think how less effective it would have been if "the strobing neon shrieked" was on either side rather in the middle. No Bueno! Even if grammatically/semantically permissible.
And examine the centre triplet itself. More symmetry with the stressed and unstressed syllables "the STRObing, NEon, SHRIEKED". Unstress/stress x3. A rhythmic syllabic triplet within a rhythmic word triplet. Add the alliteration of the s's and it all just works. A mini word orchestra right there. I very much doubt the writer (and I really can't be sure who it is though I've made my guess) thought of any of the above. But a good writer doesn't need to. The writing eye and the writing ear know all.
Here we have the transition from scene setting into style setting. More detail on the store (the scene) mixed with indications this is going to a funny/ironic/irreverent story. E.g. "disgusting" paired with "measly". (It's disgusting but why so little of it? You want to see more of that, reader, don't you? You naughty boy/girl!)
A heady mix of metaphor. We're all familiar with the temperature/emotion thing and here it's slid to us across the clerk's perch effortlessly. Hot inside (in more ways than one!) and squeaky-snow cold outside. Note the double contrastthere's a resonance of the phrase "squeaky clean" that's swept aside at the last moment and therefore we're treated to a subtle powdering of the contrast with a "dirty" (naughty, naughty!) store and an additional layer of meaning.
The last image of the magazines being almost alive and sneaking into pockets fits well too with the warm-blooded nature of the scene. Desire is everywhere. Even the magazines are on the move!
Here the temperature runs hot and cold again but what's set up now is not a contrast of the outside and the inside of the store but a contrast within the store itself, between the hot (for each other) customers and the clerk left out in the cold, so to speak. The witticism of the modified proverb is a clever way of emphasizing this and offering up another layer of social/ideological contrast between the cold sacred (churches, weddings, organization, restraint) and the hot profane (porn shops, meetings, spontaneity, lust)
And the author grabs this ball and runs for the touchdown. Yes! All the way up to God! Bang! The contrasts are all smacked together at the highest level, organisation vs spontaneity, restraint vs lust, the Godlike and the devilish, the "efficiency and convenience" of capitalism makes them all one. You don't need a wedding baby, God just wants you to fuck and if a porn store can facilitate the process, it's all good. Warmth is good! Joy is good! God wants your kids to go to college and he wants you to FUCK. Viva capitalism! Vote Republican!
A pornographic thought indeed, but presented plastic wrapped in the clearest irony.
Conclusion: The author is a closet communist and I intend to prove this using mathematics and philosophy in a further treatise behind a paywall.
You're welcome.
It's all for fun, of course. I was just wondering mostly.
Well seen!!
However, you can't discount the fact that writers are egomaniacal narcissists. They may not have narcissistic personalities, but they are fiercely proud of their work. Criticism will find ways to make them hurt or feel better, no matter what the intention was.
Therefore maybe, just maybe, next time when we have no competition but a display of talent, we could please do away altogether with the poll?
No matter how tactfully you word the poll choices, writers will feverishly look at the poll-responses for their own work and unavoidably compare their own with those of others.
You don't have to stop at two!! You are doing a marvellous job.
Sometimes the analytical commentaries are much better than the story itself. At other times they point at features others may not see or may glance over without registering their beauty.
Or registering the beauty of the commenter.
Oh thanks! I'll do my best. Amazes me how @Amity manages to do so many.
I also felt that way many times. I don't think is narcissism but low self-esteem or insecurity. Nevertheless, words and feedback are still important, doesn't matter if they can hurt.
To be honest, I don't see the members with such intention. All the comments seem to be kindly. So, I don't think an author would feel "attacked" due to the our critics.
On second reading, I like it more than I did the first time.
This could be the reason some people hold off on voting: to come back for a second or even third look before deciding.
I doubt that. Not absurd enough.
Indeed. A good short story will launch in the first 200 words, but thousands will follow before the boat reaches port. I don't know how 19th century novel readers felt, but I want to be hooked pretty damned quick. I've attempted a number of 19th century novelists, like Trollope, and didn't find it very interesting after several chapters.
Hahaha! :sweat:
Quoting Nils Loc
Don't worry. We're getting there.
The muscles of the brains are done warming up by now and soon we shall see tightening and shaping up. It takes a bit of time, but not a lot of time.
I like it because it seems to capture the atmosphere of sex shops so well, almost like a postmodern statement, a bit like the statement of Andy Warhol's soup can art.
Oh God, I must be tired. I read this as the Pawn Shop. They have 3 balls hanging outside. Perhaps not much difference.
No false advertising. Not much. You too could look like this! Fuck like this or that!
Quoting Caldwell
Can you buy that? It was hot inside. Now the poor and homeless know where to go.
"Find a Warm, Welcome Space near you". Doubles as a pick-up joint. Win-win.
Why is selling porn a lonely business? Never a bride.
Does Mike want to be or is he happy being alone, wondering about other single male customers. Has he not tried the wares? He already has his eyes on pinching a mag.
He seems to have a cold detachment. Not hot stuff?
What's God got to do with it? Is Mike religious?
The religious right. The will of God. To procreate not to masturbate. But if one leads to the other...
Quoting Caldwell
The busiest when under cover of darkness...
***
I appreciate the clever writing. The scene brought to life. We can feel it!
It didn't particularly turn me on.
Then again I am a prude puritanical ex- Proddie.
I think I liked it well enough but it might just be OK.
I'll sleep on it. Where's my magazine...
Thanks author. You're good, really :up:
Hah. I wish I'd read this first.
Heady stuff.
Bloody show-off :joke:
Mike appears to feel a bit invisible here. Just a clerk facilitating commune between clients.
People come in with the preconceived idea of finding like-minded individuals through observing what products others take an interest in. The gay men gravitate towards the gay sex category, this non-verbally identifying their orientation and motives.
In that way they "leave together" having established some discreet unspoken connection through the activity of visiting and scouring the porn shop.
Quoting Caldwell
This strikes me as a longing. The clerk perhaps wants to be seen as the clients see eachother. It is a lonely business facilitating others' lust for one another.
Perhaps the clerk is Gay also. Maybe he wants to be seen. To be approached in a way that isn't merely transactional. His personal desires are overlooked because he serving others. His role is assumed as merely "clerk" regardless of how he identifies sexually.
He watches as men leave together, wondering if they will be happy with eachother. Perhaps he wonders of what he can offer.
If... Of course, anyone ever asked in the first place.
The story is evocative. It deals with topics such as "roleplay", "body-language", "lust", "desire", "loneliness" and "human nature".
Thanks to everyone for your insightful observations. Hell! Thanks for reading the story in the first place.
Quoting god must be atheist
Excellence in commentary!
Quoting Jamal
Indeed, the porn store in the story is a long-gone period piece. They became familiar territory to me, first as a customer, later doing AIDS prevention outreach. After Video Killed the Radio Star, the Internet killed the old porn business which was soon born again on a million web sites.
While they figured into gay male culture, the porn business was / is oriented mostly towards straight guys.
The whole porn scene (in the upper midwest) crashed and burned one day in the early 1990s when the FBI seized the entire assets of the local porn empire in a RICO tax evasion prosecution. The somewhat elderly owner spent a few years in federal prison.
Cities like to "clean up" strips where dive bars, strip joints, porn shops, et al flourish. After the street is steam cleaned (so to speak), they try to establish "wholesome family entertainment zones" which often enough fall flat on their frontage, offering little that actual people want.