I like to think I’m pretty OK at my job. Once I’m able to stop crying I think I do an alright job at looking stuff up on the computeoid and then going to the place where it is. In the last week my skills have taken on an almost God-like power. I just need to hear the slight intake of breath humans make before speaking, and I have picked up, scanned, scowled at, and bagged the product on request.
Thanks to the paralysing popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey my last week has consisted of standing on the same spot, repeating the same actions over and over and over again trying not to imagine the female population of Glasgow en masse-turbating.
“Do you h-”
Yes I do h- and I’m massively in two minds about what I think about it.
On the one hand (OH GOD WHERE HAS IT BEEN?!) I find the feeble-minded, crowd following, zombiefied sheep stomp deeply draining. My snob dial is pinging to attention at a frustrated, pulsing angel and I want to scream in the faces of each and every person “ARE YOU UTTERLY INCAPABLE OF THINKING FOR YOURSELF?! YOU SIT THERE WATCHING THE X-FACTOR TOO DON’T YOU?! LAPPING UP SOMEONE TELLING YOU WHAT TO LIKE. WHICH IS WITHOUT EXCEPTION MEDIOCRITY JUST ABOUT GOOD ENOUGH TO MAKE ANOTHER UNIQUELY PERSONALITY-LESS MAN EVEN RICHER, AND OFF YOU HOBBLE, DOTHING YOUR CAP TO HIM ON YOUR WAY OUT TO PLAY YOUR PART IN THE WHOLE HORRID DEBACLE BY BUYING THE CDS, GOING TO THE TOURS, THEN FORGETTING ALL ABOUT THE LATEST VAPID-HYBRID POPSICLE THE MOMENT THE RICH-MAN NODS AT SOMEONE ELSE”.
I don’t like that you are now all nodding yourselves silly in my domain.
Erotic fiction is not some new concept. This isn’t the first time someone has written “nipple” in a book. But by the way the general population are reacting you would think smut was something humanity had been deprived of and that E L James was some kind of Jesus Christ of the Clitoris. This annoys me. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN PEOPLE?! I don’t recall your face jostling with those sagging from the bones of the usual men who openly dribble onto the carpet in the adult section. You make me sick. Coming in here on your slowly crusting-up band wagon.I bet you haven’t even HEARD of House of Holes.
But then I look on the other hand (freshly scrubbed and odour-less) and I think “you know what, you are keeping me in a job, thanks and that”. I may love reading and books more than my job, but its always nice to have the latter no matter how frustrating it can be made and whenever someone comes in, venturing passed the threshold for the very first time, timidly asking the impatient and judgemental person behind the till if they could buy something, it always manages to push a little more happiness containing blood into my heart.
Here are women who haven’t read anything since school, where they probably just drew cocks all over thier books anyway. They probably find reading something that is elitist and boring, some may pretend to think this to cover up the real truth, which is that they find it daunting. Any book which gets anyone reading is something to celebrate and as people return, the trilogy spent, looking for something else I cant help having to push a wee lump down my throat (hold on to that innuendo, I’m proud of it).
But, then again, I do feel a bit like I’m working in a sex shop, and as someone pointed out on Facebook, returning customers coming in to tell me how much they “enjoyed it” are basically telling me they had a really lovely wank. Which frankly, I can do without.
