True Porn Clerk Stories (18 page)

I was young and bright-eyed back then, but in recent years I'd been working for some pretty cool places and then working for myself, so I was out of practice with sucking it up.

I was just called in for an "interview" for a job being a concierge in an office building, which unlike being a real concierge seemed to mostly involve saying hello and occasionally buzzing people up. Instead of talking to someone, I filled out a colossal application that included an essay section on what teamwork (or as they repeatedly and incorrectly put it throughout the application, "Teamwork") meant to me. I had to write an essay on why I wanted the job and how I would throw myself into it in a unique and exciting manner. I had to do a worksheet (even more incorrectly headed "Check Off Which Ones Are Important To You So You Will Give One Hundred Per Cent!!!") in which I checked off "Teamwork," but left, say, "Gossip" blank.

I made it almost all the way through like a good toadie, but then on the last page I snapped. I was supposed to write an essay on what I hoped to achieve at the company over the next several years, but instead I flipped out and got honest on them. I even started the essay with "I'll be honest with you…" I said that the company was not a part of my personal goals, and that, while I would throw myself into any job to the best of my abilities, it would still only be my day job. The advantage in hiring me, I said, was that they would have a cheerfully overqualified employee for maybe the next year or two.

For some reason I haven't heard back.

I'd also applied for a job in the exciting world of telephone reception, to which I am no stranger -- it's what I did most summers during college. Reception is incredibly boring and also fraught with rude people, but at least one can pass the time by practicing Sultry Receptionist voices and putting the truly vile on hold for minutes at a time. I didn't really want the receptionist job, but I was really looking forward to the simple joy of knowing where rent was coming from every month. I had an interview -- a real one, this time, scheduled for Friday.

And then on Thursday morning I woke up to a phone call. Kurt, the man on the other end, wanted to know if I would like to take over writing and producing an online game for Jellyvision, the software company I used to work for.

Yes, please.

Suddenly bang, a job, and one that I actually wanted. I start Monday after Thanksgiving and I'm looking forward to it: The work will be challenging and fun, the people I'll be working with are terrific, and I dimly remember health insurance being a pretty nice thing. (In a perverse way, I've realized that I'm actually looking forward to my next illness or injury, just for the sheer joy of going straight to the doctor instead of waiting for five weeks to see if whatever it is clears up.)

Everything else happened suddenly too, so suddenly that I never knew Thursday would be my last shift. I thought I'd get one final shift in there Monday or Tuesday to say my goodbyes, and even dropped a note asking for one, but Gary just went ahead and took me off the schedule.

It makes sense, I guess -- this way I don't spill over into another payroll week, but still. I dropped by Saturday to find out when I'd be working my last shift and instead turned in my hard-won key. I spent a little time reassuring a pissed-off Casey that I'd never meant to just split without telling anyone, and then it was time to go. I'd always visualized a sort of Dorothy-leaving-Oz moment, but it was the shift change and they were busy and a new clerk had already sprung up to take my place. So we said so long and that was it.

I felt a little bad that I didn't get to spend a last shift cheerfully announcing my departure to my regulars and positively beaming at my dirtbags, and a little sad that I didn't get to thank Mr. Gentle for being such a bright spot, but in the end clean breaks are usually best.

I am no longer a porn clerk.

Addendum:

When people e-mailed me about this journal, hands-down the most responses were about the special joys of Aqua.

But the individual person who inspired the most mail was Mr. Gentle.

I was sad that I didn't get to say goodbye to him. I did get one of the clerks to let me go into the system one last time and leave a note on his file: "Please tell him Ali says thank you for being such a bright spot in her mornings."

As I typed the note, I of course had his contact information right there, but to use it would have been a violation in a couple of senses, not to mention way too creepy. And I wasn't really sure what I'd say.

So I had to leave it.

He found out I'd left when the other clerks rolled out the red carpet for him once they saw the note. Anyone who had dealt with him before already liked him, but that definitely gave him a little extra oomph.

He, as it turned out, asked for my contact information, but, to their credit, no one at the store would give it to him. He understood.

One clerk did, however, tell him about this blog, and a few days later I got an e-mail from Kevin Mullaney at the Improv Resource Center that finally put us in touch.

And then a day or two after that we ran into each other on the street, which undercut the drama of the search a little bit, but was still fun.

I think the first thing he said after hello was "I'm royalty at the store now!"

Mr. Gentle and I became close friends. We still are.

Let's Talk Evolution

As soon as I started clerking (or, rather, as soon as I started telling people that I was clerking) people wanted to talk to me about porn.

Sometimes it was with the same combination of giggle and frisson that is normally used for bringing up a silly-yet-scary ghost story, sometimes it was with an almost scientific detachment, sometimes it was with prurient interest, and sometimes it was just because the over-the-top world of porn is frequently hilarious. Actually, it was usually a combination of all of those. I'm not being superior when I mention that -- I dove into the conversations before I got all cold and dead to porn, and I'll admit to getting quite a bit of mileage out of my odd little job at more than one cocktail party.

Anyway, almost all of these conversations ended up with the other person at some point saying something like this: Men like porn because they are evolutionarily programmed to sleep around and make lots of babies with as many women as possible. Women don't like porn because they need to catch a man to provide for her babies and keep him forever and ever.

In other words, men are bad, but they just can't help it if they screw around. Women don't get to sleep around, but isn't it nice to be inherently virtuous?

Because, I think, I politely resisted saying this in every single case, I'm going to take the liberty of doing so now: That argument is complete horseshit.

Evolutionary success is not about having the most sex, it's about producing the most fertile offspring.

To rephrase: The idea isn't to spread the most baby batter around, it's to raise the most children who themselves grow up to produce children. That's why your parents won't leave you the hell alone about making them grandparents; their jobs aren't done until you do.

If you're just spreading sperm around, you're not strategizing your evolutionary success well at all.

Male sleeping around simply wouldn't have cut it as an evolutionary strategy. First off, the male in question can't just sleep with any old female for evolutionary success, he has to have sex with a woman who is currently fertile.

Human females have concealed ovulation. Fucking around means rolling the dice each time, while staying with one woman at least through a full cycle (or two, or three -- our ancestors didn't have our ridiculous abundance of food and thus weren't as reliably fertile) meant a good shot at pregnancy.

...And that's assuming that the opportunity for Cro-Magnon or australopithecine fucking around existed at all.

Illicit sex requires privacy, and the days before bricks, mortar and loud stereos didn't provide much. Ever try to get away with something in a small town? Now try it when you live in a community of 60 breeding adults who live in thatched huts around a central campfire. Everybody knows your business.

And there's not a lot of stealing away for you-time when there's a danger of being eaten by predators. Doing things alone, for that very reason, tends to be looked on with suspicion when it happens in pre-modern societies, to the extent that it happens at all.

I once read an account of an anthropologist's attempts just to go out to urinate without company. The people he was living with couldn't figure out why he'd want to do such a dangerous thing.

I'm not saying that affairs never happened back in the mists of time, just that they would have been damn sight harder to have than we think of them.

And while a single fling might have been possible if dangerous to attempt, being a rake would have been out of the question. Again, in a small community, word gets around. There aren't many evolutionary advantages in being ostracized by your clan or getting your head caved in.

Even if someone did manage to buck incalculably high odds and impregnate more than woman (and assuming the women don't abandon the offspring), he still has an evolutionary problem -- the kids have to reach adulthood and have kids of their own.

His time and provisions would be split between more than one mate and more than one child, decreasing the odds of anyone getting enough food or growing up completely healthy.

The "faithful" male only has one child at a time, but can devote his whole energy to making sure the pregnancy goes well and both mother and child are healthy and well provisioned. You have better odds raising well-fed children with two sides of a family for support than scrambling to split food between multiple children, some of whom may bear a stigma from having no socially sanctioned dad and only half the number of clan members helping out.

The healthy kids with family backing them up are more likely to have a prime choice of mates, and thus more likely to have healthy children of their own. Over thousands of years, it adds up.