The Porn Man

We have an annoying customer at the store. Well, we have thousands of annoying customers, but I'm only referring to one of them at the moment. No, I'm not going to give out his name, though I doubt he has time to surf the Internet, what with all the porn he must be watching.

See, this guy comes in every Sunday and buys lots of pornography. And when I say "lots," I don't mean one DVD, which if bought every week would eventually constitute "a lot of pornography." I mean, 4-8 DVD's a week. And then, the next Sunday, he comes and trades in the pornography he purchased in the last few weeks (for pennies on the dollar), and uses the trade-in money to buy more pornography.

I estimate this man spends $50 a week on porn at our store. He's reached the point where porn isn't just a hobby, isn't just a passionate interest, but is a full-blown psychosis. He watches porn the way you or I watch...well, nothing, really. I don't watch anything as much as this guy watches porn.

And that alone would be kind of annoying. I mean, every week we have to go back through all the old porn he bought, reprice it and put it back out on the floor. Plus, there's just something unsettling about traded-in used pornography. No, he's not leaving actual fluids on the discs or anything. (Man, I just grossed myself out...that's a first...) But, still, you don't want to think about where these DVD's have been, what they've been used for.

But I haven't even told you the annoying part yet! On Sundays, the store closes earlier than the rest of the week. 8 pm instead of 10 pm. And, without fail, every week, this guy shows up right before closing and then takes forever to browse.

Tonight he actually showed up at 7-ish, which was a welcome change of pace, although we still had to kick him out once 8:00 rolled around. Last week, it was 7:57 when he popped his head in the door, and proceeded to argue that we should remain open for his benefit because he's "such a good customer."

Still, though, these are minor nuisances. If it was just relentless tardiness followed by endless pornographic browsing, I'd probably grouse about it to people I know, but I wouldn't really consider it blog-worthy. It's his mid-browse conversations that have inspired this post to Crushed by Inertia.

You see, while I'm waiting there in the porn room for this guy to finish up (no pun intended...), he likes to talk to me. Sometimes about the relative youth of the girls appearing in his favorite pornos. Sometimes about how silly it is that we close so early when people like him are just arriving at the store to shop. But tonight, the topic of conversation was a lawsuit in which he believes he will win $20 million.

Now, I didn't ask him about the lawsuit. I don't ask him about anything, except whether or not he's finally ready to pay for his purchases and get the hell out. He just started telling me that in a year or so, he's going to be a millionaire, and he's going to spend a ton of money at our video store. Cause he's suing someone, and he's got great lawyers and the government on his side, and he firmly believes that he will win the case.

You meet people like this once in a while. People who don't have the social grace to realize you would rather peel the flesh off of your bones with a rusty pocketknife than converse with them. People who like to brag incessantly about things they haven't even done yet and probably never will do. People obsessed with telling you more about their lives than Dave Eggers on a Barbra Walters special under the influence of sodium pentathol. But I swear I've never met someone more deluded and out of touch with common human responses than the customer in question.

Folks, I have never indicated to this man in any way that I want to get to know him. That I want any inside information about his life. Frankly, I'm kind of weirded out by him, and I don't think I hide this fact particularly well. And yet still, every Sunday, I have to deal with his oddball conversation, with his peculiar insights. With him.

Why did I want to work at a video store again?