Adventures in Sleazytown (part one, book one, section four, chapter one)

Another short piece of the top of my head; it's about places that sell sex products.

So someone walks into their housemate's room; the walking-in person is female, and she needs a device; the walked-in-on person is male, and is busy thinking about very masculine things like beer and camping and bonfires. The female asks, "So, have you been to any of the porn stores?" What she means is, she wants to go to one but doesn't know at which one she can find what she's looking for. The male is looking at a website about a national park. He pauses a moment and, without looking up, says, "Why." What he means is, he wants to know how this tidbit of potentially embarassing information is going to be used. Little does he expect what's next. The female says, "I want to buy a dildo." It's a mere statement of fact, and nothing more, past half-casual, but with a hint of another sentence wanting to follow but carefully bit back. Another pause.
"I've been to the one on __________ but not any other ones."
"Did they have a good selection?"
"It's more of a movies and magazines type of place. They had a small selection. Pretty basic."
There's a discussion in the next two or three minutes which goes over the multiplicity of "whack shacks" in the town, their specialties, the creepyness of the places and patrons, and the possible wares at the ones each party is aware of. Consensus emerges that the best bet is a small, incongruously named place, which abuts a country and western karaoke bar, itself on the far side of town from the location of the conversation. One thing to note about this interaction is, there's a history here. On at least one previous occasion, these housemates have been carnally intimate. Down and dirty. Humpin'--as it were. They're still friends, a little flirtatious at times, but mostly trying to stay off each others' respective romance radar. There are other people involved, and these other people are attatched, and the other people make mutual avoidance of a special sort the order of a day. It's an emotionally charged group waiting for a lighting rod.
So but and so but anyway so and, like, [pls. don't sue, D.F.W. --f.] so the question sort of pops out and hangs in the air. One'd think that doesn't really happen, but the metaphor is literally true, for the sounds move across the room from the doorway where the female is standing to the chair where the male is sitting; then, not finding a home, they tool about the corners and the closet, under the bed, investigate the slowly twirling ceiling fan, go back to the ear for a second look and finally, having reached a sort of pregnant-silence tea-time, they hover somewhere in the space between the still slightly parted lips of the female and the staring-in-a-mix-of-disbelief-and-depression-and-loathing-and-friendship-dutifulness eyes of the male, who is trying to match the sound with the unseen movement of the lips.
"Will you go with me?"
Creak, goes the chair.
A line from a television show pops into the male's mind and without the barest gesture of consultation with the forebrain runs from the memory area to the motor neurons. The line of dialogue recalls a request from a former girlfriend to a former boyfriend for help in picking out a wedding dress. The dialogue zips up, quickly and violently dispatches the request, and flies as though a maddened hornet on PCP to the ear of the female. Its effect isn't anything that might have been intended: a laugh. But this diffuses the tesion of the situation. There is a shifting of bodies and shuffling of shoulders. "No, seriously," says the male, "why do you need me to do it?"
The female is uncomfortable going to the store alone. She thought it'd be polite to ask, since, you know, he might want to obtain an additional supply of personal lubricant. (That she know he would have already done this isn't relevant, nor is the fact that it can be obtained at the supermarket a mere hundred feet from the organic milk.) Perhaps, she suggests, he would like to--or, more to the point, be willing to--pose as her gay friend. The male knows this is an abortion of an idea. He inquires whether, perhaps, the dude she's boning'd go with her. Another discussion follows, in which it is decided that whining and being pathetic is an effective way of imposing on your friends. Also an exchange of valuable ingestible goods is mentioned. About three minutes later, Coke in hand to wash down the bitter postnasal drip, the male gets into the passenger seat of the female's car.
Late afternoon on a warm spring day has an odd effect on drivers. They like to get casual about lane-lines. They like to roll their windows down. They like to blast rock music at the highest setting their speakers can attain. Some like to creep up behind middle aged men driving their midlife crisis convertibles which, unfortunately, they get in a white color that can only be described as "bland". Then, at stoplights, these drivers try to make the middle aged men feel bad about themselves by blasting their music so lound that the men realize that their music is dated, their fast cars unable to keep up with the thrusting hips of youth in heat, their mortgages a ball and chain nearly as oppressive as their wives, their dreams of accomplishing everything television promised they could old and dried and barely recognizable as worth their fragile existence, like dusty prunes early on a Sunday morning before taking the kids to church...
Anyone entering a whack shack, if not devolved to the level of regular jerk-movie patronage, tries to act casual. And our two protagonists certainly acted as casually as possible. Chuckling and muttering clever, ironic jokes about the wares, hands hanging semi-stuck into pockets, they browsed their way from the front door to the back wall where the jellied, soon-to-be-humming wares waited. The counter in these places is raised, so they can see into the aisles. The racks are short. There are mirrors in the sorners of the ceiling. Objects of note at this location: large selection of ultra-max sized condoms; five different butterfly-style clitoral stimulators; test samples of fragrant lubes; a latext mold for phallus-reproduction with optional motor; a surprisingly large selection of high-end transgendered pornography publications; the guy working there does not look like a guy who works in a porn store.
The conversation that ensues in whispers and mutters and occasional outbursts has to do with the female asking advice about various products from the male. He knows the person with whom the female will utilize the products, if purchased, and is not entirely enthusiastic about giving such advice. Constipate would probably have been a good description of his face if one had been there to see it. The female is trying to act oblivious to the porn store guy behind the counter. He spends a lot of time looking at his only two customers. He does not, as is customary, have a magazine with pictures of women or guitars in front of him. Another customer enters and goes directly to a film viewing booth. Though they look around neither the male nor the female is able to observe this customer, who indeed, they agree, after some conversation, which is hushed and hurried, had spoken to the guy at the counter about the film to be shown. The customer even coughed twice loudly.
Stores like this smell like personal lubricant, always, and fresh rubber, and that oily smell of factory-fresh plastic. Sometimes they smell of semen, sometimes not. The carpet smells too, long unvacuumed and installed in the late seventies, by the color, it is a bit mildewed. The air is always, inexplicably, more humid than you'd expect. Most of the lighting is flourescent in tubes and purely functional. This is a store, they say, nothing more, and, they say, certainly we run a tight and hygenic ship around here. The walls are efficient panelling and hooks for the products which are all sealed like small appliances--which is what they are--in hard plastic. The covers often snap open, like doll packages; sometimes they are tighter sealed, like the packages of scissors which, mysteriously enough, are difficult to open without the very product they protect. The funny bachelorette products are near the front, along with the condoms and the "party" games for those who've been married too long. In the back you'll find things you'd only have expected to hear about, if you're a respectable citizen, while attending a particularly prurient art film or in a drunken murmur at the end of an office New Years gathering.
The female pays, finally, after about fifteen minutes which, to the male, seemed more like twenty or even twenty-two minutes. He wasn't shopping, though perhaps, he thought as he scoped out the wares in the corner of his eye, he would be back. She paid, and he pointed out the flavored ointments for use in oral copulation, which she'd failed to find previously. She said, "Maybe I should get a ball gag," as he inwardly winced. He asked, "Shouldn't you get hadcuffs, too? Like a package deal?"
"Oh, I don't trust ______ with handcuffs."
"I thought you were going to put them on him!"
"I'd be too tempted to just leave him there; you know me."
"You wouldn't do that. At least not for more than a few hours," the male added.
They laughed as the guy working there, who looked more like he should be sitting at or maybe even tending a bar, added batteries to the purchases to demonstrate their efficacy. Not even drug dealers have a stricter return policy. The male asked what, in light of the unusual name on the sign, would appear on one's credit card statement if one happened to make a purchase at this establishment. The reply was nearly by rote, and the first sentence had all the answer the male needed. The female's face flushed red and her neck pink, and the tittered nervously on her way through the parking lot. She'd been unable to ask, herself. The sun was in their eyes on the drive back.
The male sat back down in front of the computer again, looking at campsite options, ignoring a telephone conversation of the female's with the man she was going to meet to try out her new goodies. The female commented on how their activities annoyed the man's own housemate. Then the house was empty, the sun had set, the air was cool, and the campfire, far from civilization, seemed to rekindle in his mind. His imagination brought up a vision of some natives in a far-off land without electricity, dancing, entranced, around a huge flame. Drums pounded as the women of the tribe, bodies decorated, joined the chorus, shuffling their feet, heads lowered, eyes to the flames and rhythmically pushing their hips. A reminder of Bacchanals floated through this, and the goat-footed god danced superimposed with his Maenads around another fire. Another image, and another, popped up and joined the others, and he saw, with his mind's eye, the sweaty, glassy-eyed, grinning faces of all the men and women he knew would share a sleeping place that night, and cursed them.