Porn Tales 14

There was this old man that used to come into the porn shop. Now, when I say old I don't mean old like when I have complained about customers in the past. I'm talking about in 2001 he looked like he was ready to drop dead at any moment and I was not being paid enough to move his body. I bring this guy up because I recently saw him a few days ago and damn near dropped my bag of just purchased chips. I mean...how?! How could this man still walk the Earth?

This isn't someone that just looked old. He was for real old. And jerking it every day. I think. He used to rent three movies every morning, return them the next morning, and take three more out. I often wondered if he actually had the ability to jerk off of if he just went home and slapped it around for a while, sighed, and put another tape in. Either way, it was depressing as hell. I know it should be inspirational that someone at the age of telephone is still feeling sexual but that is not how my brain works.

Porn Tales 13

Back at the porn shop there was this old Latino guy that worked there and stuck out like a sore thumb. This horrible woman that worked there knew him and when he came in I thought he was lost. There was nothing pervy about him and he could barely speak English. I thought I was either being pranked or that the manager just didn’t give a fuck anymore and was hiring anyone that walked through the door. Which has happened. We did have customers end up being the counter.

I can’t help train the guy because he can only understand a few things I say so the training was left to the horrible woman. Now, this woman did not have what one would call a good work ethic. So by the time this guy is done being “trained” he can rent you a movie or do anything that requires you handing him money and saying bye. He ended up working the late shift (5pm to 2am) which was the devil’s shift. You’d get everyone from the gay bar coming in drunk, fighting, and yelling at people to get them to leave the store when it was closing time.

Porn Tales 12

In the porn shop we used to get defective tapes. I say tapes because DVD's came along much later. I would say about 95% of the time a customer brought a tape back because it didn't work that it meant that they were unhappy with the choice they made. I get it. There were lots of different reasons why people weren't happy with the porn they got. It was too short, not enough sex, or the guy that was on the cover didn't get fucked.

The line that everyone wanted to use and DVD's killed was “The tape is broke.” They would then mention how they tried it in three or four VCR's and it didn't work in any of them. Then I would pop it into the small, cheap ass TV/VCR we kept at the counter and sure enough it would work fine.

This is why I can say I have watched more gay porn than many straight men.

Porn Tales 11

There is a door that always leads to the nastier stuff when you work in a porn shop. Some places have a curtain which is just gross. You know no one takes that thing down and washes it. Some places have double doors that have been touched by more hands than a Super Bowl champion. At the one I worked at there was a frosted door that was hanging on by a thread. From my first day there I knew that one day that damned thing would fall down and make a really loud sound. Well, one day it did fall and I missed the whole thing much like when the ceiling collapsed.

Oh, and it hit someone in their face.

There was this guy that got shitcanned for giving this same guy a ton of discounts on cigarettes and god knows what else (read that here). So the damned door collapsed and smacked him right across the eye and cracked his glasses and gave him a black eye that eventually turned purple and red. Shit looked terrible. The first thing I thought was “How is he gonna explain what happened to his friends and family?” I mean, if my friends saw me looking like I just had a 12 round bout with Mike Tyson they would have a ton of questions. This guy just showed up the next day and got some free rentals for his trouble.

Porn Tales 10

While talking to The Munkey I was reminded of a time when the porn shop was surrounded by cops. Let me explain how this started. I was at the counter sitting on my ass and wondering what I was doing with my life when the owner shows up and starts dicking around with the security switch. I watched him with the same amount of interest as a dog watching its owner pick up its poop. So he leaves and a minute or so later the phone rings and I answer it with as much gusto as one can at 8am with the smell of poppers behind me.

Porn Tales 9

There was this blue eyed Black dude I worked with. His eyes were not actually blue. He did it so his face would “pop.” Oh, and pop he did. This guy was a frigging weirdo of the highest order. He was one of those people that whatever you did he also did but did it with famous people watching who wanted nothing more than to make him famous.

I started calling him “Walker: Texas Stranger.” Well, because his name was Walker (turned out that was not true), he was from Texas (he said…), and he was strange. He showed up with his little sunglasses and blue eyes with a flattop and just thought he was the bees knees. Amongst his many talents one was baton twirling.

Porn Tales 8

I had a manager at the porn shop that I couldn’t stand. Let’s call him Rick. Now Rick was a worry wart. You know, one of those people that act frantic in every situation and every little thing that happens is the biggest emergency to ever happen in the store. I hate frantic but even more than that I hate frantic with no action. If you’re gonna act like that then at least move! (sigh) Okay.

This dude was always ashy. Like always. I swear I heard him wash his hands in the bathroom and come out with them dryer than a turtles knuckles. Ash bothers me especially when it can be seen from a distance. Let me give you a few examples of this guy just to give you a taste of why I hated working with this guy so much I volunteered to do a split shift of like 9am to 1pm and coming back in the evening to work 8pm to midnight.

In the 7 years I worked at the porn shop I missed only three days of work. That’s gotta be some kinda record. One day my foot was so swollen that I couldn’t put my shoe on. I called a few hours before my shift to let him know that I couldn’t come in.

Porn Tales 7

There was this nasty ass old man that used to come into the porn shop. He had been coming for years and ended up getting the name Overring from the employees. An over ring was a button pressed on the cash register that would cancel a sell when someone changed their mind on an item or in the case of Overring, when someone didn’t have enough cash.

Overring, for those of you that need a visual, looked like an overweight runaway slave. Yeah, I know that doesn’t make any sense. He always had this look on his face like any second a slave master was going to show up and whip his ass or something. When I tried to describe his scent on The Adam Carolla Show the only way I could do it was by saying “He smelled like a combination of a stuffy, hot kitchen where they cooked nothing but greasy food and armpit.” Seriously, he smelled really bad.

Porn Tales 6

I worked with a cross dresser who will shall refer to as Shante. Once again me not seeing someone come in for an interview bit me in the ass. A large Black man dressed as a woman came in one morning to start training at the porn shop. I have no issues with cross dressers. I see them all the time and as long as they do it well its very whatever. Shante went overboard.

Daily.

So he…her…hmm. Shante comes in and its like a perfume bomb went off. I have a sensitive nose and this was like some form of torture. She…he…damn it. He, okay?! He had an assload of foundation on his face in an effort to cover up his stubble and a wig that was kept very well. I mean he really went the whole way. Even the voice.

The voice took the longest to get used to. He put on a voice like a Southern bell. He added the finger snapping and long nails and all that. Everyone liked Shante and he seemed to make customers flock to him. There was this one weird ass guy he knew that would come in every night and drive him home. Little Asian fella that would never say hello or anything and just stare at us at the counter until Shante arrived. I would just stare at him back until he looked at the chip rack. Everything was fine until one day some money came up missing.

Porn Tales 5

There was this asshole I worked with at the porn shop. We’ll leave his name out of this in case one day he tweaks his way to this blog and drips makeup all over it. He had worked there well before I did and I couldn’t stand him. He would skate into work sweating his foundation off his face. I mean literally dripping off his face. He talked very wispy and was always fanning himself whether it was hot or cold. Know why?

He was on drugs!

There are two things that led to his magical downfall. One day I baked some cookies for everyone. Yes, I bake cookies and I bake them very well. I made some which would have fed about ten people. I come in the next day to get my Tupperware and ask a co-worker how the cookies were. She tells me this.

Her: “I didn’t get any.”


Me: “Huh?”


Her: “I didn’t get to try them.”


Me: “How is that even possible? There was a bunch.”


Her: “I think (tweaker) took them.”

Now this pissed me off because I hated the dude already and the fact that he took all them damned cookies was just fucking ridiculous. I found my Tupperware with one giant store bought cookie stuffed in there as replacement for the fact that in his drug fueled mind state he thought this was okay. I would have preferred an empty container. I had to have a conversation with my manager so I would not have to lay hands on this son of a bitch because seriously I would have grabbed him and shook the shit out of him.

The last straw happened when I wasn’t even at work. At his point I was working a split shift because I couldn’t stand working with a supervisor during the nights. So in between I went to the thrift store and found a TV for $25 and was walking past the back window when my manager stopped me.

Him:  “Wanna come to work early?”


Me: “No. Why?”


Him: “We had to fire (tweaker).”


Me: “Yay. I’ll be right back.”

Turns out he had fallen asleep while ringing up a customer up. Like for reals fell asleep standing up while scanning a porno for someone to rent. He got fired and came by to visit like a year later. I ignored the shit out of him. He said hello, I just looked at him and finished eating my Snicker bar.

Don’t do drugs, kids.

Porn Tales 4

“Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it…”

I use that quote from American Beauty because it was what I thought of  when this guy I worked with started crying for no damned reason. One day this guy started and I knew immediately that he wouldn’t last long. He was attractive, stupid, and a huge flirt. It took him a minute to realize I was drooling over a cover of Gear with Jessica Biel on the cover before he stopped flirting with me.

He would spend his lunch breaks doing push ups and pull ups near the back window to attract customers to come look at him. His mood was so back and forth. He would go from bionic horndog to silently moping around the store. I wanted him to pick a mood and stick with it. We were there to sell porn, damn it!

One day he just burst into tears. I don’t mean like weeping quietly while people walked past. No. He fucking full on family member died and he could’ve prevented it cried in the back room. You know, that awesome back room where all the action is? I hate watching dudes cry. I’ll admit, I am an ugly crier. So I stopped. But this dude was losing his mind so I did what any normal person in my position would do.

I sighed heavily.

He looked at me with tears streaming down his face. I cocked my eyebrow. He realized that he was dealing with a straight man with the emotional capacity of a Terminator and rolled his eyes and went back to work. He acted like nothing ever happened, even the next day. About two weeks later he was gone. I discussed this with a co-worker.

Me: “What happened to American Beauty?”


Him: “Who?”


Me: “American Beauty. Dude who cried for no reason.”


Him: (laughter)


Me: “Sometimes there’s so many push ups in the world…and I…” (pretends to weep) “…I feel like my hearts gonna explode!”


Him: “I think he quit.”


Me: “How come people don’t get fired for being fucking weirdoes?”


Him: “Because you wouldn’t have a job.”


Me: “Swallow me.”


Him: “Ooh, daddy!”


Me: “I don’t like you.”

Porn Tales 3

There was once this guy named John that worked at the porn shop. A lot of guys named John worked there actually. This is the tale of Drunk John. Now, John was about 5’3”, maybe 110lbs. He had a few teeth left in his mouth. Stringy dirty hair. He wore a sports coat and jacked up shoes. And to top it all off?

Assless white jeans.

Yes, assless white jeans. I didn’t see him come in for his interview because if I did I would have been like “Hell no!!!” So imagine my pleasure when he came in to start training. I didn’t notice the jeans until he bent over to grab his backpack and I saw his spotted, wrinkled ass. My eyes started burning and I left the counter and went to the backroom to discuss this with a manager.

Me: “He ain’t got no pants.”


Him: “What?”


Me: “Dude ain’t got no ass on his pants.”


Him: “Huh?”


Me: “He is wearing 90% of pants! And he got no draws on!”


Him: “Yes, he does.”


Me: “Watch.”

And he saw and gagged. Someone said he was actually homeless and felt bad for him so he was hired. Nope. The porn shop became a work release program apparently. He got the name Drunk John because, well, he drank. A lot.

It became super apparent one morning when I came into work and noticed that absolutely nothing had been done during the graveyard shift. I checked the security camera and saw Drunk John grab his backpack and vanish into the bathroom. He then emerged fifteen minutes later holding a cup and smiling his toothless ass off.

Moments later he grabbed a mop. I thought he was finally gonna do something. Nope. He mopped the cement floor in the back, brought a fan in to dry it, laid out some newspaper, and laid down and slept for the next five hours. He then woke up, stretched, and I arrived for work a few minutes later. This turned out to be the last straw and Drunk John was released. I got to see his ID (which had an address) and found out he was 35. The one thing I missed when he was gone and we continued doing years after he was going was this weird gasp/breathing after he drank something. You know the sound you make after you drink something that is stronger than you expected?

“Aaaaagggghhh…”

Yeah. That.

Porn Tales 2

The porn shop always had issues. Besides the random power outage it was stricken with leaks. Oh my god the leaks! Once the ceiling in the backroom where we put tapes and DVD’s together started leaking. Know why? An angry tenant stuffed his toilet full of tissue paper and it flooded sending doo-doo water all over the place.

And then there was the flying Mexican. There was this one leak that kept on going on near the front counter. We would  put a bucket to gather it and it would be nice and brown. I kept on saying, “That shit is gonna cave in one day.” And boy did it ever!

I come back from my lunch break and this is what I hear from a co-worker.

Him: “The ceiling caved in.”


Me: “Really? Damn it. I missed it.”


Him: “Go look.”


Me: “I. Will.”

He had the understatement of the year! I went to the front counter and it was like a grenade went off. I step over the rubble and a female co-worker is sitting behind the counter. I’m staring at the hole and can actually see the light in the bathroom ceiling up there. A customer walks up and says the following to me and my co-worker.

Customer: “A guy fell through that.”


Me: “Whaaaa….?”


Her: “What?!”


Customer: “Yeah. He fell through, got up, and walked out.”


Her: “No.”


Customer: “Yeah. He left.”


Her: “I didn’t see anybody.”


Me: “That’s awesome!”

When my manager showed up we watched the footage that was recorded. Sure enough, a Mexican dude did indeed fall through the ceiling. This guy fell three stories, hit the lube rack, and jumped up and left to call his boss to tell him what happened. On the tape customers scrambled to the back of the store when it caved in and the co-worker was sitting on her fat ass reading magazines.

The ceiling was eventually patched up, we all had a good laugh, and everything was perfectly fine after that.

Until three days later when it started leaking again.

Porn Tales 1

Working in the porn shop like I did for seven long years, you get used to lots of weird requests. “Can I try this cock ring on here?” “Can I bring this dildo back if he doesn’t like it?” “What’s your name, cutie?” But out of all of these the strangest, though it may not seem like it, is this:

“Can I use your restroom?”

Seems innocent enough, right? No! You know how much weird, freaky shit can happen in a bathroom at a normal place, imagine the levels of depravity humans can reach whilst in the throws of passion in a porn shop with a stack of magazines. Here are two nasty ass stories.

One morning we (the employees) noticed something weird on the wall in the employee bathroom. By the way there was no customer bathroom. Anyway, we saw these weird marks across from the toilet on the wall. Me and the only other straight dude kept asking “What the hell is that?”

Another employee came in and said “Footprints” very matter of factly. So, in our ignorance we then asked “Why would there be footprints there?” The employee then sat on the toilet while holding a magazine (someone kept leaving Handjob magazines in the bathroom; imagine Penthouse letters but way more vulgar and for gay dudes), leaned back and placed his feet perfectly on the wall while simulating masturbation. I screamed and ran out the bathroom.

Another time this dude came into the store and vanished. I’m serious. This happened all the time. People would wander in and literally vanish. So one of my co-workers came in and opened the bathroom door to find a large Black dude sitting on the toilet.

“I’m naked…” is all he said.

So yeah we called the cops and they actually showed up. Truly shocking. They tossed his bag and found needles, drugs, and old ass porno mags. He had spread out a bunch on the floor in the bathroom for his entertainment. So, no. There were no customer bathrooms.