A little over two decades and a thousand years ago I took some time
between being a dumb teenager and being a slightly less dumb
twenty-somethinger. One station of my rumschpringe involved a small video
rental store in Hanau, Germany. It was located near a US army base and exclusively
carried VHS tapes formatted for American video machines. I worked there, for
cash, for a solid three to four weeks.
Hang on, this is going nowhere, I promise!
The ground floor had the standard – if spare – selection of movies: comedies, drama, etc. I don’t remember a lot about it but I don’t think there
was a new releases section and the movies in stock on that floor rarely saw any
action. The real business was upstairs, the porn section. It was packed tightly
with, very possibly, every porn video available at that time.
I had one coworker who was really neither much of a worker or a co. I’m
almost convinced her name was Ziva. Like the owner, she was Israeli – not Jewish,
she often reminded me. Also, like the owner, she lived in the Israeli – not Jewish,
she insisted that I understand – section of Frankfurt. It was never clear to me
how she commuted to the store in Hanau. She would simply be there when a moment
before she hadn’t been. Later, she would unhappen just as mysteriously. Come to
think of it, I don’t remember her being anywhere but at the cash register,
languidly checking out soldiers as they slid in and out with their porny
treasures.
She was short and impossibly thin. Her features were a collection of
angles, all of which pointed and seemed to slide to her perpetually pursed
lips. Before each enunciation, of which there were very few, she would slowly
kiss with the quietest of smacks what I can only assume was an invisible fairy
always floating just in front of her, ready for its next blessing. It was easy
to focus on that mouth when dealing with her. Besides being directed to do so
by the rest of her face, it was better than looking in her black eyes. She had
the second deadest pair of eyes I have ever encountered. To look at them for
any longer than just a glance was to feel the room grow colder by at least
three degrees.
During the first shift I worked with her, she stood silent, leaning, watching
as the owner showed me around the shop and explained my duties. It was
impossible to tell if she was studying us to establish the best, most silent
ways to end our lives or deciding which one of us she would fuck and whether or
not the Amaretto would be flaming or just wet as she poured it over our slithering
body parts.
As soon as the boss left, she took my attention with an okay.
[nyoekyay] She explained to me in exhaustive detail how I, as an American, could go into the PX on base and buy American Levis while she, as an Israeli –
not Jewish – immigrant to the German economy. could not. She went on to explain that
the American Levis in the PX were far less expensive than the Levis she bought
in German shops. She told me how she and her friends would all like me to buy
them the American Levis and they would be glad to pay me…
She was very thorough and mistaken. I didn’t actually have the credentials
to make purchases at the PX. I’m lucky I didn’t. I can be breath-takingly naïve
at times. I believed that she just really wanted the American Levis. It dawned
on me years later that she was proposing something of a US army enabled
smuggling ring. She never really understood, or perhaps chose not to accept the
knowledge that I could not help her. Her greetings for me, if we were alone,
was always, "Nyoekyay, I’m wondering, the Levis?"
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that little shop. It jumped
into my brain today when I saw this meme on Facebook today. That movie and this
shop are locked together in my head.
There was a single screen in the store. It was an old TV hung on the
wall with a VCR opposite the cash register on which employees could watch any
non-porn video in the store. I was there alone one morning and popped in The
Breakfast Club. It was a slow morning and I was soon engrossed in the movie. It
was during one of the snottier, self-confession scenes that the owner arrived. He
stood, blocking my view of the screen and spent several moments watching the
bawling teens.
Finally, he turned and fixed the deadest eyes I have ever seen on me. “Are
you a fucking psychologist?” [skeeyiekeeawlajust]
He punched the TV off. I’m not sure if he hit a button or if he and the
TV simply had an understanding. I just know the TV was punched and the images
and sounds stopped.
He turned and vaguely waved in my direction. “File that.”
I brought a book in with me for my next shift.
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