Jim Gore

1 November 20XX

Convenience Store

PERSONAL AND STRUCTURAL DANGERS

The horror is collective. The sun goes down, falls flat on its face, and we begin the long journey to unfulfilled anticipation. We do.

“Havin’ fun?”

“Eh, somethin’ like that,” I say to him. It’s my lead, Austin Homer.

“What’d you do all day?”

“Other than bein’ here? Not a whole lot, I suppose.”

“You still in that Japanese club?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“What’s that like?”

“Eh, nothin’ too, incredibly serious. Just a place to chat, hang out. I get bored. There’s nothin’ to do around here.” That last part is true. There isn’t shit to do for fun other than shop, and I find the practice unfortunate. I disrespect subdivisions, the people that live there, and how they use their money. Consumerism can eat me.

“I tell you, what this place needs is a rec center.” And Austin isn’t wrong. He had a lot of good things to say. How do I feel about his company? I like it, fine, I’ll admit. That also surprises me. “I hope you guys can turn it around. With all the inequality, and now the government’s goin’ for your retirement, it’s just like, man! All I want is for people not to have to struggle no more.”

There was somethin’ about that last part. I let him speak and his words melt into me. They must’ve stunned me like cattle. Though, it could also be my own isolated, vulgar, commodified condition. Never mind my humanity, I’m a customer service associate. I’m your doormat.

“The fear I have is how we’re gonna get there. There’s no turning back,” I say.

“Yep, yep. I feel sorry for your generation. It’s early so far, but it’s hard to go bad this early.” The facade of my job dies at this hour. There is no place but here. Outside, the desolate, inhospitable void offers illusions of flashing light, cars accelerating into nothing out of fear of death. Frenzy invades the night. Here, though, it’s safe—in what ways it is.

The stark overhead lighting threatens us. Revelatory, it slices us open to find nothing of relevance. What it exposes here is nothing we don’t live with. So, disembowel me. My stomach is clean.

“If I couldn’t have that, at least I can have this,” he says, but I can’t remember what we’re talking about. Even still, I start responding in a way that makes sense. I wasn’t paying attention, but I was still inside the conversation. I still live in the machine even when I don’t notice.

“I just wanna be comfortable. I just want a decent house—doesn’t have to be big—decent neighborhood,” I say. “I wanna have good food to eat, good insurance, just be comfortable. I don’t want much more than that.” I describe what I want out of life, the basic things I’ve recited in my head over and over again. I must really mean it, too. Or maybe I just tell myself that.

“But man, I’m sure you know, everything’s gotten so expensive recently! I remember when you could get a loaf of bread, a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk for $4, about. Ain’t that way no more,” he says. “Heh, things were different back then. I remember, my parents would send us outside, and just say, ‘Be back before the lights turn on,’ and we would just run around all day. We’d ride bikes, we’d, we would do just, whatever we wanted. We could go anywhere or do anything just so long as we were back before dark. Nowadays, though, it’s different. You have these kids who just sit on their phones and watch other kids play. It’s like, what?!”

“It’s wrong. That’s no way to grow up, I think. It’s not a real-life experience, and all that technology can go away. You can’t get rid of going out and playing with your friends.” I say this, but the trouble is how I grew up. The trouble is the kind of “friends” I had in my formative years. I wish I had a childhood like Austin’s. I wish I didn’t live in a convenience store.