[A_C_Slater]

The video store is more crowded than usual. There are too many couples in line for me to rent Barely Legal 5 or Ginger's [censored] without some sense of awkwardness or discomfort, plus I've already bumped into someone from work in the Horror aisle.

He was holding a movie called BloodHungry and a documentary on abortions in what I noticed were nicely manicured hands marred only by what looked to me like an imitation-gold Rolex.


Since pornography seems out of the question I browse through Comedy and, feeling a little ripped off, settle for a Woody Allen movie but I'm still not satisfied. I want something else. Suddenly I'm seized by a minor anxiety attack. There are too many [censored] movies to choose from.

I duck behind a promotional cardboard display for the new Nicholas Cage movie and take two five milligram-Valiums, washing them down with a Pepsi. Then, almost by rote, as if I've been programmed I reach for Body Double -- a movie I have rented thirty seven times-- and walk up to the counter where I wait twenty minutes to be checked out by a dumpy girl (five pounds overweight, dry frizzy hair). She's actually wearing a baggy nondescript sweater definitely not designer, probably to hide the face that she has no tits, and even though see has nice eyes: so [censored] what?

Finally it's my turn. I hand her the DVDs.

"Is this it?" she asks.

"Do you have any Jamie Gertz movies?" I ask her, trying to make direct eye contact.

"What?" she asks, distracted.

"Any movies Jamie Gertz is in?"

"Who?" She enters something into the computer.

"Don't you know who Jamie Gertz is?"

"I don't think so" she actually sighs.

"Jamie Gertz," I say. "She's an actress."

"I don't think I know who you mean," she says in a tone that suggests I'm harrassing her, but hey, she works in a video rental store and since it's such a demanding high-powered profession her bitchy behavior is perfectly resonable, right? The things I could do to this girl's body with a hammer, the words I could carve into her with an icepick. She hand's the guy behind her my DVDs and I pretend to ignore his horrified reaction as he recognizes me after he looks at the Body Double DVD, but he dutifully gets my movies from under the counter.


"I like the part in Body Double where the woman...gets drilled by the...power driller in the movie...the best," I say, almost gasping. It seems very hot in the video store right now all of a sudden and after murmuring "oh my god" under my breath I place a hand on the counter to settle it from shaking. "And the blood starts pouring out of the ceiling." I take a deep breath and while I'm saying this my head starts nodding of its own accord and I keep swallowing, thinking I have to see her shoes , and so as inconspicuously as possible I try to peer over the counter to check out what kind of shoes she's wearing, but maddeningly they're only sneakers---- not K-Swiss, not Tretorn, not Adidas, not Reebok, just cheap ones. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

She hands me the tapes without even looking at me, refusing to recognize who I am; and breathing in hard and exhaling, she motions for the next in line, a couple with a baby.