I remember my fourth birthday vividly. My grandparents, on my mother's side, gave me my first bicycle. My grandfather privately gave me a plastic rifle that shot rubber pellets. It came with a set of plastic animals for me to shoot. My mom and dad gave me a set of Lincoln Logs. Lincoln Logs are a collection of wooden and plastic pieces that can be put together to make buildings - mainly log cabins. That was my favorite gift.
My mother gave them to me as soon as I awoke that morning. I went into my parents' bedroom to get my dad up to help me build something. He yelled at me to leave him alone. I've always been thankful to him for teaching me at such a young age never to rely on anyone but myself.
I took my can of Lincoln Logs into the living room and dumped it out onto the floor. I sat on the cold hardwood, snapping logs together while surrounded by plastic animals and rubber pellets that would be forever lost. As I was figuring out how to construct my first log cabin, I was unaware that the most beautiful girl I would ever meet was being born somewhere in Kentucky.
Twenty one years later, Tracy and I exchanged gifts in the living room of her apartment. My gift to Tracy was a crystal butterfly and a card I made for her. The card was half-inspired by the pixies, who spent countless days obsessively creating psychotic collages. I began with a piece of green construction paper, as that was Tracy's favorite color. I folded it in half and on the front I wrote, "I thought I would never meet a girl who was kind and artistic and smart and strong and beautiful, until I saw this... (open)" On the inside, I pasted a piece of thin, reflective material so that when she opened the card, she would see her reflection. The card was a big hit.
Tracy gave me a thin, rectangular gift wrapped in blue paper, as that was my favorite color. It had to be a book, but I couldn't even begin to guess which one it might be. I opened the package and found a journal with M. C. Escher's "Belvedere" print on the cover. She knew me so well. I hopped up off the couch and hugged her, grinning, and went and grabbed a pen from the kitchen. I shoved the journal at Tracy, "Here, sign it!"
"What?"
"Autograph the inside cover!"
"God, I'm not going to sign it," she laughed.
"Come on, Tracy."
She grabbed the journal from me and signed her name, "God, you are such a freak!"
Tracy and I celebrated a bit before I had to prepare myself for work. I went home and put the journal away in my bookshelf. I couldn't bring myself to defile it with my meaningless scribbling. I had moved back in with my mother after leaving the pixie pad. It was a good forty five minute drive between there and Tracy's. The gas station sat almost exactly halfway between the two. I spent some time in my room just lying around until I had to leave for work. My mind wandered across a vast landscape of dreams as I drove to work - my past with Tracy, our future, what I would do about finding a better job, whether a perfect replica of a person's brain would result in a shared consciousness. I was so immersed in my subconscious, I didn't notice the temperature warning on the dashboard.
Things at the station had changed significantly. The era of the pixie was over, but there were some battle scars. Aaron had left for Arizona to study motorcycle mechanics. He was replaced by Pedro, which wasn't his real name. Pedro was the man who had impregnated - and later married - Ted's daughter, much to Daryl and Daryl's dismay.
Dustin worked about two more weeks at the station after I moved out. He quit one day without notice and headed south where his mother lived. His new home was, coincidentally, a booming pixie town.
The pixie infestation had run off at least fifty percent of our customers. Toad was left with a bad habit. He continued to run up thousands of dollars in charges to support his pixie obsession. Every day I would come in to work and find Toad in the back room, holding his flaming butane torch up to a pipe. His eyes would be eerily lit by the torch and his cheeks were sunken as he sucked obscenely on his glass dick.
I would sit on the safe and watch him, covertly, with his own words echoing through my head, "Moderation is the key."
Dustin was replaced by Poopie. My first encounter with Poopie was when he was a twelve-year-old kid. He would ride his bicycle to the station to buy cigarettes, since we'd sell them to anyone with money. Toad's paranoia put an end to that and it pretty much got to the point where we only sold cigarettes to ourselves. Though, we'd have a few especially lazy customers that would have us go inside and get them cigarettes and soda.
Poopie treated almost everyone equally bad. Usually, I'd shake my head, "Dude, he would have given you a tip if you hadn't been such an asshole. That guy always tips."
"Fuck him!" was his usual response.
Poopie fancied himself a true goth - not one of those "poseur" goths that listened to Nine Inch Nails or Type O Negative. But even if you liked or knew who Dead Can Dance or Danzig were, you could still be in danger of being placed on Poopie's shit-list. After several months, I finally worked out the complex hierarchy of his subculture ranking system. It basically boiled down to: "If you don't like Marilyn Manson, you suck." This was before Marilyn Manson became somewhat well known, at which point Poopie decided he was a sellout and moved on to some other band.
Poopie was loud and obnoxious. He was about 5'6" and 210 pounds, pale and covered with moles. His natural hair color was brown, but he dyed it blue and then green. He wore jeans, a Misfits or Marilyn Manson shirt and black boots. He had a wallet attached to his belt loop with a chain.
It wasn't long before I gave him the nickname that everyone (including some customers) called him from then on. Poopie was obscenely obsessed with his own bowel movements. It almost seemed like a control issue with him. He would constantly eat Immodium AD because of his fear of defecating in a public place. He told me that once he got home, he would eat Ex-Lax so he could finally relieve himself. It seemed anything he ate would send his stomach into spastic fits, but especially pizza; he claimed it was because he was lactose intolerant.
If only he had known. Telling me that was like handing a terrorist a nuclear bomb and a free boat ride to New York City. Every single night it was the same:
"I'm hungry," I would grin.
"Yeah, me too."
"Let's call Pizza Shoppe."
"I CAN'T!"
"Fuck it, Poopie. Let's call them!"
"I know what you mean when you say that. 'It' is me... I'm 'it'... you're saying 'fuck me'..." he pointed to himself.
I laughed, not denying the accusation, "Come on, dude, we gotta eat."
"Oh, fine!"
And so, every night he would give in. I would happily go and pick up the pizza, sometimes one for each of us, and bring it back to the station. It wouldn't be long afterward that Poopie's stomach would be causing him no end of hell. Eventually, he wouldn't be able to take it one moment longer and he would run into the women's restroom yelling in a loud falsetto, "Poop! Poop! Poop!"
I made it to work and sat on the safe, completely detached from my surroundings. I'd given in to the fact that the gas station was just going to be filled with insanity no matter who worked there.
And what does that say about me?
Poopie stomped in with his black boots and sat on the window sill. He and Pedro had been having a conversation for several minutes before I started paying attention.
"How come you use the name Pedro?" Poopie asked.
"That's my gang name."
"Gang name?"
"I'm an O.G. Back in Los Angeles."
"What?!"
"An O. G. An Original Gangster."
"Oh bullshit! You don't look Italian to me. Those are the fucking original gangsters!"
"Shit."
I wished I hadn't started paying attention. Soon, there was enough of a lull in business that Toad was able to do the shift change. He and Pedro left and Poopie laughed obnoxiously, "Fucking nigger."
I looked at Poopie with disdain, "Man, I'm hungry. Let's get a pizza."
Tracy, in inebriated bliss, decided she wanted to dance - an activity which I felt should be the exclusive domain of lesser primates. After several minutes of begging, she finally gave up and dragged her brother-in-law out to the dance floor, leaving me with her sister and dad.
"So you and Tracy really love each other," Robert asked.
"Yeah," I replied, unsure that I wanted to have that particular conversation at that exact moment, if ever.
"You should probably start looking for a real job. You know, a career. You can't pump gas all your life."
I was right. I didn't want to have that conversation, "Yeah."
Susan lit a cigarette, "Well, I know the guy who runs the technical repair department where I work. Do you want me to talk to him about a job? You would have insurance and everything."
"Sure, that'd be cool."
That was the most exciting news I'd had in a while. Susan had taken a job at a local company that manufactured and sold computer peripherals through the mail. That could be a really nice job. Right up my alley.
As the night wore on, Tracy became drunk out of her mind. Everyone decided it would be best if we called it a night. I walked Tracy out to the Probe and put her in the passenger seat, fastening the seat belt around her slumped-over body. A stream of drool oozed out of her mouth and onto her blouse. Her family came to the car and wished us a happy birthday. Tracy replied with a slurred, "Fuck you!"
As I drove her home, I noticed the engine temperature light on the dashboard. I didn't smell anything strange from the heat vents and we were halfway to Tracy's apartment, so I ignored it.
We made it back to Tracy's in one piece. Star was asleep and I carried Tracy's limp, drooling body inside, stripped her clothes off and put her in her water bed. I filled a glass of water and put it on her nightstand. I decided not to risk overheating the car and got in bed with Tracy. As I floated to sleep on the waves of the water-filled mattress, I dreamt of what life would be like without the gas station. For the first time in what seemed like forever, that dream began to take on solid form.
Posted by DevilMonkey at 7:37 PM