True Porn Clerk Stories

Welcome back to the Fleshbot Book Club. Today's selection comes from True Porn Clerk Stories, Ali Davis's tales of her time as a porno video clerk; previously featured on her blog of the same name and This American Life.

The Symbiots used to freak us out pretty badly. It was a retarded gentleman and his nephew – or, as we feared, his "nephew". They did have IDs with the same last name, but it was a pretty common one and we were worried we had some kind of chickenhawk situation on our hands and didn't know what to do about it. The nephew was too young to go downstairs (it wasn't ridiculously creepy – he was maybe 18) but was caught down there with the uncle and rousted several times.

The problem with rousting the nephew was that the uncle couldn't pick out porn by himself. Every time they came he went though the entire gay porn section one box at a time.

He couldn't remember what he'd seen before. He couldn't remember that you bring up the tags and not the boxes. He couldn't spot the difference between the for sale stuff and the rentals. He couldn't remember that you only get to check out six movies at a time. He only wanted the cheaper old releases, but couldn't distinguish the old and new release sections.

It would take him hours, and he usually got something wrong and had to go back down. We actually debated saying screw it and letting the nephew, who was of normal intelligence, go downstairs to expedite things, but our manager nixed it.

Finally he'd get back upstairs. The nephew would help the checkout go smoothly; his job was to make the world easier for the two to negotiate.

Then we got to the uncle's half of the relationship: He had the money. He had all the money, and what's more, he knew it was the source of his power and kept a pretty tight rein on it. Occasionally the nephew would pick out a video from upstairs, but his uncle had the account, so he had to check it with him first.

The whole thing freaked all of us at the store out very, very badly.

There were a lot of worried clerkly notes on the file. We didn't know what was going on, just that it was creeping our shit. Were we supposed to do something? There was an ongoing debate as to who was taking advantage of whom.

I served the Symbiots several times and, though nobody at the store agrees with me, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't a sexual relationship. I'm even pretty sure that they really were uncle and nephew. I think they had somehow discovered that they were both gay and formed an interesting team – separately, they couldn't get porn, but together they were unstoppable.

Unfortunately, sometimes our mentally challenged customers cover so well that at first glance they come off as dirtbags. It's hard, in a quick transaction, to tell the difference between someone who is genuinely confused about the rules and someone who's trying to get around them. I usually slip a note on the file suggesting that the customer in question may need some extra assistance, but there's only so much that can do.

It can get frustrating, and I worry that I'm not doing enough. That's why I try to do my best: at least that way whatever else happens, at the end of the day I can rest secure in the knowledge that I have done all I can to make sure that every adult has an equal shot at renting Fuck Pigs 5.

Excerpted from True Porn Clerk Stories, Ali Davis's tales from her days as a porn video clerk.

The book is on sale at Amazon, both as a paperback and e-book.

Hear Ali tell her story on "This American Life" here.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Ali Davis.

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