Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Last night I went to the 7-Eleven™ for candy and to check the postage on a form I’m mailing to WFMU, a radio station in the New York City listening area. The form gives them permission to archive a live 2 Foot Flame performance, making it available for download. I found a stamp in the drawer at work, and I stuck it on. I thought it was one of those universal non-denominational stamps, but there was a “1” worked into the design, so I thought it may also be a $1 stamp. I presented my envelope (a cheap-o variety that requires two chunks of Scotch Tape® to close it because the glue doesn’t stick and so, I’m left wondering about the economy of having to buy Scotch Tape® to seal it; what does that equation look like?) to the Filipina postal clerk, and I asked her if that was enough to get the letter to its destination: the USA.
She said, “No, that’s a one-cent stamp.”
I laughed, because I hadn’t thought of that and so I asked how much the letter would be to mail and she weighed it and punched some keys on the computer and said, “12 cents.”
I stood there thinking for a second. I was tired. Even if she meant 12 cents more, it didn’t make sense. I said something like, “It can’t be 12 cents.”
She looked at the screen and said, “Yes, 12 cents.”
I had to dredge up some sort of memory about the last time I mailed anything, and I thought back to the several Christmas cards I send—the idea of postage. I was thinking, “Did I miss something? Something on the news? Twelve cents?”
“It can’t be 12 cents,” I said very nicely, because hey, these moments happen, and we just have to get through them, but this went on longer than seemed plausible.
She looked at the screen again and assertively said, “You don’t believe me?”
And I said, “No, I don’t believe you.”
The envelope was between us. I circled the stamp and much of the blank space around it with my fingertip and said, “How much more do I need to mail this letter to the USA?”
“Eleven cents,” she said and dropped two stamps, a one and a 10, into the blank space next to the existing stamp—to make 12. She was convinced. Certain. She was waiting for me to accept this fact.
I said something like, “OK, that’s 12 cents, but it isn’t 12 cents to mail a letter to the USA.”
Finally, she got it. She put her face in her hands and squealed. I said it was fine and I know what that’s like to have that happen. She said it was $1.12. She got out four 25-cent stamps and because she was in this strange state (no line-up, me not in a hurry, just being patient) now couldn’t figure out how much I owed her.
“I owe you $1.11 plus tax,” I said. She stared at the computer screen. Anyway, this portion of interaction went on quite a while too; she was just temporarily all screwed up. I asked her how long she’d been at work that day. “Maybe it’s time for you to go home,” I said, you know, making a joke out of it.
I got my 10 candies out of the Plexiglas® bins and my bag of Smart Food™. I am known for this combination of items. (You’ll see why.) I took them to the front counter, but the cashier was busy making food for a guy with long neon-green dreadlocks (such a bad look) who was on a cell phone. I stood there a long time. The guy with green hair told the clerk he was supposed to be wearing gloves to prepare the food, but he didn’t seem bugged. There was a cop getting a Slurpee© and he must have heard the guy with the green hair say the thing about the gloves, but he ignored it. In my fatigued state, I looked at the cop’s gun as he walked through the store with his Slurpee© and thought it would be unlikely that he’d draw his weapon and arrest the clerk for not using gloves. That wasn’t going to happen, but it arrived in my mind, over-tired as I was.
Because the main cashier was making a sandwich, or whatever, the Filipina from the post office came to do the cash.
“How many candies?” she asked abruptly, lifting the tiny bag and dropping it onto the Arborite™ counter. It was as if the previous transaction hadn’t happened. She was all business. Confident. I was a new customer.
“Ten,” I said.
She punched in 10 times five cents and scanned my Smart Food™.
“$2 even,” she said happily. Cashiers seem to like this a lot. I gave her a five and said, “Just keeping it nice and simple over here. No complications.” She laughed.
Sometimes, on non-work days, my store interactions constitute my social life. Quality interactions can occur here and there, quickly. To suffice.
During the summer, I made a point of dressing up to go across the street to the 7-Eleven™. I wasn’t going out much—or “dating”—but I wanted to wear my summer frocks. It was fun. My kind of fun. Simple. Sometimes I went and picked blackberries next door to the store, behind a long wooden building called a church. The blackberry bush is in the yard next to the church, pushing into the laneway through a chain-link fence. Deep red roses mixed in with the brambles. Prickles and thorns to navigate; my fingers reaching in to test for ripeness before removing the berry from its node.
