The Single Guy
I was standing in line to get a book at Tower Books, and a few people in front of me was this older guy, I'd say in his late 40's, grey hair of between 1 to 1.5 inches in length, about 6 foot, probably 200 pounds, largely white T-shirt with some sort of deer logo on the back, glasses(bifocals) with a black neck cord, a cheap black digital watch with a plastic strap, loose-fitting blue jeans and work style boots. No facial hair, no visible tattoos, no distinguishing marks, although his nose appeared to be a little oversized in proportion to his face in my opinion. His nose wasn't enormous, just looked a tiny bit too large in relation to his face. Normally I'm not this detailed when it comes to strangers, but this guy was definately strange. Of course, I've never seen a Tower employee rush or anything, so the line was the usual crawl that I've come to expect when shopping at such a place. Since I was held "prisoner" by the slow clerks I figured I might was well take in the details. Although I could have thumbed through the book I was getting, I didn't really feel like it, and the books that I was currently surrounded by were all the latest celebrity biographies or those self-help books on relationships as written by divorced people.
This mystery man wasn't making any attempt to try and hide his choice of reading material. In his right hand were 4 magazines, hardcore porn. In his left hand was a white plastic grocery bag, the cheap types you can see through. Friday night, and here was this old guy picking up his "date" for the evening. The magazines were not of any interest to me, as the larger mystery was "what were the contents of the shopping bag". The line wasn't moving, as apparently the old ladies currently purchasing books were paying in pennies or something because it was taking forever for them to buy whatever they were purchasing, so I shifted my focus to playing detective regarding the items in the bag.
Luck was with me today. The first object I could identify was the large Gatorade bottle. Apparently Mr. Lonely was hoping to "go all night" with his date, "Rosy Palms", or perhaps it was a double date, if ya get my drift. The other items were visible through the white plastic, a couple packs of Marlboro cigarettes, which I would assume were for "afterwards", but before he drifts off to sleep. There was a third package inside the bag that I could not make out. As luck would have it, as he placed the shopping bag on the counter in order to pay for his "literature", a box of condoms fell out of the bag and were visible for all to see on the counter. Isn't that special? He's practicing safe solo sex, apparently even he doesn't know where he's been. It's either that or he used the condoms as a diversion to make other people think he's getting some. The other alternative is that he has a latex fetish, which would make me wonder why he didn't get some latex gloves as well.
Of course, as the box of condoms falls out of the bag, he starts to get rather "friendly" and begins to try and have a conversation with the lady working behind the counter, who already had a look of being rather uncomfortable due to handling such recreational reading material. I couldn't hear the conversation, but I'm sure he was explaining he was getting the magazines for the interesting articles. Somehow I don't think she was convinced. Her look of discomfort was quickly replaced by relief as Mr. Friday Nite was given his change(on the counter) and left.
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