Selling Pornography

      A whole post about porn. Yeah. But I plan to discuss it in an entirely adult manner with no giggling or teehees (well, I hope I can make you laugh but I'm being serious) and you can bet that this isn't going to be a raunchy or sexually explict post either. I just thought I'd get that all out of the way from the very first so there are no delusions on anyone's part here before you start writing me angry anonymous comments or getting out the KY.
      When I talk about "selling pornography" I'm not talking about convincing children to buy it or advertising it or making it available to segment markets. I'm talking about standing behind the counter in a book store, ringing up a magazine, exchanging some money and hiding their shame in a white plastic bag and telling them to have a nice day as they walk out of the store.
      I feel like explaining a few things about the store in which I work. When you first walk in the check out counter is immediately to your left. To your right is a whole large section of the store devoted to displays of a lot of extremely overpriced crap that we call "gifts" because no one buys that stuff for themselves. Directly in front of you are two rows of displayers showing cards and racks where we pile up bargain books. Bargain books are books that we get that were roughly handled by the warehouse or are old hardcover editions of books that are now out in massmarket paperback. They are cheap because we buy them cheaply because the publishing company is only loosing money on them at this point anyway and they'd rather sell them to us than ship them back where they came from to be destroyed. In front of the check out and to the left of the bargain racks are all the shelves of books in their various sections. Along most of the left wall and the left half of the back wall are the ranks of magazines. The magazine displayers are all three-tiered with three to five dividers in each tier so the magazines are actually displayed standing up in a slightly reclined position so you can see most of the cover. Forgive me if I'm terrible at describing actual places in such a way that you understand what I'm getting at when I later make a reference to them.
      The top tier of sections three, four, and five of the magazines have a board at the front to cover up most of the magazines in those sections and that's where we keep the adult magazines. We have dozens of them. We have almost a dozen gay magazines alone. Bookstores like Borders, Barnes and Noble and their subsidiaries as well as other chains like the now defunct Bookland are too concerned with PR to stock anything more raunchy than Playboy so there are guys who go way out of their way to come to where the store I work in is located, well away from where the mall is located just to buy porn.
      Guys who buy porn are separated into two categories which are "ashamed" and "cavalier" depending on their attitude toward buying it. Older gentlemen pretty much invariably are not ashamed about buying porn. They come into the store and immediately go to the left of the store to look at the porno magazines. They get what they came for and come up to the counter. They sometimes buy other magazines which they initially use to hide the pornography magazines as they approach the counter. They do not do this because they are ashamed. I'm fairly certain they do it with a mild sense of class and maybe not wanting to disturb the usually female cashiers even though it's almost always obvious what they have given that nearly all of it comes wrapped in plastic. They usually do the "Hi. How are you?" Script just like they're any other customer buying a book.
      Younger guys are pretty much always ashamed. They come in for the porn but they don't want you to know that's the only reason they came in. They come in and they look at the bargain books or they go into one of the sections as though they're looking for a book. I can just imagine their mental monologue: "Hmm. Looking for a book on fish. Science section. There are the fish books. Don't have the book I want. Oh! But look over there. They have porn. Fancy that. Well, since I'm here and they didn't have that fish book I'll just go look at the porn." They never buy other magazines to disguise the porn. They come up to the counter, holding it, all ashamed and not making any kind of eye contact and set it on the counter. They never say anything to me and, if they're young enough looking that I would ask for their ID they invariably already have it out of their wallet and present it to me long before I would ask.
      Regardless of which category a man falls into none of them actually like to be seen looking at the porn. That's why we keep car and hunting and motorcycle magazines in the two tiers below the porn. That way if it's actually somewhat busy in the store the men looking at porn can pretend to be looking at car magazines if a woman or some other person happens to come into the isle with the porn. When the woman leaves the isle they can safely go back to looking at the porn. You know, since they're here and happen to be standing right in front of it.
      Women who buy porn on the other hand also have two categories. We have the category of women who come up to the counter with an armload of Nora Roberts, sudoku puzzles and a single pornographic magazine. They mutter under their breath or tell me conspiratorially that the porn is for their husband. These women are usually embarrassed about their purchase at first but relax after a minute when they realize that no one working there appears to care that they're buying porn. The other group of women are terribly embarrassed and ashamed and tend to explain to the cashier in a loud voice that they're embarrassed to get stuck with the duty of buying porn for a bachelorette party. I didn't think so many bachelorette parties were even possible.
      The other day a woman commented that she didn't think she'd be able to keep a straight face when women came in and bought PlayGirl. I told her that PlayGirl wasn't that bad. It's when someone comes up to the counter with a stack of magazines that runs about a hundred and fifty dollars and the titles are some of the weirdest ones we've got that I struggle to keep a straight face.
      A hundred and fifty dollars worth is probably only going to be about a dozen magazines as many of them cost twelve dollars or more. But in my state there's no tax on magazines so it'd be easy for them to add up their purchase price before they got to the counter and see that they're buying an absurd amount of porn. Maybe they do. I've yet to have anyone hear the total and ask to take off a few items. Maybe that's their porn budget for the month. All I know is that some weeks that's how much I get paid.
      And the magazines themselves range from Details, which is ostensibly a fashion magazine, to Badpuppy which is a gay magazine. We also have a range of magazines that have number titles. 18 magazine has eighteen-year-old girls in it. But what about 16+, 30+, 40+ & 50+? Sixteen is a dress size, the other ones are ages. We also have one called Heavy Metal, which is a magazine filled with weird sci-fi comic-like illustrated stories. We have Hustler, of course, and Barely Legal (owned by Hustler), and Taboo (also owned by Hustler). Also Forum, and Forum letters. And everything else from Allboy to Whorientals.
      You'd think it would be weird to sell pornography. You'd think it would be awkward or feel a little bit immoral or something. But it's not. It's actually hilarious. Seriously though, think about it. These guys come possibly way out of their way to buy a magazine that no other (regular) store in town carries. I like to ask them how they are today. They usually say something like "okay" but I know that this is probably not true because they are standing a few feet away from a nineteen-year-old who is selling them pornography. They spend more on porn each month than most of our customers spend on books. In a way it's kind of sad but at the same time I can't help but laugh.