I stand at the register, my feet holding the ground solidly beneath me. I wear a slight smile, the kind you can wear all day, as customers pass me by like waves. My hands pull the cans of tomatoes and stalks of broccoli and celery over the little red eye in seeming slow motion. One after another I greet them, ask them if they are a member, how they are doing, if they found everything they were looking for, if they would like a bag for their items, and so on and so forth until I thank them and turn back ninety degrees to greet the next customer without pause. Like a meditation, it is so simple, only the moment exists and I know it, yet secretly, I am indifferent to it. Every passing breath is as empty as the moment that encompasses it.
The registers are placed in boxed pairs, with each cashier in the box facing away from one another. At Register 1 I face away from all of my coworkers, artificially marooned, just the customers and me. Items move down the belt where I pull them in a straight line across the scanner with my right hand while my left hand takes the item and moves it down to the counter to be bagged or picked up by a bagger or the customer, so that, if needed, my right hand can enter the PLU code into the computer quickly, thoughtlessly. It is a process of continuous, seamless multi-tasking. The hands move on their own, and their precision allows me to continue talking to the customer, to the extent they’re interested, without distraction. This is a food co-op. We are taught to engage with the customer. It is those small moments of community that keep people from shopping at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, and shopping here instead.
But I must be careful not to get too deep into the pattern or I could slip up and ask the customer the same question twice, or tell them to have a good night at eight in the morning, revealing how little my mind really is involved in this entire process.
I can feel it in my teeth, those moments when friendliness and helpfulness have become as mindlessly robotic as scanning produce. Perhaps people do not realize, I begin to wonder, how insincere my sincerity truly is. And the truth is that they do not, because I am excellent at what I do. My sincerity is a performance. The exhaustion or disinterest, or whatever it may be, is carefully planted, not so far hidden that the result comes across as obviously false, but obscured just enough that any decent person will receive it as placidity or equanimity instead; I’m really sorry you thought that item was on sale, but it’s not. Have a nice day!
The reason I am so good at it is the same reason my friends will sometime ask me if I am being sarcastic, or if I’m being serious. I blur the line. Doing this seems to have served me. I have had a lot of time to practice hiding my true feelings from everyone else. That’s how I got here. That’s how I coped with growing up queer.
10th grade. The bell has rung, the last class of the day is over, there’s no rush to get anywhere. As I stand up to put my belongings into my backpack, I see ████ walk over to me. What does he want?
“Hey ███████,” he says to my back as I zip up my backpack. I turn to look him in the eyes, a false smile planted squarely in the middle of my face. This time it’s easy, I simply mirror the expression he’s giving me. I lift my backpack onto my shoulder and he puts his arm around me as though we’re buddies and he walks me to the door. “You should come smoke a blunt with us this afternoon. It’d be fun.” Is this a joke?
“Damn, ████.” I say, stopping. “That sounds like so much fun.” Why don’t you go fuck yourself. “I’d really love to join you guys.” I’d rather sit in a tub of scorpions than hang out with you. “But I’ve already got plans with some other friends.” That’s when I drop the smile, assuming arrogantly that he’s too stupid to comprehend my insincerity, as if he really cared what my response would be in the first place. What history did he think we had that I should take his camaraderie seriously?
Just a few years earlier he had made a habit of asking me (what seemed like) every other week, “Hey ███████, are you gay?” stressing the last word as if he was asking me if I was from another country.
Even though he was not the first to take up this little discursive game, I would often stumble in my response, mostly due to the ensuing barrage of questions that formed in my mind. Why is he asking me? Am I gay? Is it bad if I am? Should I tell him I’m not? Should I tell him I don’t know? Why is he asking me? Is he gay?
All of those questions were like hurdles I had to jump over until the conversation ended with or without a response from me that always included him and his friends laughing just quietly enough for nobody else to notice or care.
Occasionally it would escalate to, “c’mon, just admit it, you’re gay.” Or, “You know we’d stop bothering you about it if you just admitted it.” But that couldn’t be true and even if it was, I couldn’t bear to give them the kind of satisfaction I knew they’d get from outing myself to them.
So, I learned to better hide my feelings, to hone my eccentricities into knives that I could use to cut myself for our mutual entertainment. Those knives were called “humor” and “indifference.” It turned out that those same tools would also be useful for greeting countless customers over a 10 hour shift.
Today, my compatriot cashiers are blind to my developing psychosis. At the busiest register on a busy day, there is no further one can go other than crazy. My silent musing are all that keep me sane behind this counter, standing on this black cushioned pad. This is a part-time job, I think to myself, no reason to ask for more than what I already have. I will strive in the other areas of my life, this is only temporary.
I take a casual glance out the large picture windows and I cannot deny how beautiful the day is. I can see cottonwood seeds flying through the air like snowflakes, falling peacefully over the heads of people walking to their cars with groceries. The sky is clear, the bright blue fades into navy silently, without clinging to day, or grasping for night. All this, until a familiar man and woman come to the register.
When I had first met them, many years ago, they were children, and so was I. But here they are before me, smiling, cheerful, ignorant of the moments passing before them, splashing them in the face.
I greet them in my usual manner, feigning ignorance for the time being, I don’t care if they don’t recognize me, it’s been so long. Actually, at this point, I’d really rather they not. Do they not see how tired I am? I have been standing here for the past three hours, meeting a hundred-some people: the mother with the toddler and the girl that wanted to press the button on the credit-card machine; the teenage boy wearing a soccer jersey and his mom, buying him a snack to celebrate a win; the old-lady that put her quarters on the conveyor belt resulting in them falling into the void below. No, of course they don’t see that, it’s my job to hide it all. Every moment is a new moment. So, I do my job. I appear genuine. I am kind. I am efficient. The customer goes on their way. Today, as my mind dissolves into slush, I simply cannot be asked to go any further. Now these two hotshots from my past have to come and spoil my process. This moment, a moment unlike the rest, I fear my indifference will not last long. I can already feel it turning to contempt in my smile of greeting.
They look like a couple. Now, after all these years, and they’re together? Ten years in the same school, it’s enough to make this big city seem like a small town. But it’s summer, school is out, the weather is nice. Now is the season for coming home, reconnecting.
The thought infuriates me. I almost want to laugh out loud as I watch them turn and set down the few things they are buying. Because what good is reconnecting when there was never a connection to begin with. It’s something the people in this town do a lot. Ever since we were children we hid from one another, all of us. As kids we imagined each other as just ordinary everyday folks. But really, the three of us and our families and all of our schoolmates, we’re about as dainty and civilized as our tawdry smiles. We walk out the front door of our homes and suddenly the fight our parents had disappears; or the time uncle almost overdosed, stricken from public record; all our deepest pains and regrets, locked and sealed away behind, “it’s so nice to run into you, how have you been?”
I would never forget their faces, even now, with signs of age and maturity emanating from their pores. I can still remember their names. He was a boy who never seemed to notice me. She was a girl that made fun of my braces on the school-bus, and later on for seeming gay.
But of course none of that matters here. We’re all adults now, we live out our separateness in total freedom. We see who we want to see and we live where we want to live. I work in a grocery store, they live their lives. We aren’t children on the playground anymore. Only in the spirit of summer must we endure these sudden awkward re-introductions. Let them have their life I think to myself. They may as well be strangers to me now. Maybe my feigned ignorance needn’t be so insincere. Enough time has passed. Just like moments, we move on.
They each pay separately, maybe they aren’t together. She buys a few chocolates, he buys a soda. For a moment I think I’ve escaped this visit from two ghosts of my past. But then, suddenly, my name-tag begins to feel heavy on my collar as I catch him glance at it. If I can let them go, let them fade back into obscurity where they’ve always been, why should it be so hard for them to reciprocate? Can’t they please just give me that tiny gift? No, I can already tell by the look on his face, he can’t resist.
“Is your last name ███████” he asks me, honestly, sincerely.
“Yes. It is.” I smile. Here we go.
“We used to go to school together.”
So they don’t know I know who they are, should I continue to play the fool? Should I pretend to be surprised? Oh yes, of course that’s right! I could say, tapping myself on the forehead playfully. I remember now, we went to school and… and what? Doubtful they’ll be surprising me with any grand stories about the old-times we had. But of course that’s what I’m supposed to do, that’s what I’m supposed to say.
Yes. I know we went to school. Maybe I should be the one asking the questions. Do you remember me or just my name? Do you remember how we related to one another back then, in those hallways and classrooms? No, I wont play that game today. I’m not interested in giving them that kind of power. The power to re-tell our shared history.
Instead, I don’t act surprised, I simply look them in the eyes, unflinching, and say calmly, “I know,” still smiling the same polite smile I’ve been wearing all day. They look confused for a second, but I don’t care. Maybe they’ll enjoy chatting about it later. Maybe I haven’t changed much in all these years. Maybe I’m still the same weirdo who could never act properly in social situations.
“It’s been a while,” I say, keeping the conversation’s momentum as I take a $10 bill from him to make change in the drawer.
“Yeah it has, how are you?”
“I’m alright, in school, you?”
He responds and we continue our empty banter, but I’ve stopped paying attention. None of this matters. Though it does feel more than a little strange. Ten years in school together and we were always strangers. I can still remember walking through the hallways and seeing the two of them, my connection to them then felt about as thin as it does now.
But his inquiry grates at me. I begin to wonder what it meant to me to feel so invisible when we were kids. I saw everyone else and they never saw me. This boy in particular? We had classes together but I’m at a loss to remember a single thing we ever did together, a single conversation we ever shared. Why does he remember me? Has my aloneness always been that superficial? Has all of it been in my head?
In those moments talking to them I begin to see, the boy they knew back then is a stranger to me too and we’ve all grown; the moments of our lives bending and molding us like water weathering rock. So I admit it to myself, I feel bad for being deceptive and I pay for my perjury with a minute of peaceful banter. By the end of it, I can’t seem to stop myself from smiling like someone with too much to say (while I say too little). “Well, have a nice weekend,” I say as they walk away, the next customer filling their space.
Yes. It can be fun to see a familiar face after such a long time. But perhaps when we meet again, instead of stopping when they see me, they will walk silently by, the moment washing over them like rain. And I will be fine, making my own friends, who know me more than just my name.
