Gas Encore, pt. 1

I realized while editing the Gas Guy book that some of the stuff wasn’t as good as I’d previously believed, and even if it was, the book’s a bit too short. So I’m adding a few new stories, which will air here. To eliminate any confusion amongst anyone who missed last year’s controversy: Gas Guy is not autobiographical journalism; it is an autobiographical work of fiction, taking certain liberties with chronology, names, and geography.

There is a new Marlboro display, shorter than the old one by several feet, hence no longer blocking the rear view of the store. It hasn’t yet developed the epilepsy-inducing flickering fluorescent bulbs that the old one had, and for that I am sincerely grateful. We stacked the RJR products on it when we first got it, but when the Phillip Morris people took note of that, they swept them onto the floor in a huff. Capitalism, I swear.

About five feet to the left of the counter, there’s a slushee machine featuring blue raspberry and strawberry as the flavors: given the sweetness of the end product, it is almost unfathomable that it is five parts water to every one part concentrate. I am convinced that imbibing the undiluted concentrate would send the hardiest constitution into instantaneous diabetic shock.

These two features are the only physical changes, additions or otherwise, that the store has undergone in the seven months that I have worked there. This record might not appear so grossly negligent were everything else not twenty years out of date. It is a three-legged, one-ear-bent, aging mutt of an establishment, and today is my last day working in it. My time here has been sometimes enlightening, and sometimes depressing, infuriating, and painfully dull. Beyond its meager pay, the job has, of course, had experiential value; all jobs, no matter how ostensibly pedestrian, do. Probably foremost amongst these is that I got past a lot of the unease toward black people and immigrants that growing up in a lily-white, provincial Irish Catholic neighborhood in Cleveland had instilled in me. There aren’t really different kinds of people in the world. There are people who dress differently and that speak different languages and dialects, and that can be a little intimidating to the uninitiated, but patience and time changes a lot of that, if a fella’ keeps an open mind about it. That lesson should be painfully obvious, but it wasn't for me, and I suspect it isn't for a whole lot of other people who pretend that it is.

But because I can change a little is no indication that Gas Center #2 has any intention of changing at all. The cash registers look as if they could have been designed by Atari; it lacks exterior cameras, essentially begging people to drive off without paying for their fuel; it has no email or internet access in its office. (That’s right: they actually fax memos from the corporate office to the stores.) The place is an architectural and functional testament to commercial mediocrity in practice, to choosing a good location and then constructing a business barely efficient enough not to implode upon itself, with the knowledge that foot traffic will save the day in the face of incoherent management.

But the museum, changeless quality of the place isn’t limited to the woodwork and the equipment: the same woman, a high-school drop out with the neurotic tendency to leave notes everywhere instructing the staff just what they’ve done wrong, has been running the place for 23 years. She’ll probably still be there in another fifteen. While the faces have changed and will change, illegal immigrants from points southward will be trying to break the $50’s and $100’s they get paid with on thirty cent purchases until the end of time, to the ubiquitous consternation of the present staff. The current staff of people with questionable references, criminal backgrounds, and the abject inability to pass a drug test will move along to be replaced by others in the same straits. It is as if the place itself is an extended middle finger of glass and concrete, proudly held aloft to let the world know just what it thinks of change and progress.

Gas retail is, like bars and restaurants, a cyclical rather than a linear trade: at the end of the day no project has been completed; nothing has been done that will not swiftly be undone. People will get hungry and thirsty and sober, their vehicles will use up their fuel, and they’re they’ll be again, at that doorstep with debit card in hand, with high gravity malt liquor and strawberry blunt wraps and low-octane fuel on their minds. All that changes, principally, for my clientele is this month’s drug of choice.

I go to stock room in the back of the store around seven P.M., where Mike, now the assistant manager, has just opened a 22oz bottle of Corona, taking a break toward the end of his long day shift. Since it’s a slow Saturday, there’s a second cashier, and, most importantly, it’s my last day, I feel morally compelled to join him. I stick to the 12oz version of the same beer, as I do have five hours of work left to do. This becomes the theme for the evening, as Mike and I invent excuses to restock things in order to drink more beer about once an hour. Like I mentioned a long time ago, working for Mike when he was in jail to keep him from getting fired was a thing that I knew would eventually come back to me, and so it has.

As I drink one of these beers, I reflect back on what I have witnessed in my time here: I know that there are people in combat zones who have seen far worse things than me. There are people like you and me who have seen children blown to pieces, who have watched close friends die. Having prostitutes hand you their business cards, and watching people walk away disappointed because my store doesn’t carry their improvisational crack paraphernalia—looking at an endless parade of abandoned single moms and lost potheads and homeless alcoholics—doesn’t compare to the horror that a lot of people face every day; in fact, it pales badly in comparison. But it does not mean that these things are not horrible—only that they are not the worst things in the world. Because the chapter in the human drama that I have witnessed in not humanity at its most elementally debased and disgusting does not suggest that it is not disgusting at all.

The shift, this reflection in tow, proceeds uneventfully, aided by the cheeriness of my growing buzz. I converse pleasantly with Archie, the other cashier I mentioned, and with the English-speaking customers (and even a little bit with the Spanish speaking ones, from whom I’ve acquired the basic phraseology of small talk over time). At the end I lock the door, take the till to the office to count it down, then open a 22oz Budweiser, open the back door for ventilation, and light a cigarette. Some very hard questions present themselves: Have I really learned anything from this experience? Or were things that struck me as epiphanies into the human condition arbitrarily defined based upon my mood swings? To my left in the darkness behind the building are poorly stacked, dirty plastic soda crates awaiting pickup by the Pepsi and Coke delivery drivers, enclosed by an ugly, filthy cinderblock wall. To my right are the rusting cardboard and trash dumpsters, with the smell of stale urine wafting forth from the homeless folk that use the place as their latrine. It is a panoramic view of human waste and irresponsible consumption, of which I have been a principal purveyor for the last seven months.

But then something else comes to me: I am in such a foul mood, and inclined to spin such profound negativity, because I love this place a little bit and will miss it. It is not a love like a spouse or a sibling, or even a good friend, but like a cherished pet that I have raised to my liking and which obeys my every command. I have had the run of the place since shortly after receiving the keys, free to follow or disregard the rules as I saw fit. I had total mastery over my given work; its absolute lack of challenge was something that I maligned in the past but perhaps underestimated as a tool for freedom of thought. Not too many MA students choose to work in gas stations, and so I have been given an advanced degree of trust and autonomy. Did I use it well? Who knows, really? Sometimes yes, and most certainly sometimes no. I take one last long, agnostic look out into the darkness, and shut and bar the door.

I turn out the office light, step around the corner, and prepare to set the alarm. Archie is waiting at the front door, his cab running outside.

“You ready, Arch?”

“Yeah.”

I’ve asked him more than I’ve realized: I’ve asked him if he’s ready for me to set the alarm, but I’ve also asked him if he’s ready to part with someone he hardly knows forever, for another human being to drift from view, as we all do to each other eventually, leaving us, in our hearts, alone. It typically seems no tragedy to me that we pay remarkably little attention to one another in our brief time in the flesh, and yet today it does.

I punch, a bit more slowly than usual, 8…0…7…0…2 into the keyboard, a red light goes on and a series of loud, monotone beeps tells us to get the hell out of the building. Archie unlocks the front door, and I follow him out as he locks it behind us.

“It was nice working with you, Archie,” I say. And it was. I only knew him for three weeks, but he seems like a nice guy and I wish him well.

“Thanks,” he replies, “and good luck to you.”

But luck is not what I need right now: alcohol is what I need. As I trudge off into the chilly December night, full of a strange, small loss and a fair amount of beer, a question from the guy I steal half my questions from slowly slips into my thoughts. It’s a bit dramatic, to be sure, and lends tragic dimensions to what was a menial job, but seems oddly fitted to the conclusion of my tenure here:

Is this the promised end, or but the image of that horror?