The Girls I've Known, Chapter 1: The Addict
Names have been changed to protect the innocent
It was a rainy day at work in the autumn. Most people in some form of food service or retail would fall upon their knees and thank the Gods above for the blessing. When the brunt of your customer base (finicky Jews) is driven away by the slightest bit of precipitation, a light fog even, you start to shun traditional Christian gods and pray to a bad weather god. Not I, however. I spat upon the visages of the Rain god people had erected in the restaurant. When it rained, that meant that the idling deli workers would become active kitchen workers and prepare in advance several more dishes and orders than normal days, as such they used several more trays, utensils, and kitchen real estate, which meant several more metric tons of stainless steel for me to clean.
The gothy daughter of the head chef, who preferred to be called "Sorrow", was in the bakery area again. I had visu-raped her several times that day. There's something about a gaunt, pale, chick with bottle red hair that just does it for me. Maybe it's that "I'm too strung out to have standards" aura they exude. Regardless, I decided to man up and give her an invite by proxy to a shindig at my house for that weekend. It was basically a work event barbecue/drinkfest. There'd be alcohol, charred meat, and drugs of varying legal severity. After I had asked her to tag along with her father (as any confident, not-pathetic male would do) and she agreed, I was so excited I had to go into the restaurant employee bathroom and scrap into the hand soap dispenser. Life was good.
On the aforementioned day, which is mostly a paper shredded jumble of memory to your friend and humble narrator, I made the mistake of pre-gaming a half a case of beer before she had showed up. When I sat down next to her and told her I was way too drunk to even try and say anything that would be considered flirting, she said that was fine because she was on a heroin nod that would have killed a horse. This struck me as infinitely amusing and not at all the sign of a derelict human being that I should shuck from my presence, no, in fact, it sounded absolutely perfect.
When I awoke the next day, having consumed 25 beers, 7 mixed drinks of incalculable strength, and an entire bottle of Seagrams "Gin & Juice" (it was blue, and tasted like blue), dressed the second degree mystery burns on my palm, fingers, and wrist, and located my glasses and pants, I recalled that I had somewhat hooked up with Sorrow in what was surely a regrettable drunken excursion for her and an awesome high five event for myself. After high-fiving myself, I made celebratory frozen French toast sticks for me and the drunk guy whose name I didn't know that crashed on our couch.
When I said "Hello" to her the next day, bobbing my eyebrows up and down in a lewd gesture that'd surely remind her that she had tasted my saliva, I expected some sort of over the top eye shielding gesture to avoid contact, however imagine my surprise when she said "hello" back and said that I lived nearby her. Joy and awesome! She only lived 2 miles away and liked to hang out and play Playstation. It was like that scene from The Simpsons where Homer met Gerald Ford, only Gerald Ford was a sexy heroin addict that liked him for some reason. I was the happiest fat kid that wasn't in a Burger King.
After a solid 24 hours to appease the rules of The Game, I showed up at her house with an armload of Playstation games. She guided me in a brisk fashion to a dimly lit den and introduced me to someone who could have been an extra in Trainspotting. We crashed in bean bag chairs and played Parappa and Um Jammer Lammy, growing progressively more ill with our beats and rhymes the more the room filled with marijuana smoke.
When I was through showing her some awesome tips and tricks, she asked me if I would mind it so much if she went and cooked. Well no ma'am, let it be said that I admire a woman who knows her place in the kitchen, and I'd love to eat any of her culinary delights when she was through. On today's menu was a knife tip of horse and lemon juice on a tablespoon being held over a bic lighter. She produced a fairly ragged rubber cord and said if I tied her off, she'd give me the best blowjob I ever had. Considering the number of blowjobs I had up to that point was zero, I knew she wasn't making a wild claim, after some internal debating about whether or not I'd make a humorous statement to that effect, my penis put a gun to my head and told me to the tie the god damned cord or it would sever itself in the night and choke me in my sleep, and boy would that be an unpleasant and homoerotic way to die. She fixed and then grabbed at my crotch area, and things went a little crazy from there.
After I had left that day, I realized I was faced with a very tough moral dilemma; would I be able to keep getting my dick sucked by this heroin whore and not let anyone find out about it? Truly a question every man must face courageously at one time or another. The answer was yes, yes I would god damned try.
So for a few months, we became best buds of a sort. Very mellow and relaxed best buds. Oh we'd play Playstation, and talk smack (EL OH EL) about the people we worked with, she'd put a spike in her arm and at some point before or after we'd do fucked up, dark things, it was a wild and crazy time with a budding sadist and a girl who can't feel any pain in her frayed nerves anymore. So that's what a cigarette lighter does to a person's inner thigh when forcefully applied in a not-so-playful manner after being taunted semi-seriously!
After the second or third time she passed out for 20+ minutes and I wondered if she was the newest member in the "27 Club" and what I was going to tell medics when she stopped breathing for sure and I called the authorities, I realized that this might not be the most healthy of relationships. I was going to kick the habit cold turkey and basically disentangle myself immediately from this wacky psycho groupie cocaine crazy bitch once and for all.
Needless to say, it was a difficult withdrawal process. I knew it must be what she would go through one day when her spine became too crystallized and she decided to go into detox. Surely blowing a load once a week was comparable to heroin DTs. Being of a tactful manner, I never expressed this thought to her, only made excuse after excuse as to why I couldn't go hang out anymore, each more wildly unbelievable than the last. After my fourth grandmother's death, she became suspicious and began to unload on me in every available medium. I had to quickly erase messages from the answering machine when they arrived, endure swarms of emails and keep a constant watch on the phone to pick it up when she decided to tell me what a piece of shit I was for the 537th time.
After a while, like the kicking of a baby being smothered, the tantrums ceased. "Surely that is one done deal" I figured, dusting my hands in the manner of someone who has finished with a less than fun task. That very night, as if to mock my triumphant gesturing, I got a phone call. Sure enough, it was her. She didn't want to keep me long, she just said in a dead pan manner that tonight she was going to kill herself and that she hoped I had a nice life. *click*
For some reason, this threat felt vaguely different than the other three dozen she had made during the hell week. I quickly decided on a course of action that would impress every person familiar with crisis training; I asked a co-worker to drive me over to her house quickly and covertly and confronted her angrily in her back yard without calling the authorities. After we screamed obscenities at each other, her at her window, and I standing amongst the weedy backyard, like some bizarro crack addled version of Romeo & Juliet, she appeared at the back door with a giant fuck all kitchen knife and said she was going to stab me in the heart if I didn't leave. Feeling myself swept into the drama, I grabbed at my shirt and told her to go for it. After a split second where I felt for sure I didn't see a junkie twitch, but the start of a lunge to bury a knife into my torso, she dropped the knife onto her porch and went back into her house sobbing and telling me to go the fuck away and never bother her again with what I can only describe as the most hoarse and confused screech a human being ever produced.
She quit the job a few days later and I never saw her again.
Fast forward a few seasons later, I was cordially invited to her funeral.
The news struck me in a strange way. What kind of connection did I really have to this girl? I was a shamelessly selfish zilch who enabled and, undoubtedly, worsened her condition for my own personal desires. Nobody knew what kind of sick relationship we shared, it was not the kind of thing any sane person would vaunt, and I hadn't. I passed on the funeral. Trainspotter extra told me she had a hot shot she held onto in case she ever wanted out, I guess she finally broke the glass case. A few days afterward, I thought up a sappy gesture and tried to visit her grave, I couldn't even find it. Later on I was informed that she was cremated and her ashes were on her grandmother's mantle in West Virginia. So much for empty sentiment. She still has a place in my heart however, she almost had a knife in my heart, but I guess she carved her own place there without it, it was never love, but it was something, and that's what life mostly seems to be, a whole lot of vague emotion, and fruitless attempts to define one's existence by how close to cliche you can get your biography. Nobody would ever want one that looked like Sorrow's, but sometimes things just end up that way.
Rehash Fo' Yo Ass
Tales of A Gas Clerk: Being A Prick And Holding A Job Ain't Easy
The life of a gas clerk is one fraught with danger and temptation. The danger lies in being robbed and shot in the back of the head by angry minorities for $38.92. The temptation part trickles in regularly throughout the day, in the form of the stupidest people on earth, who are drawn to my corner of commerce like I was giving out free lotto tickets with every purchase.
When you see one of these people, lizard brain functions kick in immediately. They tell you to push them to the ground, grab the nearest heavy thing, and beat their skulls apart until your forearms are covered with their dimwitted brain goo, cleansing the gene pool because The Cold Time is approaching, and we can't afford to waste meat on them or their googly eyed offspring. After your refined instincts smother that delicious idea, what you have left to stab at the enemy are naught but words. Hurtful words, words that wound deep. Whatever they might be, and if we are to keep our shitty job that earns us just enough money to skate along and maintain a slacker life, we must bite into these battery acid barbs and feast on them, never more than a whisper.
Let me tell you a little something about the average transaction; somebody will do something stupid enough to warrant a snide comment about 90% of the time. Their money is stupidly crumpled, they dig in their wallets for 45 seconds, they don't know their pump number, they change up their cigarette order at the last second, they buy more shit AFTER you make change (unholiest of sins). So more often than not as the "Thank you" leaves my lips and they turn away, something gets muttered, a "you stupid cunt", "russian asshole", "dumb whore, die, die of cancer, get hit by a truck, burn to death in a bed of gasoline", and so forth, something NOBODY has ever heard the thousands of times I've done it.
Allow me to set the scene: It's a hot muggy sunshiny summer day. Usually a good thing, as I get to eye-rape all of the attractive women in tiny outfits. Well, not today.
This hideous hambeast shuffles up to my window, greasy haired acne-scarred probably has two kids already at twenty years old troglodyte with skin tags looking thing, and she's wearing this halter top. This poor "I shouldn't exist!" size 30 halter thing. Tits are EVERYWHERE, more like albino eggplants in over extended water balloon slingshots. It was just a terrible scene.
She has one of those blinged out affront-to-real-soldiers dog tags around her neck with two ugly children hologrammed into it (I guess the tee-shirt airbrush booth at the mall was closed), which I spy, my eyes glued to the shiny object lost in the heap of flesh colored mess. She notices the general location of my glance as I make her change and says, "It's okay, you can stare!" and unleashes a Pillsbury riptide shimmy that sets my bile in motion, so I just kind of chuckle and bite down, whisper, consume the hatred,
Thanks, cause I never seen a gorilla in a halter top before
Her face contorts like time lapse photography of rising bread dough
"What did you say?!"
"Urrh, uhh, nothing don't worry about it."
"NO, what the fuck did you just say?"
"Look just take your change and lea-"
"Say it to my face you fucking pussy"
*deep breath, scream*
"I SAID THANKS, I'VE NEVER SEEN A GORILLA IN A HALTER TOP BEFORE!" as spittle hits the glass.
She throws her Dietz & Watson beef bologna arms up like I just punched her in the face. STARTS LOSING HER GOD DAMNED MIND, motherfuck this place, fuck you you pussy asshole bitch, I'm gonna get you fucking fired for that, give me the name of the owner and blah blah blah.
I'm sitting there like afterglow, like I just spent a pint of vanilla frosting across a bitches face and had a spike full of premium H waiting for me when it dawns on me that this is a bad situation, so I slip into Robotic Assistant Mode, give her the owners name, the managers name, the phone numbers, then she says she wants an apology, I declined (why?!), she said apologize or she's going to get me fired, I declined again and told her to leave the premises (what?), so she said she wants to know where the owner is RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
I think fast and tell her the carwash he owns and operates, which is a mile away. Luckily for me she knows EXACTLY which one. She runs over to her car and gets this rail thin wigger with a baby in his lap, baby is SSSSSSSHRIEKING, he's half heartedly yelling for me to apologize for insulting his "girl", I decline again (at this point, I've unleashed something that is so beautiful, I just don't have the heart to diminish it with a mea culpa). He asked me if I wanted to step outside and explain myself, so I stand up.
My chair is relatively low to the ground, I'm the only person at the store tall enough to pull it off. I sit a bit lower to the floor, but it's way more comfortable. I got about two heads and 150 pounds on this guy and said that I'm not going to beat a dude into a coma with a baby in his hands. It's just going all kinds of fucking Jerry Springer at this point. She starts yelling at him from the car to get the fuck in. They peel out of the lot.
"WHEW THAT MUST BE OVER FOREVER" I think, obviously this is the truth.
Well, about 30 minutes later the phone rings. It's my boss/store owner Sam. He said a crazy woman came up and said I insulted her and wouldn't apologize, I said "Yes sir, those are the facts", he said she kicked over a bunch of squeegee buckets and threw a pamphlet holder at a window in the office (didn't break) and said he has to fire me immediately for being disrespectful and rude to customers and blah blah yackety smackety cunt ranting, he said he'd talk to me but she better leave before he calls the cops for vandalizing his private property, at which point I guess she settled the fuck down out of her primal beast fury and her and meth mouth the super wigger left, SWEARING to Betty Crocker that this wasn't over.
So yeah. Sam said until he hears more about what happened/from her/if she wants to file a complaint with corporate, I'm fine, but at any time the boom may be lowered.
I think after doing a little trash job at the car wash she'll decide she got her nickel's worth and let it be, but who can tell what a glutton will do to get theirs.
My little petri dish job is threatened, and I almost feel sad, as it affords me endless fuel for stories and an insane amount of people watching time, as well as being so easy that I could use imperfect cloning technology to clone a retard me to do it just as well. Yeah... I should get on that.
This Horseshit Probably Should Have Been In A Blog
Coming To Terms With The Fact That I'll Never Be An Expert Marksman
There are alot of unfulfilled dreams in every person's life. Maybe your dad wanted to be an astronaut when he was a boy. Perhaps you dreamed of being a firefighter, or an archaeologist like Indiana Jones, just whipping the hell out of savage cannibals while stealing their golden monkey skulls. Maybe George W. Bush dreamed of being president. The point is, there's a variety of reasons that a lot of people didn't end up where they wanted to be in life and instead are forced to clerk a two bit operation and pray intensely to nobody in particular that some hapless Jew broad leaves fifty dollars in change like that one time three months ago.
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a sniper. I don't know why, but something about the art of putting a bullet hole in someones head from a thousand yards away appeals to me in a very special and beautiful way. Whenever we used to run around and play army as kids, I would always set up my camp in the bushes with my rifle and lay down a bit and relax. Probably because I was a pudgy shit and tired of running, but there in the trenches is where I learned to love the long range shot.
"I got you!", I'd shout. "You're dead!"
"Nuh uh! Nuh uh!" they'd respond, "How can you hit me from so far?"
I didn't know what a scope was back then, so I'd just say magic, which settled any and all arguements. Later on in my early twenties when we played army, I finally knew better. It was sniper mojo. The art of firing a cylindrical shaft of death into someones unsuspecting face area.
Luckily for us sniper enthusiasts, there is no lack of media featuring our favorite melon poppers. There's always a sniper type weapon in most action oriented games, loathed by all except sniper enthusiasts who can appreciate the undeniable talent of sitting in a dark nook with a one shot kill weapon and lazily clicking on people when they chance to stop nearby.
Then there was the game that truly brought precision shooting to new heights; Perfect Dark. You know what I'm talking about baby. Right now the sniper fans are nodding and the fodder are getting ready to yell out "Fuck you cheater!" like an ingrained reflex because their friend grabbed that goddamned Farsight weapon again and shot them through five feet of concrete, a stairwell, a steel door, a marble pillar, a diamond window pane (possibly made of glass), and a miniature black hole that spontaneously came into existance in the path of the Farsights shot, so you'd get all pissy and start throwing N-bombs all over the place even though we agreed on no n-bombs beforehand, god I fucking hate you Alan!
Anyway. After several years of brainwashing by video games, movies, and true to life crime stories, I decided I wanted to be an expert marksman. That was my goal in life. My heroes weren't Batman, Superman, or other types of -men, but real life people, like Charles Whitman who landed a head shot on a pregnant woman's baby from three hundred yards, and Lee Harvey Oswald who blew away a President (barring any conspiracy, I know, don't black list me and bring up my alliance with the new world order at your next smoked out Ramada Inn bar meeting you conspiracy faggots), not because of what they did, which was heinous, but because they could shoot by god.
So what did I do to achieve this goal? Well. Not really anything. I want to be an expert marksman, but there are a lot of reasons this won't fly. First off, I have horrendous eye sight and am not eligible for corrective surgery, because I can't afford it. So just showing up at Sniper School with glasses is probably some kind of problem right away. I mean maybe they'd let me be equipment manager or something, but fuck that!
Secondly, if you can't tell, I have mental disorders that would most likely prevent me from acting cool under pressure. Like if I were in Terroristan with a dope ass ghillie suit draped over me, and while laying on the ground I saw The King of Terrorists five hundred feet away about to push a comically large plunger that would detonate all the world leaders in the world, I'd probably have a hard time coming to grips with shooting him and making it a true shot. I'd miss and he'd sic some goons on me and I'd end up on my knees with a blindfold in some Al Zarqawi's Funniest Home Videos program. It'd be a whole messy affair.
These days I'm content to just keep using long distance rifle weapons in video games and watching movies that feature snipers (Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan, Enemy At The Gates, to name a few), and hope and dream and wish that one day I can be good enough to blow peoples heads off for money and fame. The dark thoughts have crossed my mind of course, getting a scoped rifle and just becoming some kind of vigilante crimestopper, shooting drug dealers, and crackheads and jaywalkers with wreckless abandon, but alas, I've never even fired a real gun, and I'm 90% certain that if I did, I'd wince horribly and mewl like a little girl and possibly urinate in my pants a little. The life of a sniper is just one I was never meant to know.
Chronicles of An Internet Male
Chapter 1: On Being "Meh"
It's so hard to be so goddamned good, folks. How do I know I'm so good? Because I talk the talk. Can I walk the walk? Who cares, this is the internet. You don't know. I could be paralyzed from the waist down in a motorized wheel chair with a crust covered Ghostbusters tee on from when I was 11 years old, surrounded by Sailor Moon posters and dolls, but as long as I talk the talk, you can't call me on it. You don't know, you got no proof, be gone from my face.
A long time ago, I learned that negativity and unwarranted hostility will breed you minions all clamoring to be just like you. Why? Because nobody wants to be a weiner. Nobody wants to be all nice, and helpful, and insightful. Being such as that takes effort and intelligence. It's so much easier to tear others down than to raise yourself up, and people know this, and will aspire to your teachings. A sleight earns you more points than praise, always. It's like the dollar in Rio De Janiero versus England. You're getting way more for your money with a sleight than you are saying "Good job man, that's really cool, I'm impressed!". Instead try, "Meh".
Meh is the greatest weapon of the negative asshole. A noncomittal, obtuse critique with no context, point, or constructive purpose whatsoever. It simply shows that you, as a man on the Internet, were not impressed with what has been presented to you, and not being impressed is paramount to being a successful Internet Male. The sheer lack of caring about any and all things makes you too cool for people to handle almost instantaneously. Your apathy is a tangible wave that promises fame and status to those who heed it its delcious siren call and become your unwavering fanboys.
Women
Women are never hot. Ever. They are never gorgeous specimens, worthy to be draped in gossamer silks and bathed in butter milk with soft natural sponges and set upon pedestals to be gazed upon for hours until your eyes blur from tears brought about by a lack of blinking. NO, not you, you FAGGOT.
Never.
It doesn't matter how much Dark Angel fan fiction you've jerked off to from ABPEA, if someone presents to you a new scantily clad picture of Jessica Alba that makes you want to go out and viciously rape the first brunette you come across, you will devour those urges and respond appropriately.
"She's not as hot as my ex."
Let me guide your ignorant brain into understanding why this reply is so brilliant. It's a genius two pronged self aggrandizing sentence that not only says, with no forgiveness, that Jessica Alba isn't all that and a chicken wing, but also that you not only had a woman touch your penis who was hotter, but you also dumped her and she is now your ex-girlfriend. I call this the ol' "1-2", because my platform is made fairly clear with this lone statement and I'm free to vanish from the discussion at hand and find more prey elsewhere.
For more help degrading anybody's taste in women, please refer to this handy chart:
Music
There is no good music. Rap is just black people talking to repetitive beats, metal is just Satan worshippers screaming about pig guts. Indie rock is for gay guys who paint their nails black and wear suit jackets from the Salvation Army. Pop music is just for girls, bisexual teenage men, and image obsessed trend whores (which you aren't, because you don't place all that much stock in someones looks, in this discussion anyway, if it were women...). Country? Hah! What else is there? Oh I never heard of it, because it sucks. What do I listen to? You probably never heard of it, because you suck.
That's music in a nutshell. A staggeringly complex sequence of jabs and dodges. You must be as the stalk of grass in the winds, bend but do not crack, sway in whichever direction you must to stay firmly rooted and at all times on the winning side of another shit flinging music argument on the internet, because there are never any winners, only those who dodged the most shit. Every genre has it's embarassments, it all depends on the familiarity of the opposing team with your weaknesses, you must assess, take in your surroundings and then choose a side, once the foe is routed, wave your banner the fiercest and show your toadies that you were victorious in another pointless skirmish.
Video Games
As a male, with a computer and time to spend crafting a phony image on the internet to ingratiate into the hearts of those simpletons who would call you King, you obviously game, and game hard. You have some consoles, some PC games, you've shed tears at epic Japanese RPGs, it's okay, it's alright. Remember; talk the talk.
Now watch closely as I deftly maintain a zen like state of "meh" at each and every classic fired at me.
Final Fantasy VII
What's with the CGI movies? I get it, can I get back to playing the game? I'm a gamer, I want to play games. The character design was weak sauce, Cloud was a tranny and Tifa a whore. Who didn't see the whole Aeris thing anyway? I'm glad she's dead, now I can't be forced by the game to use her weak ass in battle anymore. Sephiroth was kind of cool, with that sword, and the air ship parts were really okay, overall it's a decent game, I guess.
Super Metroid
Oh wow, I'm a space faring super ball who can metamorph into a bikini slut. Lots of shooting and shooting doors, and shooting missiles and okay, enough. Labyrinths, underground bases, jumping with missiles, yatta yatta. It was great fun back in the day, but I've beaten it like 16,000,000 times now, and my perfect game run time is like 5 whole minutes under the best recorded so far. I'm so done with Super Metroid, how about a new one, and this time not on a kiddy console.
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Link went so downhill after Zelda II it's not even funny. No wait, it's hysterical. Look at him in his little night gown dress thing trying to save Hyrule. God. Get him a skin flute why don't you. I'm throwing exploding acorns at enemies now? What happened to the boomarang? Oh yeah, I know it's in the game, but what happened? Also, you never even see Ganon, yeah, I know you SEE him, but you don't face him. Until later, yeah. Whatever. I only owned N64 for 2 weeks anyway, enough time to beat all the games worth playing then I packed it up and sent it to my little cousins. This game had some cool music I guess.
Listen Up
Being a successful internet male with an untouchable, storied history on a pissant forum takes dedication and serious amounts of hypocrisy and two faced deceit. Just remember the 3 golden rules;
1. Tear down others
2. Never put a photo of yourself online
3. Meh
Join us next time when I reveal what your stance on movies, anime (faggots), and television should be, as well as a bonus section on politics.
The Secret Level is proud to present The Grudge: World Virus
A Chilling Tale of Horror by Master Horrorologist Bonaventure
The end of the world came sooner than expected for the human race. Find out what is to be done in this thrilling masterpiece, with collaborative content written by yours truly. The critically acclaimed The Grudge: World Virus is now available to all in 7 breath taking installments!
Click here to get started!
So You've Decided To Work In Retail Hell, A Survival Guide by PG
Part 1: Smokers And The Smokes They Smoke
One of your chief duties as a newly trained cash register monkey will be to dole out a few hundred packs of cigarettes a day to the fiending masses. If you're not as dumb as a rock, you'll blow your brains out before the end of the first day, but if you're persistent and honestly want to take a stab at a lazy, low paying job with little fulfillment or chance for advancement, you'll have to start filing customers into categories for quick appraisal and dismissal.
The Brat
The Brat will attempt to sidle into the line during a peak hour of sales and get his poison illegally, all while putting you at risk for getting busted. He's usually 13-16, scrawny, and accompanied by a half dozen shorter friends standing twenty feet away with very concerned looks on their faces as they straddle their bikes.
The Brat stands up straight and delivers his order quickly with a slight lowering of his voice. The money comes flying at you fast in a feeble attempt to kick your instincts and trained behavior into gear and basically surprise a pack out of you. Often times he will leave his change if you give him the cigs first as he will be stunned that you just sold him a tobacco product.
Refusing sales to this whelp can be fun, as the small amount of power you wield over him and his friends can be invigorating on slow/shitty days. The blank refusal ("Can I get a pack of Newport?" "No."), and photo ID interrogation route can be particularly droll.
- Brand: Newport, other menthol
Motivations: Smoking is cool. If we smoke we are cool.
Jailbait
Jailbait is seventeen years old and really sick of being turned down by tobbaconists and upstanding retailers of fine tobacco products.
She can be seen decked out in the latest slut home team uniform, with some arbitrary phrase emblazoned across her braless chest, like "BeBe", "Bad Girl", or "Cocksocket", with a similarly themed word across her buttocks.
Hoop earrings the size of Buick wheel rims are often dangling from her ears. Bonus points for full articulation of the theme if her makeup is outlined in black.
Jailbait will get a sheepish look on her face when questioned for ID and explain that she has left it at home (for the 43rd consecutive time that she has attempted to purchase cigarettes from you). This sale can go either way, but, feel free to green light her if she's looking especially slutty that day. For me personally, it's usually only a go if I get midrift.
- Brand: Newport, Marlboro Menthol Lights, other menthol
Motivations: Buying for a younger boyfriend, smokes because highschool is stressful and Tammy is a bitch
Hard Livin'
Hard Livin' is a sad case. Almost always at eighteen years or just beyond, she arrives every day to get the only thing keeping her going. Her tale is a very simple one and almost never deviates.
Hard Livin' barely finished highschool while pregnant with douchey boyfriends child. Now that said child has been born, she is working a crap job while douhchey boyfriend pursues his career in steamfitting and/or welding. At nights she is learning to become a nurse and between the baby, the gig at the diner, and the more and more frequent "angry spells" from Nick, she started smoking hard.These are the people that Bruce Springsteen writes songs about.
She almost always has correct change, and the kinda face and shambling walk from the beat up Corolla that you remember easily, so that before long your transactions are voiceless and grim.
- Brand: Marlboro Lights
Motivations: Wants to die
Social Smoker
The Social Smoker is usually your easiest and most enjoyable sale. They often times do not suffer from the brusque manner of someone in the middle of a nicotine fit, nor the joyless tedium that plagues those buying multiple packs of cigarettes several times a day and the chill it puts into them at night when they wake up hacking and coughing.
Social Smoker only visits you once or twice a week and his cigarettes mean one thing; party time. He's usually half in the bag from a shindig when he arrives, shooting the breeze with you while you make change and being amiable between sips of a red and white Bud can.
Often times will buy several packs of varying cigarettes for a group of people. One downside is he may be somewhat mathematically challenged in his state of intoxication and insist on paying for each pack seperately with a bunch of five dollar bills that he'll receive change for, dropping each handful dutifully into different pockets to ensure a fair transaction for all involved.
- Brand: Marlboro Mediums, Marlboro Menthol Milds
Motivations: Needs a cigarette while drinking, wants to bond with possible female targets who smoke
El Cheapo
"What is your cheapest brand of non-menthol cigarette?". That is the battle cry of El Cheapo. Some times it will begin with, "how much are your cigarettes?" neglecting to notice that there are signs posted for two dozen different brands with varying prices, sometimes will ask if you yourself smoke so that he can bum one.
El Cheapo will not smoke mainstream cigarettes if they can avoid it, because they are addicted solely to nicotine, not to the undeniably joyful passtime of inhaling burning tobbacco leaf smoke.
After offering him several of your cheapest brands, they will begin to ask you about known cheap brands that you do not carry. "No USA Lights? No Gold Coast? No Captain Rickys Flavo-country? No Cancer Kev's Tar Baby's? WHAT THE HELL MAN."
Most of the time El Cheapo will pay solely in pocket change, with the ocassional extremely crumpled and folded dollar bill rescued from the toe of a cowboy boot in their closet, accompanying the nickels and dimes. Never leaves without their free pack of matches.
- Brand: Winston, Salem, other cheap $4 brands
Motivation: Tired of bumming from Jeff, needs nic fix
Cigarette Connoisseur
Ahh, the cigarette connoisseur. He smokes exactly one pack a week, which isn't too much or too little. He will only smoke his brand and if he cannot get his brand? Forget about it.
This smoker managed to dodge the shitty common folk standards during his integration into the world of flavored suicide, and now can only smoke his very particular poison.
Usually it's an all-but-extinct holdover from the World War 2 era that somehow manages to maintain a loyal, profitable fanbase in this day and age.
Cigarette connoisseur sometimes buys cartons of his brand, but is mostly content to hand you a twenty or a hundred for a lone pack. Usually employs a Zippo lighter and drives a classic car.
- Brand: Carlton, Taryeton, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, Moor
Motivation: Nothing like a cigarette while mowing the lawn.
Classic Chain
The sorriest of all, the chain smoker. The chain smoker will be a familiar face to you very quickly if you are to take up a register. At first you won't even notice that this person visits you every day for three or four packs, but after a while it will dawn on you and every time you see this gaunt skeletal time bomb approach, it will ignite the speculation.
"Does he buy for a lot of people? His wife smokes? He loses them a lot right?". By chance or luck, these questions will begin to dwindle away as it becomes clear this person is ingesting up to and beyond eighty cigarettes a day.
You might see him at the end of your shift, at a certain time every night, buying four packs, then he'll start appearing at the start of your shift as well, or in the morning getting another "booster" pack. Maybe you'll observe one of the saddest things possible; the escalation. Classic Chain of three packs will say "Can I get-- well make it four packs", and somewhere in his voice you hear defeat.
If Classic Chain wasn't smoking, he'd be raping or gambling or betting on rapists or some other back alley addictive activity.
- Brand: Any and all
Motivation: Can't afford cocaine
With this handy dandy guide at your side, hopefully you will be well on your way to becoming a jaded misanthrope from your newly found employment in hell. Use these secrets will to speed along the career path and rocket to Assistant Manager in no time!
The Secret Level
This is The Secret Level. We are an internet community of jackasses and idiots. If you want to experience the stupidity first hand, click on the forums link at the top, or register if you haven't signed up yet.
New front page!
Holy shit, there's a front page. Actually, we always had a front page; it just looked like crap. Well, as you can see, it's the same crap, with a nicer overlay. Exciting, yes?
Submit some content
Do you have any talent at all? Can you write stuff, draw stuff, or do something cool that should be put up on this front page? If you can do any of that, you better submit it. It may get looked at over the course of time, and if you're lucky, it will be stuck right here! Make a topic on the forums, or use the little contact button at the top, and we'll work something out.