Hippie Canyon Vintage Voicings: Striptease

Halloween is our busiest time of year. Things get crazy. People run rampant, like animals released at a zoo. Boundaries dissolve. Things get more personal. Personal space gets smaller, more compact and precious.

I wear a witch's hat to work to ward off evil spirits disguised in flesh and blood. I banish them with my pointed cone. I take the initiative, the offensive position, like a ram scraping its hooves in the dirt before charging. I anticipate disaster before it happens, thus averting it. Little children (and their parents) wonder if I really am a witch, and this comes in handy for retail arguments about returns and exchanges. I armor myself against the general public, because I have grown to know them, and know this is a necessary element of dealing with them during the Halloween season. My co-worker, Mitch, calls it 'Battling the Front Lines'. An exaggeration? Not if you've ever worked retail.

Granted, our store is no ordinary store; it is full of magic, as anyone will tell you as soon as they set foot in the door. But it is also filled with danger, like a pirate's ship.

The ceiling is caving in, in secret places, tucked away from the public's prying eyes. Mice come out at night (I've heard them and seen them after hours when they think they are finally alone). Snakes wriggle through, sometimes, silently slithering by. Black Widows like to surprise us every now and then to keep us on our toes. Potato bugs frequent the dress rack, spooking the customers. A lizard has jumped into my lap while I straightened the linens, sitting cross-legged on the floor where millions of shoes have walked before. The roof leaks when it rains, in more than a dozen places. Buckets are always on hand. It's too hot in the summer, and freezing like a witch's tit in the winter, when we have to lug wood (filled with spiders) to build fires to stay warm. There is endless bounty, booty, beauty being poured in, processed, and purchased. We lift and we eat and work harder behind the scenes than you might imagine. The illusion is elegance, grace, and an unspecific divine mirage that mesmerizes everyone who crosses the threshold, from every walk of life, from every country in the world. It is interesting to observe. The magic is real, expressed, and felt.

Today I was lugging clothes back out into their proper places. Always walking, carrying, placing, rearranging, dusting, straightening, organizing, decorating, dragging, lifting, lugging, rolling, throwing and/or catching something. Always moving. My eyes are trained to scan a room. See who's walking in the door, greet them. Someone needs a fitting room. Okay. Someone else needs a fitting room. Okay. Where is the bathroom? It's just past the counter on the left, through the red door. What kind of incense are you burning? Nag Champa. How much is this? It's $12.00. Do you live in the canyon? No. Will you get that wall piece down for me to try on? Yes, but it won't fit you. How does this look on me? Like shit. Next. I mean, it looks great! How can I help you? How can I be of service to you? Do you need psychoanalysis? Let me try to help. Are you a shopaholic? That's great! Welcome!

So, as I was putting away these garments into their proper places, I walk by a woman who is trying on clothes in the 'Fireplace Room'. She is probably in her early thirties or late twenties...hard to tell because she is a little beat up looking. She is with a man who is probably in his early fifties...again, hard to tell because he is a little 'worn'. They both have bleached blond hair, which I find intriguing. Bleached blond like Vince Neil from Motley Crue. The woman is somewhat attractive, and she is trying on clothes over her own clothes, peeling them off and on like layers of an onion, from what I can gather, passing by. Her skirt has crept up over her waist in the back, exposing her ass in all its glory. She has on black opaque stockings, but no underwear my brain registers. Sometimes enforcing clothes-changing behavior is difficult, especially when monkeys are swinging from the ceilings such as at Halloween time and people are buzzing every which way, stumbling through the store with gorilla masks on. Some people prefer to dress or undress out in the open for their own personal reasons and it can be difficult to restrain them.

There is a group of four or five men (counting as I walk by), seeming to be of middle-eastern descent, standing a few feet from her and watching her ass intently, as if it were a bright-red baboon's ass. Their tongues were rolling out of their mouths like cartoon staircases unfolding. They were like dogs in heat making no bones about it. Were they friends? Brothers? In-laws? Father and sons? Hard to tell. Hard to calculate four or five separate ages and relationships to each other in seconds (give me a full minute and I could probably tell you). Were they all popping boners together, and were they okay with that? Apparently so.

I observed this in a flash of a moment, and by the time I realized what was happening, the woman was tugging her skirt back down, struggling it over the bulbous orbs of her butt-cheek flesh. Did she know that she was putting on a show? Did she enjoy it? Did she find power in it? Her blond companion browsed through the men's shirt rack, seemingly oblivious to his friend's presentation. Did he know? Did he encourage her? Was he really oblivious?

So many questions to ask the customers; almost as many as their seemingly endless questions for me.