Yesterday afternoon, I caught a ride to Ragan's place with Lucas. The plans were to sit around, drink beer and eat. It was Lucas' birthday and me being broke as hell, I can't buy him anything. So I burn him a couple CD's; a Pharoahe Monch album, and a mix on a purple CDR and wrote WHAM - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go on it (It had no Wham on it.)
After giving Lucas what is probably the gayest gift he'll ever receive, I got in the car. We were off! We tore through the streets at blazing speeds and took a turn toward 35. We were immediately caught in the neverending purgatory known as
Seeing that a 15 minute trip to
We risk it. Lucas pulls onto
Lucas is shaken by almost killing a guy. I call him a pussy and jokingly offer him a handjob to calm him down. He turns down my offer and we both talk about how we'd like to do bad things to the tattooed scene girl walking on the sidewalk. By this time we're on Congress. It's very close to wide open. There are cars here and there and the occasional lumbering city bus, but otherwise we're making good time.
We ride Congress up until
"Oh well, at least we got this far", I say, "At least we beat some of the traffic".
And then I spot
As we approach the exit to 183 we see a sea of cars. We bitch and moan about how terrible the traffic in
Lucas parks and we approach Ragan’s building. I begin to walk in, but Lucas points to a fenced-in piece of green. He tells me that it’s her yard and I think aloud that it’s awesome that they have a yard. He greets my comment with a shrug and we walk in the back door. Two small dogs meet us there and Lucas introduces me to Ragan’s roommate, Nova. Allen is beside the sink, making tea and fucking it up. He puts too much water into the tea brewer and has to pour some of it out so he can fit the lid on the pitcher. He finishes up, and we decide that we need supplies if we’re actually going to eat.
Allen has a torn MCL and he can barely walk. He needs crutches for any long distances. We walk outside and Allen accidentally puts his crutch in dog shit. He calls shotgun and sets the dog shit crutches in the back seat with me. We drive to Wal-Mart and at the door Allen takes one of the carts that are usually occupied by the morbidly obese or the incomprehensibly old. He has problems keeping his crutches on the cart as he glides through the store at uneven speeds. He keeps the crutches on the outside of the cart, on either side of him. The cart will seemingly change acceleration with no warrant or warning. Sometimes it will putt along at an extremely slow rate and next it will lurch forward.
The first thing we do is go get a case of beer. We head to the back of the store. Lucas picks out a case of Lone Star. I cringe, but accept. We complain about the price and how it’s usually cheaper at H-E-B, but we don’t know of an H-E-B in this part of town. We proceed to the meat and decide that burgers would be too much work and would probably be way too expensive anyway. We take nearly ten minutes to decide on what we want and all the while I’m fucking with Allen’s cart. Kicking it when he’s moving, knocking the crutches off and holding the cart so it doesn’t go anywhere when he accelerates. It must have a pretty weak motor. Allen’s crutches won’t stay on so I fix it where they jam under the seat. One crutch won’t fit entirely under, so it sticks out about a foot from the front.
We decide on jalapeno cheese bratwurst and we get two four-packs of them. Since we’re doing brats we need relish and buns. We go to the condiment aisle and Allen rolls his cart over to the relish and picks out a jar. I tell him it better not be sweet relish or I’ll fucking kill him. He reassures me it’s not. The other end of the aisle is blocked by a large black family. Allen backs up his cart, and turns at the same time. As he does this, the foot-long extension of crutch protruding from the cart takes out the bottom shelf. The bottom shelf is generally reserved for larger, heavier items, and this time was no exception. Economy-size jars of sliced come crashing to the floor, but surprisingly only one of them shatters. Regardless, pickle brine goes everywhere. Lucas and I break down laughing. The family on the opposite end of the aisle breaks down laughing. We realize that something has to be done about this. We wonder aloud whether we should just leave it, or go tell someone that a pickle jar exploded through no fault of our own. Those were the only two options.
We choose the former. As we exit the aisle, Lucas, his voice full of faux menace, says to the family, “You didn’t see anything”. They were all much bigger than us. Even the children. Threats wouldn’t work on them. They just laugh more. We make a hasty escape. As we go to the bread aisle, we pass an aging man pushing a janitor’s cart. He will undoubtedly be the one who has to clean up the mess we made. We don’t breathe a word to him and I feel a slight pang of sorrow. Lucas grabs some buns and we decide to get the fuck out of that store. We pass empty checkouts as Allen decides we should go to the other end of the store to make our purchase.
The right side of the store only has self-checkouts, and there’s a line at each of them except one. There’s a Wal-Mart employee who looks to be about sixteen standing at it. He walks away from it, and we approach it. We’re about to start scanning our items when he walks up and chastises us, his voice full of frustrated effeminate hostility.
“Guys, you just saw me over here! This lane is closed!”
We apologize. I tell him I thought he was done fixing it, if that’s what he was doing it. He tells us we have to go wait in line. As we’re walking away he says, “And I hope all three of you have your ID’s if you want to buy that beer.” We give him a weird look and say we do.
We stand in line as we talk about what a prick he was to us. We finally get our turn and scan all of our items, leaving the beer for last. The register chimes and the screen flashes that cashier approval is needed. The same employee walks over as we ready our ID’s to be checked. He looks hard and long at all of our cards, furrowing his brow. He lets out a sigh of exasperation and I realize I’m standing in front of the register. I say I’m sorry and move out of his way. He begins to tap the screen to approve the transaction. He still holds Allen’s ID.
He looks at Allen.
He looks at the ID.
He looks at the screen.
He repeats this process about seven times. And we laugh because it seems as if this kid is going to have a seizure. He hands Allen the ID and says, “I can’t sell this to you. I don’t know what to do.” Lucas say he’ll just go pay for it at another register. The cashier tells us we can try but it won’t work. We shake off this odd statement, and Allen and I continue to pay for the food as Lucas goes to buy the beer at another register. We finish up and go to the cashier station. We notice the kid has disappeared. In his place is a large Hispanic guy. We tell him what a moron the other kid was and he smiles and shrugs it off.
I wonder aloud where Lucas is, as it seems to be taking him a long time to buy the beer. We wander over to where he is to find him arguing with the front end manager whose worn nametag identifies him as “Bill”. Bill tells Lucas that he can’t purchase the beer because of intoxication. Lucas stares at him in bewilderment. None of us are intoxicated. Not in the least. We tell Bill this and he says that we were denied, so we can’t buy from their store. Allen parks his cart, blocking off an entire checkout lane and leaves is there. He grabs his crutches, hobbles over to Bill and says he’d like to speak to his manager. We wait a while, fuming as Bill goes to a phone and calls his manager. I make a comment that if we don’t get our way, we should make a comment about how he’s in his 50’s and manages a Wal-Mart. They didn’t think it was a good idea.
Bill’s manager finally comes over to us and explains that it is TABC rules that once you’re denied at an establishment, you’re denied for the rest of the day. We accept that, but we ask why we were denied in the first place. He says he doesn’t know, but we should ask the original employee. We say our goodbyes and walk toward the exit, looking for the mental defective that got us denied in the first place. He wasn’t there, so we ask the large Hispanic guy. He says the kid’s on break. Of course.
We leave Wal-Mart and go looking for any store we can to buy beer. We head toward Ragan’s apartment and Lucas spots an H-E-B. We stop there and uneventfully get our beer. For a cheaper price. We head back to Ragan’s, discussing the ordeal the whole way. Allen says he’ll head back to Wal-Mart sometime soon and fuck that kid’s day up. We arrive, cook, drink and have fun.
Everything leading up to this is inconsequential.
