The Gum Thief Read Free Page B

mystic who goes through life singing songs and making people feel campfire good about themselves. Please! She's tortured me my entire life, and she's also the inhabitant of a faraway land called Uselessness. Last week she pushed the wrong buttons and microwaved a bun for ten hours, and the condo smelled like an electrical fire for days.
    Yes, I know what you're thinking: Bethany lives with her mother. Why is it okay for guys to stay home forever but if a girl does she's damaged goods? Have you priced condos lately? And working at Staples is a career? I can't believe the government even classifies what we do as a job. A job is something you can do for life. A job has some dimension of hope to it. Setting up fresh little sheets of white paper for people to use to test magic markers is not a hope scenario. All people ever draw is squiggles. It'd be fun if they wrote the occasional fuck or drew anarchy symbols. I still can't believe people ever pay for pens. Talk about the world's most shopliftable item. Staples must die.
    At least your waste-case diary is something I can fume about while I'm installing the Halloween display this afternoon. (Note: What kind of person buys a jar of orange and black jellybeans to "celebrate" Halloween? Everyone thinks that because I wear black lipstick I live for Halloween or something. It's such an embarrassing holiday. They should call it Alter Ego Day-everyone dresses up as who they'd rather be instead of themselves. Sort of like what you said about people wanting out-or people wanting to be anything except what and who they are. I'd dress up as an ivory-billed woodpecker. Imagine everybody wondering if you existed, hoping you did, longing for a quick glance of you.)
    BTW, did you see the tattoo of the devil on Shawn's ankle? I used to think that tattoo = slut, but now I think it's the total opposite. When you get a tattoo, it means you want your sexual partner to remember you and bond with you which is to say, it's more about monogamy than it is about sluttitude. Nature is crafty, but you know, black lipstick or not, I draw the line at tattoos. Because I like my skin to be deathly white. Michael Jackson white. I want it to look like it's easy to bruise. I want it to look like I taste like almond paste.
    I can't believe I'm writing this to a total perv like you. Well, it's something to kill time here at Shtooples.
    Here's what I'm going to do. When we see each other, neither of us is allowed to acknowledge that we've written or read these things we've written and read. We have to pretend we're cats and dogs, like normal. It'll make life interesting, which is a supreme challenge in this place. Boy, would I like to open a stockroom door one day and find people doing something shocking.
    Describe something shocking, Bethany ...
    Okay, how about Chris using an oversize oak peppermill to grind crack cocaine onto Shawn's rectum because Shawn's nose is so coked out that she's had to find a new absorbent membrane. That's shocking. That'd be fun to see. Or maybe Kyle using words longer than three syllables. But guys like Kyle don't need words to succeed in life, merely a pair of tight jeans and a dab of hair product.
    What's on today's To-Do list? Besides the Halloween display, I have to redo Jamie's lame "Make Your Office Your Home" display down by the business furniture section. All she had to do was put coffee cups on a desktop and set a wacky stuffed animal beside the PC monitor. Instead, she created a scarecrow-ish stuffed body with a head made of pantyhose filled with bubble wrap, the face drawn with a bingo-daubing marker. It's ... disturbing.
    BTW, you owe me, buster. I was walking down your aisle, and I had to reorganize a pile of Sharpie pens into their correct nooks because somebody had scrambled them this morning-some brave anarchist in training. I also saved you from a future shit storm by cleaning off the dust and fingerprints that were all over the cardboard box display for Zebra mechanical