Another day, another dollar you may think. Another way to make a buck, I’ll fuck my way into Utopia. Fuck, I’ll have a thousand virgins licking at my feet, I’ll have a million watches set into the front of my golden palace, I’ll attach a spoiler to my penis. I’ll spoil myself rotten with rotten soiled products in an effort to remove my useless DNA from genetic memory. Who needs sex when you have the internet?
That’s certainly what I thought as I strode confidently into town for my first day on the job. I was a Man about Town, a force to be reckoned with. The length of my stride confidently dictated this to the locals, my right oversized graffiti-streaked moonboot squeaking a refrain on the cold tarmac. Hell, this is England. What did I expect in July? The old ladies in cardigans, the man in the mackintosh and oversize shoe clomping a bass drum beat to the skiffle street. Talk of Lonnie Donegan swept the bus stop like the street cleaner really should have, a man with a bald head and flesh tunnels surprisingly leading the debate. The blue rinse certainly agreed with him, her blue rinse itself perhaps a tribute to Donegan’s covers of Woody Guthrie.
With “My Old Man’s a Dustman” ringing in my ears, I stopped short in front of the Maplin’s window. For one heart-stopping, horrendous second I saw myself walking through a hall of mirrors, my face melting into my chest, my legs cut off at the knees. It was the dwarf next to me that gave the game away. His beard seemed much too contrived and when I looked to my side I saw that indeed it was. He was an old woman sat at the bus stop bench in a camel coat. That was when the rain began again, with gusto.
My coat buried deep in my bag I hurried on, the rain plastering my stupid hair to my head, a drowned Muppet slithering across my forehead, his drumsticks sticking in my eye. I still had no idea where the shop was, just that it was near somewhere else that I had never been to or seen. Google maps had failed me; my pathetic attempts to graft a Sat-Nav in to my own body were just a sore memory at this point. Everyone in the street suddenly had that very British look, that one that says “Get in my way and I’ll have your eye out with this umbrella you SCUM.” I dropped my eyes to the pavement and passed the gaudy purple and black of that giant, seemingly recession-fuelled electronics store, His Majestic Vagina.
A text message caused me to look at the time and I realised that I was nearly an hour early. I cursed technological convergence for the accursed convenience and dutifully stepped inside the Vagina, out of the heavy British summertime. An unruly looking mob followed suit, stepping gratefully in through the double doors and shaking themselves dry like dogs, their assorted cagoules rustling, a rumbling mass of flapping Goretex birds with green and black plumage.
I hurried away from their masses, afraid that they would fall crazed upon the consumer buffet at this impromptu bad temper party and crush me against the Blu-Ray canapés. I soon found myself at the bright coloured overpriced boxes in the video games aisle. This place was a little different; here the depression of the rain beating against the pavements seemed to have distilled itself into human form. Besides me and my ridiculous face were two teenage boys with Adolf Hitler haircuts and drain pipe jeans and a rather confused looking middle-aged couple gesturing madly at the sports games. Clearly whoever they were buying for was going to be pissed off. The Emo kids seemed to be picking up boxes at random and staring wide-eyed at the backs before giggling rakishly and placing them back in another random position. At first, I thought they were just being post-ironic, perhaps in veneration of Russell Brand. But then I realised. They thought they WERE playing Xbox. Perhaps that sort of confusion is what happens when Tetris is your paternal figure, or perhaps they had been on the smoothies. Bored, their brains dribbling through their tear-ducts, they had become unable to distinguish simple reality from elaborate fiction.
I cast my eyes across the shelves, not planning to buy anything at all. I looked callously, trying to burn the bright boxes with my laser vision. It wasn’t the games, although it seems that numbers are replacing words on their covers. Soon we will be queuing at midnight to pick up our very own copy of Four 2: Three, slavering happily at the thought of owning yet another sequel. No, it wasn’t the games on offer.
It wasn’t even the price, which seemed to be based on a policy of looking at other games retailers and simply slapping ten pounds on top of their price and laughing about it at the Staff Room circle-jerk. The infuriating, disgusting thing about His Majestic Vagina is their service.
I purchased a used copy of Condemned 2 for the Xbox 360 on a whim. No disc in the box. I took it back, expecting to pick up the disc. Instead I got brutally gang-fucked over the till counter until I paid extra for Halo 3, which I knew I did not want, and received a thorough bukkake moustache from the oozing Vagina. When I got Halo home, the disc was scratched beyond reading, beyond reason in fact. I took it back, only to queue separately on three floors of the shop to be told that I couldn’t, in fact, return the game. This led to somewhat of a brutal stand-off between me and the counter assistant, and much puffing of chests and indignant churlishness later I agreed to pay an extra two pounds for Condemned 2 and a CD and walked away happy. HAPPY!
His Majestic Vagina had fucked me on all fronts, from behind too. I had made three separate journeys to the shop before playing a single minute of any game I had bought there and paid extra each time for the privilege. Yet there I was, making puppy dog eyes and soft whimpering sounds of approval at their torrent of poor excuses, an impotent wreck of a man, desperate for his next fix. I had become addicted to consumer rape.
This all came back to me as I stared mindlessly at the second-hand copies of Fracture and Live Arcade Unplugged. I could feel my own brain cutting itself free from its moorings to attempt to slither out my nose to the safety of the logo-stamped linoleum. I staggered back from the racks, wrenching myself from the happy boxes of dreams. A rumbling in my pocket prompted me to press the button again, like a lab mouse begging for food and again I saw the time. An hour had passed.A whole hour had passed. I was now late for my first day at work, distracted by shininess, distracted by price tickets and numbers and aspirations of nothing, by pretty pictures and neon light. I hadn’t even stopped to buy anything. The sun now shone in through the double doors, the light blue sky making a mockery of my earlier damnation of British weather. I felt I was being birthed into another century, spat soiled from the womb of consumerism straight in to a raucous 1950’s street party I had not been invited to. I staggered out past the revellers and on to gainful employment, unsure of what that meant any more.
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