Because I Couldn’t Make It Up If I Tried

As a starving artist type, I’ve had the privilege of working in some places where you get characters you just couldn’t dreeeeam up.  They’ll all make it into a best-seller one day, I swear.

I currently work part-time in a music store that sells vinyl and cd’s and some clothing and dvd’s and stuff.  Mostly hip-hop and r&b. It’s in the basement of a building with a couple of eclectic shops and a Korean restaurant. The store is called ‘The Album,’ but most of us call it after the owner, ‘Sami’s.’

Sami is a DJ who decided to sell music full time. He’s from Kuwait and is like the chillest employer ever. A die-hard patron of hip-hop, he’s a cornerstone of our town’s music scene.  And, he’s super diplomatic even when his customers come in tryna hustle him, get smart, or start contraversy about other artists or stores in town.

To imagine Sami’s, picture walking up to a brick building among a strip of campus shops, and then down a flight of stairs where the walls are littered with curling-edged posters and tags. You can see some fluorescent lighting, a neon sign, and then you’re surrounded by racks of CD’s, display cases, tagged walls, and the kind of clutter that’s reminscent of somebody’s Mom’s basement they stash all their stuff in while they’re living in a studio apartment.  Plenty of people turn right around and go back up the stairs.

The regulars always come in to chat Sami up, “Yo, Sami man, did you hear about–”and proceed to fill him in on the latest of whatever. Most recently, a local rapper, Thuro, was shot to death. We actually just saw Thuro in the store about a week and a half ago. I think Sami sold him some Jeezy. He was on on the KYAliens album with my husband and like twenty other local artists including myself. Now he’s gone…

“Yeah, sun sun,” Sami is always interested.

And then you get the folks who hear about the spot and want to sell him some music, like the older gent who came downstairs today.

Currently, my ongoing job is to alphabetize records. I was kinda hired to help organize, alphabetize, and ya know, lend a woman’s touch to the shelves.  The room where most of the vinyl is kept, is directly to the right of the entrance and if you don’t know to look for me, you might not catch me hip deep in dust and dust covers, at first.

Anyway, today towards the end of my shift, a heavy set, gray-haired guy with a trucker cap on , lugs a passel of cd’s downstairs because the guys next door at CD Central told him Sami might be interested (he runs an eBay account too).

So Sami’s not really interested but offers to look up the worth of some of the albums on eBay.

And then the guy leans heavily on the one of the main display cases in the center of the store, hovering near the free condoms and lube Sami keeps there cause ya know, safe sex and all.

A fairly flaming brother, previously hovering over the disco and techno vinyl notices the condoms too.

So there they are.

Says Pappy Van Winkle over there, “‘ey, these free?”

“Yeah,” Sami replies.

“Wow,” Pappy marvels, “How many kin I ‘ave?”

“Take as many as you like!”

“Well, then–” and proceeds to grab a fistful of condoms.

“Oh, and ya got lube, too?”

Sami, “You need a bag for that?”

“Sure if you got one.”

Enter Flaming Man, “Ooooo I coulda used me some of these when I wuz gettin’ it last week!”

Sami, still upbeat, “Oh, that’s a little too much information, man.”

“Yeah,” agrees Pappy, “‘ey you ever been to Japan to get some of them freaky girls man?  They’re a lot freakier than the ones over here.” A few more tubes of lube just for good measure. Keep in mind, this guy looks like he could use a dorsal fin from behind.

Enter a couple of adolescent boys, one of which is Asian.

“‘Ey!” Pappy cries, gesturing towards one of the cd’s he’s brought in, “I bet that boy rit thur can translate some of them Japanese symbols and thangs on the case!”

Bless that little boy’s heart, “Um, excuse me sir, I am not Japanese. I am Korean.” And follows his buddy around looking for a Beatles record.

“Aw,” Pappy is impressed, “Nice boy. Even called me ’sir,’” before Pappy finally notices me and asking if I was getting all the good stuff out of the record section (I did have like a stack of fifty records on either side of me).

Between that and the eighteen year old kid who came in and basically demanded that Sami refer to his beats as ’songs,’ and that he was not a beatmaker but a ‘producer,’ despite the boom-chick-boom-chick-I-coulda-made-this-on-my-cell-phone simplicity of his arrangments, it was just another day in Affrilachia.