Auxillary Capillary Blog Squad #3: Lying
Yesterday I was walking into the bank and there was this annoying beeping sound. What was it, oh someone had left their card in the machine, again. I swore this kept happening to me, like every time I went to an atm lately. People are so careless. It’s annoying because I have to deal with the fact that I’m tempted to steal their card and try and use it, or maybe just leave it there, and let the beeping continue. This process that I go through each time stresses me out a little..
Yesterday it was all warm and windy, with some light nice rain. I walked up to the beeping and I pulled the card out. And I just sort of turned, and held the card out, in the air, away from me, toward the parking lot, toward where people might be who might have left it. From the back window of a nearby silvery parked car, an old mystical woman said to me, almost as though she were an actor in some kind of divine drama that I was suddenly a part of, "he just left". She kept watching me steadily, as I just kept holding the card out, away from my body, and walked into the bank. My heart was pounding. My limbs felt almost bruised with all the zillions of different neuro-tranmissions that they were receiving. Under the gaze of several annoying paid bank greeters, and of the security cameras, I put the card in my pocket.
I ignored the greeters and I deposited my check, maintaining my usual coldness to the very typically way-too-overly hot, and annoyingly-fakely-flirty bank teller. I got my receipt, and I left.
Card in my pocket, I drove up the hill. The disabled man, with no short-term memory who I take care of, was riding shotgun. He was up to his usual oblivion, looking at his checkbook, reading the letters on the licence plates of cars, and other equally important and fascinating stuff.. "D.E.V…" Could I use the card? I stopped and dropped off some paperwork at the office. The warm wind and afternoon sunlight and nice light rain all sprinkled together on my face as I got back into the car. I looked at the card and continued driving up the hill.
My mind had become the singular action of methodically working out the details of if and how. I had found others cards recently. I had waited too long with them. I hadn’t thought out what to do. The back of this card was not signed. I went over how the cursive letters would have to look if I made the signature. I made sure I knew all the letters, I never write cursive anymore. I thought of the conversation that I had about it with my friend. ‘You can’t use you’re computer to buy things because they’ll know it’s you. You could do it at Evergreen. But then you’d have to have a place to receive the stuff. Plus, don’t shipping addresses and billing addresses have to be the same nowadays?’ It would have to be a store, just the right mom-n-pop kind of place, not some military zone like Best Buy.
I kept driving up the hill, toward the disabled man’s apartment, where I had to take him soon, toward all those stores that sell stuff.. If I was going to use the card I had to use it right now, before the guy called the bank, before it was disabled. Time was ticking. Was it immoral to use the card? Not that immoral, I thought. These days with all that automatic theft protection stuff it wouldn’t cost the guy a thing, only the evil billion-dollar bank, the same evil billion-dollar bank that had been raping me for years. I guess it would inconvenience the guy a little, maybe stress him out for a short time. It was really just myself and the bank that I might hurt. What one kind of expensive thing did I want that cost less than $300? What store could I get away with this at? These days everywhere checks ID. Everywhere. Snowpants! I suddenly knew of a certain westside snowboarding store. A store that was very loose, and very stoney. A store that was not very likely to have the strictest ID-checking policy. I was almost positive that they didn’t check my ID the last time I was there, but was that debit or credit?..
The car kept getting nearer to the snowboarding store, less than a block away now. Was I doing it? If it was happening it was happening right now, quickly, and as just a matter of business, with the disabled guy totally waiting for me in the car. I wasn’t making some nervous, thought-about-it-too-much second trip.
I pulled into the parking lot, not parking right in front of the store. I put my ID and other cards in the car door compartment; if they asked me for my ID I would have just forgotten it, just an honest mistake. I looked at the card. I thought of the cursive letters in the signature one last time.
I went in the store. A couple of guys, a lot of merchandise, no one too official looking. I looked at jackets and pants. My hands and arms were so week and shaky.. Were these women’s? In my shaky condition I couldn’t manage to handle the tags properly and see if they said so. I kept looking at jackets; all so over-designed, all so you-might-like-it-for-six-months-if-you-were-like,-sixteen-and-lived-for-pot-smoking. Still, I looked at the women’s clothes, and I easily imagined how they could look totally hot on someone.. One of the young snowboard guys who kind looked like Dirk or something came over my way.
"Are these women’s, or.." My voice broke. "Do you work here?"
"I don’t work here. I think they’re mixed."
"Thanks."
I kept looking. I tried on a totally subdued cream-colored jacket that had this mini green tree symbol thing on it that looked cool, totally all the good guys on Hoth or something. I saw myself in the mirror. Totally gay. Way too oversized and stoner. Actually stoner-gay. (I was not previously privy to the the existence of this genera). I put the jacket back. As I went on looking I wondered if they had a security camera that might one day come back to haunt me. I couldn’t look up for cameras a lot all suspiciously though. The jackets weren’t working and I started focusing on pants. Then I heard this noise. As if by fate, this whole row of skateboard decks suddenly dominoed over, right up near the ceiling, giving me the perfect fake reason to look up there for a long time and scan for cameras.
I didn’t see any cameras. I got an armload of snowpants and headed into the dressing room. I set my sunglasses down. It would be like so typical of the universe if I totally made off with the snowpants but totally left my expensive sunglasses there in the dressing room. So I was like trying on snowpants, and remembering not to forget my sunglasses in this one integrated activity. I had that lack of ability to fully breathe that I get, when I’m nervous, or if I haven’t eaten enough. I think I was nervous and hadn’t eaten. It kind of reminded me of how I used to feel when I always used to shop in those fancy department stores in San Francisco, all completely stoned out of my mind. I realized that this just might be what would totally make this work. This was a stoner store. It was normal to be all high and nervous and out of it here.
I got my pants, and my sunglasses, and I went up to the counter.
"Found something that fit?"
"Yeah. I’ll take these."
I almost accidentally walked behind the skateboard sales counter on my way up to the register. Was I being too obvious by buying such expensive pants so quickly, and so casually, maybe just because they fit? They were 40% off, that should help. But they would still be well over $150 bucks. And I now realized that it seemed like the store guy was straight. Like maybe he smoked a lot, but just not today. He did seem a little nervous though. I followed him up to the counter, I think much too closely.
He rang me up. And as I held the card out, away from my body, toward him, I felt like a robot or something. Everything was broken down for me microscopically, into this long series of false, disconnected events. It seemed unlikely, that anything as obviously a lie as the supposed ‘single sweep’ of my ‘arm’ offering the guy the ‘credit card’ could ever possibly be believed as the real thing.
"Will that be debit or credit?’
"Credit."
The sunlight coming through the window from behind the register blinded me as I stood there, pretty much naked. And then there was this distinct echo that seemed to run throughout the whole store, as the guy didn’t ask me for ID. I’m not sure if I imagined it, but for a moment it seemed like all the guys heard it. They suddenly stopped talking, stopped fidgeting, stopped fiddling with their skateboard tools, spit out their tubes of pure nitrous-oxide, that they had been gingerly nipping on all this time, and they listened, with this like winking approval, as if this was the way the system worked in their leprechaun society, in their snowboard shop; no ID check.
I heard the first half of the receipt print. He handed me back the card. The mantra in my mind was, business as usual, business as usual, business as fucking usual. Like, maybe.. I could just be this total dick.. And like, maybe.. I was just like.. here, like.. buying these fucking snowpants, from this guy.. I don’t give a fuck.. Then register paused.
It then emitted this single ‘beep’.
Then the register continued to pause, for like, a while. Fuck! Was that the alarm bell? Was that the call-the-cops-because-this-card-is-stolen alert chime? Should I run out the door now? Should I act all surprised and totally pissed?..
Then receipt started printing again.
Yeah!! Such relief, such release. Day spas, waterfalls, birds flying up lightly in small groups, bamboo forests with happy-ending, happy-ending!, nuevo-rich Chinese people spending like, fucking cash; I was ‘rich bitch!’ He handed me the receipt to sign. I had totally forgotten about this part. I started to sign it in non-cursive, completely copying the letters from the card. Then the pen got stuck in a divit on the counter, "whoops" I said, perfect cover-up. I handed him the signed receipt.
"Would you like a bag?"
"No thanks. Thanks a lot." I was out the door. I immediately locked the contraband in my trunk, and I was off, accidentally peeling out of the parking lot as I left. I felt so alive, so white hot, yet so full of color. So empowered. I could do anything right now. I remembered some people saying that there were no security devices in that store The Gap..
