You're okay

I was alone in the bookstore today--Erin offsite, Betsy off--and working the counter all afternoon.

A guy comes in, asks for the "new Spartanburg book." Judging from his appearance, I rightly guess he is looking for The Underground Guide to Spartanburg.  He stands at the counter flipping through it, then asks me if there are any places in town to see good music.

I tell him The Showroom, though there aren't any shows planned for the time being, and Blue Boulevard, and the Nu-Way, and Delaney's when it reopens from the fire, and Main Street Pub, and there are other farther out that I haven't been to.

He says he's new to Spartanburg, that he hates it, that he just moved here from Washington D.C. Personal security, he says. He pulls out his phone and shows me a picture of him guarding Mitt Romney, calls him a prick, then flips to a still of him guarding Rick Santorum from FoxNews, calls him a prick, too, and puts his phone away.

He says he was in the Naval reserves but quit after a few months and got recruited by this personal security firm. He got sent to Spartanburg as punishment--he didn't say for what--to guard a woman whose name I don't recognize.

He asks where to meet girls in Spartanburg. I have no idea, I tell him, I hadn't thought about it. All the girls he's met so far are too Southern, he says, and too country. He says he doesn't want a nerdy girl, he doesn't want a smart, dull girl. He wants a "sexy, intelligent girl," and says he doesn't know how else to describe what he's looking for. I tell him I know what he means. He glances at me and says, "You're okay, but where do I go to meet sexy, intelligent girls?" I don't know, I repeat, all I know are art exhibits, readings, and essentially anything happening at HUB-BUB. I tell him about the art openings tonight, about Ron Rash in a couple of weeks. Those are the only events I can think of that might have sexy, intelligent girls.

He tells me he's a liberal and that he hates Spartanburg because it's so conservative. I tell him he's found the forward-thinking center of the city in the bookstore and Coffee Bar and that he should hang out here and talk to people, that he shouldn't hate Spartanburg because he doesn't understand all that's happening here.

I tell him I moved here from the most liberal city in Kansas and that I love it here, that there's too much going on for me to do it all, that I rarely go to Greenville.

He asks me if I'm in school. No, I say, I went to school in Kansas and moved here for the job. He cocks his head and says, "You moved out here to work in a bookstore?" No, I say, I'm the assistant director.

He asks me how old I am. 27, I say. No, he says, I thought you were 21. No, I said, I've been through school. He tells me he's 21. I tell him he's younger than my little brother. 

He asks me where I like to eat. I tell him Cribb's and Lime Leaf and Monsoon and Miyako downtown. He asks me if I want to get lunch sometime. I tell him he's younger than my brother.

His neck is thick, splotched with red. His hair is nearly a flat-top. He wears a button-up striped blue shirt and sunglasses. He is younger than my brother, but I drop the pen when I begin to fill out a special order for him. He is younger than my brother, but it takes another customer at the counter for him to leave. He is younger than my brother, yet I do not know how to say "I am a woman."