Last Tuesday morning my boss gave me the ordering machine and sent me to order the dairy case. I am proudly the low man on this 15 man totem pole, still savoring the self-hatred of being a manager some six years ago.

When I left that job and began looking for grunt jobs no one wanted to give me one. They wanted to make me a manager. This would not do, would not jive with my writing dreams. It would also not save me from that which had been becoming increasingly hard to resist. As my body began to fail and I increasingly dreaded a look in the morning mirror, young, beautiful college-aged women were increasingly offering me their bodies, and their companionship.

After I turned down one little vixen she went and found an even better looking university co-ed, and brought her to me holding her hand, saying, “Mister Jimmy, I thought you would like Ruby, she certainly likes you—we like you a lot, Mister Jimmy…”

Then came the little slut-goddess smiles that told of a final conquest for this wretched old dog. Falling into a trance like Conan standing before Thulsa Doom, I barely pulled my watery eyes away from those gravity defying boobies and gathered my resolve.

“Now, you young ladies, go work the candy section, please.”

“Oh yes, of course, Mister Jimmy. Anything you desire, Mister Jimmy.”

And they both walked off holding hands, looking back over their shapely little shoulders, batting their eye lashes as I tried not to spell Levi Strauss backwards…

As I aged my resolve weakened. As death neared I saw ever more life in those young bodies and beguiling eyes, knowing all the while that they merely wanted my bank card, perhaps a car, tuition for their feminist bitch masters degree. So I rendered myself penniless in order to divert their gold-digging attention to other soft-headed targets.

Young fighters are targets of these every same women, the whores of the world who want what we are, what we make, what we bring, and from you young studs, the promise of your desire to succeed.

To avoid the clutches of these savage vixens some men are downright rude. I do not agree with this as I believe in individual merit, and would not be rude in passing to the rare decent woman.

Back to last Tuesday.

As I walked down to the culture section I noticed a woman of perhaps 45 in high heels and a nice summer dress, perfectly attired to show off the fading curves of her once perfect hour glass figure. I looked and was immediately admonished in the back of my mind by one of my many helpful muses, Ajay, a roommate of seven years and a friend for twice that long, who once shook her head at me admiring a curvaceous hip hop dancer and said, “You will never, ever pick out a woman for me. James, your lack of complexity is astonishing. You know I could take a lump of play dough and make a sculpture of your ideal woman in under a minute—big on the top, little in the middle, big on the bottom. What the fuck? The Stone Age is over!”

It took a Herculean effort for me not to linger on the filled-out dress. I did notice, as I came to stand next to her, that she was also scented and absent a wedding ring. This babe was on the prowl. Normally such a girl will go right for the store manager. I was comforted to be out of her line of sight, below the economic horizon that rose between her legs as she hunted for the most viable catch she could manage—in this final half-bloom of fading beauty on her way to hag-hood—to ensnare with her soft heart-shaped mantrap.

I did not realize just how desperate she was until she spoke to me, in a sultry voice, glancing sidelong from beneath her eye lashes, “So, you must be the dairy manger, the man who takes care of the inventory?”

She was halfway through her job. If I let myself get caught in conversation with her, and my old demon took hold, I just might find myself sitting on her coach in a few hours admiring the back of her head while I drank her son’s last beer. I must, for my sake, and the sake of her hypothetical off spring’s Tuesday night buzz, avoid the offered enamored interaction.

I said, “Indeed not, Miss. I am merely the toiling grunt who stocks these cases overnight so that my betters might cash a flush bonus check every quarter.”

She was stymied by my claim to that which seemed so far below my diction. Then Ed, 75-year-old Ed, who won a fight on the dock against Vietnam Neil six years ago, came to my rescue. As Ed was a life-long grunt and he knew me to be a former store manager and the retail-food-lore equal to our cruel smiling taskmaster, Mister John, he calls me Boss and Jimmy Boy alternately, depending on whether he feels like he needs a favor or a friend.

Just as the woman began to question my assertion in an attempt to convince herself that I was a worthy object of her mate-fishing expedition, Ed, standing over the leaking egg case, said, “Hey, Boss, how do I unclog this drain—where is the drain in his case?”

I answered, “That’s a self-contained unit. It is not part of the rack system and utilizes an independent and self-contained refrigerant. It is simply plugged into the outlet at the end of the row. There is no drainage system as it has a dehumidifying element. The case is simply sweating and just requires a wipe down every twenty minutes in this humidity.”

The woman left in a huff, barely half way through her audit, taking my self-deprecating statement of my job description as the snub of some cruel management type. Her short skirt, revealing well-preserved thighs and swinging over not yet sagging hips, swished by Ed, as he leered down at her and then grinned at me, “Did I ruin your shot Jimmy Boy?”

I walked up to him and patted him on the shoulder. “Yes, Sir you did—and I thank you!”