Confessions of a Boob Fluffer

Sundays were crazy days at the store. They were by far the oddest shopping day at Scarlett’s, far outweighing those traditionally looney shopping days of Christmas Eve and Valentine’s Day. Even weirder than horny full moon days, teenage modeling Saturdays and the day the Chippendale’s dancers come to town making a pit stop to shop at the store. I tried to take the day off as often as possible which some times just impossible. Since most of my staff felt the same and also liked to take this day off, I worked far more Sundays than I wanted.

Sundays were the day that drag queens and Baptist picketers were most likely to cross paths. The day that I was most likely to be told by the Baptist picketers that I would burn in hell for peddling smut and pornography. It was also the day before the former Baptist picketers would come into the store shopping for smut and pornography, dressed incognito in rain coats and sunglasses looking more like flashers than former Baptist picketers. It was a day that required extra caffeine and an economy sized sense of humor. A couple of good stiff drinks after the store closed didn’t hurt either.

Baptist picketed Sundays were always a lot of fun. The picket parade materialized about the time I would be relaxing into a potentially slow day, which is to say, about mid-afternoon, after church, of course. I would be lulled into a stupor by boredom yet humming along from the vast quantities of coffee I had already consumed.

Suddenly a flurry of activity in front of the store would catch my eye; a potential shopper was scuffling with Baptist picketers protesting in front of the store. A desperate lingerie shopping scab was trying to cross the picket line. YES! The day had suddenly picked up! How those sneaky Baptist picketers assembled so quickly without me noticing, I’ll never know. But there they were in their conservative Sunday picketing attire of polyester pants and collared shirts primly buttoned to the neck carrying handmade picket signs which read: SMUT PEDDLERS BURN IN HELL and JESUS LOVES PORNOGRAPHERS. For some reason I never connected the dots enough to realize they were referring to me with those signs. I think it had something to do with the vast majority of them shopping at the store the following day. They used the picketing as a scouting mission for tomorrows purchases. On their Monday shopping excursions they never tried to close down the store. I appreciated their financial support even if I didn’t receive their moral support, on Sundays anyway. It was nice to know they held back a little of their Sunday beneficence for the benefaction of keeping their local lingerie store in business. Mighty Christian of them.

Sunday was also the day that a nasty derogatory article about the store came out in the local paper. What I thought was to be a fluff piece about Hot Gifts For Valentine’s Day turned into a nasty barrage of words. Yes, I know, I was gullible to that sweet, young reporters charms. I’d been interviewed for fluff pieces like that many times before and gave her all my stock replies about Hot Gifts For Valentine’s Day. All special occasions were interchangeable in the world of lingerie so the pat answers for Hot Gifts For Christmas or Hot Gifts For Anniversaries were the same as those for Hot Gifts For Valentine’s Day. The responses were always the same with only the color choices changing hierarchically. And, yet, that sweet young reporter, so eager to make a name for herself, turned that silly squib into slanderous bunk, on the front page, no less. She turned her fluff piece (which incidentally still ran buried in the back somewhere) into an attack on the morality of a town that would let pornographers and smut peddlers stay open for business right there in downtown.

Thanks to the Baptist picketers, I felt like I was on familiar, yet shaky ground when I read the article. Still, I was incensed. I took it as a personal attack. When she called the following day, so proud of herself, so proud of achieving a front page scoop, asking if I had seen the article on my store, waiting for accolades that would never come as I was completely speechless. I knew my stock answers to her interview questions hadn’t given her anything to misconstrue as they had worked for previous newspaper articles with no adverse fanfare. Everything she mentioned in the article she had gleaned from merely walking around the store assuming the most scandalous of assumptions about the merchandise she observed though never touched.

But what started out as an attack on the store turned into the best advertising campaign I never planned, or planned, for that matter. The store was filled with shoppers for weeks as everyone had to check out the pornographer and smut peddler in town. And not one protesters showed up, not even those pesky Baptist picketers. In the end, I sent that sweet, young reporter a Thank You card.

Sunday was also the day that the local drag queens would come in to shop. Fresh off a successful weekend of entertaining in clubs, they would come in to look for some new accessories to wear for the next weekends performance. I loved the drag queens as they were way more interesting than the Baptist picketers who usually visited on Sundays. Men dressed in women’s clothing are always more fun than just about any other visitors except, possibly, Baptist picketers dressed in drag, which almost never happens.

As I really preferred to eat brunch with my friends on Sundays and not have to cut out early to go work, I hired a cute young gay guy named Robert to work in my place on Sundays. He was a friend of a friend, recently out of the closet, and utterly fascinated with drag queens. I figured he would be perfect to work on drag queen Sundays. He was polite, easy going and, strangely eager to learn about lingerie. At first I had my doubts that he would mesh with the occasional straight person that came in the store. But it turned out that female shoppers loved his flattering attention and their male companions weren’t threatened by his effeminate, yet sunny nature. And the drag queens? They loved him because he was cute, young, sweet and, mostly, because he was available.

We worked together for several Sundays as I wanted to make sure he could handle any situation that came up. The first time the drag queens came in, he was in awe and a little intimidated by them. He was completely star struck as he had seen their show the previous evening. They, of course, loved him and the adulation that bubbled from him. Nothing like a little flattery to perk up a girls mood. Robert quickly became their favorite drag hag. These pageant queens were taxing customers and it was hard to keep up with the demands of the group as they competed for attention simultaneously. Mostly the girls shopped for stockings, garter belts, corsets, gloves and feather boas. As Robert became more familiar with the store merchandise and more comfortable with the drag queens the less I showed up to work on Sundays. After a few weeks I quit showing up for work on Sundays. Not wanting Robert to feel completely abandoned, I would call to check on him leaving phone numbers were he could reach me.

After about a month I didn’t worry about Robert running the store. I could finally enjoy my day off lazing around over brunch for hours with my friends. I relaxed, that is, until the day that the country people showed up that first time. These were the people who, literally, wore their best, pressed overalls into town to shop on Sundays. They rarely came into town and I had forgotten to prep Robert about them. To my friends I jokingly refereed to them as the inbred mountain hillbillies. Truthfully, I really didn’t know where they came from or, for that matter, if they were truly inbred. One couple in particular freaked me out the most. He looked about forty, maybe fifty, it was hard to tell as he had no teeth and a time worn look and she looked about thirteen or fourteen and was always very pregnant. Neither of them looked quite ‘right’, like they had a few chromosomes were missing or had a single digit IQ. I guessed they were cousins or maybe she was his daughter but then again, I didn’t know for sure. This was the land of Deliverance, after all, and anything was possible. I shuddered to think what the children looked like. Thankfully, I never saw them.

I’m guessing the first time they came into the store when Robert was working must have scared him as much as it scared me the first time I encountered them. He tracked me down by phone frantically screaming “You need to come to the store right away. There’s some people here you need to see. I need your help with them RIGHT NOW”.

As it was only early afternoon I was still sitting around eating brunch with my friends. Being the responsible store owner that I am. I left Sunday brunch to rescue Robert from what horrors he had encountered. Thankfully the store was just a few doors away and I had only had one Bloody Mary. When I entered the store a man was accusing Robert of hitting on his wife. It was all I could do to keep from laughing as Robert swished around the store frantically waving his hands repeating “No, no, no! You have it all wrong. I was just trying to help her in the fitting room. I work here!” It was readily apparent that the customer who was causing so much distress to Robert was inbred mountain man who didn’t realize that Robert was gay and worked at the store. Too funny! I paused, catching my breath and put on a straight face before running interference between the two.

First, I went to the dressing room to check on inbred mountain wife. I wasn’t really concerned with how she was doing in there as they never bought anything. Like too many couples they used our store to get their rocks off not buying anything. Unlike most of those couples, I think they had a lot further to drive home to consummate what they started in my store. If they were truly ‘mountain hillbillies’ they had a couple hours drive home. That would be some very prolonged foreplay.

After checking on the wife, I walked over to Robert and inbred mountain man husband in time to hear him ask Robert “What kind of real man works in a girly store?” Whoa! Obviously an intervention was in order.

I interrupted “ Sir, your wife needs your opinion in the dressing room”. This always works for any situation in a lingerie store. He left to join his wife, the (once again) very pregnant thirteen year old.

Robert, looking relieved, said “Thank God you showed up. I thought he was going to kick my ass. This face is just too pretty for that! ”

I started laughing and said “So were you really flirting with his wife?”

Robert didn’t see the humor in the situation like I did. I was practically doubled over laughing. “Oh stop. It’s not that funny” he said bitchily.

I was still laughing when the inbred mountain mans wife came out of the dressing room announcing that nothing fit. No shock there, I thought. From the look on inbred mountain mans face I was pretty sure whether anything actually “fit” was irrelevant.

Robert was relieved to see them walk out the door. Before rejoining my friends at brunch, I felt the urge for one more dig. I gave into it “Robert, you really need to be nicer to the customers and put yourself in their place”

“Oh go fuck yourself” he said.

Gotta love a sassy employee.