I bused to the maildrop, where plenty of mail was waiting. Too much, really.

Nothing from Corina, who’s twice promised me a letter, but there was something from Sarah-Katherine. You want the details of what she said and how she’s doing in New York? Usually in the zine I’m all up in my own business and sometimes all up in the business of others, but there are limits, and today, you get nothing!

Waiting for the bus and seeing none coming, I spent 20¢ to hear my messages at a phone booth, but only heard, “The call you have made requires a 20¢ deposit.” Hey, that ain’t right.

I hung up, but my two dimes did not come tinkling back. Hey, that really ain’t right.

The instruction placard said to call 2-1-1 for refunds, and it’s a free call so I dialed 2-1-1. A bored lady answered, and I explained what had happened. She apologized for the phone stealing my dimes, and asked for my name and address.

“My address?” I asked. “You’re going to mail me 20¢?”

“Well, actually, we’re going to mail you a check for 20¢.”

“A check for twenty cents? What a colossal lot of bother for everyone. Can’t you just connect my call?”

“No, we can’t do that, sir, but we will mail you a check. May I have your name and address please?”

“I don’t even have a bank account. What am I going to do with a check for twenty cents?” I could take it to one of those check-cashing swindles, where they charge 15%, and after waiting in line for ten minutes, if I could somehow convince ’em I’m Doug Holland without any ID, maybe they’d give me 17¢.

“It’s our policy, sir. All refunds are issued by check.”

“Well, I didn’t write a check to your phone booth.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s our policy.”

“Yeah, and you only work there,” I said, “so I won’t yell at you. Could I please yell at your boss, though?”

“Sure,” she said cheerfully, and after a few minutes on hold with “Yesterday” when I would’ve preferred “The Girl From Ipanema,” her boss came on the line. He was reading from the same script, though. No, he couldn’t complete my call. No, he couldn’t force two dimes into the coin return. No, he couldn’t even mail me two dimes, only a check for two dimes. “It’s company policy,” he said for a third or fourth time, as the #27 bus I’d been waiting for rolled by without me.

“Never mind, then,” I said. “I’ll just vandalize the phone booth and we can call it even.”

♦ ♦ ♦

The #27 only runs every 15 minutes, so I figured I’d take the subway home instead. It’s not a long walk to Market Street, and there’s a new Walgreens between 4th and 5th. I foolishly thought it might be swankier than the run-down Walgreens near my house, and I wanted a candy bar, so I walked in.

You can’t walk in, though, without passing through a full-body scanning machine, and it beep-beeped at me. A security guard was there almost instantly, and he said, “Excuse me, sir,” very politely. I smiled and said hello, and started looking around for the candy section.

“Sir!” he said again, “we need to check your bag.”

“I don’t have a bag,” I said semantically.

“Sir,” said the guard, but I was in no mood. All I wanted was a candy bar, maybe two, and then a quick subway ride home to the hotel. At the candy section, the guard was still yammering at me. “Your bag, sir. We need to check your bag.” Shelves of chocolate and caramel, but where’s the candy bar I’d come for?

“Don’t you have the Snickers with extra peanuts?”

“Sir,” he said, still impressively polite despite my ignoring him, “something in your bag set off the sensor, and I’ll need to check your bag.”

“I don’t have a bag,” I said again, “and all I did was walk into the store.”

“We need to check your backpack.”

Hearing him say ‘backpack’ instead of ‘bag’ felt like victory, but I’d run low on arguments so I said nothing more. “We need to check your backpack, sir,” he said again, a little louder.

I stared at him for several seconds, weighing whether to mountainize this molehill. “The fuck you will,” I said.

“Then I’ll have to ask you to leave,” he said, pointing toward the door.

“No, man, you don’t have to ask. It’s my pleasure to leave,” and I left, without another word and without even flipping him off. The sensor didn’t beep as I walked out, like it had beeped when I walked in.

Outside the store, I leaned against the wall and pulled my notebook out of my backpack, to get the conversation on paper. As I was scribbling, a borderline-bum-looking old man came out of the Walgreens and gave me a thumbs-up. I thought he was just a happy bum, and wouldn’t have even connected his thumb with what had happened, until he said, “You told him, but good.”

I gave him a wavy hand, the gesture for ‘so-so’. I don’t think I’d told the guard but good, and there were great things I could’ve said that didn’t pop into my head until it was too late. Certainly, I should’ve demanded to speak to a manager, who maybe would’ve offered me a check for 20¢.

The scanners are supposed to detect the store’s tags, to alert the guard if someone’s walking out with unpaid merchandise. Which makes sense, OK, but what’s the point in making people walk through the scanners as they enter?

And if I’m a suspected shoplifter, then watch me closely, follow me down every aisle. Nobody’s gonna “check” my backpack, though. What does that mean, anyway? “Check your bag.” Was the guard saying they’d stash my backpack behind the counter until I left? Or did “check your bag” mean he wanted to search it?

Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s going to do either.

Still kinda pissed and still wanting a candy bar, I walked two blocks to the next Walgreens. Again I had to pass through a sensor as I entered, and again it beeped. This time, though, no security guard approached.

I walked to the candy section, and like the other Walgreens they didn’t have any Snickers with extra peanuts, so I harrumphed right outta there, and again the sensor didn’t beep as I left.

Came home and wrote half an angry letter to Walgreens, asking if it’s now their policy that all shoppers will be persecuted, but I gave up midway through. Walgreens doesn’t care, and I had better things to write than that letter.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Coupled with Monday’s salt-shaker story, it prolly sounds like I’m looking for trouble, but I don’t demand silk gloves and a free handj*b with every purchase. All I ask of a company or a worker is, don’t actively try to make your customers’ day worse.

♦ ♦ ♦  

And I never did have that candy bar.

our 81st weekly open mike

Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.

5/23/2026

Anything goes

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I was writing my review of yesterday’s movies, when I felt someone’s footsteps from the next room — someone fat, walking heavy. Which is weird, because the guy who lives in that room isn’t fat. 

That was my first moment’s thought when the earthquake hit, but not even a fat guy could shake the floor like that, so I darted to the door of my room, and stood under it like you’re supposed to.

I was wearing a t-shirt and nothing else. Hey, you want me dressed, I need advance notice. I wasn’t gonna stop to put on pants, so my butt was exposed to the hallway, while my willie looked into my room.

A stack of zines toppled off the edge of my bed, and the floor visibly moved just a little. I’ve been through several 3s and a few 4s since moving to California 5 years ago, but this morning’s quake sure caught my attention. It was either a Richter 5, or this building is flexible enough to make even a trivial temblor feel bigger.

When it seemed to have stopped, I put on pants and walked to the fire escape, but there was the same view as yesterday — no buildings were missing, no smoke in the distance, nobody screaming, no crowds assembling in the street, and only one siren in the distance, but there’s always at least one. So what the heck, I went back to the typewriter.

(Addendum: Wednesday’s paper says it was only 4.8. That makes it the biggest quake I’ve been through in SF, but it was nothing much, really.)

♦ ♦ ♦

Took a few sandwiches to a nearby park for lunch, and while eating noticed a pretty woman approaching. I do notice such things.

A man walking the other direction looked at her and put a surprised look on his face. “Didn’t you go to Mission High?” he asked.

“No,” she answered, with a small smile.

“Neither did I,” he said, “but you’re sure beautiful—” but he was talking to the empty space where she’d been a moment earlier. Her smile had disappeared just before she did.

This was right in front of me, so I said to the guy, “Does that line ever work?”

At that his body started shaking like this morning’s quake, his arms rolling around like an episode of Soul Train, and he answered me with a rapping rhyme:

    “I’ve always got a line
    for the women who so fine
    might like to squeeze my lime…”

There was more to it than that, but that’s all I jotted down, after he’d seen another pretty woman across the park and trotted toward her.

Other than that, nobody interrupted my lunch. Nobody tried chatting me up. I’m not sure anyone in the park even noticed that a fat man was eating sandwiches. It was perfect.

Something I know I’ve written before and will probably write again: I’m sure glad I’m not a pretty woman, so I can be invisible my entire life instead of always being pestered by men who imagine they’re charming.