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After the Crowds Have Gone No Words Left UnspokenBy Rick Horowitz
Late at night and appetites on the prowl, I do what I always do: I throw on some clothes and take myself down to the 9-Eleven. When everything else in the neighborhood is locked up tight until morning, it's so convenient to have a 9-Eleven right down the block and open for business. This one's been up and running for about a year already, and I'll bet I'm in there at least a couple of times a week. That sign of theirs, so bright on our quiet street, it's like... I'm not sure what it's like. "I'll take a pack of similes," I say to the friendly counter clerk, who's sitting in his regular spot just inside the door, behind the pane of double-thick glass. "We're all out of similes," he says to me. "Some metaphors, then. Unfiltered." "We're out of metaphors, too," he says. That's worth a chuckle. (This late, almost anything is worth a chuckle.) The counter clerk likes to joke with his customers; sometimes we'll go back and forth a half-dozen times or more while he's making change. I don't mind. Actually, I kind of enjoy it -- I figure it's a personal connection in an unconnected world. "You had me going," I say. "Good one." "I'm not kidding," he says. "See?" And he turns toward the wall directly behind him, while his arm makes this tired little arc from one end of the wall to the other. I look where he's looking, and he's absolutely right: There isn't a simile or a metaphor anywhere. How peculiar! I've been coming to the 9-Eleven since they first opened their doors, and they've never run out of stuff like that before. Sometimes I'll find one that's gone beyond its pull date, and I can tell just by sniffing it that it's not as fresh as it should be. (If I'm desperate enough, I might grab it anyway.) But to run out completely? That I've never heard of. "What happened?" I ask him, but he doesn't answer. Instead, he looks right past me and into the rest of the store. I turn around to see what he's looking at, and what he's looking at is -- Nothing. The shelves have been stripped completely bare. (I don't know how I didn't notice.) Where they normally have anecdotes stacked practically to the ceiling, not to mention row after row of chronicles and vignettes, there's a great big empty. Even the coolers along the back wall -- you can always find a nice six-pack of symbolism if you need one -- even the coolers are empty. This is how bad it is: They don't even have any of those Cliche Stix, the ones in the cellophane wrappers that hang on those poles over in the corner. "You're out of Cliche Stix?!" "We're out of everything. They cleaned us out." "Robbers?" "Anchors." And then he tells me how all the TV anchormen, not to mention all the network correspondents and newspaper writers and magazine writers and everyone else out there, had totally swept through the place the past few days, buying up every narrative device they could get their hands on. By the time they were done, there wasn't a proverb, an aphorism -- not so much as a platitude -- left standing. In all his nights at the 9-Eleven, he's never seen anything like it. There'll be a new shipment tomorrow, he says. In the meantime, I'm out of luck. I'm halfway out the door when suddenly he calls me back. "I just remembered," he says, and he reaches way down below the counter, pokes around down there for a good 20 seconds and finally comes up with a package of wrinkled, puckered...something. "You want an allegory?" What am I going to do with an allegory at this time of night? Posted 9/10/02. Rick's
commentary hits the spot any time of day! (You really should tell somebody.)
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Rick Horowitz
