Chuck
Palahniuk Migration Patterns in 21st Century Big Box Retail
Editor's note: The events described are unlikely and
preposterous, though possibly not untrue. Sorta like "Pirates of
the Caribbean 3."
 by
Nathaniel G. Moore
Indigo Eglinton, Store #278
Tuesday May 22, 2007
1pm-12am
Toronto, Canada.
This is my ex-manager, all nineteen
years of her, at noon: "I’ve been told he’s doing a soft
singing for his hardcore fans, but he’ll be in the staff room all
afternoon signing paperbacks."
"His books?" I ask.
"Yes, his books." And my
ex-manager scurries off to an office to check her Facebook.
I don’t follow. I’m still in litigation with myspace.com/notho
and can’t open a Facebook account.
In 2005 Chuck
Palahniuk came to this same Indigo to read from and celebrate the
Canadian release of Haunted. The rumours started floating that he
was dosing the Yonge & Eglinton population with roofies, though no
charges were ever brought up because the population itself at Y&E is
considerably dull and thoughtless to begin with.
This migration pattern repeats itself.
We are in Rant
country, and the Random House vipers are here too, snaking around the
shelves and scented gift items in biblical proportions.
 On
the way to the washroom, I brush past Chuck and since I’ve been
"channelling" George Michael (Quill
& Quire, May 2007) it seems a fitting location to begin my TDR
interview with the man that penned Fight Club and Choke.
"Chuck, your new book is written
in the form of an oral history with a multitude of perspectives. Was
this something you had planned on from the get-go?"
"Why don’t you mind your own
goddamn business!" Chuck replies, dressed in black pants and a
white dress shirt, very Tyler Durden.
I tell him he is being unreasonable and
compliment his ability to imitate the typically thoughtless and
irritating Y&E Indigo customer. I then explain how he also fits in
this area fashion-wise, as Funhouse Magazine had recently
featured this horrorshow of a neighbourhood in an article called "The
Worst Dressed Neighbourhoods in the History of Cloth."
I continue with the interview from the closed side of the men’s
bathroom door. "Would you please just open up, for your fans if not
for me!" He doesn’t answer. I wait for what seems like an hour
but is more honestly about three minutes then decide to bother the
people in HMV and buy all the copies of Fight Club to peddle
outside, even though on the Indigo sign it clearly says no memorabilia,
mobiles and xylophones. For some reason I also buy The Goonies
and Seed of Chucky.
A half an hour later, Chuck is back in
the staff room soft signing his heart out while his "hardcore
fans" are lined up in the hundreds, most of them celebrating Teen
Pregnancy Week here at Indigo, dressed in bloody bridal attire, and
snake all the way into the kids section. Some have plastic vomit and
broken ashtrays. Most have copies of Survivor and Choke in
their little grubby paws.
"Is Chuck your favourite author in
Canada?...I mean today?" I ask one pimply prince.
"Yes. Even when he’s not here,
he’s my favourite."
"You make me want to kill
myself," I reply.
"But how can that be, I just met
you?"
I turn to his friend. "And what
about you, what is your favourite Chuck book?"
"Choke."
"Indeed."
Chuck Palahniuk is a big deal in
Canada. They’ve even named an underground parking lot after him in
Pickering, mainly because it resembles the underground parking lot in Fight
Club, but that’s beside the point. It seems like the people of
this country like it when he’s here, perhaps more than any other
author in North America. I mean, he’s bigger than candles today, and
that’s saying a lot here at Indigo.
Using my Indigo immunity I call an
emergency meeting with my ex-manager and some cash supervisors. I
explain how rude Chuck was in the hallway, and how apathetic he sounded
through the closed men’s washroom door. "He’s not willing to do
business with me, and that’s bad business for TDR. I think as a result
of this, we have to teach him a lesson. This country isn’t his ATM,
his place to come and snack on, impregnate our cashiers, eat organic
trail mix from our hair-dryered-out skulls. We should swerve tonight’s
reading. We should swerve his whole goddamn life!" I yell.
"What are you saying
Nathaniel?"
"Okay Betty, or Sandra, I can
never remember your name, go print up a CER (Customer Experience
Representative) contract, get him to sign it saying it’s a release for
Indigo to publish his photos online or something."
"Then what?" my ex-manager
says to me she says, "then what?"
I says "then we knock him out and
put him in a big bag, throw him in the safe with the other people we
keep around, then when he comes to in the morning, fit him with a vest
and put him on cash."
"We can’t do that. Listen, let
me talk to Chuck, see if he’s willing to do the TDR interview,"
my ex-manager says, I think it’s Betty. But I grab her wrist, raise it
to my nose. "Go put on your sweaty red dress." I turn my
attention away from Betty and continue. "He’s left us no
choice," I continue. "Look, we have to keep him in the store,
it’ll be good for business, and we have to do this on our terms.
Heather would want this to, you know it, it’s not fair that she’s in
the Bahamas."
"There’s going to be a lot of
heat on you Nathaniel, can you handle it?" Betty says, slipping out
of her vest and into her red dress.
"You’re talking to the man who
was ranked 7th in I-Rewards sales last Spring in all of
Ontario. Sure I can handle it. I have so far. I just think we have to
set an example, we can joke about catering to our horribly-dressed
customers, carrying them around the store on our backs, reading the
books for them, and doing their children’s homework, but they’re
laughing at us harder than we laugh at them when they leave the store.
They are getting away with murder, behaviour wise. At least this way,
they’ll think twice before talking back to us or complaining that we
took away the beds and the couches. Like they don’t have furniture at
home! Fuck them, fuck them and their Cotton Ginny scowls."
So we decide that we’ll all gang beat
Chuck down after the last fan has pimple-popped his way down the Bruce
Mau designed stairwell, (which I used to spit shine with cheerleader
tears every Friday night).
A few of my vest-wearing associates
warm to the plan when they hear Chuck berating a young philosophy grad
named Des (who is not even two weeks in the vest) about the
"piss-poor" bottled water, that he wouldn’t even let his
goldfish drink the stuff.
"That’s it," I said to the group of us. We were seven.
"We go in, beat him down with sharpened giftcards and scentless
third-world candles and put him in this big denim bag."
"Where did you get this large bag
from Nathaniel?" Betty asked. "Wouldn’t you like to know.
Betty we don’t have time to discuss this with the committee." I’m
waiting for her to yell I AM NOT A COMMITTEE! but I remember that she
hasn’t seen The Empire Strikes Back 1,324 times.
Des joins us :40 seconds later, so now
we are eight. "I can’t wait," Des says. "I mean,
yesterday it was that Goth boy asking me out, today it’s Chuck…"
"Des!" I shout. "We don’t
have time for your fucking drama. I know you’re new but this is
serious stuff and it’s more affective if I remain the singular
narrative God. You’re all sprawly."
Des blinks in accordance, apologetic and a bit ashamed and we all begin
our attack.
"He’s not bleeding, he’s
likely dehydrated," I yell.
So the eight of us is enough to get ol’
Chuckster into the denim bag and down the lazy customer elevator. I
throw in some stale chocolates and three bottles of microwaved (1:02)
Indigo Clear water and we close up the bag, tossing it into the safe in
the cash office.
Mike Fuhr from Random House is standing
in the middle of Bruce’s stairwell and is livid. "Let me handle
this," I say, noticing my ex-manager sniffing the armpits of her
stretchy red dress.
"Where is Chuck?" Mike asks
me. Mike and I go way back, if it isn’t a nod at Book Expo it’s a
toast with champagne and strawberries at Random House headquarters
celebrating another Giller nomination, or it’s a polite e-mail
praising my violent bowling theatrics on Youtube.
"Chuck is resting in our
hospitality suite." I assure him. "He has phase seven carpal
in both his hands, it’s spreading to his lower intestine."
"Is he going to be all
right?"
"Yes, we’ve given him 300 cc’s
of FCC. Mike, have I ever let you down?"
The next morning I visit my old store
before a conference call with my psychiatrists, personal trainer and an
LPG sales rep in Halifax.
I see Chuck Palahniuk (sporting a Sponge Bob band-aid on the bridge of
his nose) at the cash in a vest ringing in a stack of Dan Brown books.
Chuck’s customer is hyper, like a puppy excites and rips newsprint
with his feet.
"He’s so good," the
customer insists, pointing to the books.
I can’t resist. "She’s not
talking about you Chuck!" I yell from the edge of the counter, even
though I know that my yelling is in clear violation of the Indigo Sales
Prevention Act of 2006, I have immunity.
"I just loved The Da Vinci Code,"
the customer’s eyes light up, wanting validation for this prehistoric
and most desperate of retail gestures.
"Yes, he’s very popular,"
Chuck finally says, giving into her consumer vanity, his lip still fat
from being sucker punched by Des and choked out in Betty’s armpits.
As I leave a small tear goldfishes at
my right tear duct, I hear Chuck whimper out a question to the cashier
next to him.
"When is my first break?"
Yeah, choke on it Chuck, this is your new
life, and it’s ending one Dan Brown gift receipt at a time.
At press time, Nathaniel G. Moore was TDR’s
features editor and proud member of the Indigo Immunity Progam. |
