"Deer on the Headlights" again, an(other) essay by Nick Gregorio

“Hey, it’s me.”


There’s fur all over the side of my car. I had no idea that deer shed like startled chickens when they get struck by a vehicle.

Mom, over the phone says, “Everything alright? It’s late. You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“I hit a—No, I haven’t been drinking.”

“Are you sure?”

Mom likes to assume that, anytime I have to call the house after 9:30pm, I’m in some sort of trouble that involves alcoholic beverages. Sure, I enjoy all sorts of beers; Victory, SlyFox, Sierra Nevada, but the fact of the matter is, considering all the factors (gasoline, clothes, haircuts, the occasional trip to the record shop), I can’t afford to drink the aforementioned beverages, much less believe that I could pay for the gas to get to a bar and expect to buy anything more than a Diet Coke. No, I haven’t been drinking. The deer, on the other hand, thinking it was a great idea to leap over a median on 309, may have been a bit sauced.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You know, Mom, plenty could go wrong without having any alcohol in my system. This is a
dangerous world. I could’ve run over a runner who just so happened to forget his protective reflectors on this fateful evening—”

“Nick.”

“—I could have left the keys in the ignition and gotten the car stolen by that very same runner, under different circumstances, of course, who remembered his reflectors but changed his mind about running tonight and said, ‘Huh, I’ll just jimmy-jack this moron’s car, he left the keys in the ignition’—”

“Nick.”

“I could—”

“Nick.”

“What?”

“What happened?”

“I hit a deer.”

“Another one?”

Does it really happen often enough to be asked such a question? Yeah, I’ve hit some deer in the past, so what? It’s not as if I throw on florescent orange hunting gear and say, “Hey, I’m gonna go get us some dinner,” every time I take a trip to a gas station or a convenience store. I don’t try to hit deer; they just seem to enjoy getting in my way.

“Yes. Another one.”

As the words leave my mouth, a car blows past me standing beside my car. It honks. I know what the driver’s thinking. It’s the same thing I think of anytime I pass a minor fender-bender or a pull-over: “Stupid bastard, learn how to drive!” accompanied by a good, hardy laugh. I never, however, honked at someone in this situation, afraid that the Universe will tell some hungry deer than there’s some tasty, delicious grass or some juicy berries lying directly in the middle of the lane I’m traveling in. I wish that would happen to that honker right now, in fact. The scream of the breaks, the sound of the car crumpling up like a Pepsi can, maybe even the tinkle-tinkle of glass scattering upon the macadam. The Honker, of course, wouldn’t be injured, but he’d know that he’d honked at the wrong accident. That Honker would know that the Universe just gave him a nice, swift kick to the groinal region (groinal region?).

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“How about the car?”

“It’s fine. Did you know deer shed when you hit them?”

“What?”

“They shed. There’s fur all over the car.”

I should clean the car off. The last time I left the car with fur and other, let’s say, remnants, Dad completely debunked the story I told him as to how I’d come to hit my first deer. I’d said that the deer “came out of nowhere” from the right side of the road. I couldn’t slow down in time before I clipped him with the right headlight. Minor damage, you know? Nothing really too serious to worry about. No reason to mention that I’d actually fallen asleep at the wheel and opened my eyes just in time to realize that my antlered friend had had enough time to cross the entire road, coming from the left hand side, for me to strike him with the passenger-side headlamp. I figured that telling that side of the story might not be necessary because the damage really did look as if he’d popped “out of nowhere,” well, if you use my definition of the term.

The very next morning Dad said, “I want to show you something.”

He took me outside and, like David Caruso, presented me all of the forensic evidence that suggested my story was false.

“What side of the road did you say he came from?” he asked.

“The right.”

“Uh-huh, are you sure?”

“Pretty sure,” insert nervous laugh here, “I mean, I was there.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

“Sure.”

“See this dent here, on the fender? It’s deep. A dent like that had to come from the strongest part of the deer. You know which part that is?”

“The shoulder?”

“Correct. Now, this fact alone corroborates your story.”

“Okay. Can I go now?”

“Nope, I’ve got more. Take a look at the passenger side door. What’s all over it?”

“Green stuff, some corn?”

“Vomit.”

“Vomit?”

“Yes, vomit.”

“Okay, so the deer puked on the car.”

“Son, the only way for that deer to vomit on that particular side of the car, is if you hit him on his right shoulder, with the right hand side of your car. Meaning he’d have to have come from the left, or he’s able to do an about face in less than a second”

“Okay, so?”

“You said he came from the right, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Impossible.”

“But that’s what happened.”

“Uh-huh. Look at this,” he holds up a broken piece of antler. “This was wedged in the wheel well. The front passenger wheel well.”

“Oh.”

“What really happened?”

Apparently, my father’s real name is Philip Marlowe, or Detective Lenny Briscoe, or Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes, I’m not certain which. However, after I’d confessed what had really taken place, I vowed to hunt that deer down with extreme prejudice. I didn’t kill him. He wasn’t on the side of the road. I heard him walk off into the woods. He was still alive, playing chicken with irresponsible motorists.

So I had formulated a plan. I would buy chloroform and a rag, find a nice, tall tree off of North Wales Road and wait. I’d wait for the deer with the broken antler. When he’d come around, I’d dive from the tree, tackle him to the ground and place the rag, drenched in chloroform over his snout and wait until he drifted off into a nice, deep, chemically induced sleep.

He’d come to in a dark room, tied to a chair, seeing only the lit cherry from a cigarette smoldering just a few yards away.

“Wh-what’s going on?” he’d say.

“You know what’s going on.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m The Cigarette Smoking Man.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you watch The X-Files?”

“I was never a fan.”

“That’s a shame, it’s a great show.”

“Sci-fi’s not really my thing—”

“Shut up.”

“Why am I tied up? Why am I here?”

“Stop asking questions to which you already know the answers.”

“But I don’t the answers. I don’t even know what is going—”

“Shut up.” I’d clap twice and the lights would pop on. That’s when he’d know precisely what was going on. He’d see me, cigarette between my lips, holding a broken piece of antler. At that moment he’d see the wall behind me. A nicely kept brick fireplace, decorated with photos and—

“Oh, God,” he’d scream, “Oh, Jesus! Those were my friends! How can you just hang them on your walls as decorations, you sick bastards! They were my friends!”

“My father’s a hunter.”

“You’re sick, man! You’re sick!”

“SHUT-UP!”

I’d hold up the antler and say, “Does this belong to you?”

“Naw, that ain’t mine, man.”

“Don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare.”

“So what if it’s mine? It could be fake! God knows, you probably got antlers all over this place!”

“It’s yours.”

“How would you know?”

“You smashed up my car.”

That’s when the realization would sink in, “Oh, God. That was you?”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“Look, I can pay for the damages.”

“You’re lying again. Deer don’t use money.”

“Yet you assumed I watch The X-Files.”

“Everybody watches The X-Files! But that’s beside the point. Why me? Why’d you pick me? Were you out, drinking with your buddies, looking for some dangerous fun?”

“No, man, it wasn’t like that, I swear.”

“What was it like, then?”

“I worked a double shift, it was late, I wanted to get home to my kids.”

“You and I both know that deer are not monogamous animals!”

“Come on, man! What do you want from me?”

“Revenge.”

My father would step into the room, dressed in full florescent orange hunting gear, untie our antlered hostage, and open the back door. He’d say, “You’ve got sixty seconds, friend. Then I come after you.”

Mom, over the phone, says, “You get in an accident and the only thing you can think of is deer shedding?”

“No.”

I look back and see the deer I struck, lying on the side of the road. Am I supposed to feel bad? He bounded over the median. He hit me. How is this my fault? This is evidence of obvious overpopulation! My father’s favorite hobby is now justified! I do not feel bad. I feel no remorse! I—oh, dammit.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s got spots on him.”

“Just get home safe, okay?”

I close the car door; the car door covered in deer fur, and start the car. I wish I’d hit an older deer. A deer old enough do enjoy playing chicken with his pals. This one is just a little guy. A poor dumb little punk kid who never saw a pair of headlights before and thought, perhaps this is a delicious treat or maybe he saw the face of God, or Bambi or whomever deity choose to blindly follow.

I begin to drive, my latest victim in my rearview mirror. I’m not formulating plan, this time, to seek out revenge upon this deer. I sort of want to seek vengeance on myself. Who hits a baby damn deer with an SUV? Honestly, even if he did stupidly dive over a stone wall to come play with a bright red SUV-shaped deer, why didn’t I swerve, get out of the way. He was a baby, for God’s sake. I could have easily jerked the wheel to the right and gone over the edge of the highway. It wouldn’t have been that bad, I would’ve survived (probably). I would have been cushioned by the leaves of the tree branches the vehicle would’ve crashed through on its way to the ground. I could’ve saved that cute, spotted little woodland creature!

Police lights flash up ahead a good stretch. As I get closer to the source, the images of the deer, wide-eyed, and terrified of the oncoming, imminent tragedy of what it is to be alive as a finicky, nervous creature of the forest begin to evaporate. I’m not imagining myself driving off the road to spare the cute little bastard anymore as I realize that that Honker from earlier must have been speeding. I can see the cop bending at the hip, ducking his head into the driver’s side window of the Honker’s car.

I roll down the window and slow the car to a crawl as I reach the Honker and this wonderful public servant (or Universal servant), say, “Everything alright, officer?” and screech off into the night, manically laughing, enjoying every last second of poetic justice. The universe—oh, shit, I killed a baby deer back there.

"I Am A New Man, I Grew A Beard of Shame" an(other) Essay by Nick Gregorio

A Beard of Shame is a type of facial hair growth that a man (or a woman, with some sort of hormonal anomaly) grows when he realizes that, no longer, does he have a female counterpart (a girlfriend, to use the parlance of our time) to appease or impress. Lagwagon hits the situation on the nose with the lyric, On the day she left me, facial hair grew miraculously. I dressed in black like Johnny Cash and grew this beard of shame. I have grown a Beard of Shame.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that a beard can’t be considered a stylish and manly fashion choice. In fact, in my opinion, beards are, what I like to describe as, the tops. There have been many times where I’ve witnessed men (dudes) pulling off beards in severely awesome ways and subsequently said, “Wow, that’s severely awesome,” and immediately regretted lathering up and shaving that morning. I am extremely pro beard, but the Beard of Shame is a completely different classification of beard altogether. Its title alone suggests that it’s not as cool, or as manly, as a normal beard and, although it may look awesome, it lacks said severity to the grower.

How about a little personal history lesson?

Up until now, since the year 2000, I’ve never been without a female counterpart (a girlfriend). Sure, there was a week or two here, a week or two there, but I’ve never gone without a girlfriend or any girlfriendly prospects since the age of fourteen (if one could consider a fourteen year old buy lucid enough to consider a girl of the same age an actual girlfriend). I just went from one young lady to another, to another, without any problem. Whenever one door slammed shut, another suddenly opened just as quickly. Over the years I’ve held hands in ice skating rinks, slow danced with enough room for Jesus between us, made out in movie theaters, had boutonnière pins jabbed through my coat, shirt and undershirt, directly into an unsuspecting nipple, I’ve lied and said What Women Want was a good flick, stayed over in the dorm rooms of several collegiate flings, worked in a store where the girl I was seeing was one of the managers, gone to the Moshulu (a froofy restaurant on a big sail boat) for Valentine’s Day and thought I could actually afford it. I’ve done it all. And whenever one “relationship” (I use quotes for the ice skating days) ended, there was always another young lady willing to put up with my bumbling sentences and sweaty armpits. But, this time, all I’m left with is this type of situation:

*BRRRRIIIING* (Roll the R’s)

Bosstones Prime: u smell nice

*BRRRRIIIING*

Bosstones Prime: ur pretty

*BRRRRIIIING*

Bosstones Prime: lets date lol

I’m left with no skills (game, to use the parlance (again)), no prospects, and a beard (which, although it may look cool as hell, its name suggests that it’s not).

Now, this isn’t supposed to be a silly, yet somewhat sad piece about how my girlfriend blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I’m going to try to construe the Beard of Shame as a positive thing, something to draw out a man’s inner awesome.

Ok, let’s look at a hypothetical example, shall we? Say my friends and I are partaking in the imbibition of some frosty libations at a bar. In this bar, my buddy Jerred accidentally knocks over some meathead’s (you know the type: orange skinned from all the artificial tanning lotion, greasy blow-out hair cut, gold cross hanging from his neck, sunglasses in a poorly lit establishment) beverage. Said meathead says, “Psshh. What the fuck, bro?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, psshh what the fuck, bro? You spilt my drank.”

“Oh, so I did.”

“You wanna go, bro?”

“Not particularly.”

“Well, you gotta prahbum.”

“Do I, now?”

“Yeah, you do.”

That’s when Jerred will put his arm around Meathead’s shoulder and say, “See that guy over there?” as he points in my direction.

“Yeah?”

“He’s got a beard, he’s easily a foot taller than you. He’ll tear your arms off if I ask him to.”

Meathead’ll say, “That beard scares me.”

“It should, bro.”

“Sorry about putting my drink in your way.”

“Quite alright. Now buy me a beer.”

I can be thought of as the tough and frightening loose cannon with a history of tearing people limb from limb, just because of my sheer height accompanied by the Beard of Shame. Meathead didn’t realize that it’s a Beard of Shame, thusly Meathead piddles in his designer jeans. Granted, if this were to actually take place, Meathead would jaw Jerred, mosey on over to me and say, “I hear you wanna tear my arms off.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

I’d lean in close, say, “Can I see you outside?”

In the parking lot I’d remove my wallet from my pocket and let him have it. “Ok,” I’d say, “I
have twenty-three dollars in here, it’s yours. I’ve got a gift certificate to Applebee’s for a free appetizer; I hope you like that place, they’ve got good stuff. Uh, here’s my debit card, I’ll write my pin on the back. There’s only about fourteen bucks in there, but I get paid tomorrow. Should be a good check, I worked sixty hours in the last pay period. I’ll deposit it right into checking as soon as I get it, no worries, you can have it all. Just don’t overdraw cuz I’ll have to ask you to pay the charge.”
“You’ll pay the charge.”

“Yep. Yes, I will.”

“Anything else?”

“I’ve got a cell phone and some chap-stick.”

“What kind?”

“Burt’s Bees.”

“I’ll take both.”

“Ok, sure. How about some gum? You like Dentyne?”

“I’m an Eclipse kinda guy.”

“Oh, so I can keep it?”

“Nope.”

“Fair enough.”

Ok, so it may seem ridiculous, but the beard creates an illusion. I can be a whole different person; if not to anyone else, at least to myself. Everyone needs a little change, I feel, when the future you’ve been working toward gets tossed out the window, flushed down the toilet. That being said, the Beard of Shame isn’t really shameful at all. It’s a constant physical reminder that I can be who I want to be, no matter who that might be, whenever I want to be someone, anyone else. I can stop being “Relationship Guy” and become “Make-out Guy”. I can be the witty guy in the bar who sidles up to a pretty young dame, feeds her a clever comment and goes home with a phone number written on his hand. I can be the rugged looking guy who’s too cool for everyone around but still manages to get the ladies to swoon. I can be anyone, do anything, all because I want to be something other than these nervous feet and sweaty pits, if only for a little while.

See, I don’t have one certain future anymore, which, in a way, is rather nice. I can wake up every morning and roll with the proverbial punches. No future besides the very next minute, the next deep breath, the next heartbeat. Some may argue and say that planning things out is the only way to live, the only way to get on with life, but they’re just schemers, too afraid to strap on a pair of big-boy pants (or grow a beard, in this case) and let whatever might pop up just pop up.

On the day the beard started making its first appearance, Christina reached into her purse for a folded up sheet of paper. She had taken notes, points she wanted to touch on and make clear so that my feelings wouldn’t be hurt, or my inevitable question, “why?” wouldn’t have to be asked. I thought this was sort of funny, she was very much the same person I’d spent so much time with; she was always a note taker. For two years she’d taken notes for everything: birthday gift ideas, my favorite beers, or authors, or bands, all sorts of things. She was doing the best she could to make it easier on the both of us.

I said, “You can put that away.”

She did. That was pretty lousy of me, I admit.

“I can’t have you as my safety net anymore,” she said. “I need to learn how to pick myself up
on my own. The job, moving out, all of it. I need to learn.”

My brain immediately shifted to Michael Cain, asking Christian Bale, “Why do we fall?” in Batman Begins. The response is, “So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

Both Christina and Mr. Cain made a whole lot of sense at that moment. Did it mean that Christina, one day, would take up the moniker of Batgirl? No (admittedly, however, that would be rather awesome. Not to mention, sexy as hell), but that’s what we can do now; pick ourselves up. Once again, despite going our separate ways, we’re able share a common goal.

I can’t offer any profound revelation about how to deal with a little downturn of luck. I can’t do that at all. I’ve never been that great at dishing out advice, so I’m not going to even try. I grew my Beard of Shame because of a punk rock song that was written more than ten years ago, and, wouldn’t you know, the singer, Joey Cape, has a beard despite the fact that he’s married and has a couple kids. So, I guess everything I’ve said thus far is a load of bullshit. But I can safely say that I can do what I want, be who I want, whenever I want, as I’ve said before, and it’s not because of some beard, it’s because, every now and then, I’d like a little change that I have some control over. I can shave when I get tired of looking like a mountain man. I can grow a beard in under two weeks because I’m a freak of nature. I can change like a chameleon, put on a mask like Batman. Hell, maybe I’ll even try to be “Make-out Guy”, the guy just looking for a good smooch, for a little while. Although I think I might have to lose the beard for that one.

"Theft for Dummies" an Essay by Nick Gregorio

In aisle three you could find the backpacks marked for clearance that weren’t yet pulled from the plan-o-gram. The backpacks were perfect. See, because they were marked as clearance, their prices were slashed from the standard twenty to twenty-five dollar price range to about three bucks, give or take a dollar. Funny thing about the backpacks was they’d fly off the clearance rack within minutes, no matter what time of year it was. It was as if every parent with a child in school would hoard these school bags, thinking, if I don’t act now, my child will go without a school bag. What will the other kids say? They’ll go tell their parents that we can’t afford even the most basic school necessities. We’ll be laughing stocks. Being an OD employee allowed you to procure said backpacks before those paranoid, greedy parents ever got their grubby mitts on them, because you held the key, the new plan-o-gram, the source of knowledge that made you the first to know what backpacks were ready to become the perfect vessel for your fiendish schemes. Why, you may ask, were the backpacks so perfect, what was their use? Theft, of course. Say you nabbed one off the shelf as soon as the new monthly plan-o-gram was sent down from corporate, before the parents got a chance to even look at the clearance, you could fill it to the brim with various items of your choice and pay a premium price. And part of my duties at the OD was to get the clearance off the shelves, mark it as such and take it up to the rack in the front of the store. So I was even the first employee to know which backpacks were ready for clearance limbo. I was privy to the most valuable information a treacherous crook of an employee could have.

Once a month I’d grab a JanSport or an Airpacks AirApparent Mesh Backpack off the shelf and stuff it to the gills with all sorts of shit I thought could be potentially useful. Double-A Batteries: I’m gonna need them. My Gameboy might crap out on me during church or something. I’d take ten packs of twenty-four ($20.49 each). Five-Nib Calligraphy Set: I might need that if this whole college thing doesn’t pan out for me. I’d take three ($13.99 each). Gel Pens: Maybe I could become a famous novelist someday. I’d take five sets of eight ($12.99 a pop). Poppycock: I’d LOVE to eat a delicious caramelly popcorn snack. One tin ($9.99). Sometimes I’d spring for the chocolate covered Poppycock ($10.99). iTrip/Car Charger combo by Griffin: I need my tunes in my car. ($89.99). Wireless-G Range Expander: I could probably leech off my neighbor’s internet service ($99.99). Self-Sealing Bubble Mailers: Maybe my band will make it this year. I could send demos away in these. I’d take ten packs of twelve ($7.99). Et cetera, et cetera, so on and so forth.

I’d load up every last pocket on those backpacks and mosey my way on up to the CPC (Copy and Print Center) where my girlfriend at the time would give me a little wink or sometimes a devilish smirk, knowing full well what was going down and say, “That’ll be three dollars, sir.”

“I’ll be using debit today, miss.”

“Slide your card and tap in your pin when it prompts you.”

We’d do this dance, give or take, once a month, she and I. We’d pretend to have this clerk/customer relationship whenever I’d be pulling my scams. Well, at least the scams that required one to be rung out at the cash register. In my two years at the OD, I’d learned a plethora of ways to get merchandise out the front door, and I utilized every last tactic I was aware of.

I can’t really consider myself a criminal. Sure, during my time at the OD I’d stolen (and this is a rough estimate) over three-thousand dollars worth of shit I thought I was going to want to need somewhere down the line. But, truthfully, I never stole anything because I thought I was pulling one over on a retail giant. I never wanted to prove anything to anyone. I just saw something the slightest bit appealing and thought, that’s mine, I’m taking it. The OD set themselves up for acts like these to go down, too. I mean, first of all, there wasn’t a single security camera in that whole warehouse style super-store, not a single goddamn one. Although I’m fairly certain that wouldn’t have stopped me. I stole random items from every job I ever had. I pulled Lunchables right off the shelves and took them directly into the meat-room I was washing down in an Acme and Acmes have cameras lining the ceiling in five foot intervals up and down every aisle, for God’s sake. Never bothered me. So, obviously, working in the OD was an open invitation to take what I pleased, whenever I wished. Also, the OD’s managerial was typically nowhere to be found. However, whenever I would cross paths with them they’d ask me to accompany them out back for a cigarette. They’d smoke, and my friends and I would hurl empty SoBe bottles at the walls near the loading dock, or over into the mall lot, behind a thin row of evergreens.

The lack of security, the absent and apathetic managers, and the fellow employees who followed my lead, made for a perfect environment for pilfering merchandise. Could you blame me? I’m sure some could consider my actions irresponsible, or reprehensible, or despicable, or any other loaded work for bad, but this simple formula will pretty much sum up how this sort of thing can happen:

Boredom + Shitty security + Apathy + More boredom – Managerial staff + A wealth of merch ripe for the pickin’s = Aforementioned behavior

I believe you can see that the Universe aligned itself in such a way that it made robbery an appealing, fun and easy pastime for me. And, let me tell you, I was damn good. Damn good. I was so good, in fact, that I managed to steal, then un-steal an eight mega-pixel digital camera. Trust me when I use the term “un-steal”, because I certainly couldn’t consider what I did an actual “return”.

On my birthday, a year or so into my tenure, I thought I’d treat myself to a rather generous birthday gift. I was turning twenty-one, so I figured I was entitled to anything in the store. Twenty-one’s a biggie. I scoured every aisle, clearance rack, and top-stock shelf, looking for anything that was going to suit my fancy. Nothing caught my eye. Nothing popped out and wished me a happy birthday. That is until the loading dock bell rang, that day’s freight load had just shown up and I was FreightBoy, the gofer whose job it was to haul the pallets off the truck and begin to sort and separate the electronics from the general office supplies and furniture, so it could quickly and easily be entered into the store’s inventory.

I unloaded the truck and began to hear someone, something, call out to me. “Happy birthday!” it called, “Today’s your day, buddy! You’re turning twenty-one and you’re able to legally drink beer now without fear of any legal repercussions. Today’s your lucky day. You should probably choose a brand new, beautiful…”

Eight mega-pixel camera.

“Happy birthday to me,” I whispered to myself as I came upon a cache of these new, state of the art, sleek, stylin’, and insanely expensive cameras.

“Take us all!” they yelled.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t. Just one of you will do.”

“But we come in a set!”

“Just one, thanks.”

“But we’re family!”

“Now that’s just plain silly!”

“Ok, ok, jeez, you’re a tough sell. Speaking of sell, take one for yourself and unload the rest of us on eBay. You could make some serious loot, yes?”

“Yes. Yes, I could.”

“Ask Maggie for the key out back and hide us underneath the empty pallets. Come pick us up after you clock out.”

When Maggie opened the office door, before she could say a word, I said, “Can I get the key for the back door? Got some pallets and stuff to go out. Gotta make a trash run and, ya know, clean up back there a bit. Whoever closed last night really didn’t do that great of a—“

“Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

“Huh?”

She handed me the key and slammed the door in my face.

Against the pleading and begging coming from my new friends, the cameras, I only took one of them out back with me. I figured one missing from the shipping count wouldn’t matter, but all eight may have proved to be a bit suspicious, despite the fact that the new set of so called “managers” wouldn’t have entered the tech into the system until the next morning. Maybe even the day after that. I made myself a checklist to cover all my bases:

1.) Place the camera under pallets.
2.) Return key to Maggie.
3.) Clock out at five to get home in time for birthday dinner.
4.) Drive out back, pick up camera.
5.) Happy birthday to me.

Flawless. Absolutely flawless. I couldn’t have asked for an easier heist. Once again, the universe sent me a cosmic Hallmark card. Of course, with all fantastic circumstances comes that monkey wrench that gets tossed into the spokes of the best laid plans by none other than God himself (in any of his various denominational incarnations). Whether it’s something that results in the smallest of set backs, or an incident that derails your train to cosmic victory, something always happens. Always.

After my birthday/victory dinner, my girlfriend (different girl this time) handed me a box wrapped in Superman wrapping paper. “Happy birthday,” she said.
Admiring the wrapping, I carefully removed the paper, and saw my gift. There it was, God’s monkey wrench: A brand new Kodak four mega-pixel camera. Not as high-tech or stylish as the one I’d ganked, but sweet and thoughtful nevertheless. One had to go back. And, honestly, I had a pretty difficult time deciding which one that would be.

So, after hours of deliberation between myslef and the pilfered camera, we decided that it would be best to un-steal, yes, un-steal, the superior, yet somewhat dishonest camera and try to be the “good boyfriend” we both were certain that I could one day become.

Un-stealing can’t be considered “returning” due to the fact that I chose not to walk in the front door and state, “I’d like to make a return,” or just stroll on in, foregoing the cash registers all together, and place the item back where I found it. Nay, un-stealing is merely reversing the process in which the original theft took place. In this case, I drove around back, strategically placed the camera underneath a pallet, returned to the front lot, parked, said hello to Jerry (the store manager), asked him for the key to the back door by using a similar refuse removal excuse , quickly grabbed the camera and placed it back where I found it: among it’s overly expensive brethren. Done deal. I stole, then un-stole. See how it works?

I’ve got to tell you, however, that theft can occasionally have its drawbacks. No, not the whole birthday un-stealing thing. Not the risk of being caught, fired and criminally prosecuted. Not the direct slap in the face to God, or Moses or their ten commandments. Not the soggy, sloppy remnants of one’s moral fiber. No, none of that. The real problem lies in the increased ego that comes hand in hand with getting away with various acts of robbery. I developed a very large head in partaking in all of these acts. Granted, physically, my noggin isn’t particularly what one could consider “normal sized”, but I felt that my radio headset, used to look even more ridiculous in an already absurd uniform, could no longer handle my perpetually inflating sense of badassness. I thought I was one bad son of a bitch. It was wonderful.

When my friends at the store quit or just stopped showing up and were replaced with young-bucks (who were more or less my age) I took it upon myself to show them the ropes. I became their mentor and they, they were my pupils.

Jensen had a grin on his face when I said, “Take anything you want. I do it all the time.”

“Anything?” he asked.

“Yep. Tell your buddies, too.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“One year, five months.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Year and a half.”

Word spread quickly. I had the luxury of working in a store filled with people who were ready and willing to assist me, and each other, with all sorts of pilfery (pilfery?). Under my wing, they learned faster than I ever could have expected. I started off by not paying for a Mountain Dew here, or a pack of Dentyne Ice there, whereas, they began with flash drives and memory cards. I was so proud of my minions. They helped me, I helped them. We were like a secret society embedded deep underneath the city streets the ruling class tread upon. We were cancerous little cysts, slowly eating away at the body of an office supply mega-store (figured out which one yet?). We were thriving for a good long while, too. However, as more and more employees began to be hired, I found that I was no longer the one training them. Jensen had taken it upon himself to show the new-hires the very ropes I had shown him only a few months prior. I’d become redundant and was being left out of the endeavors. Jensen started with flash drives but told his new crew to begin with laptops. That’s about when we, the cysts, began to pain the body. The mangers started to notice.
The new guys and I never had any problems with each other, I just stopped helping them and they eventually forgot that I was the one who started the whole operation. I was the one pulling the backpack scams. I was the one who got so good at stealing I could walk right out the front door with a spool of CD-R’s, or a case of SoBe Energy. I was the one who un-stole a four-hundred dollar camera. I made them. All of them.

Those were my exact thoughts when I noticed the red light. Said red light was on a white box I never saw before above the loading dock door. It’s definitely new, I thought, as I realized that with every move I made, that red light would flash green. Obviously, something was afoot.

“Maggie, what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That thing.”

“Oh, uh, still-frame motion sensor camera.”

Oh, shit.

“When was it installed?”

“Last week I think.”

Ron, the Regional Manager had them installed at the front and back doors of the store. And just in time, too. Those little thieves weren’t even discrete. They got greedy. I taught them to steal properly and they got sloppy. Too sloppy.

One by one they started picking people off. Jensen was the first to go and the rest of those crooks soon followed suit. Jerry fired twelve people in six days. But my name never came up in the conversations he held with those lousy, no good criminals. As a matter of fact, after all the firings took place, Jerry asked if I could work more hours to fill the gaps in the schedule. He said, “I need someone I can trust to work some more hours. You, sir, are the only one in this whole place I can trust. Please, assist me in my hour of need. I fear that because of the events that have recently taken place, I am now on the proverbial chopping block.”

“You can count on me, sir.”

“Good, good. You are the only honest person left here.”

“Yes. Yes, I know.”

Okay, so maybe that conversation isn’t exactly word-for-word accurate, but Jerry was asked to resign, after sixteen years with the company, three weeks after the culling and I was working thirty-five hours a week.

Apparently I was the Universe’s golden-boy for a full two years. I was single handedly responsible for thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stolen merchandise, the termination of twelve employees, the criminal prosecution of one of them, and the destruction of one man’s sixteen year career with the OD, which began in Texas and ended in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania—he was personally asked by our Regional Manager to uproot the life he built for himself and his wife in the largest state in the US, to fill a missing store manager spot halfway across the country. All of this and I was the one left standing. I was never fired. I left on my own volition and managed to walk away with a truck load of shit that, for the most part, went unused. All of this and I was the most well trusted employee in that particular store. The Universe had my back.

Not everything went to waste. I still use my iTrip. I’ll never have to buy another spool of CD-R’s, or gel pens, or batteries. I used my neighbor’s internet for a year until my family finally sprung for wireless service. I never did learn how to draw myself up a college degree with the calligraphy set, but college is just about to finish up and I might be better off for it. As for the rest, well, at least I still have most of it.

Sure, there were a few instances where the cosmos lined up perfectly, either to save my ass, or to burn a few (try thirteen) employees who were connected to my actions. But, I don’t think I did anything wrong. I stole, lied, lied by omission, but it’s all just a sort of juvenile right of passage to me. There isn’t a single person that can say that they haven’t done some bastardish shit in their lifetime. If you said that, you’d just be a liar and a thief, or a liar and cheat, or a liar and a serial killer. Whatever category you can think of and fit into, don’t try and skirt the issue. Maybe just try and limit yourself to being one type of asshole. What other reason do you think I had when I decided to write this? One I can live with, but more than that, well, I’d probably just lie about it anyway.