Loser Light Special

The closest supermarket to my apartment is this little Publix that's kinda caddy-cornered behind a Starbucks, a sushi bar, and a whole slew of overpriced condos overlooking the St. John's River. It's a nice place, but even though it's probably just as big as any other supermarket in the area it feels kinda cramped inside -- kinda like there wasn't enough room for everything they wanted to put in there, but they kept going anyways.

Regardless, it's a nice store, and above all it's simply too close by to my place for me not to consider as it my first option whenever I run out of something important, or need to pick a few things up on the way home.

Like the other night when I stopped in there on my way home from the gym. It had been a long day at work, so it was around 8:30 at night or something when I stepped in the door. The store is only open until like nine or ten, so it was pretty empty -- but all I really needed was a few essentials, so it wasn't like it was a big deal or anything.

So I get my cart, and I'm pushing it around through the aisles getting my stuff. The thing about a store like this at that kind of hour is that it's really really quiet in comparison to any other time you go in there. Usually in a busy supermarket you're washed over with the sounds of parents cooing their children, people taking to bakers and butchers, and the sounds of a dozen checkout lines beeping along a product at a time. It's like suburban white noise, and it's just part of the scenery in a place like that.

Which is probably what made all that silence seem so eerie.

Almost as if after years of being in busy stores filled with the sounds of waiting lines and commerce in action -- I'm actually more uncomfortable in a grocery store that isn't spilling over with the noises of families and bag boys scurrying around like ants before a rainstorm. But it's not like I was there to have some sort of transcendent existential experience -- I just needed a gallon of milk.

But as I continued to move though the aisles -- occasionally passing another carts and shoppers, I couldn't help but be aware of the one noise that was still actually going on:

Easy listening Muzak spilling out of speakers all across the ceiling.

Isn't it weird how we've all been in so many supermarkets and elevators over the years that we've sorta reached the point where we just sort of tune this out? It was almost like I was standing there for a second thinking to myself, "Who's the jerkoff playing their stereo inside a Publix?" -- only to realize that they always play music in here, it's just that normally I can't even register it above the usual din of the place.

But now, unhindered by cell phone talkers, label readers, "mommy why" kids, and all the rest -- there was no escaping the sound of it. Which is when I started to realize just what kinds of songs they were actually playing.

I should mention here that an unfortunate side effect of my former employment as a DJ at an adult contemporary radio station in Tallahassee is that I can instantly identify the titles and artists for the sappiest songs ever written -- which is why it only took a nanosecond for me to realize in horror that the screeching sound above my head was actually the sound of Eric Carmen's infamous painfest "All By Myself":

Livin alone
I think of all the friends I've known
But when I dial the telephone
Nobodys home

All by myself
Don't wanna be
All by myself anymore
All by myself
Don't wanna live
All by myself ..anymore

Just five straight minutes god-awful shoot yourself in the head caterwauling that's really only fit for montage scenes in movies starring Hugh Grant, not only making me pine for anything with a backbeat and distorted guitars -- but also kind of inadvertently driving home the point that I too, at that very moment was all by myself as well.

It was if Eric Carmen himself and his ten-gallon hairdo was standing in my shopping cart yelling lyrics at me, and I could barely wait for the whole ordeal to be over.

Or at least that's how I thought I felt until the next song kicked in.

Because for the rest of my stay at the store it was like me and every other person in there couldn't escape the relentless medley of songs from that long lost Time-Life CD collection, "Songs to Eat a Microwave Dinner for One to While You Watch TV with Your Cat"

Featuring all your favorite hits like:

Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally"
Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely"
Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You"
James Taylor's "Fire and Rain"
Heart's "How Will I Make it Alone?"

and what collection of smooth favorites could ever be complete without

"How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" by Michael Bolton

And after a while you're just like, "What the hell, man?"

I swear, every time I passed someone pushing another cart they looked just like me, shoulders slumped, looking off into the distance at nothing, buying ice cream they didn't need.. It was heartbreaking. All I wanted was a stinkin' gallon of milk (and maybe a bag of chips, and a bottle of cheap wine, and ..god at this rate I'll never make it through the night without at least 3 boxes of these Little Debbie snack cakes) -- but it was like the supermarket Muzak gods themselves were out to get us.

It just got to a point where enough was enough -- and it was all I could do not to find the nearest bagboy and try my best to shout at him over the sound of Janis Ian singing, "I learned the truth at seventeen, that love was meant for beauty queens.." where the housewares aisle was so I could go drag a cheese grater across my wrist and just put an end to this sad charade!

Publix -- Where Shopping is the Only Fleeting Hope of Pleasure You'll
Ever be Able to Find in This Dark, Lonely Hole of a Place You Call a Life.

[Listening to: Flyleaf, "I'm So Sick (live)"]