They're in their own little world

I was placidly going about my duties at the counter when an older gent approached me.

"Excuse me, do you have anything with guys and girls?" he asked with a painful earnestness.

Yes indeed, O gentle readers, it is all about the knife-edged clarity in this business. In one deft move, he managed to filter out a staggering five percent of our media, locking our now shared focus to the exacting bull’s-eye of damned near every fucking magazine and movie in the bloody store. I endeavored to keep my esteem for his masterful conversational acuity under control. I am after all a professional. We have many. Was there something in particular you were after?

He nods easily, realizing that I might perhaps still require more detail. Mayhap he had shaded his request with too subtle of meaning. "Yes, hard-core."

Ah, that clarified things for me dramatically. Your ease in sculpting an interrogative exchange to the most efficient and streamlined is truly awe inspiring. Thank you for ruling out the lushly popular array of co-ed naked Parcheesi features, not to mention the wildly erotic "naked people reading in a library" line. Could you narrow it down for me a little more, sir? I indicate the sales floor with a sweep of my arm. Almost all of that is hard-core heterosexual content.

"Sure, I'm looking for something that has guys and girls and is hard-core."

Oh yes, that was extremely helpful. If you'll beg my pardon, I need to nip off for a brief moment to set a pot of Socrates’ Best™ Hemlock and Chamomile tea to steeping. We've established that much. Let's see if I can chip this down to a more manageable size. Were you looking for a movie or a magazine?

"A magazine I think. My wife and I are looking to get a little kinky tonight."

A big cup of tea and hollow-point chaser it is. Words cannot express how grateful I am that you offered that mental image for my contemplation. I deeply, viscerally, appreciate your efforts to slip me into your intimate matrimonial relations. I nod and point out the magazine racks.

"Which ones are guys and girls?"

Where you're looking, unless it's labeled as "Gay", it's boy-girl. I can completely understand your confusion, those large, garish captions on the covers proclaiming pictorial sets with terms like "spunk-guzzling" and "stuffing tight, pink snatches with massive man-meat" are a bit nebulous as to what might be depicted inside as well as what genders would be required for that content.

"Which ones are hard-core?"

Damn those pesky, unclear phrases printed on the covers. How can anyone expect to guess which titles are explicit? Most of those magazines show full penetration all the way to the "money shot." If you pick up something that isn't hard-core, I'll let you know.

A few minutes later he draws close again and lays a magazine pack on the counter. "Do these have men and women in them?"

I glance at the selected titles. Yes, those publishers do hard-core photo sets so they're probably going to have a few featuring guy-on-girl sex.

"Are they triple-X? My wife and I are planning on doing something special tonight. She wants to see some guys."

Splendid, I was hoping you were going to make another reference toward what you hope to do with your wife this evening. Discretion is entirely overrated. As I just said, they're hard-core. There's going to be at least a couple guys in what you have right now.

At this point, he'd spent enough time inside that his wife, a plain, middle-aged woman, comes inside to make sure he hasn't lost his last tenuous stand against senile dementia. When she gets closer, he holds up his current selection and asks her if it looked good to her. They retire back to the magazine rack.

Five minutes at most, I hear her address herself to me, "Excuse me, but do you have anything with guys and girls? And we're looking for something hard-core."

Oh please, tell me these two have filled mobile home parks from coast-to-coast with their gifted issue until her womb shriveled up in a knot of scar tissue or fell free like a rusted out muffler on the side of a highway. Truly, these are the cream of modern intelligentsia in America. I saunter over to where the couple is leafing through the racks of magazines. It would take some effort to find anything right here that isn't hard-core. I start rattling off titles for them. On average there are two male-female photo sets per magazine. They're going to mostly focus on women in the pictures since it's marketed toward men.

They thanked me and I returned to the counter area. A bit later they laid a magazine pack on the counter and I rang them up while they both thanked me more than once for my help and patience.

See, training does pay off. I had been giving serious thought to smothering them both and secreting them in the dumpster at least a dozen times throughout their visit. But that's why I get paid the big bucks.