volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

something that vaguely haunts him from time-to-time, something
depressing and foreboding like death or cancer, and that thing
is that this is not his store nor his personal business, but that he
is in fact an employee and receives in fact a compensation for
being such in the weekly issuance of a handwritten check—a
check that, handwritten or not and always on time, in his opinion
undervalues his lifelong, monomanical obsession with LPs. With
the realization of his status settling as if a shroud upon his head,
as if ashes in his hair, reluctantly he stands.
His long, skinny, black-clad legs deliver him to Roy, who
offers his HIV-dripping headphones.
Glaring Guy ignores them.
“Gimme the fuckin’ tape.”
Roy springs into action and snaps the Sony tape player off his
belt, quickly unpeeling the raggedy duct tape.
Disgust, Revulsion and Loathing elbow each other for top
billing on Glaring Guy’s face.
In order for Roy to open his player, he has dropped his
headphones onto the countertop cluttered with graphic sexual
acts. Glaring Guy has concerns about those headphones—
devices long intimate with Roy’s head—and wonders if, in the
back room somewhere, there’s some kind of disinfectant he could
use after the stupid doofus leaves.
Roy presents him with the tape.
His face is pink from the exertion and his bald dome gleams.
Glaring Guy takes the tape, pinching it between his right
hand’s forefinger and thumb like it was dog-doo, and stares at it
as if he’s never seen a cassette tape before in his life.
Indeed, magnetic tape storage may be a technology Glaring
Guy despises. Roy knows there are people like that.
Glaring Guy carries his specimen of dog doo to where the
amp rests under the counter. Sitting beside it is a Phase Linear
7000 cassette deck tape player—38 pounds of brushed stainless
steel.
He presses on the front cover and it springs open to reveal
knobs and buttons. He inserts the dog-doo into one of the
machine’s docks and presses a button.
Red and green LED lights wink on.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY 1 1