Larissa does not live an easy life

   Larissa, 24, spends her paid hours trying to draw the attention of any living being to this sex shop hidden inside a busy gallery. The common sense everywhere, though, is that sex shops are simply not worth it: Pink rubber dildo 20$, shiny black cheap-plastic butt plug 50$, et cetera. Nobody stops to hear about the many advantages she is supposed to list, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to convince anyone to donate a few minutes of their time.
   The sex shop business these days is the least profitable it has ever been, a “sex rental”, niche thing and one that escapes the comfortable popular taste — with the advent of all these recent technological advances coming into the hands of a sick and ignorant populace. Streaming is the meat substitute for video rental, and discount coupons and free shipping have finally killed the desperate search for sex toys in the dead of night. With life this much easier, with huge catalogues and discrete packages, nobody has to commit to the shame of succumbing to the guerrilla marketing of physical sex shops, of taking the flyer and maybe even consider going in to take a look, knowing to be the newfound topic of giggling teenagers and grown ups remediating cowardice with throwing rocks.
   So what if Larissa manages to get a person or two to go in? They will just be spooked by the absurd prices and leave, like they all do. The arrival of new, loyal clientele is nothing but her superior’s distant dream. She knows her efforts are useless, and that standing there, advocating for the only sex shop in that small town will do no good for her public image. But what can she do, really?
   Her name never comes out the neighbors’ mouths, and everybody in her family — from the distant father to the distantest of cousins — thinks she’s a prostitute. Her mom, old christian woman with way too much free time to dedicate to god, concernedly asks, every night at the dinner table, for her to “please, stop working at that devil’s den and find a wealthy husband” and, every time, she wants to reply with a “shut the fuck up, you moron”, but just stays quiet, not wanting another discussion like Christmas’; afraid of not being able to hold back her ever-growing inner demon cluster.
   Unlike what everybody thinks and says of her, though, Larissa is no cop-hating-punk-dyke, despite having the hair close-cropped most of the time like a boy’s. She’s no terrorist-anarchist-communist-skinhead also, despite wearing XXL white T-shirts bought more than a decade ago, and shaving her whole body with a hair clipper on the 6th of every month. She is, in fact, a girl that prefers to aim for the practical, not seeing matter or substance in the feminine ways of cultivating long manes and buying orgasms in the shape of shoes with every paycheck.
   Autistic, she likes to think logically and superior, though existing in a deeply subjective and illogical world. Virgin, never touched herself, never seen a penis, spends all her free time either creating new literary pieces in a language she has created and only herself understands, or running up and down chasing job offers. Not performing at any interview her whole life, the only place that took her was the city’s shitty sex shop.
   “So... I see here that you put ‘experience at job interviews’ as your main qualification. What does that mean? And what in tarnation is a ‘Numka’ dialect?
   Getting the interviewer fed up with her ramblings, and being the only one in weeks applying for the job of greeter, a simple question was all it took to change her life forever: “Can you memorize a script?”
   Happy for finally be making her own money, like a big girl, turned sad after realizing the trouble she had put herself into; life after that became a downward spiral. People now knew her as the “annoying sex shop girl”, and her mom would every day bring up whatever gossip she’s been hearing, from neighbors and other needlewomen around town, about the secret life she’s been living, of sucking dick inside port-a-potties and whatever worse people could make up at her expense, to have something to talk about.
   Kids would pass by the shop and laugh loudly calling her a whore. Adult men of all sizes and shapes would listen to her for a few seconds before asking “how much for head?”. And every now and then, this super artificially-tanned woman, wearing all outdated Chanel, would come to her asking if she wanted to make an easy-quick-buck, to what she would just say “I need to go to the restroom” and leave for a few minutes, like boss instructed her to. But independent of the harassment, that nine-to-five was spent the same way, day in, day out, from the very beginning. Her brain wouldn’t let her care, she was just doing her job —, and part of the job was also not caring about all the harassment: this the main reason why that job stayed vacant for so long before her; she was the perfect fit.
   Every Saturday afternoon was payday, and she would take the check from her boss’ hands and discount it immediately at the bank a few stores from there. Roll all the twenties and tie it like a scroll, put it deep inside the back pocket, and walk home to the infuriating torture device of a christian-American dinner table. There she would eat the reheated meatloaf and microwave mac-and-cheese, give the little scroll to her mom and receive the one or two bills for “personal expenses” and “religious expenses” — or, pen and paper, and the Sunday tithe the next day.
   Every Sunday morning was church-service-day, and there she’d listen to the many other christians that, just like her mom, would say god’s name in vain cursing her for no reason and, later on, ask for forgiveness in exchange for a few dollars.
   Every Monday morning was the re-start of the work cycle, and the harassment cycle, and the run-away-from-the-creepy-pimp cycle, and the watching-rubber-dicks-at-lunch-while-boss-has-another-breakdown-about-bankrupcy cycle. Going this same way for exactly seven years today. In a few minutes, at 12:17, she’ll be 25, halfway from the first half-a-century, not counting the bullshit of leap years. She smiled when the thought of being half-a-century old went through her mind, wondered if the wrinkly skin would be a problem to the hair clipper. Wondered how many books she would have written until then, how many people she would help sexually satisfy by guiding them to this shitty sex shop. She smiled even more at the thought of people using dildos and pocket pussies instead of just having sex between each other. The idea of a sex shop, in itself, was so stupid. She felt superior in relation to anybody that would pass through that door. Though in that moment, as she sat at the dusty balcony eating a ham sandwich, the bell rang, and through the door came a man that looked like an exact replica of her, carrying under his arm a pink gift box with a big pink ribbon on top.
   “Good afternoon, ladies”, he said with a deep, smoker’s voice and Larissa, 25, got up and gave him a hug.