"I could have been somebody": The other Mark

I have never seen and will never again see someone put an Olde English 24oz can away with the speed and determination of Mark. One long chug, spit out the foam, chug the rest. I counted once. 7 seconds. Impressive and depressing at the same time.
I first met Mark probably on my first day. He would be the first one in at 8 AM(sometimes earlier on accident) to get his beer. He only ever drank OE800(this is important to remember later on) Always. He would also use the store as a grocery store, which always bums me out to see as we are a convenience store, so we don't offer that great a selection of healthy food. He would rarely wash his clothes, and I could only assume lived in squalor, because he would constantly buy Glade air freshener(air spray as he called it, which always caused confusion as to why he needed it, he was bald, and we were hearing hair spray over the phone). I always felt bad for the guy, except the few times he sliced OE cans open on the sharp edge of the slot they're in and then just stood there holding it saying "Hey boss man, I think this one's leaking." as it sprayed everywhere. Those times, I loathed him.
Mark was pretty blind, I don't really know how well he could see. He would walk around most of the day looking for partial cigarettes on the ground, I witnessed him smoking filter on multiple occasions. He had a child's sock that he would keep his change in, and it always took him forever to get his change out or put it away, and if he dropped change, strap in, because he's going to be there for a while crawling around looking for it, I would get frustrated at that as well.
Most of the time he was pleasant enough. About a year into me working here he just one day, all of the sudden, blurted out "Man, I could have been somebody", I just stood there and looked at him, puzzled. How the fuck am I going to respond to that? I said "Yeah, well..." and that was that. It was probably the most powerfully sad interaction i have had yet with a customer.
We have a policy that if we ban a customer(there are a lot of banned customers, mostly for getting belligerent and mean when they're drunk, so we don't want to be the ones to facilitate that kind of behavior in the neighborhood) you cannot come in and buy anything for them, if we find out that you are, you risk being banned yourself. Mark came in one day, probably about 6 months ago, and bought a 6 pack of Genesee 16oz cans. Mark doesn't drink Genesee, ever. I had known that man, pretty well, for over 2 years at that point. I said to him, flat out "Mark, you don't drink Genesee, you aren't buying this for someone who isn't allowed in the store, are you? Because I'll have to ban you if I find out you are", he assured me he was not. I watched him walk out, cross the street, and hand the bag to a recently banned customer. Mark was no longer allowed in the store.
I rarely saw Mark after that. Maybe twice, walking around the block looking for cigarettes.
I found out 2 days ago that Mark jumped off of an overpass into the highway. I feel partially at fault for cutting him off and not letting him have access to that vice, but that feeling is fleeting, as I cannot be responsible for that kind of self destruction.
It's okay Mark, we all could be/have been somebody, but it's rare that any of us ever are, at least in the way you thought it was to be "somebody". I hope you're at peace now.

Mark

I think this post will take me a few days to write. I know I'm going to cry going over this series of events, multiple times. But I think Mark deserves the best post I can make.

Mark. Mark was a veteran. He was drafted when he was a kid, I'm pretty sure in Vietnam if I remember correctly. He didn't have a great handle on his life. He would come in and buy 3 Genesee tall cans at a time after he was done with work for the day. He worked construction, so he was in great shape for abusing his body so badly and being almost 50. Or if he had the day off, he would drink and clean his house. Always drinking. I don't know if that stemmed from his time as a child in the military or if it was to cope with something else, I never asked.
Mark started dating an old girlfriend, she was really cool. Older biker chick, leathery skin, raspy voice, really great smile and nice personality. Eventually we could see that her and Mark were not great for each other.
Mark would come in all worked up telling us about a fight they had, he would always say "I would never hit a woman, but..." It was always really tough to cope with.
I remember Mark coming in and talking to me one day about how bad it was. i told him "i like both of you a lot, but you're poisonous for each other, you can't be happy together". They didn't break up, but I could see a change in him.
I would ask him every now and then how everything was going, the fighting got less frequent but was still occurring, or he would tell me well enough. At one point I just couldn't handle it and I would hide when I saw him coming. In retrospect, I feel fucking horrible for that. I wish I had talked to him more. I wish I could have asked him about his life. I just couldn't look past his demons, I was blind to his suffering and only looking on in a judgmental way. It's shitty and I make a conscious effort to not do that anymore.
Mark came in one day and was looking very somber. I asked him what was wrong. He proceeded to tell me about how his doctor had found some spots on his lungs. At the time he was fairly optimistic that it would get better.
Over the next few months he would come in and give me updates. It was not getting better. I was watching him wither away before my eyes. It was heartbreaking to watch someone go from a healthy man to a human skeleton in less than a year.
 Eventually his friend came to live with him, for hospice care essentially. He would ask me if we could carry the protein rich Naked juices to help Mark keep his strength up. I always tried, but our delivery with that company is sporadic at best. At some point Mark stopped coming in completely.  I would see his girlfriend and his friend come in and i would ask for updates. He would be really optimistic, she would give it to me bluntly, it was a very strange but comforting juxtaposition.
There was a beautiful day in July, I think, and Mark was able to get enough strength to get out of the apartment. His friend pushed him over in his wheelchair, but Mark didn't have enough strength to get out of the chair. I at least got to say "Hey Mark! It's great to see you man!" "Great to see you too!" He yelled back to me through the open door. That was the last thing I ever got to say to Mark. I'm glad that was our last interaction at least.
Over the next month it was very busy over here at the store and the 4 of us that work here didn't have much time overlapping to shoot the shit, so I lost track of Mark.
I found out Mark died on the day of his funeral. I was already at work and couldn't even make it to say goodbye. It still kills me, like, I'm weeping just recalling it.
I'm not going to go too deep into the political aspect of it, but mark got swept under the rug. He had to be driven all the way out to Buffalo to be given some sort of treatment. That's bullshit, I can't go into it because it fills me with an intense rage and sadness i can't handle right now, I have a register to run.
So i guess this is the best way I can say it, goodbye Mark, I miss you. I hope you don't feel any more pain wherever you are. Cheers man...I'm so sorry.

Tweety bird's grandma

I bond with some of our customers over the weirdest shit. I think it might be because I show them a level of respect/decency they don't often encounter.
Peggy fucking rules. She's a sweet lady in her late 50s early 60s. She really sounds like Tweety Bird's grandma. But she has quite a quick temper. She has lashed out at me one time, and one time only, when she was a little flustered and trying to use the atm, I was whistling along to something overbearing like Jethro Tull. She snapped at me to stop whistling, but made sure to say please, so I totally obliged. I try to be very conscious of our more unique customer's quirks.
Peggy does not like when people try to do things for her. I'm fairly certain she has MS, so she walks with a cane and loses her footing often. If someone tries to hold the door open she'll just stare at them and wait for them to walk away. But really, she's a nice lady.
She comes in and complains about her hair getting in her mouth whenever it's windy (which is like all the time on our street). I think that's how we started bonding. She would come in and talk to me about needing to get her hair cut, or how she needs to keep it under her hat so she doesn't eat it all the time, I one time told her i know how she feels and she's been great to me ever since.
On some level I think she has some sort of idea in her head that I'm like a son to her. I love it. We have fun. She loves to pretend she's going to throw canned goods and 6 packs up to me at the register, I play along. Last week she tried to float a bag of Lay's BBQ chips up to me, she smashed them into the ceiling, it was awesome.
The qualities people show you when you treat them like a human are astounding. I'm glad I've befriended Peggy, she's a lot of fun to deal with. I will never whistle Thick As A Brick around her again. I like her too much.
Sometimes we talk about her exploits as a child. She tells me about Randy, that bastard, who taught her how to be tough. She's told me about her girlfriends in high school she would try to smoke pot with, it made her too goofy. I encourage her to try getting high to help her with MS, some day I'm going to go to her apartment and get her stoned. I think it would improve her life tenfold.

Pathalogical

I can't decide if I like the customers that are clearly pathalogical liars, or if I love them. They give us the opportunity to guess which parts of the story they are telling us might be true. Or we can just play pretend and believe everything they say, it's a good time for sure.
There's one guy we haven't seen in a while. He was a little 50 something year old white dude, grey and black beard, always wearing a baseball cap. Sometimes I see certain customers coming and I'll put on a certain album to shape my interaction with them. When this guy comes in I always make sure it's something heavy. This dude picked Sleep's Dopesmoker out when I had it on the first time I met him, so he had me intrigued from the get go.
He's got a pretty killer taste in music, he loves stoner metal and psych rock. I would turn him on to things like Goat and Bongzilla. He would tell me about Hawkwind and Sabbath.
He would start to recount cool stories about being a roadie on various hard rock and metal tours from the early 80s to the mid 90s. They would consistently get more outlandish, but I never questioned them. Next time he comes in i'll be sure to ask him what his favorite tour he worked was. I'll be sure to let you know.
I know some of his stories are not true, but, are any of them true? I choose to believe some are. We often discuss how much of our daily interactions are factual and how much is fabricated. I have no idea. But I'll keep guessing.

The Bumble

A lot of these posts initially will come off like a listing of a cast of characters. Sometimes it's hard to believe we are existing in any sort of reality. Like this is all some big hoax being played on us. But I'm pretty sure that's paranoid insanity creeping in. Anyways we have had a lot of unique individuals cross the threshold at the shop.
One of the newer regulars is quite an anomaly. Stuff like he hates rap music, unless you're listening to it, then he loves this kind of music. He can never be truly pleased with the weather. If it's snowing he talks about how he hates the snow, in the summer he can't wait for it to snow. I don't think he's ever once acknowledged that it was actually nice out, at the present. It's confusing. I think he's a little handicapped on some level, but he's mostly totally with it.
He has always been pleasant enough, bumbling mostly. But recently, the day after Election Day, the results of the elections came up in conversation. He informed me that he is a staunch conservative republican, which confuses the fuck out of me. I tried to explain to him that inherently, that political party doesn't have his best interest in mind. He's a poor, black, mentally disabled man that lives in poverty. He just kept laughing and whooping that they had won the majority. I was pretty much speechless. I still am. I haven't looked at him the same way since.
How many of the people living across the street have that similar view? Are they drawn to the traditional values of the Republican Party and ignore the economic stances? I haven't been more confused by any interaction at the store half as much as this one. What the fuck?

gone but not forgotten

Let's get this out of the way now. We have many great characters that have been written out of the script for this grand show we live here at the corner. We should acknowledge our favorites that are no longer with us. This post will be edited as we recall more.

Mark, actually a really nice guy. His story is long and very sad, we may get to it eventually. Long story short, he passed away after a short battle with cancer. I genuinely miss him.

Ratmandu/Jim, this fucking guy. I remember him coming in an absolute wreck one day. Eye swollen shut, bruised to shit, still a little bloody. Apparently he was at a gay bar and someone was hitting on him(highly unlikely, probably just passing by) and Jim swung on him. Well, that guy beat the homophobia right out of Jim, it was great. Jim lit himself/his apartment on fire 3 times in the less than 3 years I've been here. The third time was the last, it was a gruesome tale recalled to me by many of the neighborhood folks. He basically melted. Fuck.

And obviously Judy.  Judy was more than human. She had eyes only for one man that worked here. It was unrequited. It was truly one of life's greatest tragic comedies.

Dedication

This blog will be dedicated to the memory of Judy. We miss your jagged smile and unsettling cackle. You were truly a ray of sunshine in a cold, dark world. They don't make wings glorious enough to lift you higher than heaven. Rest In Power my beautiful flower.