Dustin M. Wax

A funny thing happened at the Barnes and Noble last week. I had stopped in to browse a little before an afternoon class, and picked up an issue of Writer’s Digest. As I checked out, the clerk — an older woman — asked if I was a writer.

“Yeah,” I responded, “I am.”

“What do you write?” she asked.

“Well, I’m a professor at the University, so a lot of my writing is academic stuff, but I also write quite a bit online, mostly how to-type articles.”

At the mention of my teaching, she lit up. “What do you teach?”

“I teach Women’s Studies at the university, and anthropology at the community college.” I’ll admit I wasn’t all that interested in a chat — I wanted to get some lunch before my class started, too — but I’m always willing to talk about my work with an interested party.

“Oh, I took women’s studies at San Jose State years ago. All the professors were hardcore bull dykes!”

Oh. So we’re not going to talk about my work, I see. To be honest, I was pretty taken aback — was the bookstore clerk trained to insult customers’ academic fields, or did she learn it in her spare time?

“Well, you know, there’s all sorts…” I started.

“I’m a femininist,” she declared.

Always one for the wordplay, I asked if that was the opposite of a femin-out-ist.

“No,” she replied, apparently missing my subtle linguistic tricksterism, “it’s the opposite of a feminist. I was one of the first card-carrying members of NOW, back when it started. The ACLU, too. But I learned better, believe me!”

“Well, yeah, ok,” I said, backing towards the door. “Well…”

“I have a master’s degree in child development, and [something something something — I wasn’t terribly interested at this point]. I worked with autistic children for years — you know you’re getting through to them when they say ‘fuck you’.”

“Well, I have to go,” I said, lamely, and walked out the door. I admit, while I generally give employees of stores I patronize a lot of latitude, having been a clerk for several years of my life, but seriously, I’ve never had a job, no matter how bad, where I felt justified in attacking a customer or free to use profanity with a customer (and I’m not exactly sure how we got to the autistic children thing). I probably should have complained, but I think the world’s better off with her behind the register at a B&N than going back to childhood development!

What a strange thing to happen. All I wanted was a magazine!