From Krista

Some men try desperately to find a guy to ring up the porn magazines they want to buy at the bookstore I work at.

Best of all? There are no male employees. So they'll spend 10-20 minutes canvassing the whole store, before doing a defeated walk of shame to the registers, where I'm waiting, and from where I've watched them trying to avoid me the whole time. It was kind of adorable at first, but now it's just annoying.

Every time they come to the registers, they turn into an awkward teen. They sidle up to me with the furtive, awkward, sideways glance, clutching their mags to their chest as if they could hide it. Then they mumble a request for a guy to ring them up. When I say that there are no guys here, their face falls, they squirm, then flop the mags on the counter.

There isn't a single guy buying porn mags who would look me in the eyes. Even standing right in front of me, they would do their best to pretend that they weren't there, buying that thing.

Really? We have an entire section dedicated to sex and several versions of the Kama Sutra, complete with photos of two real people actually in those poses.

And have you SEEN the romance section? We've got erotica involving men who turn into animals for chrissake! (No really, on a whim I picked out a random book to look at and found it was a werejaguar erotica story! I'm half curious, half terrified about how they would pull it off.)

Take a page from the 40-something ladies I ring up once a month... They're casual about plunking down four to six erotica books at a time, chat with me about the weather and go about their business. It's not like I care.

Get over it. You aren't buying anything that would even raise my eyebrows anymore. Stop uselessly wishing for a dude to ring you up. Leveling up your one-handed skills at home is perfectly fine. You're an adult. Act like it.

--Krista