drugstore

Last weekend I went to buy decongestant. The good decongestant, the one they use to make meth, the one with the sly name (pseudoephedrine), can now only be purchased from the pharmacist. I walk up to the drugstore doors, and see the sign says the pharmacy closes at 6. It is 6:08.

Well.

Now I am here, where they will sell most things you need, so I complete the ritual, up and down aisles. First to the cold/cough aisle, where I look mournfully at the pseudoephedrine product cards that I cannot use to get the pseudoephedrine, the pseudoephedrine being behind the metal grate now pulled down, and behind that, no doubt in a locked box of danger.

Ay, me.

I have come from drinks with friends. At this, someone asks us to go around and update the group. In this unusual group, people actually say how they are, one by one. One has exciting new ideas, and mentions recent, crushing loneliness. One is finishing the semester, and that is enough to say. One’s wife is dying and distant. One would travel soon. I say my dad has dementia and my friend’s mom has stomach cancer.

I haven’t stated this, this way, because people close to me know, and there’s not much to discuss, and people not close to me, I’m not wanting to discuss horrors with.

It feels good to say it. It feels good to listen to other people’s actual, specific pain. Without expectation of discussion or comfort.

Walking the Walgreens aisles, my dad has dementia, my friend’s mom has stomach cancer, my cousins fought at Thanksgiving, my sister said something so cruel, I walked out of a Chili’s and ate my lunch in my car, the American people elected a fascist, and our federal government (my darling) may fall.

I just really love the federal government.

The food aisle offers me nothing. I have ice cream. I don’t want pizza.

The seasonal aisle has the shitty Christmas lights that are pretty cheap, and won’t work next year. The boxed Christmas cards are ugly. The nail polish colors aren’t better than the ones in my drawer at home. (I have orangey red and red.) The office supplies zone has no Pilot pens, and no letter stickers, and no appealing blank journals.

Last time I was here, I learned they only sell two kinds of bubble bath. Two. Bubble bath was the thing, then bath gel (fine sub), then bath bombs (no), shower spritzers (why?). Bubble bath is OUT, and I already own the lavender and the almond.

A dying wife, distant, a mother with stomach cancer, who only lost her husband two months ago.

Another friend with parents critically ill so close in time.

My cousins fought each other at Thanksgiving.

There are three young kids (early 20s) also steering around the aisles. It’s 6:25 on a Saturday night. This is my last stop. and this could well be their first stop. They could buy hair dye, sparkles for faces going out, snacks, cigarettes, a birthday card, socks.

When I was in a drugstore in New York City, it was a Duane Reade. There came a moment all big businesses put up fake photos of their business in the olden days, and plaques explaining what Guilded Age magnate or run of the mill Capitalist had founded their business before it became a neutered shareholder money sucker. The Walgreens and the Duane Reades have the same pictures, with their different monikers pasted in.

My drugstore history: we were a Katz/Skaggs/Osco family.

Katz, founded in Kansas City, was the first drugstore to have a Civil Rights sit in, at an Oklahoma City location.

In the early 20th century, Baptist minister Samuel Skaggs moved his family from Missouri to Idaho, where the location of the first Skaggs store now sits underneath a reservoir.

“Osco” as a drugstore name did not (allegedly) appeal to customers in southern California, as it sounded like the Spanish word “asco,” meaning “disgusting.”

I pick a bag of all green gummy somethings, watermelon flavor. I’m there. I have to buy something.

They ring up at $6, and I am appalled, but this was my mission, to buy something.

The ritual of commerce, the small serotonin boost of having bought something, anything, a plastic bag of green gelatinous candy, placed inside another plastic bag, with a thin piece of paper as proof I bought it, I had money, theoretical money in an account somewhere, my piece of plastic triggered an okay from somewhere, across wires, and the nice man put my $6 worth in its second plastic bag, and let me take them out, the security guard nodded at me cheerfully, rather than bowling me over to demand proof I had money somewhere, that it would be transferred to the account Walgreens 3845 Broadway Kansas City Missouri, and I would possess the goods.