Previously on Genial Black Man Goes to Spencer’s Gifts:
Friday, February 24, 2023
It had been nine years since I set foot inside of a Spencer’s. Thoughts of tacky, misogynistic t-shirts and drinkware haunting my sleep. Casual racism in wearable form driving me to burn again. I needed to find the antitheses of gross consumerism. I found it in the Bay Area of Northern California. Or so I thought.
On a rainy, cold morning, my desire to self-sabotage got me out of bed, dressed me, opened my mouth and shoved food down my throat, put car keys in my hand, and drove me from San Francisco to Sun Valley Mall in suburban Concord. Kicking and screaming as I was dragged into the gleaming mausoleum of capitalism, I did not want to encounter the known unknown.
My nemesis with a dick koozie and a mug for any form of antisocial behavior that was always on the wind but I managed to plug my nose. But not today. Today, fate decided that I needed to face my trauma.
As I saw the graffiti-laden sign above the hellmouth of trash through burning tears, I heard a scream. I wasn’t sure if it was my own.
The memories from nine years ago flooded back immediately: the loud imagery, shifty characters populating its insides, and the boorish walls. I WAILED. I CRIED.
The mere suggestion that touching a penis would brighten someone’s day sent my face skyward, my mouth agape, my vocal cords hoarse with yelling.
WHO needed to know that “Big Dick Is Back In Town,” I screamed. People inched away from me into even scuzzier corners of the store.
The wall of crassisity sharing space with Japanese anime made me wonder what the Venn diagram would be for this. And then I saw a customer and the gears clicked into place: it was The Coomer.
The smell of crusted bodily fluids wafted like a drunk ghost, and I crawled to escape its fumes. But I confronted more terrors.
WHO needs to know about the ass eating?!? My objections were more screeches than intelligible words at this point. Oh, but I would suffer more. I HAD to.
The conception of the grossest people shopping at Spencer’s, upon seeing these mugs, went out the window; now it’s the grossest and the blandest people. People who needed to let you know they’re perpetually horny alongside those pining for TV sitcoms from over a decade ago.
I banged my fists into the wood laminate in anger. Oh, the anger was back.
WHY does someone want swear words on their wall?!? I wailed. WHY a scrotum cup?!? THIS ISN’T FUNNY!
I wanted out. I had more than enough. And my captor wanted more of my angst.
WHY do they want people to know that they eat ASS?!?!?!? It’s their business!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I cried.
But my assailant wanted to break me, to grind me down to emotional bone: I was lugged through the gauntlet of shitty t-shirts.
MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I pleaded. I’m SORRY! I’ll never make fun of Ed Hardy merch again! JUST MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!
And they did. But only after the final one-two body blow.
I found myself twitching, my eyes unable to focus, my hands shaking with rage. I knew this feeling, delighted in this feeling. I let it wash over me. I gave in.
I woke up in a shallow rain puddle outside of the mall. As I groggily stood up, I felt a chill; I saw that my clothes were in tatters — ripped like they had been stretched beyond their constraints. I looked at my hands, bruised and cut from some sort of fight.
It happened again, I thought to myself.
I knew what I had to do. I walked along the road, needing to get out of this two-mall town. After a few minutes, a car slowed down next to me. I recognized their plastic sticker hanging in the window. And I recognized them: The Coomer.
I raised my head and fists skyward, my anguished yell hurled to the heavens, as I collapsed into a ball of tears. Spencer’s had won. They broke me. They broke everyone.
Diary of a Genial Black Man 
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