Used CD and record stores employ a specific breed of people. Prime candidates maintain their hygiene through sweat baths and dry shampoo spray. Regardless of gender, their wardrobes contain only ill-fitting graphic t-shirts, plaid, khakis, and skinny jeans. They condition their slender frames and beer guts with IPAs, cigarettes, and inactivity. Existential angst and questionable taste in music seal their employment in record store purgatory.
Solomon avoids staring at them for too long for fear of provoking them. Today, three of them roam the counters. Only one of them ever checks out customers. The other two presumably offer emotional support. Another employee slinks through the aisles, indeterminately flicking rows of CDs. Solomon fears this one will ask if he needs help finding anything, but he forgets that everyone here is struggling to find any help as is.
Thrashing metal throbs through the overhead speakers, punctuated by uncomfortable rapping segments. Although Solomon prefers this over the C-class folk yodelers, the metal grates more than the 70s one-hit wonders or house beats which typically compose the record store’s soundtrack. Solomon flits another glance at the employees, knowing one of them selected today’s ambience. He suspects it is the man whose hair grows like moss across his cheeks and chest but not his scalp. Solomon ticks the volume up on his iPod, but the metal screams more angrily, as if noticing the customer’s transgression.
Solomon knows well that his dehumanizing of the employees stems from his desire to be acknowledged by them. He is the child in corduroy, playing noisily by the cool kids, hoping one day they will invite him out of pity. Solomon has chatted with them before. He has asked for their music recommendations, but their tastes are so far from his own. He has tried to understand their favorite bands. He has ultimately discovered that they are normal, eccentric people, not indie movie caricatures searching for friendship in their 40-hour work week.
His fore and middle fingers tiptoe across the tops of CDs. The click-clacking of the plastic cases lulls him into a trance, allowing the CD covers and names to blur into each other. He stands in the middle of one long aisle, one of two devoted to bargain and last-chance CDs selling for one or two bucks. Bands come to die here. Hootie and the Blowfish have bought a large chunk of this cemetery, with R.E.M., Jack Johnson, and Avril Lavigne all investing in their own real estate as well. With the Brittany Spears albums in just a few rows and blink-182 behind him, Solomon walks in the grove where “Now That’s What I Call Music” was once harvested.
Even if he enjoyed these bands in the past, he avoids them. As a hipster in music alone, Solomon’s palate cannot handle too much mainstream. He will furtively purchase Green Day’s “American Idiot” and Coldplay’s “A Rush of Blood to the Head,” blaming his decisions on nostalgia. The rest of his CDs will be indie rock darlings and nobodies, successful enough to have their music purchased at some point but not good enough to escape the bargain rack. Those CDs which earn his approval will find a new home in dusty alphabetized binders underneath his desk.
During depressive episodes, music is his antidepressant, and CD shopping is his therapy. No health insurance needed. In the dark ages of his depression, Solomon visited the used CD store three or four times a week, spending hours browsing the same stacks of artists. He could track the severity of his depression based on how little the “New Used CD” section changed between visits. His receipts were the other barometer. In the span of two years, his iPod’s library expanded by six thousand songs, and his bank account suffered 33 cents a tune.
With time and actual medication and therapy, Solomon gradually visited the used records stores less frequently and now averages three or four shopping sprees a year. With less time spent isolating in his room, he has fewer chances to vegetate to a soundtrack of indie privilege and experimental desperation. He would wear headphones constantly if he could, but neither his partner nor his employer would appreciate this habit. Traffic and writing offer him his personal moments to drown in overdramatic lyrics and unnecessary banjo solos.
His pride is a master list of every album he owns, alphabetized by artist. Special symbols designate great albums, musically-odd bands, local artists, and people he has seen in concert. Each song on his iPod starts on a “New Playlist” where it remains until he has listened to it ten times. He is currently in the process of rating each individual song out of five stars. In four months, he still has ten thousand songs to rate, and his iPod likely has a year left in it, a lifespan Solomon actively dreads more than his own expiration date. Music offers him an inexhaustible, tedious religion, and he begs for eternal servitude.
In 90 minutes, Solomon finally completes his two-step shuffle from one end of the bargain rack to the other. He clutches a stack of 15-odd CDs in one arm and makes a few laps around the store, questioning if he can forgive himself for buying a new CD for $18. When he finally does relent and leaves the store, he takes with him his new soundtrack for the next four months, some catharsis, and a sheath of grime on his hands, remnants from every customer who fingered the same stacks he did. Today, Solomon will wash his hands, and he will scald away the dirt of the used record store.