A&P, or the future of what?

Shannon and her friend Christa are starting an ad hoc creative writing class and they asked that I join. I said okay and this week’s assignment was to write something about grocery shopping. Here’s mine.
I am standing in the A&P parking lot, trying to drink this six pack of Old Milwaukee tallboys as quickly as I can, so I can get back home before she expects anything. I bought a roll of Certs and a roll of Rolaids to handle the inevitable problems of breath from the booze and heartburn from bad living. I was just sitting at the house, and a half hour or so ago she says to me that she is out of tampons, and that her period will be starting soon, although by my calculations it shouldn�t be here until next week. She also said it would be nice to have some milk for the coffee in the morning and maybe some cereal to go with the coffee and milk. And don�t forget the tampons. OB, the kind without the applicator because she cares so much about the environment.

I don�t even really think about how these things are inserted. In fact, I don�t really want to think about women�s menstruationat all, although it seems I am forced to face it every two to three weeks. I am amazed at the amount and variety of products that are made for handling women�s monthly needs. It is almost as mind-boggling as the variety of condoms. They all seem to do pretty much the same thing. I guess that�s the nature of living in this country though, we have 30 products for every possible need, and they all do basically the same thing. A whole side of a row at the A&P is dedicated to making sure that a woman doesn�t bleed onto her clothes at �that time of the month.� This last fact just amazes me.
I look into the refrigerator on the way out the door and notice there is a half gallon of milk still left. She tells me that it is bad. The expiration date has passed. I don�t want to explain to her that expiration dates are a marketing tool more than anything else, and that you can always drink milk a couple of days, if not more, after the date on the carton. The boy on the side of the carton looks a little like what I imagine the baby would look like now. It�s got Chrystal�s eyes. I don�t think Chrystal notices these things. I don�t think she would hear any of the expiration date talk. It�s easier to just get a new carton.
I might get a carton of cigarettes and keep them in the glove compartment. I told her I quit, but she can smell it on me. It�s a little dance we do. I smoke, but only when not at home. She smells it, but doesn�t say anything about it.
So I am out along the road to the store and I am listening to the fuzzy college radio station from 80 miles off. I like that kind of music. It reminds me of what I gave up when Chrystal got pregnant, and I dropped out, and we got married with all but the real shotguns, and all of the implied ones, present at the ceremony. I wonder where I would be if I had stayed in college. Where I would be if none of this had happened? I was studying history because it was something that always interested me and because dad never put much pressure on me as to what I studied. I really didn�t think about the future then. I just figured it would happen. I spend a lot of time now thinking about the past though, and how decisions I made or didn�t make have really got me in this fucked up situation. I wish I had thought more about the future back then, rather than just letting it happen to me. If there was one thing I should have learned from studying history, it should have been that. Oh man, you don�t know how much I wish I could do it all over again.
So I am up and down the aisles after I arrive. I don�t like spending too much time in these places. Get in. Get out. Get it done. That�s how I operate. I get annoyed with the overwhelming fluorescence of it all. I get annoyed by the pimply boys stocking the shelves with boxes and shit all out in the floor. It�s good to come at this time of night because you can avoid all of the blue hairs that are in here during the daylight hours, and there�s never a line, but you have to deal with these stock fuckers and how they sneer at you and laugh always with their other stock friends just as you pass by, like I�ve got a sign on me that says, �I�m an asshole� or something like that. God! Just get the tampons, milk, cereal, Certs, Rolaids, cigarettes and beer and get the fuck out. Suck down the beer in the parking lot and toss the cans, pop a Certs and a Rolaid and drive back, trying to keep it between the lines. That�s how to do it, and that is usually my way.
Tonight is a little different though. Or at least it turns out that way. I am in the parking lot and about four beers into it when I notice the clerk who checked me out is staring out the window at me. He is just staring and it looks like right at me. There�s no one in line and he is zoning I guess. And he is staring at me. And I stare right back but I am sure that he cannot see me. The parking lot light above my car has been out since I moved back, and I purposefully park under it so that I can drink in private. He is sitting there and staring and I am staring back. He starts smiling a little bit � a knowing smile.
I start to wonder what his life must be like. Who does he go home to at night? Does it make this kind of work worth it? Does he have kids? Maybe he works nights so he can spend days with them. Maybe he and his wife split days and nights so they don�t have to send the kids to day care. Maybe he is happy in his own way. Maybe he has figured it out, and life is good for him. Maybe this simple thing turns out to be all he ever really wanted. I bet he�s a good man. I bet that 200 people pass through his line every day and none of them know him like I do. He is like my new brother. I am his.
Does he know me in the same way. What is he thinking about me as I finish off the fifth and start the sixth beer? I kind of want his life even though I don�t really know what it is like. I know he doesn�t want mine though. He can see right through it all. He knows all that is going on. You cannot be in his line of work without figuring out how to divine these things. It is the only thing that makes the work worthwhile. He can see it in my eyes now, just as he saw it earlier while I was in his line, that Chrystal and I won�t make it. We won�t last. He can sense the tension. He can hear it in my breath. He sees it in the tampons, and in the milk, and in the carton of cigarettes, and especially in the six pack. I guess he can see it in me. He has seen it every time, for a while, that I have been in here for these late night runs. He�s seen me in the parking lot trying to suck a little back out of the night, out of my life, before I return home to the future of what?