Sebring Marketing Consultants Inc.
4500 Lake Destiny Drive
Suite 102
Maitland, FL 32707
(407) 748 2541
(888) 669 6699
www.SMC.com
An Open Letter to the Management, Owners and Proprietors of Video
Stores Offering Adult Films
Greetings from Reginald Sebring, President of Sebring Marketing
Consultants Incorporated. For eighteen years Sebring has provided our
clients with "innovative strategies built on sound principles." SMC is
internationally known and our reputation is impeccable. Predictably, our
services are not secured without considerable expense. However, this
treatise is being made available free of charge to explain how the removal
of female employees from video stores offering adult films would increase
revenue.
Most pornographic movie titles herald the particular fetish and/or sexual
orientation(s) they cater to. Additionally, many tapes are bright red or
yellow in color. Consequently, it is impossible for consumers to rent or
purchase erotica discretely since it will be handled by at least one store
employee when he or she scans it. The exposure of something so private
during a face-to-face exchange with a complete stranger makes most
customers very uncomfortable. If the cashier is of the opposite sex that
discomfort can increase dramatically. To elucidate I offer the following
anecdote from my personal life: Several months ago, a business lunch at
P.F. Chang's left me with an overwhelming
yen to watch Asian females engaging in sex acts with Asian female
partners. On my way home I stopped at my local adult video purveyor for a
film to sate my rather esoteric craving. After much deliberation I
selected, "Geisha Gash." Upon exiting the doorway separating the adult
room from the commercial release room I made a troubling observation, an
unfamiliar female had replaced the disheveled, overweight, omnipresent
male clerk. Not only was the relief cashier female, she was a young,
attractive, Asian female! I briefly considered returning my selection to
its numerically assigned shelf space. However, my need for sexual release
was so urgent I had "chubbed" just from the box covers. I knew that if I
went home without some fresh masturbatory stimulus I
would be relegated to passionless intercourse with my stained and
battered blow up doll.
Halfway to the front I got a good look at her face. She was beautiful;
enormous, almond shaped eyes flanked by a lazy river of raven black hair.
Her complexion fell just short of immaculate, defiled only by the
striations years of casting contemptuous glances had etched into it. I
glanced at my movie. Its title had doubled in size. I took a deep breath
and stumbled a few more paces with stannic feet. The "End Patriarchy Now"
script on her T Shirt became legible. By the time I reached the checkout
the room's temperature had jumped ten degrees and I was feeling light
headed.
As I set my selection on the counter I uttered a cordial pleasantry. I did
not receive so much as eye contact in return. Instead, she let several
seconds of silence lapse to convey her perpetual hatred of everyone and
everything before setting her Hunter S. Thompson paperback aside and
murmuring "Phone number" in my general direction (still without
establishing eye contact). As quickly as the numerals left my mouth she
punched the corresponding keys. Following the last digit she grabbed the
scanner with her right hand and my rental with her left. While scanning
the tape she spied its title. Her eyes remained affixed to the words for a
second or so before darting towards mine. I
averted my pupils but still felt the elephantine weight of her stare…
On my very life I swear that I have not taken any kind of creative license
with the
following portion of this chronology.
It appears that the stress of the ordeal I had unexpectedly found myself
in, coupled with Lord only knows what other factor or factors, temporarily
attuned my brainwaves to a paranormal frequency. From one moment to the
next I found myself privy to her thoughts via some kind of telepathic
conduit. Her mouth never moved, but I heard the following words as if
she'd screamed them. "Unfucking believable, this misogynist sees a whole
race of women – my race! – as fodder for his perverse sexual desires." I
opened my mouth to voice indignation only to choke on a batch of saliva.
She showed no concern whatsoever during my spell of respiratory distress.
The moment it subsided she huffed, "One night or two?" This time I heard
her spoken query at the same time
I heard the malicious ulterior inquiry that belied it: "Do you want to run
a quick
batch before bed, or are you going to spend the next forty eight hours
slamming your ham Mister Loser Who Can't Get Laid?" My jaw slackened. I
felt compelled to do something totally outside my character and defend
myself aggressively, but as it has my whole life the voice of reason
lulled my inner beast back into hibernation before he could rise to his
feet. "Voices in your head are a sure sign of madness," I chided myself,
"Get a grip on yourself!" On the unquestionable integrity of that advice I
purged the knowledge my sixth sense had afforded me from my mind, and
from what I can surmise my sixth sense along with it. I
took a deep breath and did my best to reassume the visage of my sane self.
"One please," I replied through my desert highway of a throat. "Three
eighteen," she exhaled. I reached into the back pockets of my pants for my
wallet but found nothing. She crossed her arms. I searched my external
coat pockets but came up empty-handed again. She rolled her eyes, cocked
her hip and sighed obnoxiously. Alas I found my billfold in my jacket's
inner pocket, where I had recently started keeping it since reading a
blurb about pick pockets in Reader's Digest. I removed the smallest
denomination of currency I carried. I placed the twenty on the counter.
The nanosecond it hit the Formica she rapped her knuckles on a hand
written, barely noticeable scrap of paper Scotch taped to the counter that
read: "We need fives and singles PLEASE!"
"I – uh - I'm sorry, that's the smallest bill I have."
"Fiiiyyynn," she dry heaved as she swiped the bill off the counter. She
punched keys and the cash drawer sprung open. From brisk mechanical
movements her hands slowed to cessation. Her head tilted to one side and
her brow bunched like a salted slug. She withdrew the bill I had handed
her and held it at book's length from her face. Her head slowly,
involuntarily oscillated and her face expressed disgust. With conviction
she laid my twenty on the counter face up, revealing the source of her
sudden change of countenance. One of the bill's previous owners had drawn
a small but well-defined phallus immediately stage right of Andrew
Jackson's head propelling a healthy stream of semen into his mouth.
"Oh no, I, I didn't do that," I mumbled through marbles, "I didn't even
see it..."
"I'm sure you didn't," she shot back with seething incredulity, "You
didn't see it when you got the bill or just now when you pulled it out of
your wallet, right?"
"Yes! No! I mean no, I didn't see it when I got it or now just when I
just gave it to you!"
But it was too late, she had made up her mind to decimate my dignity.
"I've got omething for you, you sick fuck. One day you'll be married, and
when you and your wfe come in here…" Her eyes cut to her computer screen
and darted in several directions as if they were following an angry
bumblebee. I was perplexed by the sudden, seemingly pointless redirection
of her focus until she resumed speaking: "…I'm gonna ask if she's as big a
fan of puke porn as you are. Or maybe I'll ask her if she's a fucking
he-she like the things in the movie you rented last Tuesday! Why, I might
just send a fax of your rental history to every church in town! Would you
like that you sexist, perverted pig?!" Upon concluding her blitzkrieg she
threw her shoulders back and planted her hands on her hips in a gesture of
uncontestable triumph. I was more humiliated than I had ever been in my
life. No one, especially not me, could have foreseen what followed. A
tidal wave of unadulterated rage inundated my being.
Fight or flight adrenaline flooded
every channel in my body. "I'm notta pervesexipig!" I bellowed, "I'm
jesaguy who finez uncuvenschinal sex arousing!" My fists hammered the
counter in synchronicity.
The consequent burst of cannon fire that shot from my hands to my elbows
brought me back from cave man days. I felt as if I were waking from
centuries spent in a coma. I surveyed the room. I was surprised to spot a
tragically fat woman standing next to her life size Precious Moments
figurine of a daughter. Tragically Fat Woman's hand was constricting her
child's pygmy paw like a python. Fat's face wore an expression of horror,
her daughter's one of innocence lost. Though my rage was dissipating like
fireworks in the night sky, enough remained in me to disregard the remorse
that would have crippled me on any other day. I returned my attention to
the cashier and learned that she had suffered a more tragic fate as a
result of my detonation. Her formerly ovular
eyes were now fixed in perfect circles. Her mouth sagged like a rose
four days dead. Her previously bronze skin had gone candle wax white. I
became aware that my heart was beating like a heavyweight boxer setting a
speed bag record. I felt like I had not inhaled in the last twenty-four
hours. I swallowed as if I were trying to polish off a swimming pool in a
single effort. I might as well have been inhaling honey. I realized that
if I did not evacuate that life compactor immediately I would succumb to
blackness, possibly permanently. I ran for the door as fast as my Jell-O
legs could carry me leaving
my tape and my twenty behind.
Outside I walked through a dense wall of ice-cold rain. I found my vehicle
when my shin collided with the fender. I reached into my pocket with a
hand trembling sufficiently to register on the Richter scale. Over and
over my keys bounced off my palm like a racquetball off a wall. Cracks
appeared in the surface of my psyche. When all that separated me from
madness was one more failed attempt my ring finger laced the key ring like
a thread through a needle's eye. I celebrated my success for all of a
second before it occurred to me that my mission was nowhere near
accomplished, I was now expected to bulls eye my key into the Lilliputian
vaginal opening on the door! Between mental and physical exhaustion, rain
stinging my eyes and hands trembling like Mexican
jumping beans on methamphetamine I knew that would never happen. I made
a resolution, I would simply lift the handle to a door I was absolutely
certain was locked, and when that didn't work I would collapse on the
concrete and quiescently drown in a puddle of rainwater. I tugged. If
there is a God, that night was a rare and random display of his mercy. I
had very uncharacteristically left my door unlocked. I collapsed into the
driver's seat using my last ounce of energy to drag the door shut behind
me. How I managed to successfully drive home that night remains a mystery
even to me.
That evening was irrefutably the worst of my life. The following day I had
to miss work to have my hands examined by a doctor. I had broken one
metacarpal and fractured another at the apex of my tirade. What's worse,
the psychological trauma I suffered was so severe that any subsequent
attempts to acquire adult films I have made since that evening were
thwarted by the onset of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms including
profuse perspiration, tremors, blurred vision and nausea. The Internet was
my sex life's saving grace.
The contention that excising females would be more profitable than the
removal of their male counterparts is supported by statistical evidence.
June 2003's issue of Adult Entertainment Monthly Monitor ran an article
entitled "Which Sex is Watching What," stating that 71.6% of pornography
consumed in the Unites States is consumed by males. The article went on to
say that men not only consume adult entertainment more often than women,
but "rent and purchase more pornography per transaction..." Management,
owners and proprietors of video stores offering adult films must address
this issue immediately if they wish to make their business(es) as
successful as maximally
possible.
Regards,
Reginald Sebring
RAS
Enclosures: none
