An aisle doesn’t feel this warm

Just before we’re due to open I always stride one more time past the rows. Perfection tickles the hairs on my back erect. Tins, glass bottles, cardboard packets and plastic-wrapped chicken fillets form a wall of bolt-upright uniformity. Anything expired is gone, items replenished, promotional material on display. Everything is immaculate, untouched. Precisely the way I like it. 

Even before the vacancy was posted online I knew I would find my ultimate fulfilment in a life between the shelves of the local supermarket. As a customer I started out doing my shopping at lunchtime, but I became aware that the shop was no longer at its pristine best then. That irritated me. So I resolved to come as early as possible, when the shelves were still filled to the brim. The sight of a virginal wall of green beans had the desired effect. I put my hands in my trouser pockets in the hope of disguising the swelling under the fabric and fled blushing past a deserted checkout. At home everything gushed forth, after which an uneasy feeling crept over me, because my flaccid member evoked the image of a dented tin, its virginity lost. That day I made two resolutions: one, it was self-evident that I would get a job in that shop and two, in order to preserve the sublime nature of all that perfection I would have to learn to subdue my lusts. 

It was simplicity itself to convince my superiors at the job interview of my talent for efficiency, order and precision. But as soon as the first resolution took effect, the second began perniciously eating away at me. From then on I was confronted daily by the rectilinearity of a display of apple sauce, spinach and peas, accounted for to the very last tin, which at first made self-control impossible. When everything was meticulously lined up on the shelving, I would stop in the little room to jerk myself back to my senses after the sight of all that perfection. But the more I came on that toilet bowl, the bigger the disappointment grew. My stiff dick started to seem like a sledge hammer shattering the aisles – sperm on cottage cheese from a ruptured pot. Perfection was smashed to smithereens time and again by that jerking. 

This couldn’t go on. So I stopped masturbating. Literally and figuratively it had come to that. 

But soon the pent-up lust tinkered with my wiring. It goaded me. And around the holiday season, when an extra column of red cranberries was erected next to the tins of peas and lentils I gave in. Eight times in a row I shot into a sheet of toilet paper, at which point I began softly sobbing. While washing my hands I didn’t cast so much as a glance at the bloated face in the mirror. I could sense that my fulfilment in life was destroying me, but I had no desire to confront the fact. 

Through all the frustration, life went on... 

... until suddenly a jar of apple sauce was sitting next to the maize, and later a tin of tuna lay among the red cabbage. Someone was tinkering with the composition of my aisles. It drove me crazy. A customer making a fool of me? A colleague who couldn’t abide me? I kept a vigilant eye out, because I would collar whoever was messing with my beloved rows and show no mercy. 

Then I saw her. She casually took an item from a shelf, inspected it from top to toe and put it back in the wrong place. Not with evil intent but out of nonchalance. I had expected anger. Blind hatred. I’d thought I would rant and rave: you there, put that back where you found it or I’ll drag you out of the shop by your hair! But what did I do? Nothing. When I saw her, my obsession with perfection consumed itself. What was wrong with me? 

Suddenly she was standing in front of me. 

‘Excuse me, where do I find the peeled tomatoes?’ 

I stammered, ‘Here, next to the couscous and raspberries.’ 

She smiled and said, ‘Thank you. Everything is ranked so neatly side by side, it makes me feel anxious.’ 

‘Anxious?’ 

‘Yes, it’s too perfect. Unbearably so.’ 

‘Really?’ 

‘Really.’ 

I handed her the tin of peeled tomatoes and in doing so briefly touched her hand. I felt a tingling in my crotch. The little room was calling me. But all I could think was: an aisle doesn’t feel this warm. 

This story is written by Stijn Demarbaix for Het Rode Oor 2020. Het Rode Oor (The Red Ear) is the annual erotic writing contest in the Low Countries, curated by the Flemish-Dutch House deBuren in collaboration with Company New Heroes, Hard//hoofd, ILFU and the Writer’s Guide (to the Galaxy). This story is translated by Liz Waters.