One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about this week is my two new bodega guys. To say guys singular is actually a misnomer, because both bodegas are run by families, and each of the families is represented by a number of different people. At the bodega by the BQE, where I go to buy Hershey’s Cookies & Cream bars, sunflower seeds, chipwiches, seltzers and occasionally lottery tickets, a father and son team switch off depending on the time of day.
At the larger bodega on Court Street, where I go to buy basically everything else I need including pretzel chips, diet ginger ales, Tate’s chocolate chip cookies, Luna Bars and Annie’s Mac & Cheese — now I’ve basically given away my entire diet — a Chinese family tags off throughout the week. This Chinese family consists of a father, a son and sometimes a mother, who appears the least frequently. They live in Sunnyside Queens — I know this because I asked the son — and they own the business.
I’ve tried a few other bodegas in the hood, but they didn’t stick. At one, a roll of toilet paper cost $5. At another, the guy behind the counter talked for 7 minutes about his experiences online dating before handing me my change, and I almost ripped off my ears.
Bodegas are extremely important to me because I eat like an elementary school student abandoned by her meth head mother and am very lazy. You can go to a bodega any time of day or night, and you can do so wearing your pajamas, because bodega guys don’t judge you. They just smile, and say “how are you today,” and then give you your change. Sometimes they flirt with you, and ask you if you want to go to Palestine to be their wife, but I don’t mind that at all. It’s nice to know that someone wants to marry you even when you haven’t washed your hair for three days and are wearing underwear that — as Caleb noticed about a few pairs I save for nights when I feel unattractive — you’ve had since before you lost your virginity.
In my old neighborhood, my bodega guys knew everything about me. I lived alone, and they were frequently the only people I saw on a daily basis. They knew what time I went for a run. They knew if I was dating someone. They knew if I had the stomach flu. They knew if the cellulite was getting out of control in my ass, because my bodega guys almost exclusively saw me in leggings. The bodega was on a central corner, right down the street from where I lived — if I went anywhere, at least three sets of eyes noticed. Afterwards, they asked me where I had been, who I had seen, and if I was going to marry them. In many ways, they were my 20-something parents.
Now, neither of my bodegas are on a route where I regularly walk. Unless I am riding from Red Hook, I don’t pass them on my bike. Frequently, I don’t even have to go to the bodega to get a snack, because I can manipulate Caleb into doing it for me. “Caleb,” I said when I called him last night. “My novel got rejected by an agent and I think I’m going to kill myself, do you think you could do me a favor?”
He was in the car on the way home from his studio in Williamsburg. “Stop trying to manipulate me into getting you chocolate,” he said.
“Please,” I said.
He hung up the phone on me, but showed up 10 minutes later with a Hershey’s Cookies & Cream.
Still, my bodegas are a vital thread in the fabric of my existence. The other day, I brought Franke into the one owned by the Chinese family. Usually, they don’t mind if she walks around — “she won’t pee, right?” they always ask me — but on this particular day, it was raining. They were silent as I crept past the register. I got to the edge of the candy display when the father exclaimed, “She’s peeing!” Franke was not, in fact, peeing — she was just soaking wet and dripping all over the floor. She cowered — I picked her up. “I’m sorry,” I said, as the family stared. For some reason, all three of them were in the store that day. “Can I just get a seltzer before I leave?”
They didn’t say anything, but I sensed their displeasure. So I shuffled out of the door, practically bowing along the way, and went back out on the street, snack-less and humiliated. They could have asked me to clean the floor myself, and I would have done it on my hands and knees. It was then that I realized that bodega guys are the one type of person I’d never piss off in New York. I would scream at a cab driver. I would kick a subway conductor — not hard, just a little nudge to let them know that they ruined my fucking day. I would tell a homeless man he smelled bad. But to a bodega guy, I show my ultimate deference. Without them, in this city, I could not exist.
