We go to different supermarkets for different reasons. I don’t know if I’m the only one suffering this disease, but I always liked supermarkets. Not necessarily the performance of doing the groceries themselves, but more the supermarkets as meeting forums where we all congregate. The idiosyncrasy of we all getting together there to haunt and gather. The unnecessary decorations mixed with vital ingredients. The sweatpants, the crocs, the screaming children, the people walking like zombies on speakerphone. If there’s any other evidence that I am indeed another victim of the capitalism, must be this one.

The illusion of choice, the colour, the democracy of the participants. A cornucopia of chocolate biscuits and French cheese. Sparkly nutty granola shining in front of the veggie salami substitutes. I love some supermarkets because they are neat, organized and I know where to find everything that I need. I visit others due to their closeness to some of my commuting routes, even if they are messy or just plain battle fields.

I enjoy the militarized vegetables as much as I enjoy someone trying unsuccessfully to steel a six – pack in the self-checkout. Aldi is the juggernaut of the supermarkets. Everything is cheaper and their workers are amazing at keeping it rolling. They also throw the items at you were supposed to catch them in the air with the reusable bag. It’s great.

This Aldi also has a particular incentive. A different kind of six pack, although I have never witnessed their six pack in person and I’m not erven sure if they have one (They probably do). I will call this person Ryan. I could go on and on as well about how some names sound that they belong to hot people and some others don’t, but that is for another post. This Aldi worker, whose name I know, has an equally hot and sexy name. But we shall name them Ryan.

Ryan is the kind of guy who can rock any outfit. And he looks great in his work attire. He wears black shoes, I want to say doc martens (the ones without platform), always shiny clean. Black socks and straight fit jeans collide with the Aldi vest. His arms get out breaking the fabric, tight. Inverted triangle blooming from a waist to well rounded muscled shoulders. Strong and yet lean arms end up into big hands, concealed into black gloves. In his forearms, veins form the patterns of youth, of passion. Patterns of energy, drawn into the appendixes of a small urban demigod. Muscles soft, tender. He wears a polo t shirt (why wouldn’t he), a well ironed collar holds his neck, wide and athletic, caressing it carefully.
He has one of those faces that hurts when you look at. A beauty that’s not unique, rather mediocre indeed, in his apollonian form. He smiles a lot, and his white teeth are seen from across the several plastics that reflect light.

My friend says that he is too Abercrombie and fitch.

He can Abercrombie and fitch me any time.

The self-checkout tills beep bop like a dystopian slaughterhouse, grey and brown figures march to the shouts of “NEXT!” or “CARD PLEASE!” and I watch the cold feet, in cheap socks, in wet shoes to slither on the way to the pavement outside. A light twinkles. Someone’s shiny hair blinks too. This particular someone must have been using too much hair spray. I don’t care though.

I just don’t care.

In between the cheap coats and soaked hoodies, the light keeps flashing over him. Ryan is smashing some boxes. He does it in a way that seems simultaneously effortless and yet impactful. It’s quite hard to make smashing cardboard boxes look sexy. And yet here we are. Someone calls him. He piles up the flattened cardboards nicely under the crates where the cucumbers lay, and he nods, smiling. He says something, too far away for me to hear, but not too far away to somehow feel how his voice sounds.

Ryan’s voice is deep and friendly in ways that almost make my anti – heteropatriarchy agenda fall into pieces. He disappears behind the smoked salmon, and someone snaps their fingers right in the middle of my visual field.

Apparently, one of the other lovely Aldi workers have been yelling either “NEXT!” or “CARD PLEASE!” a couple of times. I apologize thoroughly, because apologizing gets you a long way in the UK, I smile and I move to my little till, while I spy with the corner of my eye. Nothing happens next to the salmon; nothing happens next to the chicken thighs.
I beeped boppped my shopping and got out under the grey sky.

I cannot spot Ryan through the glass. But I’m not worried. I am not attached. It’s just a transient platonic love.

One that will never happen.

Or, if I think about it poetically, one that happens for fifteen minutes every time that I walk up to buy some rosemary crackers.