Parade Of Assholes Part Three

Jose Illicitano

You know, believe it or not I might end up having less of these than I thought. I think enough time has passed that I'm slowly forgetting all the shitty regulars, and I don't want to post about the occasional innocent annoying people, like that one deaf guy. They weren't evil on purpose.

This guy was. We'll call him Jose Illicitano. He went to my high school and was in a grade lower than me. At first, he seemed really cool. He had a good sense of humor, despite being kind of a weirdo. Example: He fell asleep in Anatomy and when the teacher woke him up, he started up suddenly and said "hoo-ah!" That's right, Al Pacino's catchphrase from Scent Of A Woman. I don't get it either, but it was random thus funny.

Over time, he became a regular, and I'd let him behind the counter to talk, and would even supervise him once or twice on how to use the register in the hopes that he could substitute at some point. I think you all know where this is going...

At college, he found a girlfriend. Now, this was not a minor miracle as he was not the handsomest fella in the world. He had kinky black hair, a goattee, and a paunch. However, his girlfriend seemed really cool and open to comics. She was tall, with curly blond hair and height-weight proportionate. Well, one day I'm helping a new customer (who I never saw again) and was about to ring up his credit card when the phone rings. Turns out it's Jose's girlfriend. She says that she has something to tell me about Jose. She's pregnant. I stammer out an "uh... okay, call me back in a few minutes. I'm with somebody." She gives me a really grateful "thanks, (my name here)" and we hang up. The guy, presumably not wanting human drama with his superhuman drama, promptly pays, leaves, and sticks to mail order from that point on.

It turns out all those years not getting laid and reading comic books left Jose not with any sort of gratitude towards the female race nor a sense of right and wrong. He dumped her and his parents called her a whore and said that she raped (?!) him. She was undecided as to what to do, but ultimately decided to end it and move back down further south of the state where her relatives lived and finish college there. I understand what I just wrote might upset some of you, it's an issue that divided this country with very little, if any, gray area. What happened happened, it was her decision to make, I won't, can't, ain't and don't say what I would have done. Moving on.

The main reason she called was to inform us of Jose's sticky fingers. Turns out he had been stealing from the shop for some time now. A customer ordered the JLA:Earth 2 toys from DC Direct from us, and when we went to retrieve them from the back, they were gone. He had bought a Punisher mini-statue off eBay only to find it was missing the extra gun. No worries, he stole ours from the box and closed it back up. He stole from big box stores like Media Play (kinda like Borders for you young'uns) and Best Buy, too. He would do the old "remove the DVD/video game from the protective covering and slip it in his clothes" trick. This came as kind of a shock and a disappointment. My liberal guilt didn't want to believe the cliche of the sleazy latino womanizing thief, but there it was. I felt like Michael from The Office when he found out the ex-con working for him was the black guy, and not a white guy who got caught polluting in a black guy's lake.

If you're hoping and salivating for the neat and tidy comic book ending of the owner coming in, kicking the guy's ass back to Guantanamo Bay and dropping a bomb on him... keep hoping. I informed the owner of what the girlfriend had said, and of course he was upset. After asking me if she would testify and getting pissed, it just kind of went away. Jose stopped coming in after probably detecting some knowledge on our part and some low-key hostility. I saw him a couple of times at the gym I used to go to, and was a dick to him, but that was it. As tempermental as the owner was (he once kicked a Coke machine's ass and broke a register), he surprisingly didn't do anything. The girlfriend later admitted revenge fantasies to me such as throwing a molotov cocktail in his room, but she didn't do anything and neither did I, despite my own bloodlust at being made a sap as well as the objective anger of treating someone like he did.

I talked to the girl fairly regularly for a period of three to three-and-a-half months, I think. It was a bad year for me, as I moved far away from work with my parents who I did not get along with in the slightest. My buddies were all in college and I felt so very, very alone. It was probably a tie for worst year of my life. Place a gun to my head (at the time I probably would have wanted you to) and I'll probably say it was the worst. So needless to say, those conversations really helped me a lot. I found out she was really cool, and artistic, and her vulnerability probably appealed to me as much as my (admittedly somewhat self-interested) kindness appealed to her. We stopped talking when she moved down south and started a new job, school and life. Probably for the best, as I was most likely a reminder of all the unwanted drama that arose from that period of her life.

As for whatever happened to Jose? Who knows. He's on Facebook and MySpace, but with private profiles of course. I never heard from him or someone else about him dating another girl, and I know he doesn't have that cool of a life or a job. He's probably still living at home with overbearing parents pushing him to get married to some chick who will pop out eight kids and get fat on him.

Also, hopefully this post will show I plan on being honest about myself in the future, as I don't exactly paint myself in the best or most heroic light here. Everyone has their faults, and I certainly had more than my share in those years.

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