Ryman Shakeup
Written by Ben Tallon
It’s quiet in Ryman Stationery on a Wednesday lunchtime. I’m looking for the finest fine liner available when a loud voice smashes the fragile peace, asking the man on the till if he can come and reach a box folder down. The cashier protests that he cannot leave the till because his colleague is out for lunch, but this is snuffed out. By the time the cashier and the loud customer appear at the till, I’ve chosen my fine liner (0.03 nib) and sidle up behind a lad in a high-vis orange jacket who is now waiting to be served. He appears slightly younger than me.
The loud bloke makes eye contact with both of us and I notice a familiar wildness in his eyes having grown up around many of these characters.
Then the inevitable addressing.
“LADS. GO. AND. GET. YOUR. PROSTATE. CHECKED. DO IT TOMORROW!”
The man on the till is reeling, his terrified smile so empty it hurts, his silence so desperate. I’m already smirking because I love these wildcards, the ones who refuse to allow society to slip into a gentrification/big tech coma.
His advice is sound, his only real flaw is the volume at which he bellows it, right here in the middle of town, when the man behind the till just needs to ride out lunch hour in the trenches. It’s that impish refusal to sanction even this minor plea for mercy that delights me.
“I’M TELLING YOU, MINE… IT SWELLED UP LIKE THIS–” and now his hands come up, big shovels poking out of his weighty overcoat sleeves like a Lego figurine, and it’s as if he’s hoisting up a record-breaking sized fruit in a local newspaper.
“IT CREEPS UP ON YOU, AND THEN YOU ARE FUCKED.”
It’s on the savagery of that last word that the cashier’s head drops, and all I can do is giggle. When prostate man leaves the store chuckling, the lad in front gets out his phone and starts to google ‘prostate check’, also giggling.
All the way home, I think about the liquid-gold value of that dirty energy, the mischief, the abandon, and the different way of being, how it’s completely overlooked by most people when it comes to considering creativity, and how much better it could be if everyone could gain my appreciation of outliers.