Chinese New Year, 2023

Convenience Stories: Chapter 12

We are getting closer to the thrilling conclusion of Convenience Stories, a journalistic travelogue through the gas stations and grocery stores of rural Western Pennsylvania.

If you are a new subscriber and want to catch up on the series, you can start: here.

Mohamed (left) and his 90 Day Fiance

I was sitting in a parking lot, drinking coffee, when the car in my rear-view—a late model Toyota Corolla in Blizzard Pearl finish—flashed its headlights at me. I ignored it. A moment or two later, the car with the flashing headlights pulled into the spot next to mine.

I rolled my window down and recognized the driver immediately—it was Mohamed, from the first season of 90 Day Fiance and its spin-off, Happily Ever After? These reality shows bring foreigners to America on K-1 marriage visas. The trick is, they need to get married in ninety days or they get kicked out of the country. If I remember correctly, Mohamed spent the first season with his fiance-turned-wife Danielle in Canton, Ohio (birthplace of President William McKinley).

The youthful Tunisian with a trendy Supercuts haircut, perpetually unlucky in love, started babbling about his car having electrical problems, and how he was trying to get to Miami after dealing with some legal issues regarding his immigration status back in Ohio. I had nothing going on that day, so I offered to help, and we made a plan: Mohamed would follow me to the mechanic, he’d drop off his car, and I’d drive him back to his friends’ house in Shippingport, about 45 minutes northwest, up the Ohio River, where he’ll stay until his car is repaired.

Woman VI (1953)

I don’t think I’d ever spent so much time with a celebrity before. There was the time Jello Biafra and I had a nice chat at the civil unrest during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 1999, and the time Joey Ramone called me an asshole (he was joking). I had forgotten about this until he died of lymphoma in 2001, at the age of 49. I was talking to my mom on the phone, who asked me about “that guy that called you an asshole?”

My most visceral brush with fame was in September 2005. I was working as a security guard at the Carnegie Museum of Art. It was a grueling job, standing in one place for eight hours a day. After a year or so I got to know my supervisors pretty well, and they started assigning me out-of-the-way places in the museum where I could sit with a stack of books and read and write throughout my shift. On this day in September, however, I was stuck in an exhibit called “The Mysteries of the Bog People Unearthed,” featuring the mummified remains of Celts who had been ritually sacrificed 1,700 years ago and submerged in European peat bogs.

The day before I had been in the contemporary art exhibit, leaning against a wall near Willem De Kooning’s Woman VI (1953), waiting for a hangover to pass, when one of the guards came up to me. She was an annoying woman who liked to tell you that you didn’t look well when you were leaning against the wall, waiting for a hangover to pass. That’s my pet peeve, being told that I looked like shit. I mean, who wants to hear that? If someone looks hung-over, tell them they look good, if you have to say anything at all. They probably need to hear it.

That day, I was standing there, leaning against the wall when the guard comes up to me and says: “The drummer’s gone now.”

“What?”

“He’s gone now.”

“What drummer?” I was seriously annoyed at this time.

“The one from The Rolling Stones.”

“Really? He was here? Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

“They told me not to tell anybody?”

“Who?”

“You know—”

I cut her off, “Okay, thanks,” and went back to my wall.