Sunoco

December

At exactly 3 o’clock in the morning, I turn off of the highway and into the parking lot. As I switch my car off, so does my playlist consisting mostly of depressing Siberian punk songs. There are no other cars here except the usual car, which at this point I know belongs to the Night Shift Guy whose name I still don’t know, despite him remembering my default cigarette pack right a solid 40% of the time and asking for ID a solid 0%.

When I walk in, I try to stroll through the aisles as slowly and aimlessly as possible. God knows it’s the only thing I can really do at this hour. I spend a comically long amount of time eyeing the Monster Energy drink selection with great care and consideration before moving towards the gummy snacks. Trying my best not to give into my body dysmorphic tendencies, I pick out a berry-flavored gummy snack and head past aisles of weed and kratom to the cash register.

I quickly put my snack on the table, as if it was a hot potato. Night Shift Guy asks me if I want matches, to which I nod and say “you know me so well” before continuing to look down at my shoes. I’ve been going to this gas station for 9 months now, but I’m still so anxious of being seen, being read, being too comfortable. Night Shift Guy informs me that his credit card tap machine is acting up so we’ll have to wait a few minutes while it restarts. I mutter a swift “okay.”

There’s around a 15-second pause, now.

“You shy?”

I chuckle. “Just a bit, I’m always like this.”

I actually wasn’t always like this, but that’s not his problem.

“You a student?”

“Yeah, in the city. My family just lives ’round here.”

“I am from Turkey,” he offers up. “I live in America nine month.”

“I’m Russian, but I’ve always lived here with all the… highways and parks and cemeteries.” I wave my hand around randomly. There’s nothing to do here anymore but smoke cigarettes and go to stores. Hell, it’s probably by design.

“You like Putin?” He jokes with me, thinking I won’t retort.

“You like Erdogan?” I add flatly, “Ha-ha.”

He laughs a little, though I can tell he’s still annoyed about the machine because he’s fidgeting with the register.

“Have you heard of Yasli Amca?” I ask as he finally gets the machine working. “It’s a Turkish band I used to like a lot.”

“Yashli Amca?” Night Shift Guy perks up, correcting my pronunciation. “Of course I heard! Name means old man.” He takes his phone out and starts playing Hep de Yorgun. I noticed the way his face has lit up as the light music plays. People come here for drugs and food. Not many talk to him about things from the place he calls home. I almost feel like I’ve made something good for him out of my boredom.

I let him show me different Turkish rock and metal for the next 15 minutes. I can tell it means more to him than me. Eventually, I ask him if I can smoke outside the gas station. He says it’s fine. As I walk out, telling him jokingly I’ll see him next year, the Turkish music gets fainter and fainter, and I resolve to come here more often when I’m bored.

⌂⌂⌂

January

“I learn harmonica,” Night Shift Guy randomly adds after scanning my $5.76 worth of gummy bears and a pack of cigarettes.

“Wow, really?”

“I show you.” He takes out a harmonica from the backpack next to the cash register. He starts playing a random, simple tune. I make sure to clap when he’s done.

Then he asks me, “You like raki? You try raki?”

“I’ve never tried it,” I reply, remembering that he’s talking about the Turkish alcohol.

“Raki and water.” He makes a mixing gesture with his hands. “Melon. Kebab. Pepper. In Summer I learn you raki. Is learn?” Picking up on that he’s trying to find the opposite of ’learn’, I say “teach.” I’m slowly getting used to the patterns of his grammar mistakes. They remind me of my dad’s a little.

When he’s done ringing me up, he asks, “How long you smoke cigarette?”

“A year and a half.”

“Eighteen month?” I nod. “Not too late you quit. You must. I smoke a pack cigarette since I am 13. Sick all the time. November I quit. Less sick now.” He gives me the pack anyway, and I go to have myself a guilty little smoke outside the store.

⌂⌂⌂

February

Outside the store while I’m on my smoke, Night Shift Guy asks me, “How old you?”

“You want my actual age or the age you can sell cigarettes to?”

“Actual age.”

“I’m eighteen.”

His face looks as if he’s under the most shock he’s ever experienced. “You? Eighteen?” He almost doesn’t want to believe it. “Thought you twenty-three like my sister.” I wonder if it’s because of my short hair or my stressed-out-looking face that he thinks so. Maybe both. Probably both.

I take a drag and mention off-handedly, almost as an experiment, “my girlfriend and I became official recently.”

If he’s shocked that I’m one of those queers or something, he doesn’t show it. “How long you?”

“Like a week in a relationship relationship but honestly, we’ve been seeing each other for almost a year now.” I’m not sure if he understands me.

“My ex-girlfriend Russian like you,” he segways. “I show you picture.” He does, in fact, end up showing me several pictures. She’s pretty, I guess. I smoke for a while, making sure to not exhale his way since he quit.

“I was police officer in Turkey.” He next shows me a picture on his phone of him in a uniform, posing next to a Turkish police car.

“Yeah, and now you’re selling tobacco to underage college students. Hooray!” I notice a cop car on the other side of the highway. “Oh look, there’s your friends, come wave hi.”

He laughs rather heartily. “I say come get her! She’s a criminal!” As he points to the cigarette in my mouth with a childish grin on his face I can’t help but to think back to the she, her, she. I repeat to myself that I’m used to it, I’m used to it entirely.

“Do you like this job better?” I ask him to take my mind off It.

“Yes,” he responds. “When I was police officer always something. Something loud, something need to do. Here is quiet. Boss is good. Here is good, free. I love freedom.”

What a strange guy, I think. And yet, I’m starting to like hanging around him a lot. It’s nice, I’m realizing, to have someone you can consistently bother at late hours of the night. Either way, my cigarette finishes, and my time with him has run out for the night. Again I shall be on my way.

⌂⌂⌂

March

“You can go to car if want. After your cigarette done.” I get it—the translation. He feels like he’s forcing me to stay here.

“I like it here.” I smoke my cigarette until it’s down to the filter as he continues to show me photos of his exes and his mom and his Turkish alcohol.

A thought strikes me with the force of a bull. “Now that I think about it, I don’t know your name.”

“My name is Altan.” He repeats, “Altan. But customers call me just Al.”

That’s crazy, I think. I’m an Al too.

“Your original name?” He inquires, nodding his head to the side.

“Original?”

“Is Russian name?”

I nod.

“Is Alice?” I shake my head, chuckling. He looks away in deep contemplation, then turns back as if he’s really got it now. “Natasha? My Russian ex Natasha.”

It takes my entire strength not to burst out laughing.

“It’s... uh... it’s complicated.”

“Your original name Cate? Not Russian name?”

Shit, I forgot this guy’s been in the US less than a year and doesn’t know the word complicated.

I have to think on my feet, I realize, to try and convey the nuance of my name situation to him without making it all very awkward and weird.

“Uh... my original name... is, uh... ***** ... but I changed my name and now it’s just... now it’s just Alistair.”

It’s the most confused he’s ever been in his life, probably, because he asks me “Alistair? Alistair why?” with the most youthful urgency one could muster. It pains me to know exactly what he means—why a boy’s name? And I truly want to tell him, but I doubt he’d understand what it means to be me, working as a man, going to school as a man, and still having this conversation.

“I quite like it,” I finally choose to answer. “You can just call me Al as well.”

He notices me fidgeting with the pack of Marlboro Greens and switches the topic of conversation, presumably for his own greater good. “You want cigarette?” He points to the pack for good measure.

I take one out and put it to my lips.

“I always do,” I remark, chuckling while striking a match. “T’s why I keep fuckin’ coming here.”

“Where you going?” he asks me, remembering that I’m going on a trip after this smoke.

“Philly—” I correct myself realizing he probably doesn’t know what that means. “Philadelphia.”

“You travel safe,” he wishes me. “You want coffee?” I recognize that he’s offering it to me for free and say yes. It couldn’t hurt, could it?

On the way back in the store, Altan says, “I only know store English. Other English I don’t know. I know you want cigarette? What cigarette you want? Other than, I don’t know.” He shrugs. I don’t know what made him bring this up. Sometimes he just does that. I’ve grown used to it.

I look down at my phone and holy crap, it’s 4 a.m. already. I’ve been here a whole hour. I quickly start making myself a coffee in the back of the store. When it’s time to pour the milk in, the fridge won’t open. I pull it and pull it until it nearly drops on my feet. I manage to catch it on time, but it drops a splash of my coffee with it.

He runs up to where the godforsaken fridge is, already with a mop to clean up the coffee. “Are you okay?” I say I am. He asks again; I say yes once again. After he’s done cleaning, he opens the fridge for me correctly this time, pulling from the other side of the fridge door. I finish making my coffee and profusely apologize for the trouble I’ve caused. He reassures me with a “No worry, no worry” and sends me on my way.

⌂⌂⌂

April

The last cigarette I ever had was at that gas station. I didn’t know it; neither did he. What ended up happening was I broke my collarbone on that trip I went on, and had to quit smoking for it to heal. I didn’t pick it up again after that.

I couldn’t drive because of the fracture, so the next time I come to the gas station it is a month later, on a clear April night. Altan has me added on Instagram at this point, so he was kept in the loop, in his own way, and can probably guess why I’d been absent so long.

Anyway, he says the usual “You want cigarette?” when ringing up my Arizona iced tea.

“I quit, you saw on Instagram, remember?”

He looks shocked, so I guess the memo wasn’t as clear as I thought. “How long you quit?”

“The last cigarette I had was here... March 16th... so a Saturday.”

“Good you quit. I quit cigarettes seventy five days now.” Altan takes a light sigh. “Life good in America. I am free. My boss don’t care what I do, what I eat. My head empty, my thoughts empty. Just today and tomorrow and day after.”

Altan makes me admire the lengths some must go to to formulate something as simple as “taking things one day at a time.” I remember back when English was my own second language. I was that guy, going to great lengths to formulate such a ubiquitous feeling. And I feel like, because of this, I understand Altan quite a lot.

“I’m gonna move to Japan one day,” I answer after a long pause, leaning on the counter. “Change where I live, change my career, change my name. Forget everything about this place.”

“I don’t want ask too much.” He starts trying to formulate the thing I already know he is going to ask.

“Are you… lesbian or… you like man?”

How do you explain being trans without saying the word? Especially to someone who’s been in the U.S.m less than a year?

“Uh… how do I explain this… I like girls but I am not one of them… don’t consider myself, to be a girl…” I gave a sheepish grin and threw my hands into a shrug.

Altan says “…nevermind” with a dumbfounded expression. If I wasn’t so nervous in that moment, I would have found it quite a funny sight.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I reassure him for no reason. “As long as… as long as you don’t mind whatever I am.”

“No mind,” he replies. He doesn’t care. Why would he? And so, we go back to conversing about his favorite Turkish alcohol, and smoking, and the usual rotation of five or so things we talk about.

Later, a guy pulls in, enters and buys an energy drink. I let Altan ring him up while I stand off to the side a little, by the humidor. I hear him call the guy “man,” “brother,” “sir,” and think of all I could have been if not for this body.

As the guy leaves, he remarks, “so you guys just hang out in here all night?” And yeah, I guess we do now. Not much else to do in this shitty town, anyway.

⌂⌂⌂

May

“I couldn’t sleep,” I say, as if a justification for my presence was needed.

“You need kratom?” He points to the dainty bottles behind the register.

“Oh, not at all!” I reply. “Doesn’t that make you more awake?”

“Yes, is true,” he says in response. I kind of understand what he’s getting at—if you’re awake and you don’t wanna be, you might as well have fun.

“Fuck it all, I’ll take a cigar. What do you suggest?”

He shows me to the humidor, in which lies a wafer-like cigar with a blue wrapper. It’s more expensive than you’d think, but as soon as I step outside I realize it’s worth it. It has this slight acidic after-taste to it—as if you’re just licking a Sour Patch Kid. We talk about mindless things during the smoke. We always do. He scrutinizes my technique. “You smoke in like cigarette!” He points to his throat. “No good! No good!”

I reply, “I’m trying!” and we go back and forth.

Eventually, my ephemeral happiness runs out of battery, and I start thinking about reality again.

“Do you miss your parents?” I ask Altan.

“I love them. I miss very much. I miss my sister also. I show you my sister.” He takes out his phone to show me pictures of her. I like that he likes showing me pictures. They have no language. There’s no prerequisite, no limitation for viewing a picture—nothing him and his store English can’t handle.

It’s endearing.

“My parents and I haven’t been on the best terms.” I take a puff of the cigar. I still haven’t mastered the elusive art of not letting the smoke go down my throat. I’m used to the convenience of cigarettes.

“You what?”

“My parents… and I…,” I speak slowly, “argue… a lot. They… do not like… how I dress.”

Beautiful. What a succinct way to explain that can of worms.

He thinks for a moment and answers, “You young people always take life too fast. You take slow. You take easy next few years. You finish college. You take girlfriend, move to Japan. Then life good.” I gesture for his lighter to re-light the cigar. He gives it to me. “In Turkey I was police officer. Always thinking always chasing down. Now I have no thoughts. My brain empty. I am happy. Life good.”

It’s one of those nights when I wish I could explain everything to him, but he wouldn’t understand, and I doubt he would care to. So for tonight, I keep smoking my cigar under the pitch-black sky. What I have is enough. What we have is enough.

⌂⌂⌂

June

“Your favorite customer’s here.” I step in nonchalantly and file towards the drinks. My facial expression metamorphoses into a frown when I notice one crucial detail.

“The Baja Blasts are gone.”

He doesn’t get me, of course. “What blast? What is?” I try and explain to him, but all to no avail.

It’s nice to have these problems for once, instead of the bigger ones. I wish I could do this forever—drive on highways and act all preoccupied about Baja Blasts. It’d be a good look on me. Oh well. I dejectedly pick a Chex Mix and waddle towards the cash register.

“That’s all? You want cigarette?”

Resilience in the face of struggle is today’s mantra. “Nah, I quit.”

To tease me a little, Altan has the bright idea to take one out of his personal pack of Marb Golds and place it on the counter, right next to my car keys. “Now you want cigarette?”

“I quit, I quit, no!” We go back and forth, laughing like we’re getting tickled.

He checks out my Chex Mix.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says as per usual. I’m used to it at this point.

Of course, whenever I am used to literally anything, life decides to throw me in for a loop. “You want me say ma’am or sir?”

This is it. Fucking Mecca. Months of trying to explain Transgender to this man has led to this simply-worded question. I quickly and eagerly say “sir.” He replies, “okay, sir” and chuckles for just a little bit too long. It hits me at that moment that he might sometimes understand more than my impression of him lets me on.

“You want good candy? Is for free.” He opens a bag of gummy bears and gives it to me from across the counter.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I reply in a sing-songy voice.

“This… is beautiful.” He takes a bite from his own bag of the same kind of candy. “Every night I have two bag.” I take a bite from my bag, realizing how strange and genuinely surreal this scene must look to an outsider, or even to myself.

He’s right. “Wow... it’s quite good.”

He repeats, “is beautiful.” He must be proud to know that word, I think. I finish nearly the whole bag before I say, “Yeah, it is.”

We talk for a bit more after that, about the gym and girlfriends and cigars, the usual. It’s 2:30 a.m. by the time I bid him adieu. For the first time in my life, he wishes me farewell with a “bye, bro.” It’s as though his laugh reverberates through the store, this fucked-up little humidor-adorned home we’ve made for each other, as I once again close the door and begin the walk to my car.