In my freshman year at Michigan State, I made some very good friends on my floor at Emmons Hall. There were five of us who hung out together all of the time- myself (RJ “Regis” White), Jason Blum, Mike Raben, Dr. Tom Heikkinen and Chris “Soline” Solari. We watched television, made prank phone calls, took 1 am trips to Meijer to stack bean bags, almost got into an accident in Jackson but were saved by a tiny photo of Gov. John Engler, that sort of thing. We’d made one half-hearted attempt earlier in the year to go to the Bookmark, an “adult” bookstore in Lansing, that was one of your creepier-looking commercial buildings. It hadn’t gone well for some reason and there was always the vague threat that another trip would be made, but nothing came of it.
Until the last week of classes.
It was Thursday evening of finals week. I had an exam Friday morning at 7:45 and wasn’t exactly what you’d call ready. I was sitting on the couch in my dorm room and Tom came into the doorway.
“Regis. It’s time. The Bookmark.”
I didn’t really question it. I mean, it had to be done. This was the last night of the school year. If the trip wasn’t made tonight, it just wouldn’t be, period. I closed my Basics of Telecommunications notes and we went off to get the others. Blum and Mike were nowhere to be found, however and Soline had left for Butler, Pennsylvania that morning.
Well, that was that- I mean, it would just be a creepy trip of two guys to an adult bookstore. You need at least three people to riff off of. So, no trip to the Bookmark.
“Can I go?”
My roommate Andy. He and I hadn’t really hung out much that year. He was a nice guy and all, we got along just fine as roommates, but his activities centered more around things like drinking a fifth of vodka in twenty minutes and then busting his head open in the bathroom when he passed out (that’s another story). As I wasn’t much for the booze then (I was young and stupid), we just didn’t have a lot in common. But, apparently, he’d liked hearing about the stupid crap my friends and I did and wanted in on one of our capers. Tom and I figured “What the hell?” and invited him along. So, the three of us hopped in Tom’s car and headed over to the Bookmark. Which was closed.
This came as a bit of a relief to me, because, well, I had that exam at 7:45 the next morning and I hadn’t even started packing for moveout. So, I figured that was the end of that and we’d go back. Andy, however was disappointed and asked if there were another place we could hit.
I said, “No, not really, we should just go-”
“The Velvet Touch.”
“Tom, that’s on the other side of town, we should-”
“No, Regis. The Velvet Touch.”
“Fuck.”
Then, Andy, understandably confused, asked “What’s the Velvet Touch?”
Well, that depends. It’s a couple of things. First and foremost, The Velvet Touch was a smallish chain of stores in the greater Lansing area that features, much like the Bookmark, adult videos, novelties, things like that. The chain got its name from a service they provide, in which an employee dons a velvet glove and well, touches the customers in order to… well, you can guess.
As Tom was the one driving, there wasn’t really much choice in the matter. We were going to The Velvet Touch. It’s your standard-issue low cinderblock adult-oriented bookstore-type building in a creepy part of the city. We pulled into the empty parking lot and went up to the door. There was a worn sign attached, reading:
$2.00 BROWSING FEE
Browsing fee? That was kind of the deal-breaker. Up until this point, it’d been kind of ironic fun, but this just introduced more trouble into the equation than it was worth. It was only two bucks, but that was two bucks too many for about fifteen minutes of “Oh man, look at this awful crap” browsing and just going back to the dorm. The three of us walked back to Tom’s car, then something just snapped inside of me.
“No wait. We should do this. I have two bucks. Do you guys have two bucks?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Sure.”
“Alright, then. I never do things like this. We’re doing it. We’re going in.”
So we did. The place was set up with there was this tall counter right by the door and you hand the clerk your two dollars as you walk in. I was still nervous- it was a creepy place and I don’t exactly frequent the porn stores very often. Tom enters, hands the clerk his two bucks. Andy enters, hands the clerk his two bucks. I enter, hand the clerk my two bucks-
“Hello, RJ!”
I look up and there’s Forrest Kruger, with whom I had graduated from high school about a year before.
I just wanted to leave pretty much as quickly as possible. By the time we got back to Emmons Hall, Mike and Blum were back and the story got repeated. A lot.
“Hello, RJ!”
So, that’s the Velvet Touch story.
Also, that week, I took an exam for a class in which I was not enrolled and left it early.
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