I was wandering around the supermarket, lugging a giant bottle of gherkins under my arm. Work wasn’t coming easily. And, frustrated with myself, I’d left my desk to stroll the shop aisles, in search of some calm. I know some people find supermarkets stressful but the shelves of food soothe me; rows of monotony, endless, bloody minded and competitive. I’d grabbed some tuna, and some insoles for my shoes. And the gherkins. The gherkins are incidental to the story really, but I’m trying to paint a picture of normalcy (which is ironic because buying 1.9 kilos of gherkins isn’t really normal). But, regardless, they were what I was holding when I saw the guy.

A guy in a red t-shirt. Sweating, profusely. Beads of sweat licked the contours of his face. He clearly wasn’t in the same meditative shopping stroll I was. I heard a voice behind me, chasing him down the aisle. A woman’s voice, slightly exasperated; “Whatever you want honey. For dinner. You choose”. Ah, domestic bliss. I giggled (it’s the people watching/listening too that I like, and the peering into trolleys to see what other people eat).

Sweaty guy chucked a response to her over his shoulder and moved on. My reprieve was interrupted by the thought that I recognised him. I did a half glance back at her, also recognising the tone of her voice, but not the suburbaness of her cardigan and yellow singlet. My fingers started tapping my brain (figuratively – they were actually otherwise employed with clutching the giant jar) – where, where, where? I don’t know that many people in Melbourne, at least not in St Kilda. Certainly not enough to run into randomly.

The thought lasted a second or two before it clicked. It was C. a sex worker, and her boyfriend. Doing the shopping. Arguing over the shopping. I didn’t recognise her out of her working dress (she wears the same one every day). I didn’t expect to see her portraying the harried wife in the dairy aisle. She probably didn’t expect to see me carrying the giant jar of pickles. Actually I’m not sure that she did see me. I was three steps too far gone by the time it clicked, halfway through the checkout. And besides I figured the last thing they wanted was to stop and chat with someone from their ‘other’ life in the supermarket.

Still, it made me smile all the way through an otherwise annoying interaction with a checkout chick who failed to listen to a single of my responses to her standard roll of questions. Sex workers have lovers tiffs in supermarket aisles too. While incognito in a cardigan and a red t-shirt. They walk amoung us, and we can’t even tell! There were no heads turning, no onlookers gawking. Of course that could be because the giant jar I was hefting drew the crowd my way, but I don’t think so. It’s because some sex workers look and act the same as us. Normal. Standard. Ordinary.