That Summer Without Frank Ocean: Part 2
II. Lost in the Supermarket
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” -T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
This is the second part in a planned series of brief essays about the summer of 2015, Frank Ocean, my personal life, and music. Read part one here.
In the summer of 2015, while waiting for Frank Ocean’s new album, I had the wild idea that I might actually drive a car for once. I was soon to be 20 years old and I never pulled the feat off for more than a few feet. I decided I would work that summer in my hometown of Davenport, FL, save some money, get my license, and buy a car. While my fellow Stetson Hatters were taking to Europe or the Andes I was plugging away in the Florida air conditioning at a Family Dollar just a few minutes from my parents’ house. Family Dollar, despite its name, is focused neither around family nor keeping their prices at the dollar mark. For the former, you’re better off with a bar. For the latter, a Dollar Tree. In my experience.
When I came to my interview, which was hastily arranged on a June day wherein I had been lazing around the house in my pajamas until a 2 pm phone call got me a 4 pm job interview, I found myself before an assistant manager who was busily cutting boxes open while asking me questions. I do not remember a single thing he asked me other than his gruff muttering of “could you pass a drug test?” My “definitely” reply got a chuckle and I was never actually tested. Which could explain the smell on certain late night weekend shifts. The job was mine.
Family Dollar wound up being a summer of firsts. It was my first time being employed outside of my university’s confines. The first time I made irregular amounts of money, knowing some weeks would be lean and others thick. The first time I tried walking to work in 95 degree heat because my ride just forgot I existed. The first time I wore a red top with khakis as a work uniform (since repeated the next summer and during my first City Year). The first time I realized the among the worst part of retail jobs, alongside your feet and back hurting by shift’s end and the unreliable hours from week to week, is the fact that these jobs are so mind numbing one can physically feel their brain cells atrophying hour by hour, clock in til clock out. The utter desertion of cognitive tasks, the marvel of the human spirit broken down by the monotony of Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” remix and the harsh fluorescent lights masking each customer’s individuality with a dull blanket. The sense that every day on the job is a week is a month is a year you will never get back in the pursuit of, in this case, $9.25 an hour.
The only thing getting me through that summer were the knowledge that it was only this summer, the music I snuck through my headphones when the store was slow, and digital New Yorker articles about Belgian ISIS recruits and reviews of experimental pop albums about “soft dick rock” (customers came to the register with just enough regularity to make #longreads take hours). Knowing that for my co-workers, all at least 30 with folks depending on them to bring back the Family Dollar and some groceries, there was no such thing as a summer job anymore and they’d be here until laid off or something better came along made my inevitable return to academia feel like a guilty betrayal. Chatting with them during shifts was always enjoyable and they helped to show me the ropes, give me a hand with things, but I knew that sooner than later I’d be off to scamper across college with the wind at my back. Like all laborers, they deserve better.
Going to any place you don’t love every day makes it start to feel like your part-time jail. The rows of Family Dollar products, ranging from socks to snacks to shower supplies and back, began to blend together in their sameness. Rather than get a feeling for specific items’ locations, I constantly lost track of them. Many times I hunted down box cutters, gloves, and water bottles I’d left strewn about the premises like hidden treasures for lucky shoppers. Seriously, I was not great at this job, one which does not inspire greatness but still should not have given me so many headaches. During my very first day I sliced open a jug of water while trying to open a case of them and watched in horror as it spilled all over the aisle. I like to believe that was rock bottom, but I didn’t exactly skyrocket from there.
And through it all there was not yet new Frank Ocean to obsessively replay.
Since Ocean’s Tumblr post in the spring there had not been any updates regarding the new album. He didn’t release any singles. He didn’t do interviews. He didn’t make more social media posts about it. He didn’t really seem to be doing much at all. Frank Ocean drifted out of the public eye right when most musicians would be hyping their upcoming release, making talk show hits and discussing their inspirations.
Not only did he cease making statements, he stopped making appearances altogether. Ocean canceled concert dates and festival sets without citing anything beyond his personal decision. His friends said they’d seen him around infrequently and claimed he was still working on Boys Don’t Cry, the album he himself told us was coming in the summer. His beloved car collection stopped showing up around LA and eventually Ocean began to feel more myth than man.
But still, the album had been promised. He was going to deliver and all we had to do was wait. Sure, this was an unorthodox release strategy, but we were talking about a guy who just three years prior had dropped a seminal R&B album of the decade after being a member of hip-hop’s strangest group, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. He was a man of zigs when you expected him to zag, and soon enough he would have us all in the palm of his hands when Boys Don’t Cry came out.
Unless, of course, it didn’t.
