alienated wyoming teen storyhour

Cheyenne Books and Records is where I got my first copies of Valis and Sister, possibly on the same day, although that could be my rosy revisionism, a perfect coincidence of my own memory. The mind will go to great lengths to make itself believe it is cooler than it actually is.
He had used punk cassettes lined up in rows in a case under glass, all flossing Nickelodeony-cartoony cover art with handlettering–some of which I would later learn was Vermiform–or washed out, distorted photography, the hallmark of the shoegazers. The man who owned them, and the store where they were sheltered (they were so rare in my world, I always saw them as artifacts rescued from the bulldozer of capitalism, of homogeneity, of the Steve Miller Band mixtapes everyone was passing around at my school), was a 28-yr-old Armenian intellectual named John; he wore thick black glasses, a closet full of blue-and-black checked flannel Pendleton buttondowns (or one he wore every day?) and a deep, full, constant stubble that never seemed to grow past five o’clock. John stood behind the counter, nodding approvingly, offering backstory, and lighting incense. He thought it was cool when I picked out a Citizen Fish (!) cassette based on, as usual, the cover art–which I thought was cool, too; didn’t know it was Subhumans sideproj, and the spritely venom in my fourth-gen copy of Subhumans’ “No” had left a real stamp on my angry/alienated young tragidrama. (I can sing the lyrics to you now: “No, I don’t believe in Jesus Christ/My mother died of cancer when I was five/No, I don’t believe in religion, I was forced to go to church/I wasn’t told why! No, I don’t believe in the police force/ police brutality isn’t a dream!” Then, an anthem; now–in my grizzled cynicism–charming, so simple are they, and formative.)
When I asked John about the Minor Threat tape, he handed it over gravely, cause he kinda knew.
I went home and filed it in my alphabetized tape case next to Mint Condition. Later I’d write fan letters to Dischord with my checks and orders, to which the lovely lady Cynthia Connolly would always respond, “We don’t get much mail from Wyoming.”
I am writing this story, maybe for the third time, because the awesome Sassy ladies came over the other day to interview me, about what the magazine turned me on to while I clocked time in a cultural island, pre-internet, in the yrs 1990-1994. It’s a great thing they’re doing, a chronicle bigger than a magazine about a blip of an era where everything changed, as if we all knew and were milking our final seconds of Ludditism until the infostream revved up and hit 950 mph with no rearview.