So there’s this store in Barcelona, “La tienda del espía” (“The Spy Store” in English). I have a real problem with these kinds of stores. I’ve always disliked their crass exploitation of human fear and paranoia, not to mention the invasion of privacy that most of their products represent.
However, I needed to get a goddamn tape recording device for phone conversations. I interview people from time to time over the telephone and am tired of my crude speakerphone system. So I bit the bullet and went in.
The first thing that I noticed — as it’s impossible not to — is the Sherlock Holmes-type fella in the doorway. Just in case you didn’t feel enough mal rollo at the thought of buying spying devices, here’s a creepy life-size statue to help you get into the suspicious vibe.
I walked in, and there were two female employees there. I was the only customer, as they’d just opened for the afternoon. I explained what I needed to one of the salesladies, who happened to look an awful lot like Dorothy Michaels from Tootsie, except more feminine (naturally). But she had that same kind of nervous, eager-to-please energy.
When she tried to demonstrate a phone recorder for me, I quickly realized why she was nervous: she was new and didn’t know quite what she was doing. She seemed like a wife and mother who hadn’t worked at a 9-5 job in a long time and was a little uncomfortable with it all. Even though I was polite and tried to put her at ease, she was jumpy and apologetic. Luckily, her coworker came to the rescue. She was younger, with a head of gorgeous, thick black curly hair (I’m sorry, but I’m obsessed with women with healthy hair, ’cause mine isn’t) and a warm, friendly manner.
As I watched them fumble with the recorder, I realized that these two were the most unlikely personality types I could ever imagine working in a place called “La Tienda del Espía”. Where were the James Bond types? Or the tall, gorgeous blonde ice queens who were cast as James Bond’s foil/villain/love interest? I expected to be assisted by cold, calculating sociopaths. These two women — and I mean it as a compliment — were more fit to be selling fruit at the boquería than high-tech devices for moneyed paranoiacs.
The recorder was taking time to figure out, so I made some small talk. It had turned dark, and the shadow of the life-sized Sherlock Holmes loomed menacingly in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t get used to it. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept seeing what looked like a burglar or hitman coming in through the doorway. “What’s it like to work in a place with a huge male statue in the doorway, ladies? Doesn’t it creep you out?”
“Oh, no. We like him! He makes us feel safe.” They then told me about the statue’s relationship with the neighbors: that he was a main attraction for the local children, whose parents sometimes took them by just to visit him. However, there was one mother who wasn’t so fond of the statue. “She told us that we should take him down because he was too big and scary and was traumatizing her kid.”
“What a ñoña,” I said. “Doesn’t she realize the kind of world she’s living in? Hasn’t she realized that she lives next to a place called La tienda del espía? If she can’t handle it, she should move.”
I looked at the walls, which were covered with some of the most lurid, vulgar advertisements I’d seen in ages. They were truly entertaining. Nearly every one of them was geared towards women who suspected their husbands were cheating on them. The one that made me laugh the most was a poster of three sets of feet in one bed. Do you suspect there’s one too many people in your marriage? read the caption.
Now I was starting to understand who comprised the bulk of this store’s clientele: not men with nefarious political leanings, not criminals, but plain, simple unhappy housewives. And husbands. One of the products for sale, for 100 euros and change, was an “infidelity detector“, that, according to the sales pitch, could “detect traces of semen in intimate apparel”.
All I could think was, “Wow.” Seriously, if your marriage has come to that, wouldn’t it be better just to call it quits? I mean, when you get to the point that you have so little trust that you’re actually jizz-testing your partner’s panties, I’d say the marriage is over. Save yourself a hundred bucks and amiably go your separate ways.
Whatever sense of exotic adventure the world of espionage had for me beforehand evaporated as my awareness of the products increased.
“So who comes in here, then?” I asked. “Is it all just people who think their partners are cheating on them?”
“Many, yes, but not all,” said the curly-haired, more veteran saleswoman. “Lately in Barcelona we have a lot of people wanting to buy listening devices to spy on their neighbors.”
“Really? Spy on their neighbors? How?”
“They want super-sensitive voice recorders to pick up on conversations that their neighbors are having on the other side of the wall, or even on the floor below,” she said.
“But, why?” I asked.
“Gossip. They want to know their neighbors’ dirty laundry,” she said. “The problem is that, as they’re walking above their neighbor’s head, their neighbor hears their footsteps creaking on the ceiling. Now the neighbor knows she’s being spied on. So she comes in here to buy a device to spy on the neighbor who’s spying.”
“What’s the matter with people? Don’t they have anything better to do with their time?”
The saleswoman shrugged and rolled her eyes. “People are getting weirder every day.”
I thought about that. I guess I could understand how, in a complicated world, people could crave some sense of control that expensive surveillance devices might seem to provide.
“The strangest requests I get are from old people,” she continued. “Some old lady comes in here and says, I want security cameras in my house. I live alone, and someone keeps coming into my house at night. They climb up through the balcony, turn on the T.V., and leave the door to the balcony wide open. I ask her why someone would break into her house just to turn on the T.V. I don’t know, she says, but that’s what they do. Every night, they do it. And I want to catch them in the act.”
“So what do you say?”
“I say, Señora, I’m afraid the only person you’ll catch on that camera is yourself. Your money would be better spent on a live-in caretaker.”
“That’s tough.”
“Yes, it’s sad.”
I paid for my recorder and left La tienda del espía with many thoughts running through my mind. Not about surveillance devices, but about human nature — and the predicament of those who want to believe that these seductive machines are the solution to their problems.
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