"I've heard this is very good," I say.
"Read the flap," he says, I do.
"Damn, I will have to buy this, but not today."
"I think I'll buy it when it comes out in paperback, or perhaps I'll just pick up a copy at the library. It will be a while before I can read it though," he says.
His stack of books to read is nearly as high as mine. Later I return the favor, handing him a book with the exhortation to check it out. Sometimes like today it degenerates into a silly game of picking a book at random and handing it to whoever is nearest. Followed by the take a look at this you'll find it interesting comment, a smile, and walking away. I always find something to buy. I don't always buy something, but I always find something I want to buy. I spot an interesting title The Best American Essays of the Century. I'm fond of the essay form. Hmmm Twain, Hemingway, William James, Vladimir Nabokov, Annie Dillard. Shelley has spoken fondly of Dillard essays, oh and look a favorite of mine John Updike an essay from 1993. Interesting title "The Disposable Rocket" I take a seat and start to read
Inhabiting a male body is much like having a bank account; as long as it's healthy, you don't think much about it. Compared to the female body, it is a low-maintenance proposition: a shower now and then, trim the fingernails every ten days, a haircut once a month. Oh yes, shaving — scraping or buzzing away at your face every morning. Byron, in Don Juan, thought the repeated nuisance of shaving balanced out the periodic agony, for females, of childbirth. Women are, his lines tell us,Condemn'd to child-bed as men for their sins
Have shaving too entail'd upon their chins, —
A daily plague, which in the aggregate
May average on the whole with parturition.
From the standpoint of reproduction, the male body is a delivery system, as the female is a mazy device for retention. Once the delivery is made, men feel a faint but distinct falling-off of interest. Yet against the superhuman frenzy to deliver his goods: he vaults walls, skips sleep, risks wallet, health, and his political future all to ram home his seed into the gut of the chosen woman. The sense of the chase lives in him as the key to live. His body is, like a delivery rocket that falls way in space, a disposable means. Men put their bodies at risk to experience the release from gravity.
When...
It's just a feeling. The space in front of me empty moments ago is now occupied. I look up, Tim extends his arm handing me a book. I take it unable to resist. You'll find it interesting he says, smiles and walks away. I set it aside, the moment broken, but a decision made. I will not be leaving the store without this collection of essays. As we walk to the front of the store to complete my purchase I'm tempted to pick up a book at random and hand it to the first stranger I encounter with an admonition; look at this I think you'll find it interesting. The urge passes. I make it through the checkout and home. I finish the Updike piece I'd started. I like it. Is it possible for me to go to a bookstore and leave without a book?
