| A |
guy bought a sasquatch book with a few stills from
the famous big foot footage taken in the seventies,
and then proceeded to fill me in on the true story.
I can't really |
remember it all, but it went something like this:
"See...some people think this photo is fake because you
can see a leather pouch here around the creature's waist. Now
the reason we get goose-bumps is because we used to have hair
all over ourbodies, and you know those wooly mammoths were
hairy too, and they found vegetation in the mouths of these
frozen ones that was tropical, so that means they lived in
a hot area just like gorillas in the equatorial Africa have
long hair because it dissipates the heat. That's why we get
goose-bumps. Now when Admiral Bird was in the South Pole,
he discovered these deep caverns and he went down into them
to explore and he found these creatures living down there
he described as hairy men. Because when Cane killed Abel and
was cast out, he said, And I shall live in the Earth, not
on the Earth. Follow me?
(I'm leaving out a very long explanation
of how all the bones in plaster castings of Big Foot's feet
show that the creature's feet bones are all broken, and how
Cane, for some reason, also had all the bones in his body
broken by God.)
So basically, we were all really hairy long ago, but you see
we used to live longer back then because the Earth had a layer
of moisture in its upper atmosphere that moistened the Earth--that's
why it never rained--and a layer of 03 oxygen covered the
surface of the Earth and experiments with plans show how they
live longer on 03; so did we. That's why everyone thought
Noah was crazy. Not because he built a boat in the middle
of the desert, but because it had never rained before. (I
have heard the theory of this moisture layer from fairly competent
sources, as well as the no rain theory.)
And no one had ever seen a rainbow. Now the deep caverns in
the South Pole had been full of water too, and all the water
came up as well as falling from the sky, and that's why you
find sea shells on mountain tops. Now God put a mark on Cane
and said Unto him I shall put a mark on thee lest when a man
sees you he shall try to kill you. That means God was protecting
him, and when, you know, a hunter has been in a helicopter
and had his infrared scope on the Big Foot, for some inexplicable
reason, the helicopter has just broken apart. This has happened
three or four times."
There's more, but I've forgotten it.--tor |
"This store sells some nasty ass
crap!"
| T |
he crazy guy who buys math and science books came
back to pick up the books he had placed on hold. Actually,
he came in to tell me he couldn't buy them yet because
he didn't |
get his check. I told him no problem, we could continue to
hold them. Then he said, "Riding on the bus makes me stain
my underwear. Those shocks are bad on the bus," at which point
I had to dive under the counter to straighten the hold shelf
because I could no longer look at him without cracking up.
The guy left, and I stood up to see Tom, who used to work
here and was the surliest clerk ever, looking at me with a
look of incredulity combined with disgust and I did crack
up.--ac
| G |
uy came in and stood in the magazine section. He didn't
actually look at the mags, but stood still with one
arm outstretched, holding some papers. He stood there
|
statuesque for maybe about ten minutes, without moving. Then
he left, leaving behind this list on the floor:
Things to Bring Next Meeting --Wed. 10:30
-Pill container
-List of what you're spending $ on
-Emerald House orientation 10:15
Big Blue house 17th & Howell
--ac
| O |
ld man with spots on his bald head is nearly drooling
over one of the Taschen $30 sex books on the display
rack on the counter. I am getting tired of men coming
through the |
store, stopping at the counter display rack, the lesbian mags,
the sex section, then leaving without saying a word. I just
went around the counter to help a customer and I see this
bozo actually has a magnifying glass.--ac
 |
S |
o this guy comes in, makes eye contact, has a book
on The Fantastic Artwork of Boris Vallejo. Wanders
through the magazine rack, picks up Playboy and
Penthouse among other things, then wonders the
store, comes back to the magazines, then brings Film
Comment to |
the counter. Film Comment has a feature on "The
Fight Club" and he asks if we have any books on this,
pointing to the words "fight club" on the cover.
Traveling at the speed of thought across the vastness of my
imagination, I try to figure what exactly it is he wants.
He opens the magazine and says, "I don't know how to
put it, books on, like this..." he says, pointing to
some stills from the movie.
I say, "Books on how the movie was made?"
"No," he replies. "On this..."
"You mean books on fighting?"
"Yes, on violence, too I guess. With words and pictures."
I point out the gruesome Japanese sex film book on the counter
which he looks at, but says, "That's a little too much
for me."
(Here comes the punchline.)
To which I reply, "Well, there's always the daily papers."
---GFK
| At |
about five minutes until closing on Friday night an
older man in a plaid shirt, baseball cap, and little
mustache came in. He said what he wanted "wasn't
really a book" --it was |
a book with nothing in it. I reached over the heads of the
surly hipsters going through drugs (one of whom I had bought
coffee from this morning at the 4 Angels where she was just
as surly) to get the small pile of blank books and brought
them over to the counter. The old guy, hands shaking, found
one he liked. I range up $4.89, but his wallet was empty.
He said he had a hundred dollar bill in there earlier. I offered
to put the book on hold for him. He gave me his name--Robert
Cap--but then he exclaimed, "It's in my boot!" He
leaned over to extricate his hidden cash and something fell
out of his shirt pocket. "Oh, I'm dropping malt balls
all over," he said. Finally he pulled out a twenty from
the boot. "You won't forget Robert Cap!" he said.
Later when I was closing I saw four or five malt balls rolling
around underneath the front of the counter.--ac
| A |
man bought Plants of the Gods and asked me several
times if the title of the book was going to be recorded
with his credit card. I said several times that it wouldn't.
|
He said he works for the government and, believe him, they
keep track.--ac
 |
A |
prim woman comes in wearing a long coat and small,
wire-framed glasses. She asks where the romance novels
are. Rather than roll my eyes and tell her we don't
carry that shit, I ask if she would join me in a |
glass of verdant burgundy, a candlelit dinner, a cruise along
the bay under a full moon, where I will push my lips into
her full, soft mouth, followed by a tryst beside her grandmother's
four-poster, where I will push her down in a billow of downy-fresh
linens, grip her trembling white thighs in my strong, manly
palms, and in a furious, sweaty, passion-filled, lustful rage
that will bring a crimson rouge to her enlivened nipples and
cause her to throw her head back in a wild cacophony of enticing
marvel, I'll finger-fuck her G-spot until I blow the top off
her world!
She got kind of stiff and wide-eyed for a moment, and then
left. Just kidding. I told her that the store was just too
darn small and we can't stock everything, and well, gosh,
romance novels were one of those things we just didn't have
room for; but we do have a full fiction section, and she's
sure to find some love stories there. She looks around a little
and asks where the books on witchcraft are. I show her Metaphysics
and she looks there for a while, then confirms her stupidity
by asking if this one that she had in her hand was the only
one on magic. So I go through, reading the titles and pull
out the ones having to do with magic. She explains that she
just wants something else who is interested in the subject,
so he won't be steered wrong. Shall I recommend LaVey? Eventually
she asks if there's a store around that has "figure candles"
and things. I tell her of Edge of the Circle, right down the
street, and she wanders off, chatting about how she's used
up all her figure candles currently. Maybe Satan will grant
her a new haircut.--sc |
Why I love college kids.
"You ever read that book Maus?
It friggin' rocks!"
He then flips up his shirt (as leaving)
"Look man, I'm not stealing anything...Ha,
Ha!"
| E |
very ten minutes or so, a small group of fifteen-year-olds
will open the door, approach the counter like they're
trying to sneak past the living room with beer on their
breath, and |
ask where Raver Books is. Apparently, if you're fifteen, you
don't know how addresses work. They're wearing floppy hats
and long-sleeved sweatshirts and bell bottoms and big ugly
tennis shoes. They have all been white and fresh-scrubbed.
Homeless youth can't afford the cost of X, mommy doesn't have
that kind of cash to swipe. I finally asked what the deal
was, after I reached the point of merely mumbling with my mouth full
and gesticulating in response to their inquiries, and was
told by a waif in an overstuffed vest and beach hat that they
were giving away tickets to a rave. Quelle surprise.
God, I am so glad they're not our customers.--sc
| K |
ill All Sales Reps--Slowly
More evidence that sales reps are actually infiltrating
alien agents: Two middle-aged persons, the guy is wearing
a |
dark, cheap suit and has close-set beady eyes to match. The
female is blonde, German in inflection, and in a tan trench
coat. She's carrying some binders. She does the talking while
Mr. Beady-eyes confirms her statements, much like a Mafia
heavy. They are both chewing gum incessantly, with their mouths
open. The pitch is that they're from AT&T here to "fix"
any problems we may have had. We had some problems, all right--they
billed us for some long-distance company's service that we
did not want, did not ask for, and was very pricey and it
took 40 minutes on the phone to straighten it out. They want
to see the bills. Beady-eyes says that's the most common problem,
while Fraulein Fixer denies any understanding of how AT&T
could hook us up with someone else.
"Are the statements
here?" she asks.
I'm not showing them statements, and
this looks like a sales call, and "I don't deal with sales
calls without an appointment," I explain.
But they are not
sales persons, they both smack gum and explain. They are "customer
service representatives," here to fix problems. Well,
that spells sales person to me. Mr. Wood Chipper was not on
duty.--sc
| T |
he collection agency across the street is mysteriously
called "International Mercantile." We've been
neighbors for six years, and this is the first time
I've learned their name. |
They've always just been, "The Collection Agency Across
the Street," occasionally attracting obscenity-screaming
victims of their collections out on the sidewalk.
A new worker there just came in and spent $40 on the I-Ching,
Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, Three Pillars of
Zen, and
she put her name on the request list for any Aleister Crowley.
I asked her what her job was and she said it was doing collections
for Target. She said it's pretty easy because mostly she's
just calling people who missed a payment or were late; nothing
hardcore. She lives up by Northgate and was very excited by
our bookstore, kept saying how glad she was that we were here
and what cool stock we have.
One of our regular customers also works there. He buys High
Times and has to make sure he gets a bag because the company
would be upset if they saw he had a magazine on drugs, heavens.
Though when he bought Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's
Notebook, full of graphic and grisly photos, he passed it
around the whole office.--ac
 |
C |
hristmas Eve. 4:30 p.m.
We are closing at six. A crazy couple is in. He shuffles
around suspiciously, moving away whenever I get near
him as I walk around the store or help other customers.
She has decimated poetry and philosophy, pulling out
about thirty books and piling |
them up on the filing cabinet. I am really hoping she doesn't
try to pay with a check. I have learned from experience that
frenzied buying and paying with a check do not bode well.
I asked her if she was Christmas shopping and she said, "No,
they're for me."
He's got fidgets like Mr. Fingers (a homeless guy whose been
86-ed for shoplifting, whose little fingers are always frantically
waving in the air in front of him like lobsters in a tank),
and is interested in the lesbian books. He's carrying around
Bitch by Elizabeth Wurtzel and a Malcolm McLaren book.
She's going through history now, and has asked for books by
Howard Zinn and Buckminster Fuller. Her pile grows and grows.
"Do you give a discount to people who buy fifty books?"
she asks, adding Chomsky to her pile.
I ask what her payment method was going to be.
She says check
or VISA.
I say I couldn't take a check for such a large amount.
I sigh with relief at the mention of the word VISA.
She says she's going to do a "triage" but that she
will buy 75% of the pile.
She's about 50, wearing a short denim skirt, bare legs, hooded
sweatshirt and jacket. He's wearing a letterman's type jacket,
glasses and jeans. He's probably in his early thirties.
5:30 p.m. She's pulled about 100 books...
At 6 p.m. I tell them I'm closing up, I have a Christmas
Eve dinner to attend. The woman goes out to her car to get
her wallet. The guy stays behind. "Sometimes my Mom gets
carried away," he says.
She comes back with her wallet and credit card and starts
sorting through the pile, setting aside some books she doesn't
want to purchase. She explains they are from Coos Bay, Oregon
and they are getting ready for The Millennium. They already
have water and fuel. Now she's got books. She ends up buying
about a thousand dollars worth of books and I give her a ten
percent discount.--ac
| S |
tarting the New Year right: A young Asian man comes
in wearing cowboy hat, torn jeans, a big cowboy hat,
and a wide leather belt. He is tall and lanky and has
long hair. I've |
noticed that people who spend a lot of effort on their appearance
usually don't have anything to spend on anything else. So
he asks where art is and I tell him and he goes over and looks
through a few things, and then takes one book, choosing a
stool to sit down on to examine it. Pretty soon he pulls out
an O'Keeffe and is looking through it for some time. He brings
the book, a large paperback new copy, to aisle one an pulls
out a piece of paper from his jacket and while holding the
book open with his other hand, begins to draw.
"You know, this isn't really a reference library,"
I tell him.
"I'm just making a sketch," he says.
"Well, you've got a new book there, and it's only $9.95
anyway. But if you're looking for books you can sketch out
of, using new books in a bookstore is probably not the best
idea, because they don't stay new-looking for very long."
He seemed understanding and returned the book to the shelf,
leaving silently, making no verbal claims to special consideration
due to his special outfit.--sc
| W |
hat is with this question where people ask if this
is a library? This guy in a trench coat comes in this
afternoon, slicked back black hair, dark puffy circles
under his eyes. I mean |
he did look like he just awoke from a hundred year sleep beneath
a toadstool, but still, where is this land where we look like
a library?
It was everything I could muster not to tell him, "yeah,
it's a special library where you have to ride a pogo stick
when choosing a book, and then, if you read the book really
quickly, this becomes a public swimming pool and you can invite
all your friends! Bonehead. Go back go TV land."
So of course he wanders to the back of the store and stares
at a couple of books on display before he wanders back outside.
What does one do in a bookstore? Where's the channel selector,
man? Where's the Twinkies? Can I buy gas here?
--sc
| A |
young black man came in looking for "something
humorous for a woman who's going away on a long trip."
"A novel?" I asked. |
"No, a postcard," he replied. "I'll just look."
He picked out a postcard with a black and white photo of Dylan
Thomas looking forlorn and peering out through some dead tree
branches. Then he stood at the counter and wrote out what
he wanted to say on the back of a bookmark, asking me to spell
these words: exoticism, hypnotized, entranced, possessed.
His cell phone rang (the ring was "Yankee Doodle Dandy")
and he was called away to lunch by the exotic woman he wanted
to possess him.--ac
| M |
an and woman were going through the science section.
The woman had a big pile of books on the floor. After
a while she lay down on her back and held the books
up over her |
head to look at them. I kept watching her in the mirror. She
took some larger books and put them under her head, legs crossed
as she lay on her back with her feet on the shelves. I went
back and said, "You guys...I can't have you lying on
the floor with books for pillows and your feet on the shelves."--ac
| A |
guy asked me why we file philosophy and religion in
two separate sections. "Religion is a philosophy,"
he said. I asked him what he was looking for. He said
some funky |
Asian name and the title, The Middle Way, a Buddhist book.
I thought about his comment and decided to check his awareness
level/status by commenting, "If I had my way, I'd file
everything under fiction." He smiled. He bought three
books and tossed out a quote from one of them for me:
"The blood of my enemies tastes better than mother's
milk." Wow.--tor
|
S |
weet fellow looking everything like he just left an
AA meeting walks in with a cup of Burger King goo and
makes himself at home on the first aisle where we put
the books to be shelved. I go back there at one point
to haul down all the Burroughs because a dude buying
Bust magazine |
wants to see the selection and move his cup, straw poking
obliquely out of the top, from the center of the aisle. He
stays there, cross-legged, paging through something big for
a good long while, leaning against the shelves on the wall.
Not many people are in, so I don't care much. After about
45 minutes he comes to the counter with the book I've watched
him carefully replace in the box sleeve and asks how much
this is. Its a big book all right, and I drop it back out
and look on the first white page, upper right hand corner
and read the price to him: $110.00. The book is Patmos,
a huge glossy survey and picture book of an ancient monastery,
filled with full-page color photos of intricate tile work,
flat-faced Christ figures hanging on golden crosses thousands
of years old.
"Patmos, where is that?" he asks.
I read the first couple of paragraphs of the intro and it
mentions the Byzantine Empire, Turkey.
"Looks like its in Turkey, somewhere in the fertile crescent
there," I tell him.
"Yeah, well the reason I ask is because look at the handles
on these swords," he says, flipping through the pages.
"They look like snakes--that's the occult or something,
isn't it?"
We put the book back in the slipcase and he retrieves his
Burger King container, and somewhere in Nebraska, a half-stunned
steer hanging on a meathook wails in pointless cold grief
as his legs are sawn off by a guy who just wants to get home.
What do they teach in A.A. meetings?
Where are we, anyway?--sc
| G |
ang of three artistes has come into the store. One
wears flip flops (its about fifty degrees and I'm shivering
in my boots and sweater), one has red baggy pants, red
turban, and |
carries a ukulele, other is Asian girl with hair up in turban
thing. Artiste #1 asks for Rumi books, goes through mushroom
books, and is now sitting on aisle four. Turban man sits down
with photo book, his ukulele in the aisle. Girl played with
lighted globe, and now is sitting on the floor reading magazines.
Flip-flop boy actually bought Cunningham's Magical Herbs. Girl
is doing something mysterious on the floor (her bag is blocking
my view). I think she is rolling a cigarette. Hour later,
after sitting on the floor in metaphysics, the girl buys a
Mayan tarot deck and book. Next day I vacuum up small pile
of tobacco leaves from in front of magazine rack.--ac |
-
Mumbling under
breath
-
Eddie Bauer jacket
-
spanking mag: "WhAP!"
"This is fucking great."
He did buy it though!
| B |
lack kid in dirty jeans and stained and worn hooded
sweatshirt comes in looking for anything on motorcycle
repair. We don't have much. But I show him the section
and |
he sits over there a while, eventually shuffling over to metaphysics.
He pulls a book off the shelves there and is reading for a
while. I'm keeping a pretty close eye on him because he's
holding his sweatshirt funny, and he's a poor kid; profiling
out pretty well. Eventually he comes up slowly to the counter
and dejectedly puts a trade paperback on the counter, asking
if there's any way I could come down on the price. He explains
he's got to buy a battery for his bike and he needs this book,
all the while looking more and more hopeless. I look the book
over, its in print for $14.00, we've got it price $7.50 and
its in perfect shape, a recent publication, so I tell him
while we dicker sometimes, this seems like a pretty fair price
to me. He drops a twenty on the counter, saying reluctantly
that he needs it. I ring him up and he drags his heels out
the door. The book was How to Defend Yourself Against Alien
Abduction. Yow.--sc
| F |
riendly pudgy guy in baseball cap came in and asked
where our psychology section was. He was looking for
Co-dependent No More, which we did not have.
He came up |
to the counter a few minutes later and asked if the owners
name was Michelle.
"No," I told him.
Then he said he met someone named Michelle on an AOL chatline.
"Are there many independent bookstores in Seattle?"
he asked.
I imagined him trudging from store to store asking
for Co-dependent No More in his quest for Michelle.--ac
| A |
handy note I found in a book. I thought it should
be read, memorized, and practiced by us all: |
eat and take vitamins
dress clean clothes
fix hair
fix lunch.
get quarter.
turn off all lights
&TV
brush teeth
turn on alarm.
lock door.
-tor
|
|
