One Thousand Free Books

My wife saw the ad on Freecycle.com and called the people who posted it, John and Kate. They sounded like old hippies, gave us directions, and said to come on out any time that afternoon. They had about a thousand old books they’d read over the years, and they had to get rid of them. They needed the space. We got out there pretty easily. The directions were generally clear and easy to follow. The books were outside on their front porch, about eight boxes of them. They were in decent shape, not destroyed or really damaged, just very weathered. Together, my wife and I compiled about a box of them to take. They had a bunch of Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, William Burroughs, Franz Kafka, Jack Kerouac, and such. I loaded up on that stuff. I don’t know what my wife took. She only reads books that are about gay vampires. I think she’s just into it for all the blood and buttfucking. That’s really what she likes to read about. I didn’t see any of that stuff in there, but she must have found some. It’s amazing how often that stuff pops up. They encouraged us to take more. While we were digging, Kate said it broke her heart to give all these away, but they just didn’t have the space for them anymore. I said, “Uh huh,” as I kept digging. I felt crass, digging through their things like a looter. Picking and choosing. John said something about being a photographer, taking pictures of the homeless and posting them online. He talked about a conversation he had had with a homeless guy at one point. It motivated him to take up a collection of socks and bologna sandwiches. It reminded me of a phase I had gone through about six years earlier in which I was photographing the homeless. I’d just give them cash, though. A couple bucks and I take a snapshot. Socks, bologna sandwiches, or cash. Same difference. I didn’t mention it. I hadn’t gone there to talk about charity. I hadn’t gone there to moralize.

We’re Friends

We’re friends, you and I. If you see me in a bar, I’ll buy you a beer. Just ask. We may not know each other, but we are kin nonetheless. We are united in our agony. That is what ties us together. All people suffer. We suffer the same way, for the same reasons. We share that. It makes us unique. We’re uncommon, unrecognized, and unspoken. We are a group without identity. We don’t need one. That is the nature of what we are, alone. Our trials must be endured alone.

Aftershave

If you’re living life in any way that’s worthwhile, you’ll never run out of rejection, and you’ll never get used to the sting. You should have it in overflowing volume, by the bucketload. Don’t think it’s not useful stuff, though. Don’t mistake it for garbage. Like good aftershave, it will always sting. The sting is important. Slap it on hard with your open palm to amplify the burn. Drive it through your pores into your blood, like gasoline. Send it screaming through your veins into your heart, and choke back your reflex to scream. Eventually you won’t even wince. You’ll just seethe quietly. All the little nicks will bleed. Then, red-faced and stinging, you’ll be an artist. Every time the gallery says no, every time your work doesn’t sell, every time the woman doesn’t get back to you, every time you don’t get the job, every time you put it all out there and get nothing back, you’re becoming more perfect, leaner and harder, more “fuck you” by the minute.

Greg from Work

My wife and I were drinking at the Lava Lounge. Not a lot of conversation going on. I was absentmindedly admiring the bartender, Katie. She’s a late 20s white girl with long dreadlocks, in punk attire, and a ring through her septum. No tattoos on her arms, but she’s got tons on her legs. She always looks really good. She’s the only girl I’ve ever seen who has the ability to make “crust punk” look sexy. She knows us and what we drink, and she has really good taste in music. She generally just lets us back behind the bar to pick out what we want to listen to. We see her there a lot. She’s great. We were actually just about done there, and ready to head down to the Moose, when this big guy appeared beside me. He threw a bag on the bar and looked up at the TV. There was a baseball game playing. He ordered a drink, looked over at me, and asked me about the score. I had no idea, as I wasn’t paying attention, but as I looked up at him, we both froze in an alien sort of recognition. It was Greg from work. He used to be a contract coder where I work. We had worked together for about three months. Good guy, but we just hadn’t had enough work to justify renewing his contract. Not that I’m part of any of the decision-making process anyway. I felt bad about that, and wondered if he harbored any ill sentiments. It didn’t seem that way. I didn’t say anything about it, and instead introduced him to my wife. We smiled, laughed, shook hands, and made idle conversation about nothing. Minutes later we shook hands again, and my wife and I departed for the Moose. He kept watching the game.

Greg’s Shaved Head, The River of Whiskey, and the Red Back

Greg was tending an almost empty bar again. That’s generally what he’s up to at 7pm on a Saturday night. We’re frequently the only people there. Last night this was again the case, with the exception of a few other people who were barely drinking, scattered throughout the bar. Greg had gotten loaded the previous evening and had shaved his head. He was still hung over, and getting drunk again behind the bar. That’s always good for me and my wife. I sat down and ordered a double of Bushmill’s. My wife got some sort of elaborate martini. Greg started us up on free shots. In the course of about three hours, I drank my double of Bushmill’s, a double of Knob Creek, numerous shots of Glenlivet and Chivas, and two beers. Greg has got awesome taste in music, and together we all kept the jukebox jumping. Greg is half-Philipino and half-Irish. He calls himself a McFlip. As I was beginning to glow, and really get a good buzz going, I noticed just how red the Lava Lounge is. Very red, and it reminded me of the married couple we’d slept with a few short years ago, and the woman with the red back. I remembered that as the woman got more excited and closer to climax that her back turned brighter red. It was incredible to watch. That memory was filling my head beautifully, and the whiskey buzz was on its way up. Then a giant pack of frat boys and their bitchy women came through on a bar crawl, interrupting my brief intermission and dragging me back into the bar. They all ordered Miller Lite, like they were members of a death cult. Jim Jones would have smiled. We endured it. Greg scrambled to accommodate. There was one jackass who looked exactly like Lance Armstrong, only a bit more muscular. He was probably about my height, but with a good 20 pounds of additional lean muscle. Not a guy to fuck with. He sat down beside me to order a drink for himself and another for his girlfriend. In an effort to be friendly and cordial, I said, “Hey man, you look just like Lance Armstrong. I bet you get that a lot.” He replied, “Who’s that?” while leaning forward on the bar and kind of flexing a little in what appeared to be an effort to intimidate me. I explained who Lance Armstrong was, and he didn’t seem to care. I guess he had figured out that I wasn’t trying to start a fight, and beyond that point he wasn’t interested. Like a swarm of locusts, they eventually moved on, and left their beers all strewn about the place like bodies on a battlefield. Lance Armstrong’s meathead look-a-like went with them. I gathered up all the empties for Greg, in a modest attempt to repay him for all the free whiskey in my belly. Eventually we left for dinner, and I poured more beer down with it.