I let the publisher handle the press releases. I had sent them a few names of places to send them: my hometown newspaper, a few newspapers of note in cities I’d lived in. I wanted it announced in my hometown paper for the sheer pleasure of rubbing it in their faces. The other papers were so that people I’d met along the way whose addresses I lost might see. I finally DID it. Fuck yeah, I thought. Finally got a book under my belt.
Of course, because of who the publisher was, I knew there wasn’t going to be a big book tour. No couch conversations with Oprah. No spotlight in the Times Book Supplement (this was back when they still published it). The release was quiet. I bought myself a moderately expensive bottle of scotch to celebrate. After I drank about half the bottle sitting at my kitchen table, I decided I needed some air. I was feeling particularly literary. The spring in my step was undeniable. I decided to wander the bookstore and drink a cup of coffee.
I drove to the nearest mega-chain bookstore. It was a Saturday evening, so there were a lot of people milling about. I walked to the back of the store, where the coffee bar was located, and ordered a cup of coffee.
“Coffee?” the kid working the register asked, as if I wanted something that wasn’t on the menu. He had to be in high school… certainly old enough to know what real coffee was, even if he never drank it.
“Just coffee.”
“What flavor?”
“The kind that tastes like coffee beans.” He wasn’t amused.
“You want room for cream?”
“No thanks.”
“Hot or cold?”
It’s COFFEE, I wanted to tell him. You serve coffee HOT, you fucking emo freak.
“Hot.”
The kid still looked confused; his forehead was wrinkled as if her were in deep thought. His hair, all spiky and carefully mussed, shimmered under the bright lights. For a spit second I thought I saw traces of mascara around his eyes. I needed coffee. I began to suspect there wasn’t a button on his register with a picture of a plain cup of coffee. Then after what seemed like forever, he rang me up. I paid in cash. This also seemed to confuse him. He gave me change, and set down my cup of coffee. I didn’t leave a tip.
The coffee was hot, fresh, and a little on the bitter side. I was amazed, since I had expected some fucked flavor with a ridiculous name like Hibiscus Nutmeg Soul Fusion. But the kid had actually managed to dig up a regular cup of coffee. I started to feel a little bad.
It passed quickly.
I started wandering the Fiction and Literature section. In this particular bookstore, they didn’t bother to sort between general or genre fiction and literary fiction. Actually, that made it easier, since everything was organized alphabetically. I’d seen some interesting organizational strategies over the years – ones that made the Library of Congress System look streamlined and Dewey Decimal like something out of the Idiot’s Guide. At least they didn’t pretend that it made any difference; literary is as much a genre as sci-fi/fantasy – except the women all have smaller tits and the guys are all complex and secretly wanting to connect with their “feminine side.”
There wasn’t much that interested me; the ones that did were authors I’d already read. There seemed to be more books with a NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE sticker on them. The covers were a scene from the movie – especially if it starred a big name. Those kind of books annoyed me, and still do – if people don’t have the courtesy to read the book before it’s got Brad Pitt’s face on it, then fuck them.
The Fiction and Literature Section emptied into the Graphic Novel and Anime section. There were more people in this section than in any other section of the store, including the self-help section. I had meant to wander into the Poetry section, but they must have moved it since the last time I was there. Some of the people in the Graphic and Anime section were kids; a couple of them, however, looked to be a little too old for Superman. I noticed a couple of girls; they were all decked out in black, highlighted with odd hot pinks or greens. One of them had crayon red hair, pale skin, and dark, dark mascara. She was wearing a tight top with spaghetti straps that her breasts were clearly too big for. Heavy looking boots. Dressing to stand out, but somehow, offended when anybody notices them. She looked like she was carrying a book. A real book too… not a comic book or one of those Japanese Anime books that are basically cartoon porn.
She gave me a dirty look. “What’re you looking at FUCKWAD?”
“Ah, nothing,” I answered, smiling. “I was just trying to see what you’re reading.”
She clearly didn’t believe me. Women now are so goddamn cynical. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can’t help myself. I just had a book published. Natural curiosity.”
She cocked her head to the right and squinted. Her hands were on her hips. “Ooooo,” she teased. “You got a book published. Goodie for you. Now fuck off you dirty old drunk. What do you do, get hammered on cheap gin and cruise bookstores looking for young girls to molest?”
It was scotch, I wanted to say. “No, really. It’s nothing like that, I swear. I was just…”
“Oh,” she stepped a little closer, pushed her boobs in my face. Her friend the Goth stood back and watched, laughing to herself. “So you don’t LIKE me. You think I’m UGLY? You think I’m a FREAK?”
“No,” I answered, stepping back. “I don’t think ANYTHING. I was really just curious about the book, that’s all.”
“Oh.” She held it up. It was a paperback edition of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. “You like this book?”
“It’s ok,” I said. “Twain was a good writer.”
“This book,” she proclaimed, “sucks. It sucks because most books suck. But my dad likes it. I’m getting it for him for his birthday. HE’S OLD, just like YOU. He likes sucky books. I bet your book is sucky. Why don’t you tell me the name of it so I know what to buy him for Father’s Day?”
I turned and walked away. I heard the crayon-red haired girl and her friend the Goth freak laughing. “Guess I’ll see you when you do Oprah,” she cackled. “My mom reads whatever Oprah says to read. “
The poetry section was on the opposite side of the Fiction and Literature section, near the restrooms. It was the smallest section in the store. I scanned the titles, thinking about buying a book, when I saw it. It was MY name! My BOOK! Right on the same shelf with Neruda. Fuckin’ A, I thought. I took it off the shelf. I wanted to hold it. I wasn’t expecting to see any copies of my book anywhere, and I wasn’t sure how they got there. Maybe they stocked one or two new writers every once in awhile. I felt my buoyancy return. It didn’t matter if the emo freak didn’t know what regular coffee was. It didn’t matter if a color-blind illiterate girl made fun of me. None of it mattered.
I flipped through the book. All the lines of all the poems were familiar, of course. They were still echoing in my head. Then I flipped to page 45 and read the poem. Even though I knew each poem intimately, there was something new about reading it from the book. I read it slowly, focused on each word. It read off the page exactly the way had wanted it to read.
That was when I noticed the typo. It was in the second to last line of the third stanza. Fro instead of For. Fucking hell.
I was interrupted by a familiar voice. “THAT’S HIM, THAT’S HIM! I’D REMEMBER HIS DIRTY FACE ANYWHERE!” I looked up and at the end of the section, near the way leading towards the main doors, the crayon-red hair girl and her Goth friend. Someone very manager looking was with them. The crayon-pink haired girl was crying and pointing at me. FUCK ME.
“Sir?” the manager asked… but not really. “I need you to leave the store. Right now.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“All I did was come in here to buy my DADDY a book,” the little bitch was shrieking. “And I had to get MOLESTED by some PERVERT!”
“There’s been a mistake,” I tried to explain. “A misunderstanding. You see, I was…”
“It was SO DISGUSTING.” She was really hamming it up. “It was bad enough that I caught him looking down my shirt… but then he put his hand in his pocket...” she grabbed Goth girl for support. “It was so… so… HORRIBLE.”
“I need you to leave the store NOW, sir.”
“But…”
“I may never be able to walk in a book store again,” she went on and on. “And I LOVE books. But now…”
“SIR.” the manager’s tone was as insistent as his uni-brow. “You leave the store, RIGHT NOW, and NEVER COME BACK. Or, I get on the phone and call the cops.”
“Send him to jail,” crayon-pink haired girl hissed. “They know how to treat PERVERTS in prison!” She sniffed. Mediocre acting, I thought.
“SIR…” the manager grabbed my arm.
“I was just looking at my book…”
He grabbed the book and tossed it on top of the shelf. “You either LEAVE or I CALL THE COPS.”
I let him lead me out. “And don’t let me see you here again,” he threatened. “Fucking creep,” I heard him mutter under his breath.
I turned around and saw the manager talking to her. His back was to me. She looked beyond him, saw me, and stuck her tongue out at me. It was pierced. Then I went home and finished my bottle of scotch.