March 1, 2004

Just the other day, as I was standing between the stack of books at the local Barnes & Noble, I was wondering just how much of my so-called disposable income could I afford to drop on books at that very moment.

I had to choose, would it be One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or An American Tragedy, and Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. A newly minted copy of The Orchid Thief mocks me from it’s cardboard stand. Yes, I do want you, I want you in the worst way, I want you almost as badly as I desired Batman comic books when I was a kid and all my parents would buy me where Betty and Veronica.

I remember what desire tastes like now. It tastes like the bitter disappointment that comes from finding onions on your burger when you specifically asked your dad to tell them NO ONIONS and smells like the ink from ball point pens that where boosted from the post office. Pens that I used to draw moustaches and beards on Betty and Veronica, well, I visited a special kind of torture on Veronica. I blacked out her teeth and drew glasses on her face. I especially hated Veronica. She had cooler clothes than me, she got to wear high heels and lipstick, like I didn’t. And she lived in a house that was something like I knew I would never get to live in.

Bitch.

Anyway.

I knew in my heart that I would not feel fulfilled if I left the store without one of them. I had already picked them up, I had already fondled the spines, examined them for fingerprints and found them spotless and smelled the clean crisp smell that comes from a brand new book having it’s pages flipped open to a random section for a preview read.

I really should choose. I’m not in the position where a few dollars spent in books means that anybody at my house will be cast out into the street, or that my four-legged dependants will do without. Really it comes down to a matter of time and space.

If I could sit down and do nothing but read for eight hours a day, it would probably take me six months to get through my stockpile.

I am also ambivalent about choosing an Oprah book. I was reading a long time before she said it was cool, and I certainly don’t want to be lumped into the throngs of people who started reading just because Oprah said it was cool. But then it dawns on me, that thingy is just a sticker, and stickers can be peeled off.

No one would have to know when I actually bought the book.

Or, if asked, I could say it was a gift.

Or, if asked, I could say, bugger off and quit poking around in my books.

That is the response most people would expect from me, after all.