Well, I was going through my old journals, and I found this gem. Written during a particularly boring Spanish lit class, spring 2007
I'm not a knight in shining armor
Mostly because my horse is a
bicycle made of trash
and I don't know where
I left my shoes
But there's a smile on my face
maybe that's enough
From my diary, circa may 2011
I’m afraid. I worry that if I stay in once place too long, I’ll do something stupid like get a respectable job in an air conditioned office or get married and buy a house. The twin demons of logic and expectations lurk under the floorboards of my apartment. I can usually scare them away by thinking of absurd building projects that consume great amounts of time and money, but when I run out of ideas, the demons sense my vulnerability; they flatten their shoulders and slip between the cracks in the floor and waft upwards to loom over my prone body, and lacking the creativity to keep them at bay or the strength to evade them, I buy a ticket and flee.
I found this in my old blog drafts. I have no idea where I was going with this, but I really enjoy the beginning, so I’m posting it, rather than just letting it languish in my in-progress bin. Maybe I’ll finish it one day. Until then, I give you: the beginning of an unfinished story!
The stage lights turn on to reveal a used bookstore/music shop. A labyrinth of wooden shelves fills the room, labels written in sharpie on masking tape strips. A book collection adorns the shelves, appearing eclectic to the untrained eye, but actually a rather patchy collection of tattered paperbacks bought off of graduating college students. The owner Vincent and Darrel, one of the employees, are behind a fake-wood-veneer counter. The shop windows are partially obscured by posters of upcoming local rock shows, and the sunlight filtering in between the posters makes curious geometric projections on the shelves. Right up against the windows are stacks of rubbermaid containers filled with vinyl records, meticulously alphabetized. Darrel is perched on a wicker stool, brow furrowed in concentration while juggling The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and Anthem as high as possible. Meanwhile Vincent is slouched in a red pleather chair, feet on the counter and a stack of Sartre paperbacks by his side, secretly planning to knock The Fountainhead, and only The Fountainhead, out of the air with a precisely thrown copy of Nausea. A few customers are walking the aisles, casually leafing through books and putting them back, while Steve, a pierced man wearing all black and a camouflage messenger bag flips through the vinyl, checking as he does every day for rare metal EPs.
One of the customers, a twenty-something girl in black pants and a tightly knit sweater strides around an aisle and up to the counter.
Customer: Do you have anything by Charlotte Bronte?
Vincent (without taking his eyes off the flying Ayn Rand novels): Did you check under H for Humorless and gawdawful victorian novelists?
Customer: …
Darrel: Or maybe F for Fucking go read something better?
Customer: You guys are assholes! How do you expect to..
Vincent seizes this opportunity to fling Nausea through the air, missing the Fountainhead but knocking Anthem flapping towards the back of the store. The other Rand books clatter to the floor next to Darrel.
Vincent: We only sell to readers with taste! If you’re going to buy that blather, at least have the decency to hide it in a stack of half-decent books so you could pretend it got in there by accident.
Darrel: If you’re going to read a proto-feminist, at least read one with some sac!I think I saw some Virginia Woolf books on the shelf back there, next to the stacks of hentai.
The customer is visibly upset, looking back and forth between Darrel and Vincent before turning and stomping out. The other customers look toward the counter and then go back to the shelves.
Steve(walking over, record in hand): You really are assholes.
Vincent: We try, we try.
Steve lays the record on the counter
Vincent: What’s this? Fleetwood Mac?
Steve (rolling his eyes): Come on–this is the 1970 German release of English Rose. Most of the tracks were completely remastered. It’s not Mac, it’s like McMac, it’s so trippy.