Wither and Wane

I was at work today and I kind of had a moment. I've been in the bookselling business for many years now, too many to mention, and I and not only familiar with books, I live them.

I have probably touched literally millions of books in my day and honestly speaking, despite all the issues that go with working retail – and god knows there are plenty – at the end of the day, like say today, I still like what I do.

That is to say, I still like the actual doing part. All the politics, the ass kissing, the back stabbing, the lies, the laziness, the incompetence, that stuff is for the birds. Yeah, that stuff can go jump a cliff. What I dig is being surrounded by books.

I love books.

I love fiction, literature, history, sociology, science, comics, art, cooking, bargain, poetry, kids, philosophy, the occult, fuck, I even love bestsellers and all their vapid glory.

It's boner city for me to be surrounded by books.

The store I work in is a landmark in Houston. It's a landmark, but don't tell the property management company because they seem intent on making a buck and tearing the thing down once my home office moves the program and closes our store for one that actually might turn a profit.

Once upon a time, in true storybook fashion, our store was the biggest bookstore in all the land (or at least in all of Houston). No one could even hope to unseat us as the book buying center of the Houston universe.

We anchored our little shopping center. Hell, when our building was built in the late 30s, we were the center. Back then, on opening night, crowds gathered to watch the Jack Benny film and taste a small sample of America at its finest.

The movies stopped running eventually, and before you knew it some investors had turned our building into an independent bookstore.

Unfortunately what they had in vision was not matched in their business acumen and before long they had to sell out to the world's largest bookseller.

A few years later I entered this picture and except for an 8 month stint refining my hatred for hippies, I have been there ever since.

As for the business, well, over the years the suits envisioned a future of huge and profitable megastores. Our poor little converted art deco theater, all clunky and retrofitted, didn't match up. Sure, for years we did fine what with the giant health food store being in the center and really no competition to speak of, but once they moved down the street leaving their old spot empty for several years, and then once our only actual competitor erected one of their own huge anchor stores right on the same corner we were doomed. Suddenly the tables were turned.

Me? I'll keep my job, will move to another store and will keep doing this work for the foreseeable future.

So anyway, at this rate, yeah, financially speaking I will die an indentured servant, so to speak. I will be working until I can't work any more and then, for all I know, I will move under the nicest bridge I can find and take shelter from the weather while I wait to die.

Good solid fun.

But you know what? I don't suck devil cock and I don't bend over and take it too far up the ass. Oh sure, I might dally, but I never go full hog.

So do I have dignity?

Fuck you for asking. I smoke meerschaum and let my team of afghans pull my gilded chariot through the streets because I am a god among men.

And tomorrow, when you are at your job, massaging the ego of your Napoleonic gastrointestinal expulsion of a boss, offering your sphincter up to the gods of commerce, while you are signing every contract old Mr. Scratch shoves beneath your nose, long since immune to the smell of sulfur, I will be at the bookstore reading the Walking Dead series, eating leftovers, and only being nice to the people who deserve it.

Just do me one favor in my waning years.

Come say hello when you come to pick up the new Danielle Steel, okay? Deal?