He was a Lover of Books and Women, and in the shrine on South Calhoun, later forced out of business by religious prigs, he found a juxtaposition that was divine and inspired. He never told anyone else he was a lover of books and women, because it sounded dorky, and he knew of nobody else who qualified as both, so he kept his mouth shut in order to avoid being made jest of. At the same time, he told himself that all the more often to make up for the deficiency, as if repeating the definition would make it all the more true.

He knew, for instance, that James Bond, agent 007, was not "licensed to kill". Instead, Her Majesty's Secret Service assigned him to the double-ought section because on one occasion, he had found it necessary to kill on behalf of his queen. There weren't too many others. There were currently three of them, the newest being 0011. It seems like agents who found it necessary to kill were often, in turn, necessary for the enemy to kill as well, and they were often ruthlessly efficient about it, which made it a wonder that James Bond had survived as well.

No, Mr. Bond

"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die," said the one enemy, but it was a stupid enemy. A smart enemy does not kill with grace and elegence and irony, he simply... kills. It is perhaps desirable that the body not be immediately found, but it must be eventually found so that his co-workers know that they are not to be killers, and it may perhaps not to leave clues, for one would not want to be executed for murder, but on the other hand, if one were to leave no clues at all, it would look like Mr. Bond had accidentally tripped and fallen in the wood mill, and been sawn by the 32" blade, and that would never do, would it. It is a fine and delicate line that Ian Fleming walked when he wrote of the adventures of the admiralty's division.

In the early books of the James Bond series, Bond was almost destitute. He made very little and could scarcely afford a car. He had a sports car, but it was an old one, purchased used and abused, and with too many miles, and it was only with loving care that Mr. Bond was able to restore it to servicable condition, which really didn't fit well with the later books when The Armourer was so agitated that Mr. Bond was so careless with the Queen's property. Nothing in the story line explained that. Nor did it explain why, in the first stories, Bond was a blank check, a student of having no remarkable habits, while in the later stories, he smoked a variety of Turkish cigarette that was exotic, expensive, and difficult to find, and he was equally demanding of his fine liquors, demanding that they be shaken, not stirred. In the first book, he did drink his vodka with pepper, because the pepper would carry fusel oil, a pollutant of poorly made liquor, to the bottom. By peppering his drink, and failing to drink the bottoms, he could avoid being accidentally poisoned by rotgut, but he was drinking commercial liquor of some quality and the chance of poisoning was slight, and the use of pepper was an affectation he continued out of personal preference, not out of necessity, and he knew it to be a slight to his host.

It Was a Rainy Day

It was a rainy spring day, full of lightning, when he drove through the town square, preparing to make a road trip to the big city with the South Calhoun street store. She was slatternly and sodden, and it was only because he was a gentleman that he offered her a ride. "Where are you headed," she asked, and he told her, perhaps the first person he had ever told, that he was a lover of books and of women, and he was on a quest to the holiest of grails. She knew the store, of course. That astounded him. He would have imagined that perhaps another guy would know of it, but a woman of breeding? No, never. And, of course, she was not a woman of breeding, but by entering his Detroit barge of faded fabric and rusty trim, she acquired it. If truth had been told, he was no lover of women. He had, in fact, never even dated one.

And if truth be told, his shrine was not a bookstore, but more of a newsstand, with a few newspapers in the front, mostly alternative "underground" newspapers and comic books, and a lot of magazines, most of which were not produced by men and for men who loved women, but by those who wanted them shackled and bonded, who wanted them whipped and encased in leather, who wanted them removed of all clothing whatsoever, so that you could more easily discern that they were gangly or pudgy, find every pimple and the always-present bruises, and see the hair that could have been pretty if it had only not been overprocessed and allowed to pass too many days since the last shampoo.

I'll Go With You

"I'll go with you," she said, and it astounded him. It was rare that he ever ran across another worshipper in the shrine. Newspapers were 7c and most magazines were 25c and 35c, and the shrine bore prices of $2 and $3 on magazines, and $10 and $20 and there were super-8 movies that were $60, but he didn't have a projector, so he could only imagine what might be worth $60. He would spend a minor fortune $8, or maybe as much as $10, today, and with prices so high, the stores could survive with only one person in them at a time. He wouldn't have wanted someone else around, anyway. They might have shown undue interest in those dirty books that really weren't books, for lovers of women who really didn't love women.

He wasn't really sure about Sandy. Yes, he knew her name. He didn't know how he knew her name, for he knew nobody else who had anything to do with her, nobody who shared an activity with her. And she had nothing to do with the women in the dirty books that were not books, except perhaps for the dirty stringy not-quite-blonde hair.

He parked the car, and scurried around to open the door for her, but she's already let herself out, and instead of closing the door gently, she'd slammed it so hard it wouldn't close, and she had to slam it a second time. Crude, rude, stupid. Doesn't she know that a gentleman would take the door for her. Someone who knows how to treat a classic - and a lady - properly? He headed to the door of the shrine to open it for her, for the handle did not open properly sometime, but she beat him to it, and she thumbed the latch with the right sidejostle, and swung the door open, flayed the door open allowing it to take its good ole time closing, so that he could enter on the same opening as well.

The Pimple-Faced Clerk

The clerk, a gangly pimple-faced kid of perhaps 22, looked up at them. He didn't greet them, but they weren't wearing badges, nor were they the owners, so they didn't get a scowl, either. She bumped him by the elbow, and gave him a nod of the chin, suggesting that they go to the booths at the back, where you could watch movies for 25c. He didn't want that.

Woody Allen used to be married to Louise Lasser, daughter of the guy who wrote the Lasser tax guides. They had a big tax refund one year, and decided that they could either take a vacation in Bermuda, or get a divorce. A vacation would be over soon, they decided, but a divorce, you would have forever, so the choice was obvious. The Lover of Books and Women would have made a similar choice. Peep shows were over in no time at all.

Look At This One

Look at this one, she said. It had a naked woman on the cover, sitting in a kitchen chair, all bound up in 3/8" jute rope. He nodded in agreement; the bindings distorted the shape of her breasts and made them look unappealing. She showed him another one, where the woman was handcuffed behind her back, lying on a piano bench, her ankles tied to the legs, and her face enveloped in black patent leather. "Can't even see her face," the Lover of Women and Books observed. "Don't they know that a smile really makes a woman look pretty? He picked out a magazine showing a woman in cutoffs and an unbuttoned flannel top holding a chunk of firewood, as if she'd just been working barefoot in the woodlot. Her face was full of zits. "She could use some Noxema" his travel companion observed. He nodded. He also picked up a comic book from R. Crumb. He couldn't figure out why regular comic book outlets didn't sell Crumb comics. It surely didn't have anything to do with the casual use of marijuana, would it?

On the way home, she asked if he ever took the alternate route. "Lover's Lane? Sure." And he decided that given the wet weather, the many curves of Lover's Lane would be fun at excessive speed. The car fell off the asphalt on both sides, grabbing at the stone of the berming, making his heart race. "Smoke?" she said, as she got out a baggie and some Zig-Zag papers? "No thanks," he said. "I don't use."

Want To Watch The Lightning?

"Want to stop for a while, and watch the lightning?" She must have been getting hot; she had several buttons undone on her flannel shirt, and you could tell she was wearing no bra. It was getting dark, and the thunderstorm was showing no signs of letting up. The lightning would be spectacular. He thought about it, though, and decided he'd couldn't wait to get home to begin his worship of the female human body.

It was a lonely life for a Lover of Women and Books.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
alternative press - bondage - Books - bruises - comic books - James Bond - lightning - Louise Lasser - Lover - Lover's Lane - old cars - pimples - R. Crumb - Women - Woody Allen