You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.

You aint seen nuthin’ yet.

I used to get there about 11, sometimes 12 depending what sorta day it was. Id be standing in the corner with my back to the wall. Reading. That was a laugh. Coz in those days I’d get the feeling that the bookshop assistants didn’t think us folks could read. Usually I/d be starving, but I had this thing where I/d con myself that I was fasting. Well I had to just to get by. And believe me, up to a point it worked. I/d be losing weight like a speed freak. But in those days I was somekinda fanatic. I was driven. Nothing fazed me. So that in a nutshell is how I got by.

So I/d be scanning all the shelves checking out the dope writers. Man it was cool. Some of those authors really knew how to sockit to you. And some of em’, bless their literary souls, could put down a line with so much honest truth, it made you wanna SCREAM and HOLLER. My favourites were the yanks. The thing I liked about the those books I read was that they didn’t tryn bullshit you or frilly-up the page with fancy prose. I’m talking straight up Carveresque, Hemingwayesque, Bobbie Ann Mason, Hubert Selby Jr, Michael Herr, Dany Lefferriere, Richard Wright, Donald Goines, in your face no-horseshit-realist motherfucka’s. They’d school you on what was what, and if you couldn’t take their truth, then too bad buddy. Go tell it to the marines. Coz mister they were giving it to you hard, down-and-dirty. Usually I’d only be in there a coupla minutes when the fat slimy looking manager would come goose-stepping out from behind the two-way mirror at the back of the store and give me the once over. Jeez you’d think I/d gone in there to rob the joint the way that pompous arsehole stared.
Arsehole I/d be thinking. Rotten stinkin’ arsehole. I only came in here to check out the books. Fill a gap in my education.
Like sometimes I/d even buy the thing just the pacify the feller. But it didn’t help. The next time I came in hed treat me just the same; like a-born-to-be-dead-beat-looser.

Reading those books I practically forget the tough world existed outside. Didn’t matter who wrote ‘em book either. Black, white, red, Chinese, straight, gay, Martian. Long as the pros was down, then so was I.

Occasionally I/d get the urge to tell the damn fool, that just like those dudes up there on the shelve, I too was gonna be a writer someday. Weren’t nothing in the Bible or any other of those good books that said writers or readers had to look any particular way. Don’t think it would have helped though. The man just seemed to have it in for me.

I remember one time it happened. I’m talking about the same old tired-Negro surveillance-bullshit. I’m in the store checking out Somebody’s boots, by Nelson Algren. Has this blurb on the back. (Hemingway) If you cant take a punch…don’t read it. Read the first page. Liked it. Read some more….Christ, ol’ Nelson’s prose was so tight he could fell a man the way Mike Tyson put down Trevor Berbick.

Anyway guess who comes creeping up behind me. Yeah that’s right. The fat slimy manager in the blue button-down shirt. So I start getting all nervous. I’m pulling out books and shoving ‘em back on the shelf. I’m starting to get a sweat-on and the muscles on my neck are wound up so tight it feels like I’m going into traction.

So I’m like, screw you mister, I/ll buy the damn book if it/ll keep your self-important arse off my tail for a minute. Can’t a kid browse. Pleasssse! Well obviously not in your blinkered estimation. So I reach into my pocket, pull out a twenty and damn! Would you believe it? It’s the last bitta dough I have in the world.

The book cost 7 bills, which without pussy footing around the place is at least three dinners. That’s right. That little old book, crazy as it sounds, was gonna cost me my lunch three days on the trot.

Then just as I’m walking upta the cashier I think, now hold on mister. The hella you doing to yourself? Ain’t it enough that this arsehole is tryna disrespect you….So now you’re gonna starve yourself in order to placate the self-righteous dick? Hell no! So I slam the book down on the counter, turn on my heels and get the hell outta dodge.

Twenty minutes later I’m back in my pokey old flat. The heatings off and to borrow a phrase from Salinger, its colder than a witch’s tit. I decide ta treat myself. Make myself a cup of steaming coffee and a toasted tuna sandwich…Dolphin friendly of course. Then with the coffee on the floor, and the tuna on the side, I settle back on the sofa with my Charles Bukowski Reader.

What the hell, I think. As Bukowski would probably say:
Least you got four walls and a roof…And despite the dog-eat-dog-ball-breaking cold world out there. With a roof and four walls…A mans still got a chance. Ain’t that the truth when you’re living on thin air, prayer and good intentions. Hold your head up…PEACE!