I have Jury Duty on Monday. Argggh! That led to me staying in the office for 12 hours each of these past two nights. So, I had a lot to do to get things in order before being out for at least three days next week. I am sort of looking forward to it. There will be lots of guaranteed overheard dialogue there. So I can read a novel and write one simultaneously. I am reading Jameson Currier's Where the Rainbow Ends and reviewing it for LGNY
Well, the other day, I got a call from A Different Light, the gay bookstore, informing me that the soundtrack to Steam: The Turkish Bath that I reserved had arrived. I had rushed to ADL to buy it after seeing the movie, preferring to "support the community" rather than the surly folks at Tower Records, the other place the Quad Theater had listed as a point of sale.
Well, the long and short of it is that they lost my copy, and were rude. See the letter I wrote to the store manager. They were also out of the book I needed to buy for a pal departing our shores.
Customers cannot expect anything resembling "customer service" in this town. My treatment at ADL proves beyond a doubt that not all gay people are wittier, smarter, or more polite than the general population. If my hypothesis, that 90% of the population is stupid, hold, then there is no reason to doubt that 90% of the LGBT population are stupid as well.
So I left the store frustrated. Twice I have gone there for A and I have left buying B, C, and D. Not that I didn't need B, C, and D, but as a consumer, being treated shabbily has made me less than "community minded." With Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore closed at that hour (10 PM), I headed up to the Lincoln Square Barnes & Noble. I was pissed off at them on the Eve of Christmas Eve, when I went to see Quentin Crisp. They didn't have the book I needed, either.
Well, it was now 11 PM and I was on a tear! I crossed the street to Tower Records to get that soundtrack already. I didn't see it, but I know it exists. After all, I saw other people's reserved copies at ADL. So I started to ask the clerk if he had seen it. Of course, I had to repeat the word "Steam" to him four times. Then I had to spell it. I was on the verge of pantomime when he retraced the routes I already told him I did. So he declared that it didn't exist if it there wasn't a placeholder card for it. So I scoffed and said, "Well, I have seen it, and the theatre I went to had a sign saying it was here!" So he stalked off and I continued to shop. Because, you know, that money was burning a hole in my pocket by then. So I bought the soundtrack to Little Voice. Thus satisfying my gay shopping genes. Then Brutus, the clerk, told me he looked into it (Initiative! So rare in the post-modern clerk.) He told me it exists, but is not available yet.
Whoever said shopping was a pleasure never shopped in New York.
But I still didn't have that book! That book being Object of My Affection. It's my favorite book. Our pal P is leaving us next week and I meant to give this to her for Christmas. Being Jolly Old Saint Book, I gave the copy I bought for P to L, as I had a complicated dilemma, and I meant to get two copies originally, etc. When P disappeared for our company holiday week, I gave the book to L and figured I would just get another copy later. Well, here I am hitting the bookstores in the later hours.
And on shabbos no less!
So I jumped in my dogsled (the IRT) and went to the B&N on Broadway and 82nd Street. They had the book. Glory be. Jubilant, I asked the clerk if they had a list of readings for the month, and the twit upstairs said, "for reference, but not to take with you." They acted like it was the only one in the store.
I think the people who work at Barnes & Noble overtly or latently hate working there, because they do just about everything to dissuade people from coming back.
Downstairs, there were no flyers at the information desk. I asked the register clerk if they had a list of reading that were being held in the store that month, as I bought the book and the latest issue of the overpriced but wonderful British film magazine Sight and Sound. No UPC code on the latter, so this was the first problem for Wonder Clerk. The second was my question about readings being help there.
"What?"
"Do you have a list of readings being held here?"
"What do you mean?"
"I want a list of the readings..."
Supercilliousy: "Readings!?"
"Authors come in here and read their books to an audience..."
"Oh, readings. I thought you meant readings, like manuscripts..."
Either I am a true mumbler, or people are just too fucking stupid. Maybe it's something in between. I might be taking diction classes soon, so I can clearly and precisely let people hear me say to them, "You are a fucking moron," without turning into Sam Kineson in the process.
Well, I found the list of events, and as I left the store, I decided to go for one last try at successful consumerism. I went to the newsstand and said, "Do you have Snickers?"
I figured that this would have to be foolproof.
And there is was, behind the Milky Way bars.
Life is beautiful once again.
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