Popped into Borders today during my lunch hour. What started off as a mission to locate Ayn Rand’s Marginalia got a little out of hand when I found out that you get $20 vouchers when you spend $75. As it happens there wasn’t a copy of Marginalia anywhere, so I ended up buying the last copy on Amazon. However, I ended up with with five books (probably out of, fifty) that I’ve been meaning to pick up: Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Ayn Rand’s We The Living, George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones (rec by TR) and Zoe Foster’s Textbook Romance (which, for the purpose of the rest of this entry, is a ‘guide to men’, and let’s just assume I’ve picked it up because really like Zoe.. which I do! :))
So I went to pay. Rocked up to the counter and the guy commented on my interesting and rather diverse selection of books and asked if I wanted any wrapped. I didn’t. He told me he meant to pick up Textbook Romance, because one of the girls working there told him to check it out. And another one, he said, “hang on, I have it written down just this morning,” and he reached into his pocket and unfolded a piece of paper and on it, was written “Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men”. I laughed and asked if he knew anything at all about Belle, and it turns out he didn’t. So I gave him a quick run down, then asked if he’s read Neil Strauss. His eyes lit up – “Chapter 7,” he said, “I took a girl home that night. Couldn’t finish a book in high school but chewed through that in a week”.
We discussed the cons of The Game being a bestseller: “Some guys, they’re like robots. They follow everything to the letter and girls have heard it all before. They know the book. See, you’ve read it,” he tells me. “it’s about the confidence,” I say. “And about how much conviction you’re putting into it and how much you believe you’re about to pull something off.” And then some: “But you cannot generalise a whole gender,” I tell him. “How much of anything in any of these books do you think would be applicable to you and how much of this do you think is common sense, playing on the (lack of) self-esteem of others?” Then he tells me he wants to write a book, but for men, on women.
“Ah. Good luck with that.”
(Yes, of course by this time I’ve long finished paying for my books)
I looked at my $20 vouchers. There were two: $10 for Jan and $10 for Feb. “Oh, so you can’t use them right now? Damn,” I said. There was a Victor Hugo (another rec) I wanted to pick up after which was $27. Cheeky bugger grins and says, “Maybe after reading that book you can get a man to buy that for you.” Oh shitttt. He thinks I’m buying a man guide because I need help in that department?? As it dawned on me (in a very, seriously, oh f*ck kind of way) I decided there are really only two things I can do: Ask for his number? But what’s to prove? I grinned and walked off. But not before glibly letting this one slip:
“I don’t swing that way, honey.”
