cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Bookstore and Lindsay Not Being a Proper Girlfriend I have the papers now. The new LLC has been created. I'm the CEO or something. Within 2 or 3 days I will own this bookstore. The building, the business, the books, everything. Just shy of a million dollars in debt, though the building may be worth close to two million in a few years. This is such a Horatio Alger thing. I showed up to just cover the desk a few days a week for a month. The place was in such bad shape that I couldn't resist straightening the shelves of over 100,000 books and cleaning the place and fixing the air conditioners and doing carpentry and installing smoke detectors. I found that all of the tens of thousands of fiction hardbacks were completely out of alphabetical order and began methodically re-alphabetizing them. Starting with A. Remove all of the books from the shelf. Sweep the dust and crumbled plaster. Wipe it clean. Pull the books that belonged in a completely different section. Put everything in alphabetical order by author. And then just keep going. So I was asked to take over ownership of the bookstore. I said 'no thank you.' A few dozen people approached me over the following weeks and asked me to please reconsidered or else this institution would cease to exist. The founder, after 49 years in the business, is physically and mentally incapable of continuing it. His wife made the offer again with his blessing. I agreed. Today I drove to Richmond and stopped at every Good Will along the way and then hit thrift stores. I came back with around 250 books that I hand picked. I know now what sells. Who my customers are. When I do this, about a third of what I just picked up will sell within a week. This haul today cost about $100 and I will turn it into around $1,700. The bookstore in an institution and the exiting owner was known as 'the prophet of 4th street.' People came in all day long just to see him. They still come by and ask after him. But now there are also people who come in just to talk to me. For research advice, real estate help, book recommendations, historical projects, or just someone to talk to about books, history, art, architecture, geography and science. It is an office to inhabit and I am inhabiting it. I have a list of improvements that I've been itching to make for months. The bookcase next to the front door, directly across from the desk, should be producing $50 to $100 in revenue per day. It is one of the first things that anyone entering looks at. It should be filled with things that could plausibly be impulse purchases. Instead, it contains the following sections: Dance I have sold exactly two books off of that shelf in the last five months or so since I have been here. A few months ago I suggested to Donna, the outgoing owner's wife, that we use three of those shelves for a 'staff picks' section. This idea was shot down. "Most book stores don't have a heraldry or handwriting section," Donna explained. "So we're showing everyone that we're different and we have that kind of thing. And the aviation section has to stay there. A few years ago, there were a few guys who would come in sometimes and look at those books." A few years ago. A few guys. Look at. Not buy. This was enough reason to keep the most valuable real estate in the store stocked with books that literally nobody buys. While the business is losing money. Donna has no idea how to run a book store. But she is utterly devoted to her husband, Sandy, who has been in a wheelchair for 16 years and has experienced a mental decline over the last 3 or 4 years to the point where he has to ask me three times what a particular book is that we are looking at. He has essentially no memory of any historical events of the last 20 years. He is on opiod pain pills most of the time and lives in a fog of books and friends and well-wishers and meals and plays which he watches and takes in as though he were watching birds at a feeder. Donna is thin and trim and looks as good in her 70's as most women could hope for. She is a retired nurse. She pays the bookstore's bills and has gradually handed off nearly all of the actual management of the bookstore to me over the last few months. Which I never asked for, but just gradually started doing because it needed doing. She sees Sandy of old in a lot of what I do. Driving an hour away on a Saturday to buy a collection of books from a college professor who died long before his time. Giving books away almost for free to a regular with Parkinson's disease. Sandy bought this building for $34,000 in 1974. Before I was born. He ran it without rent and without a mortgage for most of its existence so far. I have to increase revenue by 50% within the first year just to survive. Before any profit. I have a cadre of volunteers to either manage or maybe not manage. Friends of Sandy's from his glory days who stepped in to help as he declined. One of them is Tom McS. Tom started a financial information company which was bought by Standard & Poors and he made millions. I worked for him for the summer of '97. Jehu, who was his #2 guy, got me the job. I wore a suit or at least a blazer and tie and spent the summer calling businesses and trying to get the details of their pension plans for a directory. A large enterprise of hundreds of people, with Tom at the top in his tailored suits and Boston accent. A distant, powerful boss. Today I have to deal with Tom fumbling the Square reader and begging my help to clear out his attempted sale of $85,000 for a single hardback. Tom goes in the back to piss and leaves the door open for all to watch and listen and then does not flush the fucking toilet. Every now and then he simultaneously pisses me off and delights me with some long-winded spiel about things like working at Fenway Park in the 1950's selling peanuts. It's always a long, pointless ramble about how you had to sell the most peanuts before the game to get to sell the more profitable wares like beer during the game. Always while I am trying to get work done and file books and research first editions. But I know that a transcript of everything that he says would be precious. Cut down into some Joseph Mitchell type of story. A few weeks ago a man in his early 60's came in to sell a few books. One of them was a copy of Dr. Seuss's "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew" whatever. It's Suess' second book, so smaller editions. While we were looking at them, he noticed for the first time that it was signed by Dr. Seuss. I pointed out that Dr. Seuss signed a lot of books. Fast forward though weeks of me leaving messages and trying to get this guy to come in and pick up his $35 check for his books. Finally, he collects it a few days ago. I'm having visions of questions of provenance and didn't want to get excited until that was nailed down. It's a very early 1938 edition of the book. In very good condition, still has the un-torn dust jacket. Not a first edition, but very early. Signed by Seuss himself. I'm looking at something worth between $900 and $2,000. Sandy would have priced that at $8.50 and sold it like any other kids book to be destroyed by fingers and crayons. If I can find a few things like that every month, on top of the ordinary sales, I might have a shot at keeping this thing going. I am never bored in the bookstore. I delight in finding any shelf to straighten, old books to research, leather-bound volumes to rub with dressing, crumbling plaster to sweep away, shelves to pull out and rebuild. Visitors find it large. It feels like a labyrinth if you haven't been there before. But it is really only around 700 square feet on each of its three floors. It has started to feel too small to me. No room for a real workshop in which to store tools and build things. After I've carved out a two bedroom apartment to live in from the storage space on the top floor, there will be no place to store books or my camping gear. Another of our volunteers, Tom C., is a former National Geographic photographer. He is a deep old file. Many trips to Haiti and Cuba. I've seen some shit and been to a few places. He hasn't seen as much of, as who should say *shit,* but he has been around the world a lot. I like having him around. My star employee right now is June. June is a petite trans woman who is experimenting with goth style but her knowledge of what actual goth culture and music consists of is severely lacking. June throws herself into projects like the Great Alph@betization of the fiction hardbacks with the same kind of obsession that I have. She is so awesome. Getting into the zone of just wanting everything to be where it should be. I am going to give her a raise as soon as the sale is complete. June comes to Chinch1lla C@fe events sporadically. She is at the periphery of that scene. The main two people from the Chinch1lla C@fe have asked me to help find them a house to buy where they won't have to worry about landlords or city inspectors. I think I've found the thing for them to buy, which isn't listed for sale but which they can get. Lindsay. Poor Lindsay. She is so good. But she's been working Friday and Saturday nights for months now. There are no date nights. She still usually puts zero effort into her appearance, though on those rare occasions when she does, she looks lovely. She comes in and rubs my shoulders at work now and then. I like that. But there is not much of an actual relationship happening here. Thanksgiving is coming right up and I'm not strongly tempted to invite her to meet my family. She is a very good person. It was she who connected me with the bookstore in the first place. She is never, ever available to come with me on a trip to Richmond to buy books and visit thrift stores or do anything other than occasionally come with me to net little fish as feeders for my eels and other fish in the tank. I don't see a long-term basis for this relationship. She could have increased her hours as a social worker, but didn't want the stress. So she went back to restaurant work, which means evenings and weekends. And it also means not having any time to see the man she is dating. There is also ZERO sex happening, other than me going on down on her now and then. She wanted to go off of birth control pills because the hormones were bad for her. Ok, cool. She is also allergic to copper or something, so can't use an IUD. Huh. So she says she is going to get her tubes tied. Meanwhile, I fucking hate condoms and would rather just have sex with one person than have sex with everyone in sight without one. So there is no sex whatsoever happening in this weird excuse for a relationship. She has never once even attempted to go down on me or do anything that might lead to trying to fuck with a condom. It is like dating in middle school. And I am not really into the whole getting her tubes tied thing. It is her body and her choice. But I would like to have an option for having more kids, on the off chance that I am able to afford that lifestyle in the future. She moved in with her ex-husband after the divorce. And I am not allowed to be around when he is home. That is very suspect. She is supposedly moving out within a month. I do not feel moved to buy her flowers. I feel like this is a friend whom I hang out with and check in with. I feel like the opportunity for sex to move this into the next level has passed. Lindsay is also very delicate. She has a history of suicidal ideation. She is in therapy and goes to 4 or 5 AA meetings every week, and teaches yoga and goes to a bunch of yoga classes. I loom large in her life. I am always very nice to her. I work very hard. She sees me being respected by judges and business owners and queer activists and politicians and I have status and I constantly earn it by the way that I live my life. And she gets to come along for part of that. She found a guy who fixes cars and computers and does carpentry and writes and reads books and is asked to take over a storied bookstore and doesn't cheat on her and always shows up on time and tips well. What happens if he doesn't want to be in a romantic relationship with her anymore? Taking care of Lindsay could potentially take over my life if/when this thing has to end. She hasn't been able to step into an actual girlfriend role. I need someone to do that and she just hasn't been able to. 1:44 a.m. - 2023-11-12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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