Charles Bukowski, �Love is a Dog From Hell�
About a week back, a little punk girl who had the same haircut as me — bangs hanging over one eye, the rest of her hair sheared close — came into the store.
She was selling books. I went through her bag and found that she all her books were either by Neil Gaiman, Hunter S. Thompson, or Charles Bukowski.
I�ll need all of your addresses so I�ll know where to send the wedding invitations.
Kidding, kidding. Well, not kidding about the girl with my haircut, or what she was selling back to me, but I�m skeptical about whether she actually read any of these books. As I�m sure many of you can attest, it is impossible to read a Charles Bukowski book without it becoming absolutely filthy by the time you finish it.
It doesn�t matter how you treat a book. You could read Ham on Rye in a bio-dome experiment with controlled airflow and zero pollutants and you would still walk out with a cover soiled with several black inky spots on the cover and something that looked like congealed grease on the pages.
It�s not your fault. That�s just what happens.
But these books she brought into the store were immaculate. I�m talking pristine condition, looking newer than it would look if you bought it at Barnes and Nobel, though if you�re shopping for Bukowski or Hunter S. Thompson at Barnes and Noble, you�re no friend of mine.
In fact, these were in such good shape that I wondered if we weren�t the drop-off for some elaborate heist involving cult authors. I asked a few questions and got her identification, which served two purposes � it covered the store in case they did turn up to be stolen, and I was able to discover that she was a scant five years younger than I.
So I won�t need those addresses, as we�re going to elope.
This book wasn�t from her pile, however, as I would feel weird about having a Bukowski book that was cleaner than I was. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more poetry, which isn�t too bad if you read really quick and try and forget that that they�re poems. Not to say there weren�t some unbelievable stinkers in here.
This particular copy, in fact, had a bookmark in it featuring stamps from the Arab Republic.
If the former owner read this, it�s no wonder they hate us.
