Islands in the streaming ...

Lately I have been really fascinated by the idea of "curling up with a good book." While I read a lot, it's never in a leisurely way that requires a fisherman knit sweater, a cup of tea, and a cat far-more precious than the lumbering teen-aged oaf clomping around this place. I read before bed, over lunch, on toilets, and whenever I have at least a 2-minute wait for anything. What a pleasant idea, though. I'm going to sit here and reeaaaddd. Just read. That will probably never happen because now our Wii is capable of streaming Netflix. This means I can spend 18 hours watching mediocre whatevers that I probably wouldn't even watch if it was on TV. But this, this is novel. "March of the Penguins"? Meh. Why not. As long as there are moving pictures.

***

Me: "I should see if the pizza delivery guy will give me a ride back downtown to get my car."
Chuck: "Someone should start a business where they do that, take you back to your car."
Me: "They do. It's called Yellow Cab."

***

When I thank the pizza delivery guy for traveling out of what I assume is their pie-zone, he uses the statement as a diving board into crazy talk. Hermantown, he tells me, is a tricky community. It's the moms who do the ordering there, and if you piss one off, it can sink your biz. This is hard: Some of their drivers are 20-somethings, an unpredictable lot to say the least. Who knows when one is going to piss off a mom in Hermantown and sink the biz?

I think this is what he was saying. I was distracted by a) the paint in his hair; b) the panic associated with not knowing exactly how I was going to get this guy to leave.

***

"Where'd you get those shoes," a man asks me at the bus stop. "I've never seen shoes like that."
"A trail store at Fitger's," I say. "There kind of hiking, all terrain shoes."
"Oh! Do you hike?" he asks.
"Well, I walked here," I said.

***

I'm sitting in a chair at Barnes & Noble reading. I hear the man next to me taking photos with his cell phone. I adjust so I can see what he's looking at. Profile shots of boobs in magazines. Photos a little edgier than what would run in Maxim, but not edgy enough to warrant "behind the counter" status.

I can't help that I immediately am able to see exactly how his night will unfold. Leaves store. Transfers photos to computer. Opens a bag of Cheetos. ... I can't stop watching him take these photos, and thinking about his bravery in unabashedly announcing to this store: I'm a boob man. I can't wait to look at these boobs again later.

That's when I remembered that I was sitting here about 60 pages deep into the memoir "Whip Smart" by Melissa Febos, her story of being a dominatrix. The difference between me and this amateur photographer, however, is that I'm not a pervert.

Postscript: When I left the store, Camera slappy was sitting with his mom in the coffee shop.