Bookstore Days

David Bowie came in once to buy The Origins of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I’d read it and was cool
at the register, declining to make small talk with the rock star.
He had a girl on each arm and they were a walking ménage a trois
in my healthy which is to say my sick young mind. Nervous-looking –
druggy paranoia maybe, or worried they’d be noticed or not.

Susan Sontag browsed and bought nothing, having read everything
already, I imagined. Two young men accompanied her,
photogenic bookends clinging to her every silent word.

Fred Gwynne came on a busy Saturday night, Sunday Times
night, ink stains everywhere in a frenzy of slapping together
and doling it out for a dollar – Oh how long ago it was.
Dear Herman Munster with a redhead on each arm,
decidedly unmonstrous ladies wrapped in murderous fur
for the trio had had a night on Broadway I am sure.

*

To the age of 25 or so, bookstore clerking was my main skill. The SLC campus bookstore, New Morning Bookstore in Soho (setting for the poem above), a midtown-Manhattan Barnes & Noble, the Brazos Bookstore and the River Oaks Bookstore in Houston, and Printer's Ink in Palo Alto (the Stegner fellowship I had didn't pay enough, so I taught ESL and clerked to make ends meet).

Spring St. between West Broadway & Thompson, NYC
ca. 1979

But New Morning was the best: a literary and all-around arts nexus, crazy customers, the occasional celeb, eclectic selection, and a wonderful bunch of folks on staff: Ron Kolm, Thomas McGonigle, Michael Labambardo, Chris Gresov, Ellen Cavolina, Maggie Vitagliano, Cathy Corrigan, Jeff Adams, Opal [?], Roz [?], Walt [?] -- briefly, also, Richard Edson and Adele Bertei. And who am I forgetting?

Tuli Kupferberg and Samuel Menashe were frequent visitors, holding forth for who would listen; various writers of course: Gary Indiana, Hal Sirowitz -- and the big-deal painters of the day stopped in now and then: Robert Longo, Francesco Clemente -- but no one impressed me as much as Joni Mitchell, who I swear was all in blue. Probably there were many others, but I was too ignorant to know.

I was there 1980 -- 1983, but with a couple of jaunts out West to try to work on fishing boats (got on one for a week in Oregon while staying with Vijay Seshadri, was miserable, came back tail between legs, as I have so often in life).

So, a nostalgia piece: my weakness, at this middle-aged stage of life. The structure is donnée: each notable mentioned in the poem did indeed come in with a pair of younger companions, so the poem has a sort-of do-see-do pattern.. 

For a little more, here's an interview with Ron:

http://www.litkicks.com/RonKolm