Just When You Thought She was Into You

Lisa Ann M_ [I'm reading Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes] came into the store with the kind of forceful personality which is either intensely annoying, indefinably charming, or the magical combination which comes across as Holly Golightly on speed.  Like a heavy current, you realize you could be swept along, so you let it wash over you and try to remain upright.  

When I leave the buying office and register work distracts me from my agenda, I do my best to be civil.  The customers don't realize whoever should be on the register is AWOL, and they're the reason there's a roof over my head, so I resist the urge to vent my annoyance at my job situation on them.  Sometimes, I even manage to fake enthusiasm.  In LAM's case, her joie de vivre was catchy.  

LAM purchased a copy of Les Standiford's Last Train to Paradise, explaining that she liked to read about the places she travelled.  I gave her points for being a paying customer, for her boho chic outfit (fashionable isn't my thing but stylish is, and the look suited LAM) and blocky black glasses, and for loving Books & Books.

"Are there any cool places in this city?" she asked.  "You know, for people who love books?  Events, or somewhere special you like to go?"

I asked how long she planned on staying.

"I'm leaving Miami as soon as possible," she said.  

In that case, not really.  

"Is there an Art Deco district?  I've heard about all the cool Art Deco architecture.  I saw some on the Beach but it looked pretty run down."

If you've been to South Beach, that's about it on the art deco.  I mentioned Wynwood and the Design District, but since I couldn't offer directions I was fairly useless to her.  

When I first moved to Miami, I would have commiserated with the numerous negative things LAM had to say as I rang her up, but I'm done bad-mouthing The Magic City.  I've lived here long enough to see Miami, to love this town and adopt it as my own.  By this time, Becky had come by.  She wasn't cock blocking but she was certainly present.  Lurking, I guess you'd say. 

"Are you a biker, by any chance?" LAM asked.

I allowed as I was.  

"Because I biked here by Venitian Bridge.  Do you know Venitian Bridge?"

She meant Venitian Causeway, one of the few bike-friendly places in Miami.  

"Once I got off it, there didn't seem to be anywhere to go.  I got honked at a lot."

I told her apart from Alhambra, there wasn't a street in the Gables with a bike path.  The best you could do was bike carefully.  

LAM refused a bag for her purchase, instead tucking Last Train into the bag over her shoulder.  She plucked a copy of Tim Gautreaux's The Missing from her bag to make space and asked if I wanted it.  She'd just bought the book in New Orleans, finished it on the train, and wanted to travel light.  I told her I was familiar with The Missing and had intended to read it since it was published.  I thanked her, wishing I had something to offer in return.  

According to Becky, Lisa Ann M_ was flirting.  I might agree, if not for the following.

"I can't really get you back to Venitian," I said.  "That's out of my six-mile radius."

"Six mile radius?" 

"Yeah.  All social engagements need to be within a six-mile radius of my house.  Otherwise, I don't go."

"What it that, a Miami thing?  Or an old-person thing?"

She may have meant "is that an old-school thing" or "a classic rule of living" but I wasn't about to find out for sure.  I said it was my thing which I'd adopted from a friend, wished her luck on her travels, and bid her goodbye.

I may not have gotten an ego boost out of it, but at least I got a free book.

My Favorite Cop in the World

After Friday’s classes, at a delicious restaurant recommended by SIBA, a group of book lover’s sat down to dinner.  Judith Rosen from Publisher’s Weekly; Chris Finan, President of the American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression; Detective Joe Matthews, twenty-nine year veteran of the Miami Dade Police Department; Mitchell Kaplan, former head of SIBA and owner of Books & Books; Becky Quiroga, Children’s Book Buyer for Books & Books and manager of the children’s section at our Coral Gables store; Les Standiford, bestselling author of nonfiction like Last Train to Paradise and The Man Who Invented Christmas, as well as the John Deal mystery series; and Eric Svenson, sales rep and southern charmer extraordinaire for Harper Collins.

Oh, and me.  I read books.

People who love books tend to two camps; shy (or bookish, har-har) and storytellers.  Standiford and Matthews are storytellers.  Mitchell is one who comes across as shy, but that’s just because he’s as good a listener as he is a speaker.  Through the three of them, we hear the story of how Bringing Adam Home became a book.

It started with the timeline of Adam Walsh’s abduction, a document it took Matthews over two years of constant effort to create.  Hoping it would serve as a warning of what could go wrong if investigations were mishandled, he shopped it to a university press.  The editor-in-chief said, “I’m going to do you a big favor – I’m not going to publish this.”  The Uni editor advised Matthews to take it to a big publisher, where it could get the treatment and audience it deserved.  

A few days later, Matthews was having lunch with a friend who mentioned that attorney Joe Kaplan – once a lawyer for the police unions in Miami – had a kid in the book business (if you don’t know books, that’s like saying Basil Fanshawe Jagger has a kid in the rock star business).  Joe M met Joe K, who called Mitchell, who met Joe, who liked Mitchell, who thought of Les Standiford to make a non-fiction document into what Truman Capote called a factual novel.  

To hear Matthews tell it, he and Les hit it off right away.  They met for coffee at a McDonalds and stayed there for four hours.  “They probably thought we were homeless.”

As martinis, cuba libras, mojitos, and Budweisers flow (along with the occasional soda and Odoul’s for souls brave enough to handle sobriety), talk turns to e-books, family, pornography, and movies.  

Matthews tells a great story about a Hollywood actor who wanted to make the Baby Lollipops case into a movie, or a TV series.  This actor nipped around super-stardom from the seventies to the nineties but never quite made the leap to household name status.  He specializes in soft-hearted tough-guy roles, and sympathetic villains.  For the sake of storytelling, we’ll call the actor Guff.  

Guff and Matthews didn’t quite hit it off.  As a man who trains officers on how to administer lie-detector tests, Matthews is uniquely qualified to tell when someone is full of shit.  Still, Matthews agreed to meet Guff at the bar in a South Beach hotel.  

Guff bullied the servers and spent the evening trying to take the female half of a couple he just met to his room upstairs.  Matthews decided to bow out gracefully.  

Guff wouldn't have it.  He followed Matthews into the street, demanding an explanation.

Like a date gone sour, Matthew knew that they wouldn’t work together.  Also like a date, he tried to come up with reasons Guff would understand which wouldn’t hurt his feelings.  Something’s off, we don’t click, now let’s just go our separate ways, the chemistry isn’t there, I’m trying to spare you here, etc. etc.

None of it satisfies Guff.  He wants a reason Joe Matthews won’t work with him.  Matthews is a cop, used to confrontation and plain speaking.  He’s tried to be gentle, but he’s wasted as much time as he’s cared to on this B-list actor. 

“Listen, Guff – I don’t like you.  Is that clear enough?  I don’t like you, and we’re done.”

Guff goes ballistic.  How dare a nothing like Matthews dislike a successful actor like Guff, a man with his own production company, perfect stubble, and chin that could cut class?  He screams himself into a frenzy.  He promises Matthews he’s dead in Hollywood.  He actually uses the phrase, “Do you know who I am?”  

All that would have been fine.  Rude, yes, but Matthews would have walked away.  Except Guff poked Matthews in the chest to emphasize his point.

Matthews grabbed Guff’s finger and bent it back.  To hear Matthews tell it, Guff screamed “in a cowardly fashion.”

“Do you know who I am?” Matthews asked the actor.  “You don’t come to my city and tell me off.  Don’t ever call me, don’t ever talk to me, I want nothing to do with you, ever again.”

My favorite part of the story was Matthews tone when he described Guff’s scream.  Matthews sounded surprised, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing for such a little thing.

Clearly there’s a difference between playing tough, and being tough.  

The Girl with the Pigeon Tattoo

Becky’s in a book.  


I snubbed Becky after Eric Carle drew The Very Hungry Caterpillar on her forearm, but Harper Collins, Eva Talmadge, and Justin Taylor did not.


Check out pages 82-83 of The Word Made Flesh:

Cool tattoos are expected, but you could always browse the internet to check those out - it’s the stories behind the tattoos which make Word Made Flesh worth owning.

Eva Talmadge came to Books & Books for lunch with her mother a few months back.  Becky and Eva tried to get Mo Willems' original-drawing-made-permanent-via-tattoo of the Pigeon into the book, but the layout had already been finalized.  

Here it is anyway, for your enjoyment:

If Word Made Flesh is a hit (and if early Books & Books sales are any indication, it will be), I’m sure you’ll see the Pigeon in More Words Made Flesh: This Time It’s Personal.*

The Pigeon debuted at BEA 2010, and made Becky a minor celebrity in children’s book publishing.  She became Tattoo Girl.  She posed for pictures.  Everyone wanted to know which illustrator would be next.  

Turns out Lane Smith was next, with the Monkey from this year’s best picture book, It’s a Book.

Now who’s next?  If Becky could choose, Maurice Sendak would tour (which he adamantly does not) and she’d ask him to draw Max on her arm.  But it doesn’t work that way, and camping out on his doorstep won't happen any time soon.  A serendipitous combination of subject matter, access, willingness (one illustrator balked at drawing on flesh), and financial breathing room need to come together for these tattoos to happen.  

Whoever the next addition to the Mortal Art Project turns out to be, I’ll keep you posted.

* Title not final.  Or real.  Neither is Word Made Flesh II: Electric Boogaloo   

I Carry a Big Stick

Harry, seventy plus years old, gay and garrulous, wants to know if I’m okay. I’m “even more silent than usual,” he tells me with his impish smile. He’s a sweet, good-natured guy, but the connotation is that there’s something off about me because I don’t talk much.

Am I that quiet? In work mode, I guess so. I thought I left the silent, shy version of myself behind years ago but it comes out when I’m buckled down on a deadline. Which, at Books & Books, is most of the time.

Still, I don’t see the point of yakking for yakking’s sake, except to make others more comfortable. It’s a skill I’ve developed somewhat over the years but nothing that comes naturally. That’s part of the reason I enjoy groups of people; there are others to share the burden of filling dead air.

I told Harry I felt great. In less of a rush (or with quicker wit), I could have used humor to prove to Harry how great I was.

“I like people to see me as the strong, silent type.”

“When you don’t talk much, you’re at less of a risk of saying stupid things.”

“God only gave me forty-seven million words in this lifetime, and I’m trying to use them judiciously.”

One thing I’ve noticed. In crowds where I don’t speak much, when I do open my mouth, people listen. On the rare occasion that I actually have something decent to say, this works in my favor. When I’ve been the victim of my own logorrhea, I’ve wanted the ground to open at my feet so I could disappear with nothing but an inward groan and a sheepish wave goodbye.

That’s why dialog is so much fun. You have weeks to put the perfect phrase in your character’s mouth, whether you want her to be dazzling in her erudition or cringe-worthy in her ignorance.

Truthfully, I wouldn’t mind being mute.

Halloween Parties for Jesus

On Halloween, I was supposed to meet a girl who works with JC, one my one of best friends. Great, I thought, this is where I’m at in life: the fix-up. Excellent. JC and his wife Laura spent a goodly portion of my birthday weekend prepping me. Not a fix-up, they assured me, just a costume party at which we’d both be in attendance. Fine.

Between telling me how funny she was, that her name was Marcy Graham but everyone called her Macy Gray, and that they thought we’d hit it off, it was a picture show.

AJC: Wow, I can’t believe you got us all tickets to Leonard Cohen tonight.

JC (thrusting IPHONE into my face): Here’s her Facebook picture.

AJC: She’s cute. I’ve always wanted to see Leonard Cohen, but the tickets-

LAURA (thrusting IPHONE into my face): Here she is at a Cancer benefit.

AJC: Okay, she’s cute in a cocktail dress. Um... but I thought the tickets were too expensive. Should we have a cocktail first, or-

JC (thrusting IPHONE into my face): Here she is with purple hair and a nose ring.

AJC: Great, she’s cute and punk and I’ll meet her at this Halloween thing and we’ll hit it off and have lots of sex and babies, okay?

JC & LAURA: If you want.

AJC: Let’s drink now. Heavily.

Anyhoo, JC and Laura had one reservation about Macy Gray; she attends church. Doesn’t cross my eyes none (no pun intended). I subscribe to the Bible passage in Matthew where Jesus says to go into your room and pray by yourself (and "Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you"), but I’m not much for fellowship. As long as Macy didn’t expect me to attend with her, cool.

I was trying to decide what to be for Halloween. With an eye for the romantic, Cleopatra pounced on Macy’s church-going ways. Cleo told me I should find out what Macy Gray planned on being, then dress up as her partner.

“For instance, I’m going as Cleopatra,” she said. “You’d be Anthony.”

Of course, that’s what ended up happening (and why I call her Cleopatra), but I bring up Macy Gray because of what Cleo said next.

“Oh, she’s a church girl. I’ve got it; you should go as Jesus. The second you walk into the party, she’ll be all over your dick.”

JC took me to Casa de los Trucos on eighth street; Historic Calle Ocho, if you subscribe to hyperbolic street signs. The line to get in Casa de los Trucos stretched to the parking lot. When customers left, a bouncer would let the next few people in. Inside it was hot, crowded, loud, and festooned with every costume you could ever want, on the cheap. Thankfully, I was rolling with JC, one of those guys who doesn’t necessarily know everyone, but who knows someone who knows someone. In this case, he used to rent an apartment from the owner. He looked up the costume I needed (on the cursed IPHONE) and got us help.

Thrift led me to a Caesar costume similar to how I remembered Marlon Brando’s senate robes as Marc Anthony in 1953's Julius Caesar. Here’s a picture of the costume I bought at Casa de los Trucos:
This is no Caesar. Clearly, this costume enjoyed a previous life as a Prince of Peace costume. It didn’t sell, so the company was like, “Screw it. Sew some gold around the edges, put some leaves in the dude’s hair, and change the name.” And I, balking at the price tag of the costume I really wanted, fell for it.

It might be worth noting that Trucos is “tricks” en Englais.

When I got home and took a long look, I realized this would not do. It might be a funny sight gag for Cleopatra. Remember how I was supposed to be with Church Girl tonight? But then she’d have to stand next to me the whole night.

No problem. I haven’t made my own costumes in a while, but it’s like riding a bicycle. All I needed was a trip to Party City and a sewing kit from CVS. Fifteen bucks later, I had this:
That's me between Caesar and Cleopatra.

Marc Anthony, not the singer.

Ode to Joy

I’m reading, and loving, Arianne Cohen’s The Tall Book. According to Cohen, “talls” react to their height in one of two ways. They wilt under all the attention their height garners them, holding up the wall at parties, slouching their way through life, or they develop the large personalities people expect to accompany their size.

Cohen, naturally shy and bookish, forces herself to become larger-than-life. Even though I’m not a super tall, 6’3” is in the ninety-eight percentile of height. I empathized with Cohen.

So let’s consider Cleopatra. All 5’1” of her.

When I’m out and about with Cleo, a line from Ani Difranco's “Evolve” always runs through my head:

I walk in stride with people / much taller than me.
Partly it’s the boots / but mostly it’s my chi.

Cleo keeps up. She also fills a room naturally, in a way I never could. She gets toe-to-toe with strangers. She moves through life without fear, using her cute-as-a-button face and petite frame to excuse behavior which would come across as pushy and aggressive in someone my size. I love that.

“Oh, I get it,” a crackhead who wanted money for watching Cleo’s car outside a club one night drawled, “She’s the one in charge.”

“Absolutely,” I told him.

The whole petite, cutesy, childish thing works for Cleo, but it’s also only one facet of her. People who only see that will never know the woman she is, what it feels like to drown in those huge, dark eyes.

I can’t do an “Ode to Joy” (that’s what I had in mind, an Ode to Cleopatra) because I’m not Leonard Cohen. Really, I want to have written “A Thousand Kisses Deep” before he did. Parts of it, anyway.

Cohen fills an entire mead notebook for one song, a whittling process with which I’m not unfamiliar. Although Ming basically dictated herself to me, I’ve written thousands of pages for Scratch the Dead Places, what will eventually be a three to five hundred page novel. Most first drafts of my short stories are two or three times longer than the finished product. Keeping that in mind for my Ode, I just wrote free-form, pages and pages as they came to me, knowing I would burn most of them later to find the salvageable truths.

You know the one about a hundred monkeys typing on a hundred keyboards for a hundred years (or maybe it’s a thousand monkeys for a thousand years), how one of them would produce the complete works of Shakespeare? I felt like one of those monkeys.

I’m no poet. Still, even though I can’t put it on the page, poetry healed my heart. I never would have guessed.

Consideration, Bad Haircuts, and Wimps

Yes this looks stupid, but I'll gel it differently next week when it's out of style.

 Recently some coworkers and I were enjoying lunch outside the office, catching this deli at the crest of their lunch rush.  Office folks crowded every table outside.  The thought of sitting outside on a cool day in Miami, especially in April when we know there might not be another one for some time, proved just too strong.  One of us waited outside to shark for empty tables while the rest of us ordered.  Eventually, the lot of us squeezed around a pair of two tops we pushed together to make one big table.  While we ate, a two-top opened behind us and a four-top opened to our left (in restaurant-speak, a two-top seats 2, a four-top seats 4, etc.).

 With his fauxhawk and sideburns, designer jeans hanging just so, with her tank top and flower skirt, eyes invisible behind Jackie-O sunglasses, I took them as college students.  Maybe they had flirted in class or had coffee with groups of friends, but they were alone together for the first time.  They ordered, they took their drinks and the little buzzer that goes off when the order’s up, and they came outside.

 Jackie O’Shades sat at the four-top, crossed her legs, eased back into her chair, and started sidewalk watching.  Faux Hawk, drinks in hand, balked.

 “Shouldn’t we sit over there?” he said.

 O’Shades squinted (at least I think she did; tough to say for sure, behind the sunglasses) at the two-top Faux Hawk indicated with a chin point.

 “Why?”

 “Well, they’re pretty busy,” Faux Hawk said. “We don’t need all that room.”

 “Oh,” Shades said, “you’re one of those.”

 This stopped Faux Hawk in nervous mid-fidget.   She might have called it "a lunch thing" or whatever, but he clearly wanted it to be a date.

 “One of what?”

 “Oh, you know,” she sniffed.

 At this point the conversation at our table bumped up in volume, so I missed whatever she had to say for herself.  I wonder what her response could have been.   Considerate?  Thoughtful?  Kind?  Exactly what was Faux Hawk, and why was she making it sound like a disease?

 Whatever the answer, it must not have satisfied him.  She moved to the two top and he set the drinks down, telling her to stay while he went inside to wait for the food.  She still thought she had a shot.  It was in the arch of her back as she lounged, adjusting her skirt, looking at him over her glasses.  Equally obvious was how quickly he moved her into the “no” column.

 I think, Good for you, Fauxhawk.

 It’s a sentiment I never thought I’d express.

 My hatred for the fauxhawk cannot be overstated.  First of all, I am from the People of the Flint.   A half-breed Mohawk, but still a Mohawk.  From time to time, members of my family have shaved their hair into a Mohawk to express pride in our heritage (or maybe just to see how it felt, using Native Pride as an excuse).  If you’re light-skinned, male, young, a Mohawk is a choice to take yourself out of normal society, whatever that is.  Of course it’s hair.  It’ll grow back.  So it’s a temporary sojourn into a minority that many wear daily.  Being a woman, a senior, wheelchair bound, dark-skinned, these you don’t outgrow.

 That was the point of Punk.  Shave your head and leave a strip of hair or a row of spikes, and that was your hair wherever you went.  Your job, the subway, your home - you were always punk.  It was jarring, shocking, immediately removing you from straight society.

The fauxhawk is the hipster equivalent of the "business up front and party in the back" mudflap, you’re a wannabe punk on Saturday but you can comb your hair flat for church on Saturday.   It’s a hairstyle for wimps.

 I’d like to make a case for wimps as the worst word for weakling we can conjure in the English language.  This is, of course, the dark horse candidate given the preference most people have for pussy (ie, “What are you, some kind of pussy?  Just drink the shot / punch the cop / jump.”

 Pussy became synonymous with weakling because in some men’s minds, a pussy is synonymous with a woman.  Not only is this not true (I have proof), but how either a pussy or a woman became synonymous with weakness is anyone’s guess.   Can we get past this, please?  A pussy is a strong organ. It can take a pounding all night long and still ask for more.  Hell, it can take multiple poundings from dozens of cocks and walk away with a little chafing (I've seen videos).  Meanwhile, where is the mighty cock that can fuck dozens of pussies in one night?  Kick a cock in the balls and watch it wilt.

 In fact, forget wimp and weakling.  Let's go with cock.

 “You won't steal that candy bar?  What’s the matter, you some kind of cock?”

 I guess that just trades one wrong for another.  Turning women’s gender into a pejorative is wrong; that doesn’t make the reverse right.  So why not just leave language alone?  Wimp, weakling, they work just fine.  I think at some point language will evolve past the nonsense we live with now.  

 I’m starting with pussy.  That doesn’t make me a wimp.

Back to the fauxhawk.  If this hairstyle appeals to you, please, by any means at your disposal, step outside yourself for a moment.  You want something on your head that looks like a cock’s comb.   Fine.   You like being different, and I can respect that.  Shave your head into a Mohawk.  Much as I hate people appropriating a piece of my history for fashion or sociological statement, at least it shows strength of conviction.

 A fauxhawk might be fashionable. But it will never, never be cool.  Unlike, say, this guy.

Yes this looks stupid, but at least I have the strength of my conviction.