SEA, SEA RIDER


The man who owned the bookstore was not magic. He was not a

three-legged crow on the dandelion side of the mountain.

 He was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seaman

who had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic and floated

there day after day until death did not want him. He had a

young wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen and a home in

Marin County. He liked the works of George Orwell, Richard

Aldington and Edmund Wilson.

 He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky

and then from the whores of New Orleans.

 The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards.

Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars.

Most of the kooks were out of print, and no one wanted to

read them any more and the people who had read the books

had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic

process of music the books had become virgins again. They

wore their ancient copyrights like new maidenheads.

 I went to the bookstore in the afternoons after I got off

work, during that terrible year of 1959.

 He had a kitchen in the back of the store and he brewed

cups of thick Turkish coffee in a copper pan. I drank coffee

and read old books and waited for the year to end. He had a

small room above the kitchen.

 It looked down on the bookstore and had Chinese screens

in front of it. The room contained a couch, a glass cabinet

with Chinese things in it and a table and three chairs. There

was a tiny bathroom fastened like a watch fob to the room.

 I was sitting on a stool in the bookstore one afternoon

reading a book that was in the shape of a chalice. The book

had clear pages like gin, and the first page in the book read:



 Billy

 the Kid

 born

 November 23,

 1859

 in

 New York

 City



 The owner of the bookstore came up to me, and put his

arm on my shoulder and said, "Would you like to get laid?"

His voice was very kind.

 "No, " I said.

 "You're wrong, " he said, and then without saying anything

else, he went out in front of the bookstore, and stopped a pair

of total strangers, a man and a woman. He talked to them for

a few moments. I couldn't hear what he was saying. He pointed

at me in the bookstore. The woman nodded her head and

then the man nodded his head.

 They came into the bookstore.

 I was embarrassed. I could not leave the bookstore because

they were entering by the only door, so I decided to go

upstairs and go to the toilet. I got up abruptly and walked

to the back of the bookstore and went upstairs to the bathroom,

and they followed after me. I could hear them on the stairs.

 I waited for a long time in the bathroom and they waited

an equally long time in the other room. They never spoke.

When I came out of the bathroom, the woman was lying naked

on the couch, and the man was sitting in a chair with his

hat on his lap.

 "Don't worry about him, " the girl said. "These things

make no difference to him. He's rich. He has 3, 859 Rolls

Royces." The girl was very pretty and her body was like a

clear mountain river of skin and muscle flowing over rocks

of bone and hidden nerves.

 "Come to me, " she said. "And come inside me for we are

Aquarius and I love you."

 I looked at the man sitting in the chair. He was not smiling

and he did not look sad.

 I took off my shoes and all my clothes. The man did not

 say a word.

 The girl's body moved ever so slightly from side to side.

 There was nothing else I could do for my body was like

birds sitting on a telephone wire strung out down the world,

clouds tossing the wires carefully.

 I laid the girl.

 It was like the eternal 59th second when it becomes a minute

and then looks kind of sheepish.

 "Good, " the girl said, and kissed me on the face.

 The man sat there without speaking or moving or sending

out any emotion into the room. I guess he was rich and owned

3, 859 Rolls Royces.

 Afterwards the girl got dressed and she and the man left.

They walked down the stairs and on their way out, I heard

him say his first words.

 "Would you like to go to Emie's for dinner?"

 "I don't know, " the girl said. "It's a little early to think

about dinner. "

 Then I heard the door close and they were gone. I got

dressed and went downstairs. The flesh about my body felt

soft and relaxed like an experiment in functional backgr