Visits from folks I like

Archive: Richard Evans Lee

Continues from: Poor, unsocial but that is OK, really.

My days as a used bookshop owner were mostly glamourless and pedestrian. If you met me you'd know that I wasn't built for glamour. With wicked wearyingness most of my customers are equally pedestrian. More so.

A few favorite folks dropped by today and I spent most of my workday in conversation.

I don't talk to Ken all that much anymore. But I wanted to let him know that the shop won't be continuing to buy fresh vinyl. Gordon says the sales are only receding, the college students who thought LPs were 'neat' are diminishing in number.

Ken is the most dedicated buyer of music not recorded on CD that I know. He does buy CDs but he still buys LPs and 78s and even 8-Track tapes. He's not a collector in the invidious sense of someone who buys things because he is under the illusion they have value and can be sold for riches on eBay one day.

Having bought music for years before CDs arrived he has a large library of old recordings that he loves. He has a filter that takes the worst of the pops out of 78s, can repair old 8-Track tapes and LPs. A mix of a love of divers kinds of music and love of the dying formats in which it has been recorded.

Kevin mostly buys comics. Not the shiny four-color new ones. He buys some new comic books but by few artists and most of them European. He collects old comic books and newspaper strips and has a gifted and stringent eye for the distinctive. Unsurprisingly we admire the same artists: Alex Toth, Roy Crane, E.C. Segar, Harold Gray, Chester Gould, Nick Cardy, Mac Raboy, George Tuska, Ogden Whitney … the list could go on. Now he doesn't appreciate Ernie Bushmiller and I don't care for Al Williamson. It is his eye for individuality and quality that make him a pleasure to talk to.

Marcus. A visit from Marcus is always a treat. He's my age, he's gay.* His sexual appetite is large and he pursues it will intelligence and diligence. While Marcus and I share few interests there's an underlying sympathy. We don't approach life in the same way. What is it? I'm not sure; we dote on our lives pleasures while keeping a wary eye for our approaching personal apocalypses? That is a little melodramatic don't you think? Really I don't know. It wouldn't' be hard to work out several plausible intellectual fantasies explaining why I enjoy Marcus' visits.

And so went my day of labor.

* Regrettably I have almost no gay friends.