I check out a new bookstore on South First that’s taken out a colorful, full-page ad in the Chronicle. Grand Opening! Inside, the store smells of incense, sweet with a slightly musky after smell. Arabian frankfurter. That might explain the terrier yapping at the door. The customers are a cross section of the city: hipsters and old hippies; young cool alternative and thirty-something preppies. Neo-preppies? I don’t know, I’m here for books. I weave my way around the store, trying for a complete left-to-right circuit, and take in the various items for sale:

CDs, jewelry, pens and pencils, small electronic devices, small animals in their cages, tourist souvenirs (post cards, Stevie Ray Vaughan statuettes, various items with images of an electric guitar, Keep Waterloo Weird bumper stickers). Bookmarks. Bibelot. Bookish bling. Gizmos, gewgaws, baubles, beads, doodads, gimcracks, amulets, totems, totem poles, Polish totems, tote bags. Tchotch·ke, trinkets, trifles, whatnot, novelties, and kitsch. Knickknacks, bric-a-brac. paddywhacks, oddities, curios, mementos.

I’ve completed a circuit and realize I haven’t found what I came for.

A young man mans the front register, talking loudly to a young woman at the information desk across from him. Flirting, speaking the lingo of cool young people: Dude, like, rad. They are the only people talking. Who might I be to intrude, to ask these supposed workers about a book in this supposed bookstore? I make my way toward the back where a big-bellied clerk, beard and white man’s afro, pushes his glasses up his nose, and hooks necklace after necklace onto a rack.

“Excuse me. Uh, do you carry any actual books?”

“Of course! Only the best.” He points to a narrow, wire rack in the back corner, two columns, five books per:

1. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Nuns

2. Women Who Run with the Wolves End Up Tired as Dogs

3. Dyin’ Ethics

4. How to Win Friends and Influential People

5. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Sex

6. Soul Food for Chickens

7. The Six Pillars of Self Esteem – No Wait, Five. Seven?

8. Feel the Fear, Lick It Anyway

9. The Power of Positive Drinking

10. Everything I Learned in Kindergarten I Forgot in First Grade

 I head over, peruse, scratch my head, literally, and become aware that I’m scratching my head. I pick up Classic Book #10, open it about halfway, and lift it to my nose, an old habit. Instead of the subtly pleasant chemical residue I usually smell, the pages smell like. . . . I take a longer whiff. Elementary school arts and crafts. Glue or paste. Something I haven’t been exposed to for decades. The smell triggers some positive childhood association – positive modifying association, not childhood.

“Papier–mâché.” A voice behind me, the clerk.

He looks left and right, leans over as if to reveal national security secrets. “A marketing thing. Infuse the paper with pleasant odors in the printing process. Stimulate the senses, appeal to something in the brain’s pleasure center. Something related to the topic.”

I put back #10, pick up #9, sniff. Immediately begin salivating: clean gin and tonic, perhaps a lemon twist. I can almost feel the cold ice on my tongue, the fizz tickling my nostrils.

The clerk winks.

More salivating after #6. I try #5, try to tease out the associations even as the bulge grows below. I need to get out of here. I feel the urge for a chicken burrito or taco or sandwich, anything chicken related, a stiff drink, and a wank. I’ll figure out the order later.