This past week, I observed my birthday by leaving work early (with their consent; when you leave early and don't tell anyone, it tends to piss them off), and lighted out for the territory between darkness and light, between civilization and madness, between good and less good (evil is too strong a term), between all that is wonderful and luminous and all that is cast in shadow and likely an alien looking to munch on your entrails when you turn around the corner. In other words, I went to Anderson.
My adventures there began with a stop at a record store where I bought a used copy of the Grateful Dead's greatest hits. Truth be told, I've never bought into the myth of the Dead, travelling caravans full of nake hippie chicks or no. Interminable live jamming has never appealed to me as something to either listen to or sit through, and so when I want something by the Dead, I want the studio records, which have some truly beautiful songs that I can enjoy without an endless guitar-and-woodwind solo or two. Then I proceeded to a used bookstore there that I frequent often (and which I will abstain from identifying here). While looking at the sci-fi section (someplace I'd never usually venture, but I'd been thinking about giving Ray Bradbury a try), I kept on walking down the aisle past the paranormal until I was confronted with a shelf I wouldn't have expected: erotica.
Erotica? In Anderson, South Carolina?
Just to be sure, I perused a few pages of each and every volume to be sure it was just as disgusting and degenerate as I thought it must be from the lurid cover photos and saucy descriptions on the back cover. Yes indeed, this was filth of the second-highest order (not quite Cinemax-after-Dark filthy, but you get the idea). I was shocked (shocked!) to find that there was gambling going on at this establishment, in other words.
No, I did not buy any...but funny story: On the way out of town (after visiting the mall at two in the afternoon and being reminded of a zombie movie with the absence of sentient beings in any of the shops), I ran into smut yet again. Not twice, but thrice!
Another bookstore that I frequent (and again, shall remain nameless) called to me, and I decided to look at the slim nonfiction section they had. Wouldn't you know that, when I turned around from considering a Bill Bryson book, I came across yet another "erotica" section (though they labeled it "steamy romance," because good Southern Baptists don't read erotica)! Once again, I checked to make sure these were as filthy as I thought they'd be (we have to protect the children!) and left in a huff. Well, if you can be said to "huff" by picking something off the nonfiction shelf, purchasing it, and thanking the pleasant lady behind the counter.
But wait, there's more: in a thirft store I stopped at in West Union (!), do you know what I found lurking in amongst the Republican diet books and John Gray self-help manuals. Yes, smut! Vintage Seventies smut, at that (the kind where the guy has a moustache and a Camero, in that order). For some reason, I think the people working there don't actually bother to see what books someone brings in for donation, because West Union is full of good church-going folk (all two of 'em). Apparently I had a nose for smut that day, as well as the hands to pick it up and flip the pages, the eyes to see and comprehend the words, and the class to put the books back after deciding that no good hiding place would suffice in my abode in which I could keep them from innocent eyes. For shame, America!
I blame Obama....
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