The Boy with the Bookstore

by Sarah Echavarre Smith

Like, he’s pulling back from obviously flirting with me because he doesn’t want to come off like a creep who’s hitting on the woman who works next door to him. And I definitely appreciate that.

None of that disparaging talk. I’ve done that enough my whole life.

“You know, I am so sick of books written by wanky dead white guys a million years ago still being thought of as sacred, when in reality they’re boring as hell to read.”

“Did any Bell Hooks or Yoko Ogawa or Louise Erdrich get damaged?” “No.” “Then it’s really not much of a loss. The world does not need more copies of dead white dudes’ books. Pumpkin did everyone a favor.”

Now there’s a dozen-strong crew of male contractors watching me crawl out of my car and make my way to the building, and it makes me wish I were invisible.

“And truthfully, I was getting a bit tired of all the literary fiction you had us reading. I kind of assumed you were one of those boring guys who only preferred heteronormative fiction written by dead white guys.

Like, really, we’re all adults here. I think we could all stand to have a bit of open-door sex in our reading.”

I’ve spent more than half my life enduring harassment, and when it happened in front of other people, no one has ever intervened before. Not once.

Decency shouldn’t be thanked. It should be baseline.”