~!:Weekend Revelations:!~

Well another weekend has come and gone, but not before things happened. Friday night Heather, Heather, Andi, Richard, and I played cards. Heather brought cookies and Richard shared his Irish whiskey and new found coffee wealth. All in all it was a fun evening.

With Saturday however things turned a bit strange. When An Doof Ass lived in Chicago he was known for taking long afternoon trips up to the Lakeview neighborhood to have a walk about through its many used bookstores. To his credit, he often came home with the latest Greek Lexicon thriller or another exciting edition of Aquinas’s commentary on the De Anima. Well, I never did the used bookstore thing during his Chicago-period because I was usually asleep when he left and good and settled in for an afternoon/evening of smoking in front of the tv by the time he got home. But this Saturday was one of the last beautiful day’s so I decided to take advantage of it and hit An Doof Ass’s haunts.

For some reason, every bookstore An Doof recommended was in a section of Lakeview called Boystown. Now Boystown has some of the best restaurants and wine shops in the city. It also happens to be where Chicago’s male homosexual community goes to hold hands and drink bubble tea. Followng A.D.A directions I ended up in front of very nice little place called The Antiquarian Gay Man’s Fabulously Used Bookstore.

Now, I love reading a Foucault-ian interpretation of Ockahm’s “razor” as much as the next guy, but when you see a book entitled Aquinas: The Hung Ox you really start wondering about the quality of the scholarship. Yet, the store was not without its charms. For example, the complimentary mint cookies and green tea was a nice touch, and knowing An Doof Ass would make meals out of anything complimentary,in order to save up money for boxes of wine, I could see why he might put up with the occasional copy of Plato’s Symposium: The Allure of Alcibiades. But out of curiosity I asked the proprietor, Fabian, if he remembered a certain gin-hound in a blue flannel shirt, wool socks, and Birkenstocks…

Fabian: Oh you mean Axel. Yeah, he’d came in here all the time. Strangest guy that Axel, he’d sit in the corner hiding a Greek Lexicon inside of a copy of How to Write like Abelard without the Unpleasantness? just eating cookies and calling anyone who walked by him a ‘no good heretic and destroyer of the great traditions of the Angleican World Alliance.’ Of course he was always drunk because he kept putting schnapps in his green tea so most people thought he was just an Angleican sponge looking for a good time. He was so sweet though, everytime on his way out he’d thank me for running a fine bakery and that he was very seriously considering the eventual purchase of some of our "wares."
W.B.: hmm…did he ever go off on the regal and noble Baptist tradition?
Fabian: oh all the time. After a couple swigs he would pat himself on the back and say ‘No backsliding here you Baptist heathens, just good Angelican devotion.’ The strange thing is he’d come in so early most of the time he’d just be yelling at his reflection in that mirror over there.
W.B.: Ah yes, I’m familiar with um…”Axel’s” affinity to for yelling at mirrors. I remember one afternoon he was fist deep in a box of Burgundy and in such a heated debate with his reflection that he not only punched out the mirror, but also punched himself out to avenge the death of “his greatest interlocutor.”
Fabian: Oh that sounds like Axel all right.
W.B.: yes, well, any way, how much for the copy of Augustine’s Other Confessions?
Fabian: 6 bucks.
W.B.: (whispers) 5 and you got yourself a deal.