pantsfarm

I was flipping through Shopgirl by Steve Martin and so I thought I’d randomly excerpt some passages as I came across them. I feel kind of guilty for reading this… well not trashy, but… I don’t know, this [something] little book.

Jeremy’s thought process is so thin that he has the happy consequence of always ending up doing exactly what he wants to do at all times. He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile. His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his realxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, “for what?”

This memory bank is in a jumble. It is not coherent. Occasionally his more rational mind will venture in and try to arrange it, like a boy cleaning his room. But just when everything is in its place, the metaphor holds and two days later the room is a mess.

…the world would learn that millionaires, too, eat their dinners out of a white paper bag while standing in the kitchen. Even Mirabelle knows not to do that, as the self-prepared dinner is a great time killer for lonely people, and as much time should be spent on it as possible.

Usually he eats out alone, or tries to fill the evening with friends or a date. These dinner dates, which function mainly to fill a vacuum of loneliness between the hours of 8 P.M. and 11 P.M., cause him more grief than a year of solitary confinement.

from Shopgirl by Steve Martin.

I also managed to finish Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn yesterday, and so I’m going to make a note of a few quotes from there as well:

In fifth grade I wrote a report that I spent the weekend skiing in “Vermouth” with my grandfather, that “Vermouth” was a beautiful state. My teacher did not correct this — maybe we were all skiing in a state of Vermouth.

In school they take a survey about drug and alcohol use –

Do you drink:

1. to be social.
2. because you like the taste.
3. with meals.
4. to get drunk.

Without hesitation I answer 4: I drink to get drunk.

After a short eternity he comes back shaking his head, Well, there’s nothing in my book about needing to wear shoes, but I’m gonna give you a ticket anyway just for being stupid. I shake my head at my own obvious stupidity, consider against telling him the story of the forgotten sneakers, thank him, Thank you, sir.

To hell in a handbasket — this is how my grandmother described my future with a knowing wink. After I’d already totaled two cars, my mother sat me down and asked what I planned to do with my life. Seventeen, clearly on the wrong path, I thought for a moment and answered, Crime. As tears well up in my mother’s eyes I tried to explain — White-collar, victimless.

Emily finds out, confronts me, and I see that I really don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m adrift, as the Buddhists say, on a river of forgetfulness. A hungry ghost.

That weekend a friend takes me to a party in the South End, to the loft of the brother of one of the Beastie Boys, or so she claims. Wearing a sweater pulled from Pine Street’s clothing room, I feel shabby beside the beautiful people.

I realize these quotes are all probably disconnected and meaningless to most everybody but me.