I just found out I played high school football against Joe Biden. (We murdered ’em.)

I was reading “The New Yorker” profile of Hunter (the “bad” son), which said he and Beau had followed their father to Archmere Academy. I had practically forgotten Archmere was regularly on our schedule, but, I figured, even though the media had Joe as “old” and practically in his dotage, while I was, as far as I could tell, vital and wise, maybe we overlapped. So I Googled him.

Sure enough, Wikipedia has him born November 1942, which means he should have graduated in 1960 like me (DOB: March ’42); but, for some reason, he was Class of ’61. Wiki said he was a star halfback, who, as a senior, led a perennially awful team to an undefeated season. (Could be. I didn’t check further but I remember they had a good QB, and that extra year’s growth must have helped Joe.)

Anyway, I’ve asked teammates if any wish to go public with recollections of his having groped them in pile-ups. I figure that would derail his campaign and give my gal Liz a leg up.

Sold an “I Will Keep You Alive” to my former secretary.
Swapped a “Schiz” to a lawyer/poet in exchange for his new collection.
Sold an “IWKYA,” a “Best Ride,” and a “Most Outrageous” to a lawyer from Sacramento who comes to the café when he is in town visiting his grandchildren. He is originally from Philly and, after buying a “Cheesesteak” for himself, bought five to send to friends. (I would have sold him a “Schiz” too, but I hadn’t put another in my bag since selling one to to Wayne. See: “Adventures in Marketing: Week 164A”)

Another morning a fellow was giving all my books a favorable once-over, but I couldn’t engage him in scintillating patter because I was occupied by Knut. I knew of Knut – and he of me – because he had occupied Adele similarly when she had taken a stab at selling our book in a different café several weeks earlier.
Knut, a thirtyish, Norwegian-born snowboarder and real estate developer, had been excited to meet Adele – and now me – because he too had suffered serious bodily injury. Eighteen months before he had fallen at Alpine, suffering a concussion, his third. Whereas, one might say, my injuries had left with no sequelae any more peculiar – or obvious – than sitting in cafes selling books I had written, Knut’s had left him with the inability to stop talking. His conversation was friendly, bright, engaging – and unceasing.
On and on he went. On and on and on. About meeting Adele. About the cover of our book. About the flyer announcing our upcoming reading. Analyzing the text: “Alive” and “Romance” and “Doing Everything Right.” He explained concussions: the physical mechanics; the neurological aspects; the brain rattling back and forth within the skull. He reported on the concussion-sufferers support group he had walked out of because he was so much more fortunate than the woman upon whom the air conditioning unit had fallen.
Much of this I already knew from Adele. I also knew that, no matter how long he talked, he would not buy a book.
Nevertheless, I thought, Compassion. Reduce suffering.
I also thought that, if he came to the reading and raised his hand, I would not call upon him for a question – and whatever that brought with it – unless he showed me a receipt as proof of purchase..

In other news…
1.) I’ve basically sold out of “The Schiz” and have ordered a box from its distributor. (I’m also almost out of “Outlaws, Rebels…” and have been buying used copies on-line to sell as “previously owned.”)
2.) We’ve printed out flyers announcing our Books, Inc. reading. [AUTHOR’S NOTE: August 6, 7:00 PM, 1491 Shattuck, Berkeley.] I’ve posted one at the café and left a few on a table at the health club. I’ve also handed some out. The first person said, “I’m teaching a class that night. Maybe my wife will come.” The second said, “I’ll be on the east coast.” The third said, “‘A Cardiovascular Romance.’ I love Romance Novels.”
3. I have also received free advice. One person said I should punch up the copy. “I died twice; yet here I am,” he suggested. The second said we should focus on the “we” of the group, not the “I” of us. The key words, he said, were “sharing,” “relationship,” “spirit,” and “love.” I said we had most of that covered.

[FURTHER AUTHOR’S NOTE: All of Bob’s books – even the pre-owned ones – are available from this very website.]

Are you selling these?
If someone will buy them.
And you, uh, uh, write…
I write them. I sell them.
He had been around for years. On his good days he slouched in a chair by the door of the café and twitched. On bad days, he stood outside, shaking, shouting, waving his arms. I had never seen him speak to anyone except the owner when he was being told to keep quiet or move. He had a grey beard and a wool coat. He had not cleaned it or himself in a while. He had a “trailer,” a body-width-wide, body-length-long, four-sided, roofed and floored structure, whose two-halves, which snapped together in the middle, could enclose a sleeper. It had wheels and a hitch that could attach to a bicycle but it sat now in the parking lot of the health food restaurant across the street like a shell awaiting its mollusk to return.
He said he would see me when he had money.
I said I would be back Wednesday. The first of the month had been a week ago and I did not see him receiving an infusion of cash soon.
When I was leaving, he asked what philosophy I offered people who read my books.
That was a good question. I said I did not have a philosophy, except to write about what interested me at the moment. I wrote a lot, I said, about alternative and underground cartoonists.
I had to repeat that for him.
He said something which referenced “The Telley Times.”
B.N. Duncan, I said. I’ve written about him,
Bob, I said.
Wayne, he said. Like Bruce Wayne
He had been born in Berkeley in 1949. He was writing about spiritual matters himself.

ADDENDUM
Wednesday, Wayne was there with a crumpled $5 bill. He wanted “The Schiz” because of its cartoons. I told him it was $15, so he wanted me to hold it for him. I said he could take it and pay me when he had more. He came back from his chair with another crumpled $5.
That will be plenty.

A guy stops by my table at the café, balding, goatee, close-cropped red hair, ball cap (“C”). Grad student in chemistry.
I give him the usual answer. “Existential sports novel, true crime reportage, memoir, riveting medical account, black comedy.”
He picks up “The Schiz.”
“Half-dozen murders,” I say. “Kinky sex. Twenty different illustrations by twenty different cartoonist. Intricately plotted.”
“Looks interesting.” He has stopped at Shary Flenniken’s drawing. “But I don’t have cash.”
“I take credit cards.”
“Really?” I didn’t look the type.
“If I can work my Square.”
“It’s easier if I pay cash. I see you here all the time.”
Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, I thought.
“I think it’s awesome that you get to do what you like.”
If I was the role model, it would take him thirty years and luck.

In other news…
REMINDER: Adele and I read from I WILL KEEP YOU ALIVE at Books, Inc., 1491 Shattuck, Berkeley, on August 6, at 7:00 p.m. (Free admission, no cover, no minimum.)

No sales.
Gave a “Cheesesteak” to a fellow former workers’ comp lawyer, who, besides really relating to “The Schiz” and traversing some of the same cardio-vascular ground as I, is the only person I know for whom the law was a Plan B after failing to make it as an astrologer.
I thought I had negotiated a swap of an “I Will Keep You Alive” to a yogi from Calcutta, who materialized before my table at the café one morning, in return for a copy of his book on yoga and Parkinson’s, though I do not practice the former or suffer from the latter. “Thank you for your presence,” he said, giving me one of those pressed finger-tips bows. But I never saw him again. (If you can’t trust a yogi, I ask you, who can you trust?)

Now for some recently received words-of-mouth on IWKYA.
1.) “A terrific and original book… A classic, I think.” NYC-area semi-well-known figure in world of independent press and awards.
2.) “A harrowing and moving account of a terrible ordeal.” Retired Boston-area psychotherapist/artist (and cousin).
3.) “Wonderful… incredible… replete with honesty, humor and wonder. It’s a pleasure to have you as company.” Philadelphia-area MSW (and friend).
4.) “Supreme Ultimate Gratitude for this Deep and Massive Work. Though we all live in Alternate Realities we are all also part of a deep mysterious Inter Connected Reality… (into which) the Two Voices of I Will Keep You Alive in their own Uniquely Similar Directions take me.” Bay Area cosmically-connected retired librarian (and friend).
Then there was the pal who hasn’t read the book yet but had taken it on the plane with him only to pass it to his seat mate who was curious while he, presumably, settled comfortably into the in-flight magazine. She finished it before they reached New York and, he said, “liked it.”
“She liked it,” I, perhaps ungraciously, replied. “She’s gonna have to do better than that if she expects to make next week’s Adventure in Marketing.”

Sold an “I Will Keep You Alive” to a basketball buddy after a work-out and a (tax deductible) lunch.
And another Mended Hearts chapter president – that’s three out of about 200 – says he’s bought one.
As did a cousin, who said she’d been resisting it because she’s had enough medical issues to deal with.

No books sold at the café, but a white-haired guy in t-shirt and khakis took in the cover and asked if I knew Ram Dass, and a woman with short curly grey hair said about the title, “That’s quite funny.”
“What?” I said, not having received that reaction before.
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
More gratifying was the e-mail from a medical social worker who comes in once in a while. “Books this honest,” she wrote, “are like a rung on a ladder. When I have to climb out of an emergency, I’ll have the strength of your honesty under my hand.”
Now that was special.

The most engaging conversationalist I’ll call “Ed,” a round-faced octogenarian, sporting a goatee and newsboy’s cap. He was an abstract painter, with roots in the Cedar Tavern, and stories involving Franz Kline and both de Koonings. His 91-year-old wife – make that his “woman” – a writer/singer/actress, had been in the Party with Paul Robeson. We went back and forth about the difficulties of being an artist these days. “All the galleries are closed,” he said. “The stores are closed. All the bars are closed. I know working people walking home sober.”
“You ought to write your memoirs,” I said.
“The last thing I rote,” he said, “was ‘Dear Mom, I still don’t have a job.’”

BALTIMORE

The locker room flat screen is showing the World’s Cup. Myron says something about “a corner kick.”
“You must know this game,” I say.
“My kids played,” he says.
“I went to a school with compulsory sports,” I say. “By 8th grade, it was clear real men played football.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that, Bob,” George says.
“You see any men up there?” I say.
George laughs.
“I remember,” I say, “when girls – women – couldn’t cross half court in basketball.”
“Progress,” Myron says.
“On the other hand,” I say, “they could hit each other with lacrosse sticks. No one else in Philly could do that.”

[Author’s Note: For new readers – or old readers with spotty recall – let me explain. Every morning, I sit in a café with a selection of my work spread around a sign of The Checkered Demon saying “Buy Bob’s Books.” Then I issue regular reports.
Think of it as performance art.
It sure ain’t a recommended business model.]

Sunday, the city closed Shattuck to traffic and parking for a street fair. I figured I’d sit at an outside table and take advantage of the hordes. Unfortunately, my hours preceded the fair’s by a couple, so the only horde I attracted was a fellow who felt compelled to tell me about the time – it was in ‘63 or ‘67 – when he ran into Buffalo Bob at the Chicken Delight on Harmon in Richmond, where Bob had gone for chicken nugget fritters and a Nehi, after escaping from Napa State Mental Hospital. This story, with its side tracks and circumambulations took about 20 minutes and included a request for a couple dollars (I obliged), which made the day a net loss.
The week’s only actual sale was Adele’s, who made her café (a different one) debut. I’m hoping for a “Guest Adventurer” report from her, so I won’t “appropriate” (as we artists say) her material – but if you run into her, ask about the fireman.
I swapped two “I Will Keep You Alive”s, one to a basketball buddy for his latest poetry collection and one to mountain biker for a tube of super-powered sore muscle relief she smuggles in from Germany.

` In other news…
1.) I squeezed out of the distributor the number of copies of IWKYA and “Cheesesteak,” which have been ordered (not “sold”). Dauntingly minimal. On the positive side, a second library has acquired one of the former. In Wellington, New Zealand. (Don’t ask. We haven’t a clue.)
2.) Faithful readers will recall my college buddy who’d called IWK the best book he’d read this year, leading me to wonder in print how many that was exactly. Well, he’s checked and said “At least ten” – though, he adds, “It’s a good thing I finished ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ in December, or you’d be Number Two.”
3.) Words-of-Mouth. From a lawyer-pal, on “The Schiz.” “It’s like reading a cross between Mickey Spillane and Ismael Reed, with a little flavoring from Bukowski, just to kick up the language.”

In the café, I sold an “I Will Keep You Alive” to our first botanist and to our first resident of Montana, which, unfortunately gross-sale-wise, consisted of the same woman. But a pleasing encounter all the same.
And in the health club locker room, Adele sold one to first Israeli, a woman who’d tipped us to “A Touch Away” and to whom we’d recommended “Shregim.”
I also gave away two “Cheesesteak”s. The first was to a Mended Hearts chapter president in North Carolina after she’d said she’d buy an IWKYA and revealed that she’d grown up near the art museum. The second came about after a fellow beside the club pool remarked favorably upon my 1982-83 76ers “World Championship” t-shirt. When I told him I was from West Philly, he said his father’s claim to fame was, while pitching for Overbrook, giving up a “mammoth” home run to Reggie Jackson, which put his dad, though a couple years my junior, squarely within my book’s ideal demographic.

In other news…
1.) Speaking of MH chapter presidents, we have now e-mailed over 180 about our book – and received three replies, Two (from N.C. – see above – and Georgia) say they will buy it, and one (from Idaho) says he couldn’t open the attachment that describes it.
2.) And word-of-mouth-wise, a fellow with (and against) whom I’d played tennis and basketball over three decades but never shared intimacies, unless you count sitting nude in the same backyard hot tub, after finishing the book, reached out for a coffee over which we discussed life, death and relationships. About his reading experience, he said that, after resisting them at first, he’d enjoyed Adele’s portions more than mine. He’ been “touched” by her willingness to expose herself, the rawness of it, the fears exposed. She’d been, he said, “Very courageous.”

My latest piece is up at:

The Great Exaggeration

It begins:
“The other night I read my obituary.”