The Magazine Section
by Marian Huyck Grossi © 2008
The first thing that hit me was the musty smell of books, old and new. The aroma of coffee and fresh baked goodies was quite a contrast from the dank odor.
The place was dusty, yet there was a pull and I smiled, wondering what lie ahead. I had always wanted to take time and go into the used bookstore with its chipped gold lettered sign on the front window.
There were the nudie magazines, some of them very titillating. I imagined they were selling condoms by the handfuls on the side when I looked at the covers and then glanced to my left and to my right hoping no one was watching me. I had decided to look at the raciest, most revealing magazine in the adult section. I picked it up, opened it and saw the hugest firm breasts, and what I thought must be at least a thousand positions for pleasure in and out of bed I had ever seen. The taut bare butts of the men had me thinking lewd thoughts.
I heard a noise, as I stood mesmerized magazine in hand. I looked up. There was the man with the finest butt I had just feasted my eyes on in the magazine standing right beside me. I began to get flustered, and then my female hormones kicked in full throttle. Pointing to the photo in the rag I held, I looked at him.
“Is… is… is… this you?”
“Yes ma’m, that’d be me.”
“Good shot,” I said in a trembling voice, embarrassed as all get out.
“Why, thank you, I did that spread in my lean times.”
“He had to say spread,” I thought with visions of many things.
“I was a down and out writer, but since people had told me I had a nice butt and was good lookin’ I figured I’d go to an audition for male models I read about in a trade magazine I ripped off at the Laundromat.”
My interest in this man piqued.
“You want to look at some of my writing?” he asked with no embarrassment.
I was beyond ogling at him, by then I was full of desire. "Sure," I said with a hint of nonchalance, “I’d like to see what you write."
We walked down the aisle. I checked out his firm tush again, how I love men’s butts. I corralled my thoughts; my hormones were doing the rest.
Picking up a hunting magazine he leafed through the pages stopping at the featured story. He seemed to be taking a long time focusing on the article.
“I wrote this piece in about three hours and made over three thousand smackers,” he said without sounding braggadocio. “Come on down this way,” he motioned as he continued his slow walk.
I had maddening thoughts of what it would be like to unzip his jeans. My face began to get hot. I was already hot. Trying to erase the intense feelings I felt, I held tightly onto the magazine in my hands which was damp from perspiration.
He came to a halt in front of the most popular woman’s magazine, Women in Society. Since I had a subscription to the magazine I knew he was not a woman. Looking him over again, my eyes stopped at his chest, mentally unbuttoning his shirt. I didn’t see a hint of breasts.
He opened the pages and shaking, pointed to an article titled, Fifteen Ways to Cope with Menopause.
“I wrote this here piece in about an hour, I know what menopause is all about because I was going through it by having to cope with my mother. She made me an easy thousand dollars, and I used a version of her name instead of mine. Those folks think a woman wrote this article,” he chuckled.
I began to think this man could write about anything.
Reaching over a few feet and leaning against me, he lifted one magazine and then another. “See these magazines ma’m?”
Slowly shoving one of the cooking magazines in my face he pointed to the pages of perforated recipe cards. “I showed this magazine how to increase their sales and am well-known for this section. Why, I wrote all of these recipes here. I’m one heckuva cook in the kitchen,” he said. I could smell with my imagination the hot tamales he could make. I was wishing I could be his hot tamale, as a sexy woman is referred to in my town.
He broke into my thoughts and said, “Here, take a look at this one,” handing me a thick architectural magazine priced at twelve dollars an issue. Leaning against my shoulder, he reached across and began opening the pages; he stared at the photos of elegant bedrooms. “I took photographs of several bedrooms and used my computer program to tweak the photos around. Why, I fooled them all; made ‘em think I lived in this place. They paid me over ten thousand for this piece.” He abruptly stopped talking and his eyes began to well up with tears as he said, “I don’t do photography any longer nor work on my computer; the desire is gone, but maybe one day it will all come back, I just don’t know.”
I drew my attention back to the magazine. What a bedroom! I knew I saw us sprawled together on the bed, the French brocade bedspread askew, pillows everywhere. I felt I was at the point of near explosion. Then reality stepped in and I asked him, “How long did it take you to create these photos?”
“Ma’m, the computer programs make it easy for darned near anyone to make any kind of picture they want. “
I had him pictured at the computer, not wearing a shirt, muscled arms with strong fingers racing across the keyboard; his wavy black hair in place except for a few fine wisps that swept across his forehead just enough to increase my libido.
“Come on, I’d be pleasured to show you some more of my work, which never seemed like work to me.” He began chuckling under his breath and then in his manly voice he said, “I eat only the best food there is. No cheap brands for me. High end is the only way to go. I can show you what foods are the top of the line.”
With that he picked up another magazine.
Mumbling and looking at the table of contents, he exclaimed, “Why ma’m, it’s right here,” stopping at a gourmet chef’s page with a shopping list for fine foods along with a few recipes.
My eyes were burning. My mind was spinning. I looked at his hands. His nails were well groomed; he was perfect, just perfect, and almost too perfect.
“You write about everything. Do you really cook like that?”
“Why no, ma’m not any longer. I have my maid cook my food. She gets paid real well too.”
Along with everything else I wished for, by then I wished I were his maid.
I didn’t notice people browsing, I felt honored he would want to take the time to show me his published material since I interested.
He picked up a magazine titled Speedway Racecars.
“See this cover shot? Take a real close look. I’m the driver of this 1982 Gimball Racing Mach 3. Slick Gaftor built it for me. It’s named after me, Jackson Gimball. I don’t mean to brag, ma’m but I was the three time winner in the Can Am Series in 1982. See this car? Well, ma’m it’s the only true pull rod front-suspension car produced in racing history. This here is one story I didn’t write. The Speedway Racecars folks came to me. Damned if they didn’t write all of these pages about my car and me, they also bought my photos for one-time publication rights. This shot here is when I got the checkered flag over one hundred of the best racecar drivers. The field began with five hundred drivers, and I knew soon as I watched them run the track which ones would be eliminated. I damned near hit it on the head.” He continued with his story, “They paid me twenty-three thousand dollars for this spread. They made millions on it though, so what they paid me was a drop in the bucket. I went ahead and sold the car in 2003 for over half a million dollars to a race car museum.”
My mind was trying to keep up with the money he was making from writing, racing and selling. I wondered what else this man could do.
Mister Gimball stopped dead in his tracks at magazines with babies on the front covers. He shook his head and lowered it as he began to weep. I didn’t know what to do when he lifted his head and said, “I can’t ever have a baby; never. The one thing I wanted when I got married was a baby; my wife and I both wanted a family.” He picked up a copy of Newborn Baby and held it tightly to his chest and kept it close as he walked to the end of the racks of magazines.
When he arrived at the reality section and picked up an issue of True Life Horror I shuddered. I thought, “Oh no, not horror, he can’t be writing true life horror. I don’t know if I can take this.”
Picking up a magazine devoted to an entire story, complete with photos, he said in a slow quivering voice, “This is my story.”
“Oh, did you write that story too?” I asked, doubting him and his claims of writing the variety of stories he had been showing me.
“Ma’m, why don’t you come with me if you have time, and of course, if you wouldn’t mind. We can go right over there and sit in a comfortable chair and have a cup of coffee,” he said pointing to the bookstore’s self-serve coffee area. Rubbing his brow, he continued, “Looks like there aren’t any folks taking a break to get a load off their feet now, so we won’t be bothered. We can have a cup of coffee and a biscuit. What do you say?”
I hesitated, but since I wasn’t in any particular hurry, I agreed. Then I noticed the huge contrast between True Story Horror and the Newborn Baby magazines he held tight to his chest.
“Call me Jackson, please,” Mister Gimball said as he pulled a chair out for me at a small table sitting in a corner. “This will be a quiet place to talk and tell you about my story.”
He went to the old wood counter, poured our coffee, put two biscuits with marmalade on a plate and brought them to our table.
As he sat down in his chair he laid the True Life Horror magazine on the table and slapped his hand on the cover. “Damn, I wish this wasn’t my story,” he said. Suddenly his voice became strong and louder. “Son-of-a-bitch! I wish to hell this wasn’t my story!”
Nearly ripping open the magazine, he pointed with his finger straight as an arrow to photo after photo he said his wife and friends had taken. There were photos of him and his new bride at their wedding. She was as beautiful as he was handsome. There were photos of him with his tall chef hat on and the caption, “Jackson Gimball, owner of Louisiana’s famed LaLouge’ Restaurant opens three additional upscale restaurants.”
My eyes were glued to the magazine. I looked at him, “Jackson, you must be the proudest man for all of the things you accomplished.”
He was silent.
Turning the page, he pointed to a full-page photograph of a huge electrical turbine tower and a single burned tree on barren land. Lying askew at the bottom of the tree were two small charred branches.
He remained silent as he stared at the photograph.
When he picked up his cup, his hand began to tremble, coffee spilled out and onto the magazine page. “Good! Damned good! The page needs to disappear, just like me. The sons-of-bitches. I wish I could die!”
I frowned and pushed my chair back from the table. The sound of the chair legs on the tiled floor seemed to echo throughout the store.
When he saw the look on my face he pleaded, “Ma’m, please, don’t leave, everyone always leaves me. Stay…please.”
My heart went out to him and I knew I would have to stay; he seemed so lonely and lost.
A faint smile crossed his face and he continued turning the pages. I saw photo after photo of him and his accomplishments. He was quite the man. His writing accomplishments alone were overwhelming. Being a novice writer, I envied his work and wanted to ask him more about writing professionally, but held that thought as he continued turning pages not saying a word.
Suddenly, Jackson Gimball, the man sitting across the table from me, flipped back to the page wet with spilled coffee. Anger began to erupt in his voice, and he cupped his hands as though he wanted to say something more.
He motioned, “I was here,” pointing to the tree, “right here grafting this tree for the government, like I had done with other trees. You see, I was the only person who knew the secret of grafting these trees that would be used as weapons when they matured. They have the power of an atomic bomb and nuclear weapon of the future combined, and no one but me and two government researchers knew about the crop I was propagating.”
I thought, “Yeah, sure, and elephants can fly.” I just knew this man was a brick short of a load and fear overcame me. He took my hands in his and held them tightly. I couldn’t move.
“Ma’m, don’t leave me, not yet.”
I nodded my head and gave him the best smile I could muster. Giving my hands a tight squeeze, he let them go and continued his story.
“Out of all of the things I have done, this one is the worst. They had to get rid of me so I couldn’t write or talk about what I did. I don’t know why I took on the job and left my wife behind. I only know, like evil thieves, they killed the last bit of life out of me and burned it all to smithereens. I…I … oh damn this is hard. They took the laser beam from the electrical turbine in the tower and pointed it in my direction while I was in the tree grafting nuclear pellets.” He shuddered and began pounding his fists on the table so hard the table cracked in two pieces and it sounded like his the bones in his hands cracked as well.
No one in the old bookstore heard a noise.
“The electric bolt hit the tree right where I was, scorching the entire tree and me with it. All that’s left now is a skeleton of the tree, just like me. Those two burned branches you see on the ground under this tree, they’re my arms!”
He cried out hysterically as he yanked the buttons off his shirt and ripped off his rubber face covering. He pulled off his prosthetic arms and let them fall to the floor. I screamed as a single glass eye fell out.
I ran, leaving a skeleton of a man screaming, “Ma’m, ma’m, oh please ma’m, don’t leave.”