BEA: You’re Gonna Make Yourself Sick!

Books, books, books, books, books. Books! As far as the eye can see. I step off the escalator into an orgy of books. A Caligula-number of books. Just an absolute shitload of books, free!, waiting to be devoured. Gene Simmons and Wilt Chamberlin combined didn’t have as many groupies as I, a literary nobody, now have books!

Remember Scrooge McDuck from the cartoons? Swimming around in his ocean of gold? I could do that right now. Just bathe in books.

In the back of my mind, I hear my mother’s warnings about over-indulgence from Halloween’s long ago. But fuck that, man, there’s free books to be had!

I stride into the waves of pages and my mother’s trepidations are drowned out in my head by a man’s voice, deeper and cautioning while at the same time encouraging. I size up a stack of books that reaches my waist and hear Chief Brody say to me, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”