Free Tripping on Tears by Day Rusk

sticker is offensive and just has to go, that’s all.”
    “Are you sure you’re just not trying to hide the fact that you’re cheap? That you bought the book at a discount?” she asked, smiling.
    “No, I’ll tell people I bought it on remainder; I just don’t think it has to be publicly branded for one and all to see. I’ll peel off the sticker and if I’m at someone’s house and I see a book like that, I’ll peel off the sticker there as well. It’s just the right thing to do; the humane thing to do for the book.”
    “Interesting,” she said, as she leaned back on the couch, nodding her head.
    “Now that I’ve come clean, what are your pet peeves?” I asked.
    She sat back up. “Pet peeves? I’m afraid I don’t have any. I forgot to feed them and they died.”
    I smiled. She was quick. I liked that.
    Safia was looking around again.
    “What are you looking for?” I asked.
    “Books,” she said. “You’re a writer. I expected to find book shelves in your living room, lined with books.”
    “Follow me,” I said, getting up. “They’re all in my den, my work area.”
    I led Safia to a room off to the side of the living room. I opened the door to a den full of book shelves lining the walls and a wooden desk sitting in the middle of it, messy with my notes and various scribbling. She smiled as she stepped into the room.
    “This is what I was expecting,” she said, as she began scanning the book shelves, but not before looking closely at my desk. “You do realize your desk is an utter mess, not neat and tidy, like I assume you like things.”
    “Go figure,” I said with a shrug.
    I watched her carefully as she began scanning the spines of books on my shelves, occasionally reaching up and pulling one out for closer examination. She was taking her time, drinking it all in. I took a seat on the edge of my desk and waited.
    “There’s hardly any fiction in here,” she finally said, “mostly non-fiction.”
    “I used to read a lot of fiction, but at one point in time, I just gave it up. I found I wasn’t interested unless it was true. You know biographies or books on history.”
    “There’s quite a variety of stuff here, covering a lot of ground.”
    “I’m interested in a lot of eras; lots of things,” I said.
    “Oh, look at this,” she said bending down and picking a book off the shelf. I knew exactly what had caught her attention. She stood back up a book in her hand.
    “The Marquis de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom . And it looks like there are a couple of others, Juliette and Justine ?”
    “That’s right,” I said.
    “The Marquis de Sade?” she asked, as she flipped through the pages.
    “Wouldn’t you be fascinated by the man who inspired the word sadism?”
    “I don’t know what this means; I don’t know if I should be worried,” she said.
    I smiled. “ 120 Days of Sodom is probably one of the vilest and most disgusting books ever written, or in its case, written but never completed. It’s a tomb full of debauchery. Just for that pedigree alone, doesn’t it deserve to be discovered and read?”
    “You’re not secretly into S&M, are you?” she asked.
    I laughed. “No, not at all. I’ve always been fascinated with evil, pure evil, which also accounts for the Hitler and Himmler biographies. The funny thing about de Sade is his worst crimes were drugging some prostitutes, engaging in sexual practices that are today considered normal, like sodomy, and having a poor attitude towards the Church and not being afraid to vent it, especially during his sexual escapades. He beat The Exorcist to the use of Crucifixes during sex, by a century or more.”
    She looked intrigued.
    “For the most part, he spent the majority of his life locked up in prison, his mother-in-law, who detested him, paying his room and board, and ensuring he stayed that way. It was the books he wrote and had smuggled out of those prisons, including the legendary Bastille, that account for his notoriety today.