The Stiff: Chapter 4: Page 121
There is something very disturbing and faintly unhealthy to me about ‘comfortable’ American homes — suburban houses decorated with homey generic paintings and inspirational sayings, with thick floor rugs and heavy soft couches, with baskets of tchotckes and fluffy throw pillows and cat litter boxes and ornamental plants. There is always a faintly damp, heavy smell hanging in the air, a sense of stickiness, of preserved decay.
The only proper smell for a house is the smell of dust and tons and tons of books.
NEXT UPDATE: Friday!
Heh. But of course there are plenty of people for whom the smell of dust and books is ‘preserved decay’.
Ah, but dusty books are the smell of TRUE comfort! ;)
Hey, how come there’s no page 120?
By the way, this scene here… I can’t even imagine this scene. COMMUNAL porn-watching??? Something like this just seems unimaginable today… much like the porn movie theatres which have long since closed.
@Esn – Urk! It looks like I had saved page 120 as a draft instead of actually publishing it. It’s up now, thanks for noticing it was missing!
Not to sound all moralistic, but I never sat down while people played a full porno movie either. But even though, uh, viewing habits have changed, do you REALLY think this kind of stuff still doesn’t happen? -_x I mean, people may not *need* to gather to watch porn due to scarcity, like animals around the watering hole, but I’ve definitely had plenty of fellow dudes show me *clips* of porn (mostly on computers, not video/DVD) as a test/display of masculinity (or something), like “Hey, ha ha, check this out.” SOMEONE’S sharing around all those pornographic links.
I haven’t actually had other guys show porn to me, but I’ll take your word for it. I had assumed that porn activities were mostly done online and often anonymously.
The other strange thing to my eyes is that they’re wearing their outside shoes in the house, rather than taking them off at the entrance to put on slippers or just being in socks. I know that this is a common thing in the southern half of the U.S., though. (it’s understandably less popular in climates like mine where it would mean that you’re bringing in dirty snow and slush onto the floors)
Anyway, all of these little details just add to the very strong sense of time and place that you’ve got here.