Bookowski

forehanded (FOR-han-did) adjective

1. Providing for the future needs; prudent.

2. Well-to-do.

3. Made with the palm facing forward (such as a stroke in tennis).

I'm reading again and it's much better than it ever was when assigned. I get to pick what to read, when to read, how far to read--a whole world of choices. In the mornings now, I go to the second or third floor of the theatre (whichever contains less distractions), sit by the windows, pour myself a cup of coffee, and read for about thirty or forty minutes. Starts my day off with a little story, kind of like meeting a friend for a casual breakfast. Only, I suppose, they do all the talking, you decide when they stop, and there's no check involved.

Anyway, this morning I started Women by Charles Bukowski. I received it as a gift two birthdays ago and, after moving into our new apartment and reorganizing all our books, Adrienne found that we now own two copies. We also own two copies of Catcher In The Rye and Catch-22 (nodding to our mutual interest in good catching), but the Bukowski pair signify the only identical editions we share. With two absolutely exact copies of Women sitting side-by-side on our livingroom shelf, I realized, having never read the book, I was taking the ultimate decorative risk: displaying something, in duplicate, I knew nothing about.

Twenty-two pages in and I can say, with a certain authority, that Charles Bukowski, too, knows very little about women.