Barnes & Goebbels

"I was very close friends with Andy Warhol."

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So last night, my book group met to discuss John Steinbeck's East of Eden (because it doesn't count as shameless fawning if we wait a year before following in Oprah's footsteps) at the Barnes & Noble in Bethesda. We meet there the 2nd Wednesday of each month and while we sometimes have a tough time staying on topic (for instance, last night I had a lot to share about Katie Holmes's "pregnancy" and Sarah Jessica Parker's gay husband) -- it's a great group of people. Especially once we said goodbye to Creepy Lionel and Very Important Stephanie.

Anyway, we're in our Circle of Sharing, and we're finishing up our "How've you been since last month?" conversations, and there's this guy in a fedora, a trench-like jacket, and a suitcase on wheels. Because why not? He gets the attention of our facilitator, Ben, and asks, "Is this a fiction book group?" And my spidey senses are already tingling because I don't trust people with suitcases on wheels. So Ben says, "Yeah." And the guy's all, "What do you do?" And Ben explains that we meet once a month to discuss a book. Then the guys asks, "But then what do you do?" Like we've missed some important step. And it was then that I realized we were in for some bad news from this guy.

It was also then that my friend Annemarie meowed.

Once upon a time, a woman with a basket full of stuffed cats joined our book group for the evening. Throughout the discussion, she would periodically meow for one of the cats in the bag and then would ask, in a very concerned voice, if we truly liked her kitties. Annemarie's meow, she said later, was an early warning system we all failed to heed.

Poor, socially inappropriate Ben then invites Crazy Suitcase Guy to join us. Several of us in the group gave short, terse headshakes that Ben either missed or completely ignored. "I don't know if I should," CSG says; "you see, I'm a published author. Maybe I would be too critical for this group." I can hear my friend Debra's eyes roll from across the circle.

Ben continues to (Goddammit, Ben, why? Why did you continue to?) encourage the guy to sit in with us, and he joins our circle. Oh, and he's picked up this honking huge book of Andy Warhol's photography.

"What, you want something to read if our discussion bores you?" Debra asks. A word or two about my friend Debra: she gets into fights with cabbies. She's also on the threshold of that time in one's life where one has more liberty to "let it all hang out." She's fearless in sometimes uncomfortable ways. And because I had already pegged this guy as looneytunes from way back (even without the help of Annemarie's meow) -- I didn't see this going anywhere good.

"I just feel the need for some protection from Andy Warhol," CSG says. We all kind of chuckle, thinking he's trying to make a joke. Nay nay, my friends. "You know, I was very close friends with Andy Warhol."

Yeah. I know.

"So what book are we discussing this evening?" he asked, holding Andy Warhol firmly on his crazy lap.

"East of Eden," Ben said.

"Ah, Steinbeck," CSG mused.

"Did you know him?" I asked? I shouldn't have asked. It was provocative to ask. Really, I couldn't help myself, though.

"No," CSG says, in that dismissive tone like all of a sudden I'm the crazy one. "Why would I?" He then launches into this whole birth narrative, and how he was 4 years old when Steinbeck died, so how could he possibly even know who Steinbeck is. I mean, yeah, he knows of him because CSG is a Very Important Published Author -- but it's not like he and John were BFF. Not like CSG and Andy Warhol. "I was very close friends with Andy Warhol," CSG repeated.

"Yeah, right," Debra muttered audibly. Debra mutters everything audibly. Once we went to see The Life Aquatic and she almost got in a fistfight with a guy in a cowboy hat. "Are you kidding me? You can't wear that in here!" Later, when Debra realized how much she hated the film, she said, "Maybe I could ask that guy to put his hat back on."

Anyway, Debra's muttered "Yeah, right" sets the guy off. "Why did she say that?" he wants to know. "Why would she say that?" Debra, no longer wanting to be in this guy's line of site (she was sitting right across from him), gets up and says, "Oh, Mike: here's that thing." And I say, loudly, "This is what she meant by, 'Yeah, right'" as I wave what appears to be a dry cleaning ticket because I hope that our little one-act will defuse the situation because CSG is really worked up about this.

So meanwhile, during our dumb show, CSG guy turns to this guy Tom and says, "She can say 'yeah, right' all she wants, but have you seen this!" And he flings open the Warhol book and shoves it onto Tom's lap. The picture? Isaac Asimov. The reason?

Yeah. I got nothing, too.

So things settle down a little. Debra returns to her seat, I feel like our clever ruse worked, and we're about to get back to discussing the book when CSG takes his cell phone from his wheeled suitcase and begins talking into it.

Loudly.

In German.

No one actually heard the phone ring. I didn't see him dial any numbers. And later, a quick check of all of our cell phones proved that reception on the bottom floor of the Bethesda Barnes & Noble is pretty much bupkes. He's chatting away in German (or "German" as Noah later suggested) and Ben taps him on the knee and gestures away from our circle, communicating to CSG that he should take his cell phone conversation away from the discussion. CSG makes a dismissive kinda-agreeing gesture with his hand, like, "I know, I know" -- but remains seated and talking very animatedly into the phone. Ben tries a second and third time, with no success. Finally, CSG shuts the phone and Ben says, "Next time, please take your cell phone conversation away from the group so that we can continue our discussion."

"But you weren't discussing anything," he said. "You were all laughing at me for knowing Andy Warhol." And then he went on and on about how he was going to tell Barnes & Noble about how we were using their space to be exclusionary and the crazy's really almost at eyeball level now and Debra tries to explain that actually, no, Barnes & Noble hosts us here, and that it's a Barnes & Noble book group and then the guy erupts in an orgasmic fountain of incoherent rage and yells:

"BARNES AND NOBLE? MORE LIKE BARNES & GOEBBELS!"

Yeah.

Yeah.

I KNOW.

He then begins to yell at us, telling us that we're all anti-Semites (roughly half the group is Jewish or Jew-friendly) and that he's very important and that he has to take these very important phone calls and we don't understand and that if we think we can just invade Iraq we'd better rethink that because a whole lot of vengence is going to rain down on us and actually, no, No, NO: He won't leave because we're Jew-haters and on and on and on and I'm actually pissed that I didn't have some kind of voice recorder at the ready because it was operatic in it's diagnoticness.

This guy? Definitely receiving services somewhere at some time.

Finally, he grabs his suitcase on wheels and storms away from us, clumping his suitcase up the escalator stairs and out of the store.

When it stopped being fucking terrifying, the whole thing was really about 17 different kinds of awesome. Seriously.

"What set him off, do you think?" Tom asked.

"Well, asking him to wear that yellow star was a big mistake," I said.

"The next time someone new tries to join us," Annemarie said, "and I meow? Listen to me next time!"

I gotta say, though: Barnes & Goebbels? That was kinda perfect.