I’ve never read Naked Lunch, though I’ve intended to since I was young and first heard about it from acquaintances who’d read it and liked it, or who knew about it and mentioned it, so I took it from the rack and brought it with me up to the front of the store, where the registers are, and waited in line and purchased it. Then I wandered outside, and made my way up through the streets of the East Village, in the rain, until I found a coffee shop in Gramercy Park that I decided to stop in at to sit for a while and read, though I didn’t actually end up getting any reading done in there, because of how loud it was, but only looked at my phone and drank my coffee and listened to the conversations around me.