the contextual life

Texture

“Texture. Texture. Texture,” an elderly man said as he dragged himself through the door. He had a tattoo on his forearm; some text in big block letters, Times New Roman maybe, but I didn’t look long enough to notice, or catch what it said. He didn’t seem like the type who would take well to staring.

“Texture. Texture. Texture,” he said again. There was a wince from those within earshot. The man spoke with a voice that betrayed a life of unfiltered cigarettes; his esophagus, nothing but a charred piece of meat for at least 20 years now. There was a tension in the room that hadn’t been there a moment before, a feeling known to many subway riders. The otherwise tuned-out crowd sat up a bit straighter and took notice, but not too much.

The guy behind the counter was everything you’d expect a guy who worked in an East Village coffee shop to be. Unawares of the potential hostage situation, Counter Guy went on chatting with the girls working the register.

“What can I get you?” one girl finally asked.

rasp. rasp. rasp.  

BookStalked: Gabrielle Gantz of The Contextual Life and David Gutowski of Largehearted Boy

David and I were bookstalked by our favorite bookstalker! Check out what we have to say about author events … 

bookstalker:

Gabrielle and David are two high-profile bloggers who exemplify the best of the NYC  lit scene. Their friendliness, enthusiasm, and knowledge was a total inspiration to me in the early days of BookStalker. A book publicist by day, Gabrielle writes about lit events and reviews books at The Contextual Life in her off-hours. David started his popular lit and music blog Largehearted Boy OVER TEN YEARS AGO (which is like decades in blog-years) and also runs the related reading series Largehearted Lit. As if they weren’t busy enough, the two friends recently combined forces to start BookBoroughing, a literary event calendar. This month, they are also starting a BookBoroughing reading series pairing friends, starting with Matthew Dojny and John Wray next Wednesday at WORD.

After the jump, both share their favorite events, surprising experiences and which one of them was just a liiiittle bit wary about their newest endeavor.

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