the boombox of loves lost.

Depeche Mode's Black Celebration album goes on the repeat, rescuing me from work. 1986. I'm in the front hall of Tucson High Magnet School, and someone has this tape on a boombox. Me, Angie, Lando Ettrick, Leah, Dee Dee, sitting around a pillar, Swatches, K-Swiss, Benettons, pretty as a picture, we're together but alone, no talking, just listening, shoulders touching. There's a stretch of "Sometimes", then "A Question of Lust", and by "Here Is the House" and "World Full of Nothing", we're weeping, weeping uncontrollably, each of us thinking of someone we no longer have, and can never have again. The tape clicks and stops, and we look at each other, knowing, and go home.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.