How to Piss Off an Avid Reader

         I was sitting in the most inconspicuous corner of Tim’s, headphones on my ears but unplugged, sipping on a coffee with my mind stuck in a book. A novel with complicated wording and ideas can be difficult to follow properly, which is why I usually decide to wear silent headphones if I’m reading in public. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest can certainly be called a novel with complicated wording and ideas. Eventually I began to replace the tumult of words surrounding me with the words written on the pages in front of me. I was forgetting myself and living vicariously through a socially inept tennis prodigy, I was laughing in my mind at David Foster Wal -

             “What are you reading?”

             I removed my headphones. “What?” I said to the young man now standing beside my table.

         “I said, what are you reading?” the man repeated, audible now that my ears were exposed.

         “Oh. Just a novel,” I said. It’s like a Tweet, only longer. I began to put my headphones back on and return my attention to the book.

         “What novel?” he asked. I halted in putting on my headphones.

         One that’s difficult to read when having a conversation.

 “It’s called Infinite Jest.” Surely that was the last of his questions. If my skinny answers didn’t dissuade him then my jaded tone did.

“Oh, is that, like, a fiction book?” he said “fiction” like a homophobe would say “cross dresser”.

I sighed and replied simply, “Yup.”

“I’ve never read a fiction book in my life. Lots of non-fiction,” “non-fiction” was said with triumph, “but no fiction. They’re pointless because they’re not real. They have no use whatsoever.

If you’ve never read one, how do you know they have no use? “Hmm,” I said.

At this point he finally moved on, possibly realizing that I was in no mood for conversation, but more likely hearing his order being called. I gritted my teeth and tried to realign my concentration.