DOWNTOWN
nate east
But to be honest, the only thing that ever influenced me was hundreds of hours spent in the Springfield Public Library where everything was brown. Brown carpeting, light brown walls, and a strange brown fountain in the foyer with metal reeds that were hollow and rainbow-reflecting like oil in a parking lot. My mom told me not to touch the trickling water because it was hooked up to something electric and I didn’t want to get shocked. The computers for looking up books in the catalog had green letters on black screens, and if you pressed the right numbers you could access the internet where I would study websites about Pokemon video games.
One day I was at one of these terminals and an older boy sat down next to me and started typing a mile a minute. I couldn’t yet type fast and I secretly watched his screen in awe and envy. He typed “little red riding hood” into the search bar and pressed the key for title search. His keys clicked so fast that the sound was like the drum roll of rain drops or the rolling click of skateboard wheels on squared-off cobblestones.
Nate East
www.nateeast.wordpress.com
Drown
Junot Diaz