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The Fedora

Rick Hartford was in a curious state of mind. The closest he could get to a word describing just where he was at didn't seem to do his mood justice. He kept returning to the word ‘funk' - seriously? This is a ‘funk?' He admitted to being dejected but not necessarily depressed. In fact, there was a part of him that was relieved, who couldn't agree with the tried and true — better to know now, than to find out later.

The part that bothered him the most was his inability to getting beyond all of this. Was this some kind of a fog, or maybe a fugue, or just your basic everyday kind of extended freak out? No wonder he kept coming back around to ‘funk.' Everything just seemed so pale and featureless, as if all the colors of li...

Wait! What the...? Where the hell am I?

Rick slowed to a stop once he realized he had unknowingly, at least to his immediate recollection, walked into a rather strange and bewilderingly chaotic shop, or storeroom, or whatever this place was. He glanced around and found nothing to suggest that it wasn't anything other than a space filled with all manner of curious items and oddities with no apparent order or organization. There was stuff everywhere.

That's when he was assaulted; his senses overwhelmingly overloaded by a multitude of stimuli. He shook his head to clear it and felt himself kick into immediate survival mode. He turned around and stepped outside.

Once back on the sidewalk, he looked up over the door, then at the large window beside the door, where he read "Amorous Goods — A Specialty Shop Catering To All Things Erotic, Attractive, Even Romantic. Herein You Will Find All Manner of Items; Be They Exotic, Peculiar, Mystical, or of an Otherwise Altered Nature." He shook his head in silent disbelief, only here, in San Francisco, the City, Bhagdad-By-The-Bay would you find such a store, and he wasn't even in the Castro. Then again - on second thought - it occurred to him that this intriguingly strange and fascinatingly odd establishment might merit further attention.

Next to the door was a small plaque; "Customers Should Be 18 Years of Age - or Similarly Experienced."

Huh. The place definitely had a San Francisco vibe.

He reentered the store, attracted more by way of a sincere curiosity to explore and discover, than any intent or need to purchase anything. Upon this second perusal, he noted that it was actually much larger than he'd first assumed. The strangeness hadn't changed; visually, aurally, or aromatically. From somewhere unseen he heard the sound of wind chimes or bells, apparently accompanied by the droning notes of an Indian tamboura. And from some far off corner the strange tones of a percussively plucked or hammered string Asian music that was so faintly heard that he felt an overwhelming need to move towards it - the better to hear it.

Until the sounds stopped suddenly and he found himself puzzled as to why he was standing exactly where he was. What is this place?

The shop smelled oddly old, yet overlaying that aged, if not ancient mustiness was a piquant of fresh spices and softly perfumed floral scents — it suggested rather than reminded him of gardenia's. And what exactly were those intermittent whiffs of something wonderfully female? He had no idea, yet with each step, he found himself expecting or at least hopefully encountering the source.

Then he stopped again, slowly turning around in place puzzling over the who, the what and the where all the while wondering the intriguingly unanswerable why? Yet, unmistakably he knew that someone was watching him. He hoped the someone was a woman; young, curious, sexy...

Damn he was horny, that he was stuck in an ongoing state of pathetic pause was more than clear enough. Had it really been months? Shit! Months of fucking DIY sex— well that was the problem wasn't it? There had been, in fact, no fucking. No fucking since breaking up with Cynthia. Cynthia the Crazy Bitch who he had been with for most of the

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