He made me sell my books. I wanted words - he wanted dope. All my lovely volumes were packed in boxes one day when I came home from work.
He never took me anyplace. But he took me to Powell's to sell my Shakespeare collection, my John Donne, all the Emily Dickenson - and my cherished Edgar Allan Poe... all the musty, strange old books I had lovingly hoarded - many first editions.
Next he took me to a used book store where my paperbacks could be traded for stacks of westerns he would be too high on crank to read.
Now my books live in the closet. Safe...hidden, like Jews in a Warsaw Ghetto, or runaway teenage girls in abandoned buildings.
It has been five years. Perhaps soon I will get a bookcase and let them out to stand beside my chair.