Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

First Edition, First Printing
As New
Alfred A. Knopf, 1989


This is the first first I ever bought with the intent to buy a first. I bought it at J. Michaels Books for $32 down from $40 because I had a coupon. I'd seen another first of Geek Love at Smith Family Bookstore for $35, but it was a remainder and the dust jacket was faded from the washed orange to a dirty yellow on the binding, as I've heard often happens with this book..
When I saw it at J. Michaels four months ago, I knew I was about to embark on a new and expensive hobby.
I've bought at least five copies of Geek Love and am in the market for another reader's copy. It's a book I keep around to gift to people, most of whom are visiting the Pacific Northwest. My reasons for gifting this particular book are probably a little snobby: I like people to know that I read edgy books, and revel in the thought that they are reading it for the first time and thinking, "Man, that guy's weird."
Who have I given it to thus far. . . . The first copy I owned I gave to an old friend's girlfriend. I hadn't seen this friend for years. One day I got an e-mail from him saying he'd be in Portland for a few days, so I wrote him back and said I'd meet him there. He was coming to town to attend a sex seminar with his girlfriend, who wrote for playgirl magazine. Thinking it rude to meet someone and note have a gift, I grabbed my copy of Geek Love as I ran out the door to catch the Amtrak to Portland.
Coincidentally, she loved the book. Two years later when my wife and I visited the same couple in New York, my friend's girlfriend returned the favor by gifting my wife and I with a vibrating cock ring. I suppose she wanted us glean something about her from her gift as well.
Others who have received the book are my friend Aaron, who didn't read it because his wife had just given birth and he thought it would give him nightmares; John, who I shouldn't have gifted it to for reasons I don't want to go into; and most recently, my friend Chuck from Denver, who just visited a few weeks ago with his chain-smoking, cat-loving social-worker girlfriend.
Now I have an edition that I'll never give away, and I can be reminded of these people and more people in the future every time I see the book on my shelf.