the last book I ever read (Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, excerpt ten)

from Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello:

Before I knew where I was, I found myself walking to Richard Hell’s apartment in Alphabet City. I was trying not to draw attention to myself by wearing my black leather jacket, tinted lenses, and Chelsea boots. I was also carrying a battered tweed instrument case containing a red 1961 Fender Stratocaster that I had impulsively bought on Forty-eighth Street that afternoon with my first-ever credit card after two or three too many martinis at lunchtime.

There were voices shouting after me in Spanish, but I refused to engage, and walked on, giving a fair imitation of a sense of purpose. I was going to sing Richard’s “You Gotta Lose” with him and the Voidoids at CBGB’s in aid of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project. I was on good terms with at least one of the other evangelists, but it was a long way from singing with Rusty at Harold and Sylvia Hikins’s poetry nights in Freshfields.