When Does the Cesspool Close?

Phone rings.

Me: Adult Reference Desk. How may I help you?

Caller: I’m calling to say that Enid and Sophie won’t be coming today.

Me: Oh. Okay.

Do other libraries take attendance? How do you keep track of what patron is supposed to be present on what day? Seriously. How do you know? Because if I knew what days certain patrons were coming, I’d rearrange my schedule or (*cough*) come down with an ailment.

Me: Were they meeting someone here?

Caller: No, they were signed up for a program today!

Me: OH! But we don’t have any programs today that required registration.

Caller: I don’t know! I’m just the grandma and their mother told me to take them for a program today, but I’m not going to!

Me: Okay, that’s fine. Thanks for call--

The caller hung up on me.

Sometimes I wish we had Caller ID so that I could call back this grandma and finish my sentence.

It’s fair if they can call the library and say something stupid like, “Yeah, I got a phone call from the library, but I don’t have voice mail so they couldn’t leave a message and I was wondering who called and what it was about. Caller ID says it came from this number.” How am I supposed to know who in my building called you and why? Dude, get an answering machine before you get Caller ID! It’s much more helpful!

* * *

Phone rings.

Me: Adult Reference Desk. How may I help you?

Caller: What time does the pool close today?

The pool? You mean the library’s pool? Well, our pool is private and only for staff. You can’t play in our pool. Imagine the crud and filth that we’d have to clean up if we let the patrons use our pool. For that matter, I’m not quite sure why we let them borrow our books, computers, movies and CDs. Have you smelled a popular library book lately? Egad!

CLEARLY you’re asking for the hours of the pool at the PARK DISTRICT, which is NOT a part of the library. NOT A PART OF THE LIBRARY! Who ever heard of a library that had a pool? That’s like a library with an open bonfire in the middle of it! What stupid concept!

If you want me to look it up for you, ask me to look it up for you! DO NOT assume that I have the hours to every local business on a handy-dandy spreadsheet. I do not. And no, that is not a good idea.

Oh, wait! Maybe the pool you were asking about is the cesspool that is a majority of the community I serve! Oh, well, that, m’dear, is open 24 hours!

* * *

Patron: I have a book that someone gave me, but I have no use for it. I was wondering if you take donations.

Me: Sure. If we didn’t add it to the collection, we’d likely sell it in the annual book sale.

Patron: Why don’t you take software?

Me: Well, that’s a little fuzzier, what with registration and copyrights. Books are fine, though.

Patron: Yeah, I had a copy of Linux that I wanted to donate to the library and I talked to the guy who is your computer guy… I can’t remember his name…

Me: Yeah, he doesn’t accept equipment or software donations.

Patron: That’s really silly. You could’ve made money on it if you wanted to. I mean, it wasn’t an original CD or anything, so you couldn’t have charged a lot, but it was a genuine burned copy of an original. I can vouch for that! It’s worth money. But you guys just turned down the money. So sad.

Me, shrugging: Eh, whaddaya gonna do?

Personally, I think the loss was worth it. For instance, we might have made $1 on the sale, if that, but the jail time, attorney fees, court fees, penalties and blow to our reputation might be a little more than $1 worth. That’s just a guess, though. I don’t actually know anyone stupid enough to try to sell illegally copied software in an open forum like that. Although, sir, you might be the first. Go ahead and give it a try. I think eBay has a special eJail for offenders like you. And if you sell it quickly enough, it might cover your eBail.

On second thought, we really don’t want that donated book. It was probably stolen and we’d get in trouble for possession of stolen property. Just go. Go now. And don’t come back. Ever.

Self Love

I walked from my office to pick something up from the shelf and found myself about 10 feet behind a man who was seemingly headed in the same direction as me. He was familiar, but I didn’t know if he was just a regular patron or possibly someone I might know outside of the library. Hopefully it was just the former.

About three steps into our synchronized stride, I heard a flubbery squeak that was fairly loud. It did rather sound like a fart, but many things make fart noises around our library, including the carts, my shoes, and the gerbils running on their wheels inside all the computers.

Note to self: we really must upgrade to mice, which are smaller and have more energy.

In front of me, the familiar man reached behind himself and, through his nylon shorts, firmly grasped his left buttock in his left hand. With the bun secured, he pulled the cheek away from the other and the same flubbery squeak emanated from the gap his hand had created.

My face contorted into some kind of mixture of horror and disgust. My feet stopped walking, but I didn’t remember telling them to stop.

Unfortunately, the familiar man also stopped, still 10 feet ahead of me, and this time, instead of clearing the way for another gaseous expulsion to exit without speed bumps, he dug his hand between his cheeks and seemed to be scratching or massaging the orifice through his shorts.

At first I gagged and made a turn to avoid hitting the odoriffic cloud that he’d let loose on the planet just a moment ago, and also to avoid touching anything that he might touch before me.

Then it dawned on me – this man, however socially challenged and intestinally free he was, had absolutely no qualms about his bodily functions. He welcomed his farts into this world with cheeks widespread, and he rewarded his anus with a nice rub afterward. That’s someone who loves his body. That’s someone who believes his body can do no wrong. That’s someone with more confidence than I will ever have.

And, dare I say, I was a little turned on.

They say you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else, and I believe it. If this guy loves his bowels this much, imagine how much he might love the more lovable parts on someone else. It was titillating just thinking of the possibilities. Those hands were accustomed to accommodating the needs of his own body. What might he do to someone else? And no one ever need be humiliated if some playful activity leads to their own escaping squeakers because this guy is likely to hold your cheeks apart and beckon them into the world, possibly give you a little rub of a reward after.

Yea, I say! I’m downright intrigued with this man! Perhaps we could all stand to be a little freer with our bodies!

As I rounded the corner and caught up with him, I realized where I knew him from the second I saw that same hand that had so recently been giving himself a nice post-fart stroke was shoving a finger so far up his nose, I thought it might come out his eye socket. Yes. Now I remember. This is the mentally handicapped man who visits the library with his mother. Years ago he used to follow me around in the stacks in the opposite aisle and peek at me through the holes in the books, which inevitably would scare the mother-fucking-shit out of me and I’d almost crack a tooth from clenching my jaw in an attempt not to scream bloody murder.

It was suddenly all so clear.

And now that I’ve amused myself and repulsed all of you, let’s all take a break and have a group vomit! Wheeee!

Rule #1: Do Not Touch the Librarian

He completely creeps me out with all his religious tattoos up and down his arms, the pop-bottle glasses, the straw hat, and sly way he seems to emphasize his southern drawl. Once you cross the Mason-Dixon line, chewing on toothpicks and wearing a fringy, suede vest makes you a bit laughable here in these parts.

He is not charming. He is not sexy. I wish he’d leave me alone.

Yet, he frequents the library often and always makes a point of visiting with me.

Often there is nowhere to run.

It becomes increasingly difficult to hide my horror when I see him walk in the door, though I try to be civilized and professional.

He always asks me out for coffee. I tell him I don’t drink coffee. He then asks me out for whatever I drink.

I have come very close to giving up all beverages because of him.

Instead I explain that my boyfriend wouldn’t appreciate such a meeting.

He smiles sinisterly and says that his wife would not either, but as long as we behave, there is no harm.

Vomit. Bile. Last week’s digested meals. Bits of my own broken down digestive tract. Chunks of my reproductive system self destructing and rising in the eruption of insides wanting to become outsides.

The misbehavior I am inspired with when he is around is not the kind he’s thinking of, unless he’s imagining himself rolled up in an area rug and run over with a bulldozer before being buried semi-alive in a shallow grave somewhere near a fire ant hill.

I withdraw when he’s near. I pull my hands off the desk and push my chair back, keeping my distance because whenever he comes in, he tries to touch me. Not in a molesting way, but in an overtly desperate need to make contact way. It bothers me. The contact doesn’t bother me, but I follow his eyes, and I watch his behavior because he baits me to expose a part of myself that he can touch, and that bothers me. It’s the manipulation and it’s the fact that he thinks he has some kind of right to touch me.

He asks for books on blackjack tournaments, which is a creature unknown to me. Poker, yes. Blackjack -- never thought it could turn into a tournament.

This requires me to take my hands out of my lap, move forward a bit, and use the mouse and keyboard. He watches my hands move up to the desk and he stares openly at the movements.

We have no material on blackjack tournaments and strategy guides to help you win them. I tell him I cannot find any in existence, but the truth is I’m not looking all that hard because each time I move my hand to mouse something, his eyes follow and it creeps me out more.

He’s going to touch my hand, I can just tell.

My arm twitches at the thought. I look around for another patron, another staff member, anyone I can make eye contact with and somehow indicate that I need to be rescued, but no one is nearby.

He says, “Now that’s just the purtiest ring you got there,” and before I can yank my hand away, he’s holding it in both of his, turning my ring so that the ruby faces him.

I thank him coldly and pull my hand away.

He seems a little bit shocked at my shortness and dislike of his handling. He then thanks me for my help, accepts that there are no books on the topic he is asking about (as if he never really cared anyway), and bids me farewell.

If he wasn’t a foot shorter than me and in his late 50s or early 60s, I’d be concerned that he might be a serial killer or other dangerous deviant.

Clearly he has a hand fetish.

Then again, if he catches me wandering around the library without my protective desk between us, he will touch my shoulder, my back or any part of me that is within reach.

It really creeps me out.

Sometimes he sings to me. This is easy enough to curtail since it is a library.

He’s invited me to his many performances at nursing homes around the area, where he plays gospel songs for the residents. I think that if he and I were in a place where death is a fairly common occurrence, it would inspire me.

How many ways can one murder another with an acoustic guitar?

On that pleasant though, I shall venture off into dreamland.

...strangulation with guitar strings...impaled with fretboard...beat about the head with entire instrument...zzzzzzz...

The Mouth-Breather

We call her that for obvious reasons. When your mommy and daddy have relatives in common, something happens in the embryonic stage that prevents the offspring from developing proper nasal breathing passages. You can hear an inbred coming if you listen for the mouth-breathing.

She asked one of the youth librarians for "another book catalog."

A what? Like, an online public access computer? A card catalog? And "another" one? Where did the first one come from?

After much snotty explaining on her part, she managed to inform the librarian that she sought a second list on which to document the books she's read to her kids for the reading club. (Our supposition is that someone else is doing the reading, unless picture books count.)

The poor youth librarian didn't have her Mouth-Breather to English dictionary handy. There was no hope for understanding without translation.

Then the woman somehow found her way to the adult area, where she and her son stood in an aisle I needed to get into. In fact, it was the aisle that leads to my office, and her son was pounding his little fists hard against the glass of my office door.

She did nothing.

I said, "Excuse me, I have to get in there." I was hoping she'd move herself, her kid and the stroller with her baby away from the entrance to my door, but all she did instead was instruct the boy to get out of the way. She didn't budge an inch.

This forced me to squeeze between her and the wall while stretching my arm sideways to unlock the door, but I still wasn't able to get into the office because of the stroller.

She still did nothing.

She left me with no other recourse. I had to move her baby in the stroller myself.

She still did nothing.

After I managed to squirm into my office, I began closing the door as I stared with loathing at the back of Mouth-Breather's head. She turned around and I paused for a fraction of a second and thought to erase the look on my face as our eyes met, just before the door touched the frame, but I decided against it. She deserved to know just how much of an ass I thought she was.

She still did nothing.

Fast forward three days and she returned with her two children.

The boy is about four years old and I learned his name today, not because he told me, but because Mouth-Breather shouted it so often that it sounded like a broken record echoing in my skull.

Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Jonah!

JONAH!

Jonah! Jonah!

Jonah-Jonah-Jonah-Jonah-Jonah!

Jonah, another mouth-breather, clearly suffers from ADHD, and possibly a little bit of a hearing impairment because nothing anyone said to him seemed to penetrate his childish ears.

He was on his way up to the third tier of an empty bookshelf as he ascended what must have been the kiddie version of a rock-climbing wall, before one of my coworkers stopped him.

It went something like this.

Coworker runs to save Jonah's life.

Mouth-Breather does nothing.

Coworker puts her hands on Jonah so that he doesn't let go of the shelves and plummet to the ground.

Mouth-Breather shouts, "Jonah!"

Coworker says to the boy, "Jonah, you cannot climb the shelves in the library. Feet are better off on the ground, where you cannot hurt yourself as much."

Mouth-Breather, who can see the entire event unfold, shouts, "Jonah! If you don't get over here, I'm leaving without you."

Coworker eases Jonah off the shelves.

Mouth-Breather, now looking at me, shouts, "Jonah!"

Coworker watches as Jonah runs off to join his mother 10 feet away.

Mouth-Breather shouts, "Jonah! That's it. We're leaving!"

No apology. No discipline. Nothing.

From the looks of it, she's pregnant again, too.

Who knew her own brother would be available to procreate three separate times with her?

Then again, I imagine mouth-breathers don't get to do much kissing. They'd pass out.