Over time I couldn't help but notice how interesting these people really are. I think my favorite is the “Crazy Guy”. He shuffles up and down the aisles while carrying on conversations with himself and his invisible companion. "Whatchoo say da me?... Heh heh yeah I know. I seen dat blue fish umpfin yetterday I told em..... What?! ….I doesn’t want dat!" Everything about Crazy Guy is intriguing in a train wreck sort of way. From his pock mark scarred, weather worn face and his faded black forearm tattoos to his filthy wardrobe that never changes. Always wearing the same grungy white wife beater t-shirt and tiny brown shorts with black dress socks pulled up to his knees. He completes this stunning ensemble with a dirty pair of beige construction work boots and a grimy grease stained Cardinal’s baseball cap.
Crazy Guy and I made mutual eye contact once. It was an extraordinarily jarring moment and I was sufficiently confident I would be slaughtered in the parking lot that night. I was sitting at my usual table near the back of the building behind a pile of books watching Crazy Guy giggling at what must have been the invisible butterflies flitting in the air near the non-fiction section when some kind of psychic radar must have kicked in and he turned around and caught me staring at him. I can’t imagine what my face must have looked like at that moment. I felt like a frightened goblin that had been caught trying to steal the soul of a slumbering child.
I averted my eyes in dismay. Shit! Maybe he didn’t notice me watching…. I took a deep breath and tested the view, looking up quickly in his general direction but not directly at him. Whatever oddities that were running through his mangled brain at the moment had frozen him in place. I sat there with my head down trying to think of some kind of self-defense technique I could perform from a sitting position should he suddenly decide to charge me in a manic fit of unbridled rage. I had no idea why he would even do such a thing, but when you’re wigging out it’s best to go over all the possibilities, including the idea that Crazy Guy may or may not be considering the various seasonings he could use to enhance the flavor of my corpse with before he cannibalized me.
“Feelin!” I heard it, but my brain was attempting to compute the nonsense into something logical that I could relate to. Feelin?... what the hell? Feeling maybe?... Felon? Yeah I’m definitely getting murdered tonight….. I looked up at Crazy Guy in confusion. “Feelin!” he croaked again, his gelatinously wrinkled mass of jowl quivered with his proclamation. In my own ensuing terror born insanity, I briefly pictured a swarm of miniature roaches sprinting from the dark crusty crevices of his neck meat while he maniacally stabbed at my mangled lifeless body. Don’t be such a drama queen you idiot, he’s just some harmless crazy old man…. Smiling at me encouragingly, he held his hand up in the air and started tapping his finger on a non-existent drum to a beat that only he could hear. While I was considering if I had enough time to scribble down a goodbye note to the kids before Crazy Guy invited me to his house as dinner, he spun around and walked towards the door. The entire scenario probably only lasted for about 2 minutes… But I did learn a lesson that day…. Never look directly at Crazy Guy again.
I appropriately dubbed another delightful dweller the Two Dollar Man. He is always... always at the library. The mystery about the Two Dollar Man is how he gets to the library in the first place because he wanders from person to person offering $2 for a ride home and it's always just $2. Never, 3 or 4 or even 5, but only 2 dollars. That isn't all he wants to gift the other dwellers though, he has a collection of notebook paper business cards which he created with his own hand that he decorated with festive ink flower doodles and circular tornado like scribbles around his email address and myspace url that he gives you when he tells you he's a rapper.
The Two Dollar Man approached me once with his paper card offering and rapper status acclamations. "I'm da next big thing. Check id out babygrrrl", thrusting his chin up in the air and still eyeballing me while patting his stomach like he just ate the most satisfying meal. “Kin you gimme a ride, babygrrrl? I got two dolla fa gas, jus down da road. Aint no rush I gots time.” What I wanted to say was something to the effect of- “Of course not. I don’t even know you and I already find you annoying. Why would I want to put you in my car where we have to be in an enclosed space together, breathing in each other’s carbon dioxide and dead skin cells. Then I’ll spend the rest of the month knowing that all of your decaying flesh is either still floating around in the car or somewhere, or even worse- resting gently on the surface of one of my lungs. If it’s just down the road then walk. Do you see TAXI written on my face you moron?”
Instead I simply said, “No habla ingles, lo ciento” and laid his paper card on the table like I didn’t understand a word he just said. The Two Dollar Man’s eyes lit up all bright and shiny with some form of special comprehension, “OH, OK DEN! GO HERR AND LISTEN TA DIS!” he shouts at me while pointing to his myspace url. I just told you I don’t speak English you brainless wit, I didn’t say I was deaf! I just smiled and nodded and battled the inclination to run after him and leap onto his back so I could snap his arm in half after he had the balls to stroke the side of my cheek with his grubby forefinger before he walked away. I’ll never be able to understand why strangers want to touch other strangers. It’s weird and intrusive and presumptuous.
Of course there's always a variety of what I call the “Cheating Whores” who come in and out of the library on a regular basis. They're easy to understand, usually of the wealthier lot. These expensively clothed, heavily jeweled, and immaculately groomed, Oompa Loompa tanned bleach blond nightmares are always at the computer terminals... which I found odd at first. They never check out any books, or even look at any books at all. They exclusively dominate the computers and why? Pass by their monitors and they're on email accounts or facebook of all places. No doubt cavorting with their cheating low life counterparts, only at the library so the husbands don't catch their misdeeds on their home PC's. It's just speculation of course, but why else would they constantly come into the library and use the computers when they’re obviously well off enough to have access at home. Losers! The most disgruntling factor concerning the Cheating Whores, aside from the obvious fact that if my suspicions are true they’re nothing but walking trash cans, is the disruption level they evoke. The Cheating Whores, hell bent on initiating a quick fix of Sin, never even bother to turn off their God forsaken cell phones so the entire time they’re choking up your fresh air with their perfume bathed bodies you’re forced to listen to some hideously tacky version of whatever popular hip hop song they think makes them younger just by listening to it every fifteen minutes, electronically chirping through your tortured ears, until you can’t get the tone out of your head and by then you’re pissed because you don’t even like that song! You don’t even like hip hop at all and now it’s raping your brain over and over again.
I think the most annoying library dweller is The Whiner. I run into her about 3 times a week and I always have to fight back the urge to punch her in the face because she never stops her stupid sheep’s whining. She bitches about everything in her high pitched nasal tone and tries to bring you into it too. "Don't you think those librarians are talking too loud?!.... Don't you think they close too early on Sunday?!.... Why don't they put out sanitary cloths to wipe keyboards off over there? That's unsanitary! ... Why don't they close the blinds? The sun hurts my eyes!"... On and on with her bullshit until I'm imaging how glorious it would feel to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until she ceases her pissing and moaning. Of course she would probably bitch about that too. "Why are your hands so cold?! Don't you think it should be warmer in here?!".... I cannot stand her.
I usually go to the library in the evening and stay until it closes. It gets very creepy at night when you're the last one there. Just one row after another of well-worn books, unoccupied aisles and dimly lit corridors. Every infinitesimal sound like a thunderous boom that echoes through all the empty spaces and then you hear a sound you didn't make and you wonder where it came from. Knowing there is no one else there and trying to imagine what made that shuffling sound, that muted thump, that soft sigh.... Brain racing for an explanation, heart rate increasing, you try to deduce some logical explanation for the mysterious phantom sounds around you while you listen in cold paranoia to the slow shick shick shick of the clock on the wall.... it’s an interesting rush.
Most adults go out for excitement when they’re feeling adventurous. They go out to dinners and movies, they go to clubs and bars, they get drunk and party with their friends.....I just go to the library.
