Dewey Does Decimals
A user’s guide to dirty stuff in libraries
Ain’t public libraries grand? Oh, indeed! Let us list the ways it is so: (1) It’s warm & comfy, (2) It’s quiet so you can sleep – except when the security guard comes a-pokin’ w/ his poke-stick, (3) The washrooms aren’t too grubby & you don’t hafta ask for a key, and (4) If yer not sleepy & you’ve read all the magazines, you can sit back & enjoy the crazy antics of the "regulars."
Now let us list these "regulars": OK, there are the obsessive high-schoolers poring over homework (they will snap, it’s only a question of "when?"); the chronic self-gratifiers who smell like honey; the woman who glares when people cough; the fellow who always coughs (I’m thinking TB); the guy who speedwalks w/ his arms hanging straight down at his side & part of his circuit involves checking the payphone for quarters every eight-point-five minutes; the parade of grouchy septuagenarians ostensibly researching family trees but who really want to know where it "all went so wrong"; that well-dressed woman hunkered down w/ a stack o’ "Garfield" paperbacks (she’s the one who swears, and loudly); and of course there’s that dude w/ the ferret living in his overcoat.
University libraries are also fun, if you don’t mind the stench of fear. Many people think you need to be a student to hang out at a university library. Technically, this may be true, but they never ask for ID. Besides, there are enough non-student/staff kooks who are allowed to be there (these are the somewhat deranged-looking guys who, like, slipped on some ice in front of the Science building in ’73 and so the University lets ’em hang out as part of an out-of-court settlement) that you’ll fit in just fine. Washrooms: immaculate. Graffiti: top-notch. (’Specially the stuff writ in Latin – those kids are a riotvs maximvs!)
Some university libraries even stock the stacks w/ ooh-la-la, and I ain’t talking about a flash of milky thigh in the 1975 Eaton’s Fall & Winter Catalogue. The University of T_r_nt_, for e.g., is currently cataloguing a massive porn donation: 500 books, 800 magazines, 2,000 videos and an astronomical amount of shame. The "documents" date back to 1910, and include such titles as Behind The Green Euphemism, I Knead Yr Buns: Not About Pastry, and a rarely-seen vaudeville film-loop called Take My Wife, Please...And I Will Take Your Wife, Because We Are Vaudevillian Wife-Swappers. The man who donated the collection says he "accidentally" amassed the loot over the course of sev’ral decades. Many people laughed when he said that.
"Experts" (uh-huh... right) believe the collection may be the largest of its kind in Canada, a country known for its large porn collections. No wait, that’s Sweden. Anyway, the "experts" also believe the collection holds important, uh, insight into the nature of, err, human something-or-other, and will prove invaluable when future scholars wish to see some boobies. These same "experts" have not been seen in weeks, except for when they pay the pizza delivery guy.
But not everyone thinks the library is an appropriate place for nakedness, and I’m not just talking about those of us who’ve had to sit near the guy w/ the ferret in his coat. An outraged citizen recently stole sev’ral ceramic penises from a B__ld_r Public Library art display b/c he thought they were offensive – but then turned himself over to the police after experiencing a change of heart. "When I saw these things in the library," he said of the purloined loins, "I’d never seen anything so wrong. Once I got ’em into my living room, I’d never felt anything so right." Nobody knows what this means, nor does anyone really care to know. Upon learning of the recovered weenies, a spokesperson for the library simply said, "Uh, he can keep those." |
