Sex and the Library
I never know what links I’ll unearth when I read my Mediabistro e-mail. While Sex and the Library mostly blogs about day-to-day tribulations in working for a public day care center - ahem, I meant, library — my mind just drag raced down Memory Lane, all those books and quiet buildings flashing before my eyes… Hey! Quit looking at me like that. All we did was, we…Okay, let me just tell you.
A library is a sanctuary. You know, like a body is a temple…Let me rephrase this.
I believe in milking my tax dollars for all they’re worth. And when I was in college, well, what with tuitition and academic enrichment fees and whatnot, it’s not like I wasn’t getting milked for all I was worth. So I spent quality time in that sanctuary. As a freshman, I quickly scoped out the quiet spaces. The corner of the basement level. The study carroll at the far end of the top level. The bench behind the magazine rack next to the media center. I roped off my own private Idaho and let the good times roll. Well, back up a second…
I had no privacy at home. I had no privacy on campus. Most of the individual piano practice rooms were taken up by students who had the same idea as we did (that, or the smartasses actually were playing the piano in there). So when we couldn’t get away, I arranged the table at the corner of Williams Library’s basement level to look like a group of students were occupying every seat — notebook at one space, sunglasses at another — and piled up a stack of reference books taller than our respective heads. We’d sit at the edge of our chairs but made sure our backs were straight so we’d be properly camouflaged by the reference books scattered around the table. Not a whole lot could get accomplished in 45 minutes, anyway. He’d have a 2:00 class and I wouldn’t feel anything inside me until 4:30ish.
We had contingency plans should anyone happen by. Books were open in front of us. We were “studying together”. We were “comparing notes”. We were “collaborating on a project”. We tried jamming the library elevator, but it would only stay closed for a few minutes. It was a Southern Baptist school, where we went. We were two of the few liberals on campus, there because it was local and convenient and relatively cheap and we were just there temporarily. Until better plans panned out. He was going to a state school next semester, I was hoping to go to a real liberal arts college far, far away from home. We were biding our time. Rebelling in innocuous ways, like bringing wine on campus or delivering a talk in Fundamentals of Speech Communication about repealing the state sodomy law. Just because we chose to be here didn’t mean we were selling our souls to someone who wanted to save it. It was a liberal arts college. We could transfer credits. And it had, after all, a decent library.
And we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. We were experimenting. We’d gone to the same high school, two of the few freshmen who’d known each other in their former lives. We’d gotten frustrated at being stuck where we were stuck. We’d gotten to be better friends, we’d gotten drunk at a party in the Married Student Housing, we’d gotten intimate under the influence, and after we’d gotten sobered up, we got an idea we wanted to… feel out. And not necessarily tell our mutual friends about. We would slack off when one of us got a real significant other. This was not romantic; we were not to fall in love with each other. It was just…something we did in private places like the libary. For the time being.
Williams Library carried tomes that the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated trustees would likely have had a problem with. In my favorite “third floor spot”, I copied recipes for aphrodisiacs and gleaned relationship advice from Ovid in Ars Amatoria. I reread Our Bodies, Ourselves cover to cover and learned not to do so on an empty stomach. After an afternoon of scrutinizing one too many vaginal drawings, I started to twist and turn in all the wrong places. Then I came across the photo of the woman slumped over dead from an illegal abortion. I got tunnel vision walking to the bathroom, slumped my back against the wall and slid carefully into a squatting position until I could regain my bearings. No one saw me. It was deathly quiet, rows behind rows behind rows. A galaxy of universes that occupied the same space and didn’t disturb each other.
The library was the only place now where I could be completely alone. Anyone I knew there would have a palpably different conversation with me than anywhere in the “outer” world. The library was more than a tuition-funded hotel room. It was a place for new relationships…with the written word, if with nothing or no one else. Sure, I’d read all about my PC muscle in those books and yes, I could use that in private without anybody knowing. But there was something about my spot. And the other one, and the other one. Not on my body. In my library.
By sophomore year, my “lab partner” transferred out of the picture. My bibliophilic tranquility was disrupted by a busier schedule, not to mention seeing more people there whom I actually knew. Or maybe I’d read all the good stuff in the inventory. Williams Library was ultimately replaced by a multimedia behomoth with plush carpets, light and airy spaces, and no nooks or crannies. (Maybe that’s why they call it “nookie”. ) Moreover, the university was changing along with it. It became more tolerant, more diverse, more…well, let’s just say it killed the mood. I studied in public thereafter and stuck around to graduate.
The old building now houses the university’s School of Music, but I haven’t been inside to see what they’ve done to my old reading hangouts. I prefer to remember some things the way they were. I prefer to think that some places, no matter how they are used by different people, are somehow sacred.
