Alone and Unobserved

I’m sick. Just a cold; nothing major. But it’s made me realize something: I don’t get sick very often. Oh, I call into work occasionally with a sinus headache, but my meds always kick in by the next morning and I’m (relatively) good to go. Today is the first time I’ve called into work for the second day in a row in over a year. I… just don’t usually do that. And my god, it sucks. There’s only so much television and internet and warm baths and lounging around lethargically I can take—especially when I’m kind of achy and sore-throaty and I can’t get comfortable and nothing’s really engaging.

Here’s hoping I’m feeling better by tomorrow. Better yet, tonight. Or how about… now? No? Okay, what about… NOW? Argh.

No matter how long it takes me to actually get better, I can guarantee it’s going to feel like an eternity.

Late last night, I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business (i.e., watching Season 2 of Doctor Who on Netflix) when a cat came up and rubbed itself against my leg. I think my reaction—shrieking at the top of my lungs and knocking over my chair—is completely explained by the fact that we do not have a cat. And the fact that I am a touch high-strung.

Hopefully the ensuing yells, yowls and high-speed chase through the house will teach my roommate not to leave the screen door wide open when there are inquisitive cats prowling in the neighborhood.

In other news, that same roommate made this delicious peach-and-crème-fraîche pie for our friend Denice’s birthday celebration yesterday, and when everyone had gone home there was still over half a pie left!

Which is why all I had to eat yesterday was brunch (at Pago in SLC) and pie. And more pie. Pie pie pie pie pie PIE. Which is why I feel extra-specially fantastic today, I’m sure.

You know, that thing where I agreed a month ago to work a closing shift but I forgot this morning and so I dragged myself out of bed and all the way to work only to find out I’m not supposed to be here for another couple of hours and I could have slept in?

Yes.

On my way to work I made the mistake of having a thought while still in my not-yet-awake, overtired, uncaffeinated state, which is always a bad idea for me. Because then that thought—or part of it—echoes in the hollow space inside my skull FOREVER, or until I get coffee and wake up, whichever comes first. Some mornings it’ll be a snippet of a song (“I can’t stop loving the MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop loving that MAAAAN of mine. I can’t stop…”). Other mornings it’ll just be a phrase, or a word (“Biblioteca. BiblioTECa. BIBILIOTECA. biblioteca.”). This morning it was “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça” (“why they would have done that,” in French). Not even a complete sentence. So I walked to the bus, accompanied by a regular refrain of “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi…” This got a bit boring and repetitive, so I mixed it up: “pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi ils auraient fait ça, pourquoi ils auraient fait cela, pourquoi…”

So you see why sleeping in might have been a good idea this morning.

[Note: I am aware that "Pourquoi ils auraient fait ça?" can be a complete sentence in French. You'll just have to trust me that the intonation of the phrase that repeated itself over and over and over in my head this morning ruled out that possibility.]

On Thursdays I work at ten o’clock am, which means—if I want eight hours of sleep, which, when don’t I?—I need to get to bed by one o’clock am. No problem.

Except I couldn’t sleep last night. Like, I tossed and turned and turned and tossed and, the sleep, IT DID NOT COME. Every hour I took breaks to check Twitter, blip songs, and ping the entire online world with updates on how awake and unhappy I was. And then I went back to tossing and turning. Until FOUR IN THE FREAKING MORNING OMG.

At nine this morning my alarm (i.e., my iPhone) went off. I apparently slept through seven minutes of that racket without twitching, although it did invade the dream I was having and eventually woke me up.

I somehow got up, got dressed, and got to the bus stop. Took the bus a few blocks. Got off, stopped in at Beans & Brews for a mochaccino and a scone to go, walked the four blocks to work.

There are a few things you need to know about Beans & Brews.

• Beans & Brews is a local Starbucks-like franchise coffeeshop chain, with seventeen locations, all in Salt Lake and Utah counties.
• Beans & Brews coffee is served boiling hot.
• Beans & Brews cardboard sleeves are the thinnest I have ever seen. Far too thin to protect your hand from the heat radiating from the boiling liquid. Like, PRAYER would be more effective than a Beans & Brews cardboard coffee cup sleeve.
• Beans & Brews coffee cup lids have tiny little sipping holes that are apparently specially designed for maximum ballistic efficiency. Beans & Brews lid + boiling Beans & Brews coffee + a normal walking pace = searing gobs of coffee and foam in your face, on your clothes and all over your belongings. Guaranteed!
• Beans & Brews pastry bags are so fragile that if you happen to drop your pastry while, say, juggling an iPhone, sunglasses and a lava-hot, foam-spitting cup of coffee, when you bend down to pick up the bag the paper will neatly split in two, depositing your scone on the filthy pavement.

Needless to say, I was not in a good mood when I finally made it to work. My hands and face were dotted with red boiling-coffee welts, my bag was covered in tan mochaccino foam, my scone (and its traitorous paper bag) was in a garbage can at the entrance to a municipal building, and I was so, so, SO TIRED. Also, fifteen minutes late. And I hate being late.

But the worst was when I got into work and discovered that, surprise! I wasn’t scheduled to come in this morning at all. Suck on THAT, me!

Since I did manage to suck down the majority of the boiling mochaccino, I’m blogging instead of going back to bed. I got enough of the fruitless tossing and turning last night/early this morning, thank you very much. Still not sure why I couldn’t sleep last night—I didn’t take any allergy medication, and the only coffee I had yesterday was a latte at lunch. It must have been the caffeine from the handfuls of bittersweet chocolate I ate yesterday evening, which wouldn’t usually have been a problem, but apparently I need to make a new rule: no chocolate after 3pm. God. My life, it is so hard.

I’ve been wretchedly bad at updating this blog lately. We’re coming to the end of the semester, and the amount of final projects I’m putting off is poisoning everything I do. Whether I’m reading a book or soaking in the tub or helping library patrons at work or watching TV or getting drunk at a party, there’s that niggling little itch in the back of my mind that says, “You should be doing homework! Stop having fun and work on your assignments!” It’s really cramping my style.

One of the first things that goes when I’m stressed, overtired or out of sorts is my creativity. Not only can I no longer write, I no long even feel the urge to, which is such a bizarre loss that it always catches me completely unprepared. Even worse, I become utterly uncreative and inflexible in my day-to-day life as well, which means I find it harder simply to deal with things. You might not realize how much creativity you use in making mundane decisions, but believe me, you’d miss it if it were gone. Suddenly my mind can only recognize a single way of doing things. In my head, every problem only has one solution, every interaction only one acceptable path to success, which makes dealing with library patrons—who are endlessly creative in thinking up ways to baffle and bemuse me when I’m at my best—almost impossible.

Well, hopefully the end of the semester will herald a brief period of peace, tranquility and (fingers crossed) creativity, before the summer term arrives to crush all my dreams again.

In the meantime, go have fun reading the archives of Mis/adventures in Bookland, where Suffering Silently blogs about dealing with bookstore customers in a small-town bookshop in Canada. I could swear some of her customers also visit my library.

Sorry there was no flash fiction yesterday like I promised. But yesterday was exciting, so there is a blog post! Expect a flash fiction piece next Friday. I promise I will keep my promise this time.

***

Yesterday afternoon I was getting ready to head off to the post office when someone rang our doorbell. It was a neighbor.

“You have a big water leak over here,” he said.

We walked to the side of the porch where the hose and spigot used to be, and where a geyser had now appeared. The spigot had apparently burst during a particularly hard freeze, and after a couple days of relatively warm weather had thawed enough to start spraying water all over the porch, the downstairs neighbors’ stairwell, and the yard.

“You’ve got to get that turned off fast,” the neighbor said. “Do you know where the main shutoff is?”

I did not, of course, know where the shutoff was, in the same way that I never know anything immediately useful. So I went back inside and woke up my roommate, Craig. It took a moment for me to break through his “slept through half the day” haze, but I eventually figured out that he didn’t know where the shutoff was either. So I phoned my landlady. Predictably, she was in class and unavailable, since it was the middle of the day on a weekday. I left a message in which I made it clear that the world was coming to an end at her rental property and we needed her help ASAP, goodbye. The neighbor and I searched the outside of the house for a shutoff and Craig searched our basement, but with no luck.

Looking at the geyser again, the neighbor pointed out that the water was running right around the foundation of the house, so he and I maneuvered two snow shovels in front of the geyser, to try and divert the flow out into the yard instead. I was completely soaked in freezing water in the process. But even after the river was somewhat diverted, we discovered that water was still finding its way through cracks in the cement and bubbling up in my downstair’s neighbors’ stairwell, where the drain was conveniently clogged, and a lake was forming.

I called the water department and asked them to come out right away and shut off the water by the street to keep the downstairs apartment from flooding. They came out very quickly, but even with a shovel, two probes and a metal detector, they couldn’t locate the water valve under the snow. As they searched, the water in the stairwell continued to rise until it was only an inch below the level of the doorsill.

At that point, we were out of options, so finally Craig broke and entered let himself into the downstairs apartment, searched their cupboards and closets and (miracle of miracles!) located the shutoff to that specific pipe, thus saving the day. Yay!

(The landlady has promised us chocolate for our troubles, by the way, and we’re going to hold her to it.)

I need an A this semester or I have a very real chance of a) losing my scholarship, b) having to repay said scholarship, to the tune of several thousand dollars, and c) getting kicked out of my low-rent library science program. Getting an A is not looking likely, and I am steeling myself for the worst.

But today I logged into the course website (aka WebCT, aka Blackboard, aka The Java Juggernaut of Death, aka That #%$&ing Piece of *#@$!) and discovered that the web design project, which I was supposed to have started sometime in October, but which I actually started a week and a half ago and submitted on Monday, had been graded. 100 out of 100. Giving me 40% of my grade. Or at least an F. It’s a start!

What with the constant background stress of procrastinated homework, the two feverish weeks of cramming, paper-writing and assignment-finishing, and the week where my landlord misplaced my rent check and I thought I was going to be turned out into the snowy streets to starve, I have been extremely, constantly, chronically stressed for at least the past two months. In fact, I didn’t realize how much that terrible class was weighing on me until suddenly it was over: the last assignment was turned in, the last stupid, endless exercise in mind-reading (i.e., multiple-choice quiz) was done, the last lame, kiss-ass comment was left in the course’s online forum. I might have a failing grade in the course, but it was DONE.

The next day at work, I was a changed man. I was patient and polite with patrons, even the trying ones. I listened to their inane blather difficulties, smiled at them, and told them to have a nice day.

It’s great to have my librarian mojo back. I wonder how long it’ll last.

Latest in the popular series “Things Patrons Do and Say that Annoy the Shit out of Me” is an episode that happened last night.

Presumptuous Patron: I have a pronunciation question for you.
Me: In which language?
PP: English. First, though—are you gay?
Me: …yes.
PP: I thought so. I work with a wonderful gay man. He’s happily partnered, though, so you can’t have him. [Cracks up at her own wit.]
Me: Oookay…
PP: When he is doing business, the way he pronounces his words, his preference isn’t obvious. When he talks with other gay men it is, but not at work.
Me: Um…
PP: Sometimes, when you talk, the way you pronounce things, your preference is really obvious.
Me: You know what? I’m not comfortable with this discussion.
PP: Well, do you want your preference to be obvious?
Me: I’m not comfortable with this discussion.
PP: All I’m saying is…
Me: I’m not comfortable with this discussion. [I walk away.]
PP: [Called after me] I didn’t mean to offend or make you angry!

This patron apparently had good intentions. She only meant to be helpful, after all! And of course she couldn’t know my history of repression, the years of trying and failing to pass as straight, to be straight, and how I finally came out of the closet and learned to accept myself for who I am. In short, she doesn’t know me—which is exactly why she shouldn’t have brought up the subject at all.

An hour later, I was watching the wonderful new Gus van Sant movie, MILK, in which Harvey Milk calls for all American gays and lesbians to come out of the closet, to stop hiding who they are, to make their presence known. The film is truly excellent, and timely as well: Milk’s main fight was against Prop 6, a referendum that would have allowed schools to fire gay teachers as well as those who supported gays or gay rights. Prop 6 failed, against all odds. Three weeks ago, we lost the fight against California’s Prop 8, in which a lot of the same rhetoric about “protecting the children” and “recruiting” and “teaching homosexuality in schools” returned to haunt us. Milk’s example is inspiring, and the movie reminds us never to stop fighting.

My name is Sean Tibbitts, and I am here to recruit you!

That I’m in contact with any of my old friends is a miracle—specifically a Facebook miracle. It’s thanks to Facebook that I’m still in touch with former roommates, former BYU friends, former dance partners, former fellow grad students, former coworkers, former professors and former boyfriends, as well as cousins, aunts, online acquaintances, fellow atheists, fellow ex-Mormons, fellow gays and so on and so forth.

I’m beginning to wonder if this is really a good thing. I just lost a friend, primarily because of what each of us has posted openly online (see the comments on this post). She is a practicing, faithful Mormon who supported Prop 8 and who opposes same-sex marriage because she believes homosexual sex is a sin. In fact, like many other Mormons and many fundamentalist Christians, she doesn’t even believe homosexuality exists, per se. She has written a great deal about her views on her blog.

I, on the other hand, am a confirmed atheist ex-Mormon gay man who believes the Mormon church is a man-made organization that is characterized by bigotry, lies and self-righteousness. I believe Proposition 8 was motivated by intolerance and deception and homophobia, and that the Mormon church bears a great deal of the blame for its passing. Just last weekend I participated in a protest against the Mormon church’s opposition to gay rights and support of Prop 8. I have also made no secret of any of these things on my blog.

So she found my blog and was horrified and upset by what she found here, and I found her blog and was horrified and upset in my turn. I wrote a blog post in which I speculated cynically about the true reasons behind the Mormon church and its members’ opposition to gay marriage. She wrote a hurtful comment in response, in which she questioned my integrity and called me bitter and closed-minded. I wrote a cold rebuttal, which I closed by stating that I didn’t feel much friendship for her anymore. She agreed.

Are there some former acquaintanceships that are worth preserving, at least for nostalgia’s sake, but which are too fragile to handle the constant barrage of truth and stream-of-consciousness honesty that accompany an online relationship? Would Summer and I still consider ourselves “friends” if neither of us had a blog and neither of us was on Facebook? Is it possible to preserve a friendship by willfully refusing to know the truth about another person?

Just a few years ago, Summer’s devotion to the Mormon church and opposition to same-sex marriage would have been things we had in common, not things that drove us apart or set us at odds. People change. Our ideas of what friendship is also change.

And then there is my family. I don’t really discuss these subjects with them, but I’m Facebook friends with several of my siblings, and I’ve seen their status updates and the causes they’ve joined. And I’m sure they’ve seen my statuses and notes and causes. How is it possible to preserve a relationship, knowing what we know about each other?

When I was growing up I was often called names. It kind of comes with the territory—I was effeminate, geeky, introverted, awkward, unattractive and unpopular, and terribly insecure about it all to boot. I was an easy target, so I was often targeted.

That was years ago, and I thought I was totally over it. This turns out not to be the case!

Yesterday a well-dressed, clean-cut man approached the reference desk and (in accented English) asked for books on Balzac in Spanish. From the first moment, his attitude was hostile, condescending, even contemptuous, and as I searched our database and failed to find any of the Spanish-language materials he was looking for, first on Balzac and then on the Marquis de Sade, his behavior descended to open mocking. When I asked him to please be more civil he (in an even worse tone) asked to see my manager. As I got up to find someone to talk to him, he continued to openly mock and ridicule me, so I informed him I would simply be calling security.

His response: “Yeah! Call them! Fucking maricón de mierda.”

Then, instead of waiting to speak with security, he got on the elevator, leaving me shaking, speechless and on the verge of tears.

This is the first time I’ve been called an actual nasty name at the library. Patrons have been rude, irrational, unreasonable, profane, angry and loud, but in the three years I’ve worked here, this is the first time anyone has descended to name-calling. And it really threw me. This is a complete cliché, but in the few minutes I had to deal with that patron it felt like I was suddenly that awkward, oily-faced fifteen-year-old again, and I was stammering and flushing and trembling and completely falling apart. Just like I used to.

In case you don’t know how to insult people in Spanish, “maricón” is (among other things) a homosexual slur. And once he used it, his earlier unexplained antipathy suddenly seemed very clear: He was rude to me because he realized I was gay. In fact, apparently he felt my being gay gave him license to be the most completely over-the-top asshole I’ve ever dealt with as an adult.

I’m feeling very off-balance right now. Since that encounter, I’ve been intensely aware at all times that I am a gay man and—while I’m not what I think of as flamboyant—it’s usually pretty obvious to people (even over the phone). When I interact with patrons now, I constantly wonder if they’ve figured it out, what they think, and whether they are going to take it as license to be rude or disrespectful. I haven’t felt this raw and vulnerable in a long time—again, probably not since I was a teenager.

Ugh. If I wanted to re-live my youth I would do what Dooce has done and post angsty teen-era journal entries for all the world to see.