How deceiving it looks from the outside.  So inviting and welcoming, but the moment you step inside, that bucolic facade disintegrates into a very bleak reality.  America's libraries, that free font of learning and adventure has turned into a flop house for the forgotten man and woman.


I'm not a snob or elitist yet I have found myself inwardly mouthing the words of Dickens' Scrooge, "Are there no work houses?" each time I walk into a library.  I spend a great deal of time in the library.  I've been an inveterate patron since I was six years old.  I use to enthusiastically attend Saturday afternoon children story hour, at the Bloomingdale branch, in my neighborhood in New York City.  However, gone are the carefree days of whiling away hours, tucked in some corner in a snug chair, reading about Charlotte's Web, Alice's Adventure or the Pilgrim's Progress.



Now when I go to one of the numerous branches in Los Angeles, I must gird my senses for the assaults they are bound to meet.  The first attack is on my sense of smell.  A day in the library, is not a day in the library unless my nostrils are usurped by smells of pee, musk oil masking pee, unwashed privates and hair, stale smoke, city soot on top of filthy bare feet, halatosis, and the comingling of all those rancid smells at once.

The next sense is sight.  I sit down to complete my novel or just peruse the various sites that amuse and interest me and my attention is diverted by someone dressed in every article of clothing they own or was donated to them, topped off by a beanie on their head with one of those rotating red streamers.  I test myself to see how long I can go without looking up at the Asian couple sporting dreads and clipping their toe nails.  Of course there are the regulars, like the woman who claims to be Amelia Earhart, wearing a XXX flight suit.



The third of my senses that's attacked, sound, is the most egregious offense because of my hypersensitivity to noise.  I can not stand noisy, chatty people.  So when I go the library and I hear people speaking loudly or playing something online so loud that I can hear it emanating from their ear phones, I become the most virulent shussher that ever lived.  If my shusshing doesn't quiet them, I enlist the aide of the librarian.  If that doesn't work, I insist the security guard gives them the boot.  Yes, I'm that person.  It used to go without saying that there was no talking in the library, not anymore.  It's bad enough I have to put up with rude sounds of flatulence, belching, snoring and the repugnant sound of phlegm and snot being snorted up or out, but an old N.W.A. video ta boot, that's just too much! 

NOISY EROGONIMIC KEYBOARD

The other day I was in the library seeking peace and solace, which I can only achieve after stuffing ear plugs in my ear and keeping my head down, when I heard a definite slapping/clicking/bumping noise.  What's that noise?  I looked about and found the culprit.  It was a woman who had an old keyboard that could only register type if it was slapped with her meaty digits.  That explained the loud slap and click but what about the pounding.  That came from the "erogonomically designed" keyboard resting on the woman's corpulent lap and bumping against the wooden table each time she moved in to type.  "It's annoying, stop it, use the keyboard on your laptop," I requested.  "I can't," she rejoined, "it gives me carpal tunnel."  I push in my ear plugs deeper, but the noise permeates like a cleaver.  I asked her again to refrain from using that infernal blast from the past keyboard.  She refuses.  I report her to the librarian, it's decided she should move to the children's section.  She leaves in a huff and a puff.

PHOTO TAKEN BEFORE I REPORTED HER

Don't get me wrong I feel for the homeless, the lonely, the anti-social and the forgotten; I'm certain I've been described as all four at some point in time, but even in those dejected states one can comport oneself with decorum; if not, at least migrate to the Beverly Hills library.  It offers so many advantages; it's spacious, comfy and has a wonderful air filter system, so foul odors don't linger and attack patrons like in the small Los Angeles libraries.  Why don't I encamp myself there?  Too many stuck up people.