Lady Librarian

There’s a woman on my mind.

The most essential goal of my life right now is to be emotional stable—for long periods of time—perhaps forever. I’ve done an excellent job so far this summer. However, there’s a woman on my mind. So how to deal with this? I read lots of AfterEllen posts which say—Oh, there’s this girl. XYandZ happened. Does this mean she likes me? I’ve never felt this way before. Also, ABandC happened recently. Why is she giving me mixed signals? What should I do? I never reply to these posts, but I often think that there are two clear options—you either pursue her or you don’t pursue her. You either decide to sit down and have a heart to heart chat or you don’t. In my situation, the clear option right now is I don’t pursue and I ignore. If there are unclear signals, then I decide that it’s all in my imagination and go from there. Too many times in the past, I interpreted something incorrectly and . . . let’s ignore the Romantic Tragedies of My Life, shall we?

I don’t have the Flirting Gene. Instead, I have the Awkward Conversationalist Gene. Many times, when involved in a conversation, I purposefully say something really stupid or weird. To spice up the conversation. Very detrimental. In contrast, when someone flirts with me, I clam up and stare. I know the rule is that when someone flirts with you, you flirt back. However, I have a very slow brain. It takes me at least a minute to understand a joke. My sister can attest to this fact. Flirting, I understand, require immediate and correctly coy responses. I am incapable of this! Hence, I will not pretend that there’s anything going on.

Now that I’ve made it clear to myself what I will and will not do, then I will now proceed carefully to unburden my mind.

I tutor at the public library in the children’s section. I often see a certain librarian. She has short black hair, waving off of her forehead, deep set gray eyes, and a voluptuous figure. Her skin is so white—like cream? –like ivory? She usually wears a long sleeved black shirt and black pants—which goes well with her white, flawless skin.

I don’t know her name, her age, her marital status, her sexuality. Henceforth in this blog, I dub her Lady Librarian. I have tutored for five years, and so I’ve seen her once in a while. This summer, I am tutoring Monday to Wednesday, and when I decided to tutor, one of the chief attractions was seeing her. I think—since I want to settle in this town, I can look forward to seeing her for years and years to come. I will stop tutoring someday and settle into a job, but I am a ferocious reader, and as long as she works at the children’s desk, I will see her, since I read lots of YA literature.

There are certain people, who—when I see them, make me feel happy and safe—simply because they are who they are. I like to memorize people—to write about them, to sketch them, to think about them, and I’ve spent lots of time thinking about Lady Librarian. I don’t know anything about her. Is that a chief attraction? Possibly yes, since everything is in my imagination. Everything is possible. She could be everything.

Here’s what I want—if not to pursue her. I want to have a nice conversation with her. I want to be able to see her, say hello, ask her how her day is going, and go from there. I want to slowly get to know her. She enjoys talking to people. One of my favorite things to watch is Lady Librarian strolling among the shelves. When a child asks for a book, she strolls purposefully to the shelves. I’ve watched her countless times. I have no qualms about watching her, because how can she notice little me sitting at my tutoring table? She strolls back and forth, picking books up, pushing in chairs. Once, I dropped my pen, forgot about it because I was busy tutoring, and she strolled by, knelt, picked my pen up, and placed it next to my hand. Now, if I were a quick thinker, I would have looked up and said thanks. The perfect thing to have done could have been to lay my hand gently, briefly on hers.

However, what happens usually is that I ignore her. If she is walking behind me, I don’t turn around and say hello. I pick up my pace. There were many, many times when I could have glanced up or stopped for a moment as I passed her station, and said hello. It doesn’t have to go anywhere, I could simply say hello, smile, and keep walking. There have been a handful of times when she engaged me in conversation, and I always messed it up. Always said something stupid.

Yep, so that’s one of my goals this summer—act normally with Lady Librarian.