Fun at the Halfway House

So I’m spending a lot of time at Santa Monica’s main public library these days, and it’s completely fascinating. It’s actually the temporary main library, because they’re building a shiny new one a few blocks from here that won’t be finished until next year. But that’s by the by. This is my sole experience of the public library system in the US, and if it’s anything to go by — which I admit it might not be, since Santa Monica is hardly yer average American burg — then they’re great places to go if you want reassurance that, however marginal you might feel in society sometimes, you’re pretty damn mainstream in comparison to some. I joke that it’s a bit like a halfway house for the clinically weird, but I’m only half joking. Sure, one of the lenses in my glasses has been held in place with blue tape for quite a few months now, but that scarcely figures on the oddball scale that the Santa Monica library has quite helpfully recalibrated for me.

I’ve been here enough to notice the regulars: the ones who come to be, rather than to do, and perhaps to snooze away a quiet afternoon. A hint of camouflage in their wardrobe sometimes, a shake in the hands, often lung complaints that have the delicate tinkle of emphysema, and some healthily invigorating conversations with themselves. And goodness knows my personal hygiene isn’t always one of my five-starred reviews, but there are smells here sometimes that ought to be captured for the benefit of medical science.

And then noise. This isn’t weird; it’s just me. The man sitting opposite me (delicate tinkle of emphysema: check) has a packet of cookies under the table that he’s reaching for every now and then. He’s not supposed to have them in here, and he knows that, because the act of taking out a cookie, eating it, and then putting back the packet is a careful ballet of pretending to be doing nothing at all. It’s like he’s a kid at school scoffing from a bag of sweets under his desk. But — and it’s a huge fucking great big but — the process of taking out and eating each cookie is currently driving me crazy. Confession: people-noise sometimes makes me nuts, particularly in places where I ought to be able to expect quiet: idiots talking in cinemas, gaggles of bright shiny undergraduates who go to university libraries specifically in order to map out their social engagements for the next two years.

And rustling. Paper bags. Sweet papers. Rustle rustle rustle. It makes me tense and occasionally homicidal. So what Mr. Emphysema is doing right now isn’t helping, because the long drawn out process of trying to extract each cookie as quietly as possible means that the rustling is maddeningly quiet — it’s a bit like a whisper in a quiet audience; its very quietness makes it louder — and also maddeningly extended. Just take the bloody cookie out quickly, stick it in your mouth and have done with it already. Jeez. And then there are the people who eat a chocolate bar (cf. burgers wrapped in paper) by painstakingly turning over a millimetre of the wrapping, nibbling away at the partially-revealed treat, and only then venturing to reveal another millimetre. Just take the bloody thing out of the wrapper and eat it already. Jeez. Yes, I know you’ll get chocolate on your pretty fingers. That’s life, I guess.

Okay, that’s enough for today. I’m starting to worry that Mr. Emphysema is currently blogging about all the weirdos in the Santa Monica public library, and especially this dork opposite with the blue tape on his glasses.