captionstojerkby: When I first took the work-study job at the library, I had definite ideas of what

captionstojerkby: When I first took the work-study job at the library, I had definite ideas of what I expected librarians to be like – ideas that tended to complicated stereotypes about bookishness and awkwardness and quietness that, for all their complication, would track neatly with an easier metric like, say, number of cats owned. Like all caricatures, though, it turned out they were so exaggerated as to be just plain wrong – and not just because, as Stacy (the other work-study student) and I agreed, he was, for all his disdain, unexpectedly, unaccountably hot. He was in fact quiet, though. Even though he never actually shushed me, even though he didn’t wear horn-rimmed glasses that he could have perched at the end of his nose as he brought his finger to his lips, he was quiet, and he enforced a like quiet throughout the library under his supervision with a hierarchy of increasingly disapproving but somehow apathetic stares that made you go quiet not because you didn’t want to displease him, but because you wanted to – well. Please him. Which was – whatever, right? It wasn’t even the main stacks; it was the Scandinavian Studies library, for fuck’s sake, tucked up at the top of Arnnurson Hall – one floor of old wood shelves filled with even older books of nineteenth century Danish poetry and shit. We got maybe, at the absolute most, five visitors per day, since the profs and grad students (and who the fuck else is gonna need something out of the Scandinavian Studies library?) could get books delivered to their offices if they weren’t in a rush. So after the three days I spent training in under Stacy, the other work-study student, my Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays were spent alone, and quiet, and – since the Scandinavian Studies library maintained its own catalogue and so the old computer at the circulation desk wasn’t even networked – bored out of my freaking mind. Not technically alone: he was there, too, never even acknowledging my existence unless I fucked up. So the first time it happened, on a Tuesday, I guess I might have been glad for the excitement. “Excitement” isn’t the word, I guess, but I was sure as hell glad to have something to do, even if that something was to go through two carts of musty old books – he said a professor had finished a project, or cleaned out her office, or something – and look them up one by one (no barcode scanners for the pure bibliophiles in Arnnurson) and then try to figure out where exactly in the maze of other seemingly-identical brown-covered volumes they were supposed to go. It was a big project, and difficult if you don’t, say, know what you’re doing. And even more difficult if you have a supervisor, someone who does actually know what they’re doing, who – according to Stacy – almost finished PhD in this shit, but who refuses to help you. And even more difficult if you’re also weirded out by the fact that it’s not like he can’t help you because he’s busy doing something else – the only he is doing, after weeks of ignoring you, is standing there, arms crossed, silently watching you walk back and forth across the polished wood floor shelving books. Wednesday morning I come in, and the carts are full again, with a note on top in his crisp, neat, precisely-looped handwriting: “Re-shelve these, please.”  On Thursday, there’s no “please.” On Saturday, there are four carts. I’m two hours into the task before I realize it, before I think that the book I’m trying to find in the antiquated system is maybe sort of familiar, that even though I don’t read one lick of Norwegian I recognize the title, the binding, the feel of it in my hand: I recognize it because I’ve already re-shelved it. Three times. I look up at him, tilting my head in a question I can’t quite bring myself to ask, partly because I’ve been conditioned not to break his silence, partly because my mouth has suddenly gone dry. He’s leaning against a low bookcase – Icelandic Reference – hands in his pockets, face inscrutable, eyes trained on me. I furrow my brow, look down at the book, over at the carts – which I now realize are full of books I’d re-shelved on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday, and that sure as hell weren’t really all pulled off the shelves for Important Scandinavian Research Purposes on Friday afternoon – and then back at him. He nods, once, slowly, and my confusion skips right past anger into something else. Something knotted deep in the pit of my stomach, that feels a lot like confusion, that feels a lot like fear, that feels a lot like an awful realization, but that I hope is maybe something else. It’s not until I stand up that I realize that I’m hard. I don’t need to look down to know that my dick is cutting a thick, arcing line underneath my jeans; I can feel the tight denim pressing down on to it, holding it tight against my thigh, tighter and firmer than a hand would. I look back down at the book, at the computer screen, and see (and remember) where the book’s supposed to go. I step out from behind the circulation desk, and there isn’t a moment when I consider holding the book down in front of my crotch because, honestly, that’s not what’s obscene about the situation. I walk past him, the old oak floorboards creaking under my shoes, his eyes turning to track me, to follow me, and I can feel the the way my jeans are gripping my shifting ass as I slowly put one foot in front of the other, and the way my pink t is bunched up in the back, up around my waist. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I’m over by the shelf where the book belongs, in this dark corner tucked away from the door and from the floor-length windows that look out down over the quad; I don’t exhale until I’ve slid it home in the space between two thick, fox-edged hardbacks. Afterward I just stay standing there, facing the shelf, head down, hands hanging loosely at my sides, worrying a floorboard with the outside edge of my sneaker.  And I don’t know why that is, why it is that I’m not even moving or anything, until I hear the sound of his footsteps behind me. -- source link

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