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Diary
Date: Tuesday January 1st, 2002
First
day of a new year; beginning of the third
day as prisoner to my own
desires.
The
first thing I did when I arrived at the
library today was rush to my office and
check my email. As the screen opened I
quickly shed my clothes, undressing
completely as I had done a number of times
in the past couple of days. So far I've
only ever stripped naked when I've been
alone in the building; the front door
locked; no real chance of being caught. I
was thinking about Mike and how his
demands would become more challenging when
some new email caught my attention.
I could
barely contain my excitement when I saw
Kevan's name alongside his response to
mail I'd sent to him last night. New Year
Resolutions I'd called it. In it I invited
him to join Mike in blackmailing me and he
accepted. I was thrilled! Now there was
two men who'd be making demands of me. I
couldn't get the leather cuffs I'd brought
in from home on my ankles and wrists fast
enough.
The
silky smooth fur of the cuff linings felt
sensuous against the skin of my wrists and
ankles. I daydreamed for a while about my
two blackmailers. Be careful what you wish
for or so the saying goes. I could feel
the time fast approaching when my boss
Jeff was going to find out about me. It
was therefore a matter or urgency that I
kept my fantasies in check and revealed
some real life facts about the building
and people where I work. I composed the
following note for Mike and Kevan.
The
library where I work is a single level old
brick building built sometime in the early
1930s; solid, imposing entrance; silver
frosted glass on the front doors gold
embossed with a sort of crest/shield
design. There are no windows except for
two long ones either side of the main
front entrance. These, like the front
doors, are painted with silver frost to
keep the harsh California sunshine off the
rare and valuable books inside. The
building itself is quite narrow across the
front (maybe 20 feet) but it runs the full
depth of the city block; 80 feet or
so.
Walking
inside through the main entrance you first
arrive at a small reception area. On a
normal day you'd be met here by Sylvia,
who isn't only the receptionist; she has a
degree herself in book restoration and
conservation and the receptionist duties
are done on a rotational basis by most of
us who work there. Sylvia is in her late
20s, quite a large girl, with a sense of
humor that leads me to think she's got
quite a streak of Dominatrix in
her.
To the
left of the reception counter is Jeff's
office, mine, a small lunch room and then
a large, long room running right down to
the back of the building. This room
doubles as a staff common room for all of
the staff as well as a photocopy room and
book conservation area. At the back of
this room you'll also find the male and
female washrooms; each nothing more than a
small room with a single cubicle. Next to
the washrooms is a storeroom and inside
it, a tiny cleaner's room with a mop,
bucket and broom, and so on.
Moving
back out of the common room there's a
passage way which runs between the common
room and rows of shelves and leads to a
fire escape door at the back of the
building. This door leads outside to a
courtyard, or so the rumor goes. Nobody
has ever opened the door since I've worked
there but it's believed the small,
high-fenced yard on the other side of this
door encircles a courtyard that is
overgrown with a jungle of vines and other
wild-growing trees and shrubs.
The rows
of shelves fill approximately half the
building and are as high as the ceiling,
which is about fifteen or sixteen feet
high. In the front half of the building,
between the shelves at the back and the
reception counter at the front, is a large
open space with a number of large, old oak
tables. Hidden away in the front corner,
directly opposite Jeff's office, is a
small cluster of booths containing
computer terminals.
It's not
a lending library; more of a specialist
reference library visited by academics
mostly. There's a full time staff of six
including me and a part time maintenance
man who spends most of his time reading
newspapers and drinking the staff's coffee
in the common room. His name is Steve and
he's a big, bearded bear of a man in his
late 40s. Most of the staff treat him with
a sort of disdain (he's not overly
educated) but he's always nice to me so I
don't have a problem with him.
Of the
other staff, Sylvia I've already mentioned
and I expect you'll all get to meet Jeff
soon enough. The three others in order of
age from youngest (40-something) to oldest
(50-something) are Michael, Andrew and
Aleistair. I'm not as young as Sylvia but
these three men all treat me in a
playfully friendly way like I'm the
youngest sister to everybody at work.
Michael and Andrew spend most of their
work days away from the building
collecting and delivering things to our
clients - universities and colleges
mostly.
Well,
that's the tour of the building and a
brief introduction to the people I work
with. Opening hours are 10am to 4pm Monday
to Friday, although most of us begin work
at 8.30am and finish at 4.30pm and
occasionally (like me last Sunday) some of
us might come in on Saturday or Sunday
although we're not paid any overtime if we
do. Steve the maintenance man is the only
staff member who regularly works
Saturdays. Not sure exactly of his hours -
maybe 8am to noon? He comes in on
Saturdays to do the noisy work that can't
be done during normal opening hours.
Polishing the linoleum floor in the staff
common room, for example.
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