Diary Date: Tuesday January 1st, 2002

(c)2005 kinkabella@gmail.com
http://slave802120.blogspot.com

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 for new 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 see Sylvia sitting here. She 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 that stores mops, buckets, detergents, and so on.

Moving back out of the common room there's a passageway that 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. There is 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 regards 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 working 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. 

