Friday, October 8, 2010

Blushing over Library Books


Do you know what I hate?
Returning library books late, knowing that the next time I'll have to go in, look a librarian in the eye and fess up to returning said book late, to pay my fine.

Do you know what I hate even more than that?
When that library book is a romance novel with a ridiculous title.

I can count on both hands the number of times I've actually checked out a romance novel from my library. It usually happens when I'm either (a)reallllly depressed about something or (b)have the flu. I'm not entirely sure what it says about my personality that a bottle of gatorade, a box of saltines, and the verbal equivalent of someone's throbbing something-or-other is what buoy's my moods...nor am I honestly sure it means anything...but I bet Myers-Briggs would have a thing or two to say about it.

And do you know what else I occasionally ponder? Why is it that the cerebral incarnation of porn always, and I mean always ends in some medieval marriage or life-mating or some sort of ridiculousness? Have we really not traveled the landscape of sexual equality far enough to have these novels include sex for sex's sake? Or am I just reading the wrong books?

Regardless, I still had to hang my head in shame in front of Vivian the Librarian at the downtown imcpl earlier this week when I shuffled up to the desk to pay my $2.25 fine for returning "I Kissed an Earl" two weeks late. I vaguely made eye contact with the fuse box cover just over Viv's left shoulder when she read off the other books I still had checked out on my card (such gems as "To Dare a Duke" and "The Wicked Wickerleys").

Why can't I take ownership of these books? Why can't I make my way to the checkout counter without the covers turned upside-down on the top of my pile of books, half-naked men and partially unclothed slutty demi-mondes hiding under The Purse Makers Bible? Ehh...Probably for the same reason that I still feel a little flushed when I buy a pack of condoms or a box of tampons at the drug store. I just can't help it. It's my natural instinct, despite all the forced bravado, to be embarrassed about sex and the inner workings of my own twisted mind... Go Figure.



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