Boulevard Park Library is a fine facility. I’m there once a week or so, and never had any issues, until yesterday.
There’s only one restroom, unisex. I’d used it when I first got there, and then again an hour and a half later. An hour and a half after that, I was ready to leave. My ride home on the bus takes twenty minutes, so I wanted to pee again, before leaving.
The restroom door was open, but a mop had been tilted diagonally across the doorjamb, so nobody could enter. Which meant the restroom was being cleaned, I assumed, so I put off peeing. It wasn’t an emergency.
I answered a few more emails, and when I looked up ten minutes later, the mop was still propped across the doorjamb. I looked longer this time, but nothing seemed to be going on inside the restroom. Nobody was in there, cleaning it. Hmmm. Maybe someone had been cleaning it, they’re in the middle of the task, but they stepped away to get more Ajax or whatever?
So I went back to the internet access I’d come for, but soon my day at the library felt finished. I packed my laptop into my bag, but still needed to pee before leaving. And yet, the mop blocked the restroom doorway.
Carrying my bag, I walked to the mop at the door, peered inside, and saw nobody. The restroom is directly in front of the librarian’s desk, so I asked her, “Is the restroom closed?”
“It’s being cleaned,” she said, but it wasn’t being cleaned.
“There’s nobody cleaning the restroom, and I gotta pee.”
“I think Jerry [Jeri?] stepped away,” she said.
“Is there another restroom?”
“Jerry will be back in a minute, I’m sure.”
“I’ve been looking at that mop blocking the door for twenty minutes, ma’am, and I’m old,” I said. “When I gotta pee, I gotta pee — and I gotta pee.”
Which wasn’t strictly true. My need to pee was a preventative measure. Soon as I walk out the library door, cross the street, and stand in the bus stop, I’ll need to pee, if I haven’t peed at the library first.
“Well,” she said, “if you gotta, you gotta,” and she gave a one-shoulder shrug, so I lifted the mop out of the doorjamb and carried it into the restroom.
“Hey, the restroom is closed for cleaning!” came a shout from the other end of the library, from Jerry, I assume (not Jeri). He shouted at me, in the library. What ever happened to Shush?
I ignored him, closed and locked the door, and peed. Then I flushed the toilet, because I’m a gentleman, and washed my hands, not because I care about hygiene but because I knew Jerry and/or the librarian would be outside the door, listening.
When I came out, the librarian paid me no never-mind, to her credit, but Jerry wanted to scold me for peeing in his unclean bathroom (which, by the way, seemed perfectly clean). He said something to me, but it wasn’t apologetic so I wasn’t listening. I left.
Probably I’m not going back to the Boulevard Park Library next Tuesday. I don’t like to be as memorable as yesterday made me.
Also, fuck you, Jerry.
7/6/2022
Republished 11/7/2025
Leave a Reply