This is the first time I’ve been to the Los Angeles Central Library. This is the first time I have been wrecked out of my mind and in public in quite some time. I, an avid cannabis user, am usually accustomed to this. But today, for some reason, I am frightened. I am high school high. I am ‘is that mirror a portal?’ high.
We exit the parking structure and make our way to the Flower St. entrance. It is beautiful outside and the steps leading up to the entrance are quiet and soothing. My heavy feet clomp in concert with the lapping of fountain to my left. This is the calm before my storm.
The second we step into the library I am lost. I am dumbfounded by the size and the arresting design. I’m a big fan of architecture and I am a big fan of being in big buildings. This building is too big. This is gargantuan. The ceilings hover above me with condescending eyes. The building knows I am stoned and the building is unforgiving. I exist inside of its heart. I have to respect this. I am too tiny to not respect this.
Alex needs to renew his library card and I need to urinate. More specifically, I need to locate the bathroom and I can barely stand. A particular fear has set in, which is similar to but not the same as ‘The Fear’ Tess Lynch once so deftly described, that makes me positively certain I will soon unstick from what I know as reality. I hazily walk past three information desks that seem to actually be turrets, manned by bespectacled wizards, craning their bearded necks, up from massive books, books of names, long lists of names, for what? I bet my name is in that book. Don’t let them see you. They’ll recognize you from the book.
The main veins of the library are too crowded and bright and pulsing with too many types of strange. I duck into a quiet study area following hazily a picture of a man on woman symbolizing that yes, I indeed have found the restroom. I have found my sanctuary. I can finally breathe.
I enter the bathroom to find a leering Red Skelton licking his teeth at me in the corner. His trenchcoat, the color of Gerber peas and infant feces, scrapes the puddled tile floor, his sailor’s hat slits his face horizontally, his cloudy eyes just barely sneaking out beneath the brim to scan me. He stares at the empty urinals now, guiding me towards them, as if to silently cackle: all yours.
This is the longest pee of my life. I’m forcing the liquid out of me at a speed that in no way can be safe for my genitals. Now, Red is rooting around in his coat pockets. He’s making a low noise and searching for something. Half of me is convinced he is masturbating and all of me is convinced he’s locating a blade. A tiny, fleeting voice of logic tries to tell me that I will not be stabbed and ejaculated on in a public library at 3 PM on a Friday but the marijuana quickly changes that voice’s mind. I shake and run out finishing the last button on my fly as I stumble back into the heavy quite of the study room.
But that spooky silence is immediately broken by two grown adults screaming the word ‘fuck’ at each other. A crowd of library employees hover over two men accusing each other of watching their computer screens, hands in each other’s faces, and those faces, which are being stretched and pinned to the ground in ghoulish wax, gnarled teeth and angry eyes saying ‘fuck you, no fuck you, you fuck’ over and over and over again.
I run-walk like someone with a physical disability until I make it out of the room and take off down the escalators because I don’t know where I am going and anywhere is better than in there. But have you been to this library, Angelinos? Have you descended by the turquoise marble pillars into what feels like the depths of Hell? What must be thousands of feet beneath the earth (thousands! Surely an accurate estimate!), what must be a dungeon, what must be a holding area for addicts and murderers, or maybe just the social sciences room…
Alex finds me and I sober up a bit, now that I have my anchor. But you know what? I like that fear, sometimes. I like the feeling of existing in some other world. Because what should have been an easy 2 minute walk to the bathroom in the library turned into a fever-dream adventure for twenty minutes. I guess people who don’t do drugs have their health and a different type of sanity. But they don’t have ghouls in bathroom stalls. And I like ghouls. I really like ghouls.
(Source: lieslieslies)
