I used to be that dork who worked at the circulation desk of the campus library while a student at Brown. This meant I checked in and out the books needed by my fellow studious students and faculty. I worked the midnight hour shifts, which was great because we had minimal supervision, although it’s not as if we could get into that much trouble. We were in a library after all and I liked books. However I would occasionally take my 30 minute break by sprinting over to a local bar to meet a few friends and drink as much $2 beer as I could, then I would dash back for the last hour or so of my shift looking a little more jolly than I was before the break.
The evening supervisor was this incredibly sweet, warm, older librarian who would chat with us about her then-new PT Cruiser. I became good friends with nigh time security guard. He educated me on massively multiplayer online games that he was obsessed with.
Some shifts, my fellow library circulation work-study mates and I would wear “silly hats” the entire evening to amuse ourselves: He in a Russian faux-fur hat, me in a straw cowboy hat. I think we were the only ones who found it hysterical. One of the girls I shared shifts with for a couple years recently became pregnant.
One quiet night, a girl I always admired from afar approached me while I sat behind the circulation counter. She was that girl we all knew in college: perfectly gorgeous, dressed like she stepped out of a fashion magazine, wealthy, and spoke four different languages. She stood in front of me holding what we in the Brown library business called an “oversize art book,” which could not be checked out and could only be viewed inside the library. In a well practiced voice and look (ah, those eyes!) that was one-half flirtatious, one-half pleading, and underscored by a sureness that I would do her bidding, she asked if I could bend the rules and check out this book to her as a “favor” because it was an “emergency” and she would “return it the very next day.” I’ve always regretted my decision. What do you think it was?
Why am I talking about this boring library stuff? Oh yeah, it’s because Perfumer Christopher Brosius makes a scent that makes you smell like a library.
