7:40 am. I get on from the basement, a cup of coffee in hand necessitated by the indecorous hour. The seam in the paper cup creates a tiny gap between the lip and the lid through which hot coffee drips with stunning regularity, pooling in the indentation between my thumb and forefinger. The ride to the fifth floor is interminable.
11:55 am. Loopy and distracted after two hours of teaching, I get on from the first floor. A pear-shaped girl in lesbian shoes pretends to glance around her looking for the stairwell. When the car’s arrival dings, she fauxpologizes, "I’m only going to two." In my pocket, the track advances to "Baby Got Back."
12:03 pm. As I negotiate two armsful of books wondering how I will hit the down button, the film school’s new hire strides past, makes eye contact, passes by. He is a yankee, I remember. The wait for the car back down to the first floor extends as, in a Proustian moment of reflection, I test myself to see whether I can name all 14 of the books in the stack I am carrying. I can’t. I curse the library’s in-person-renewal policy.
12:21 pm. On the way back, I think if I had the board-flat torso of a twelve-year-old boy the books would balance better. Instead they want to tip off the top, so I walk swaybacked. Two lunching ladies join me at the first floor. They do not select a number. My overcooked noodle of an arm can’t help them. Two obvious freshmen get in on the third floor, thinking we are going down. The ride is interminable.
Raveling Out 
“The seam in the paper cup creates a tiny gap between the lip and the lid through which hot coffee drips with stunning regularity”
I fucking HATE that. Engineers should be working on that 24/7.
Did you get where you were going ?
what, exactly, are lesbian shoes? i hope they are made from the tanned hides of lesbians…
my grandfather calls birkenstocks lesbian shoes. my grandmother tells him to shut up, fred. i think she was secretly worried that i was a lesbian and would be mortified. after all, jesus, look at those shoes!
Flog–I know! Gah! Getting a cup that leaks like that basically ruins the entire day. I do not think I am being overly sensitive on this issue.
Patrick–Not really. I am still stuck in that elevator car, at least metaphorically speaking.
Mel–In this case they were Tevas. Pretty much any sporty-type sandal qualifies. It’s double bad if a person is wearing them with socks and/or on a cold, gray, miserable, rainy day such as today. Put on some proper SHOES, is all I am saying. Your grandparents are hilarious, by the way.
How, exactly, can an arm resemble an overcooked noodle?
In other notes:
FLOG: I spent my graduate physics thesis working to fix that coffee cup problem. The problem is absolutely intractable. INTRACTABLE I tell you!!! (insert insane cackling here)
My shoes are lesbians, I find them humping all the time.
It was really my bicep that felt like a noodle, from carrying the books all over creation. I am not as tough as I should be for this line of work, apparently.
Also, can we get a think-tank or something on the drip issue?
T–do you film them? I’m sure there must be a niche for that; you could make oodles of dough on the internets!
How on earth did you manage to write all those notes while you were holding the books?