The quiet power of simple assertion

I discovered about two weeks ago that the local library allows people to rent "Quiet Rooms". Not "rent" per se, because they are free, available for up to two hours a day, and you can sign up for one a week in advance. The rooms are indeed quiet, come with electricity and best of all (and most distractingly) have free wi-fi access to the Internet.

So I've been taking advantage of all my tax dollars provide, and have been coming for a two-hour stint every day since then. Of course, there's been a visit to Houston in the middle of this, so it's only been about 5 visits so far, but so far so good. It is proving invaluable, even in this short period, to have a set time that I have to work on my writing, and to have a nice, well-lit space to work in, and to have time away from my desk at home, which offers many distractions, from unpaid bills, to cats who require coddling, and to children who require feeding or occasional yelling at. Or is it the children who get coddled and the cats who are yelled at?

Anyway, today is the first to present any wrinkles in my new-found work space.

The five quiet rooms are in a line on a single wall of the library. They are high-ceilinged, well-lit, narrow rooms with just enough space for a countertop desk across one wall and two desk chairs side by side. The door of every room is mostly glass -- a wise precaution these days, allowing people to be in quiet space, but not entirely private. (There's a piece to be written about "public privacy", but not today.) Room A is the most coveted because it is a little wider than the other rooms, allowing a bit more of that hard-to-get privacy. The counter is against one of the walls perpendicular to the door, so you can't be seen quite as easily by people passing by, yet you can have the windowed door in the periphery of your vision, whilst looking primarily at a blank wall. Three of the other four rooms require you to sit with your back to the door, a slightly spooky and vulnerable feeling. Room E, although the desk is similarly off to the side, isn't as wide a room, so you are directly in front of the full-length window in the door when you sit.

I had signed up for Room A today. There is a ten minute grace period on the sign-ups, and then, if no one has shown up for an assigned room, it's open season for anyone for the remainder of the sign-up period. I usually arrive at 9-1/2 minutes after the hour, puffing from the run from the car (I intend to walk to the library every day, but usually haven't time).

Today, I was crack on time for a change, but someone was sitting in Room A. Comme c'est, comme ca, I thought (wondering if that's how it's really spelled in French). Thinking that I'd rather not disturb someone if I didn't have to, I checked the signup book -- only Room C was officially open, and no one was sitting there. So, I lodged myself in Room C, thinking I could manage just as well in one room as any other. It didn't occur to me to sign up in the book for Room C at that point.

I pretty instantly fell into the Zone today, and set to work, deep in thought, ears plugged with earphones playing Sibelius' 7th Symphony.

Suddenly I have a guy standing behind me, telling me I'm over time and I have to get out. I had been working for only 20 minutes. It was startling -- I was in one of the rooms where your back is to the door, and with the music in my ears, I hadn't heard him open the door and have no idea how long he had stood there. He spoke, when I finally heard him through the violins, in a tone as if he had been repeating himself for a while, a little impatiently.

My interrupter is a short guy, with neatly clipped, short grizzled hair, wearing baggy jeans and a striped button-down shirt. Slung over his shoulder on a rope is a huge bulky something, the size of a bass cello, extending a good two feet above his head and down his back to his knees. The whole thing is wrapped in black garbage bags. The garbage bags may indicate he's homeless, but his clothes seem too clean.

His eyes... well, there's something weird about his eyes. If this were a book, I'd write that they are pale gray and shine, almost blank, but as if he were on the edge of violent incomprehension, just barely holding back. But this is real life, and I don't generally believe you see that sort of thing in people's eyes in real life. Perhaps I was merely reacting to the music, the end of the third movement, near the crescendo of the piece. All I know is that I did not want to mess with this fellow, standing there, hands at his side, black bagged thing on his back.

In 30 seconds I had gathered up my stuff and fled. At the sign-up book, I see that someone had written the initials "SJ" into the space for Room C, with an arrow from noon to 2, implying that he had signed up 20 minutes before he had arrived -- although when I had checked earlier, the book was blank. All of the other rooms were checked out, although Room A still showed "Vivi" (me), from noon to 2 p.m. However, at 12:20, I had officially lost my reservation. Finally I asked the librarian what the protocol was, and she said, if I had signed up for Room A and was here on time, then Room A is mine, and she walked over to kick out whoever was there.

Turns out, the room was already empty. With relief, I stepped in, closing the door against the eyes of my interrupter, who still stood in the aisle in front of Room C, just watching me. I breathed in a big sigh of relief, which was a mistake -- the room stank, strangulatingly. Body odor, definitely, but there was also something that smelled like old soft warm cheese, without a hint of mold. At least, I really hope it's old cheese, not all body odor, because I don't want to think about what part of the body, or effluents from the body, produced this stench. Whoever was here before hasn't showered in a long while -- another homeless person, apparently. Or, possibly he was a person with a sophisticated palate for what to bring to eat at the library on a Saturday morning, but I doubt it.

After 15 seconds of literally breathless indecision, I gave up and packed my things to leave. The stink was really oppressive. But I thought of that guy's pale eyes, and the way he stood, kind of expectantly, watching me. He enjoyed kicking me out of the other room. In fact, I'm sure he knew this room was stinky and -- because it was the only open room -- that I'd have to work in it if I wanted a quiet room. That is, I'd be here instead of him, because, according to the rules, since "Vivi" hadn't shown up to take Room A, he could have sat in this room instead of kicking me out of Room C.

So instead, I determined not to give in to the creepy creeps of the world. I sat down, started mouth-breathing, and wrote this entry. The air is clearing now (it's been an hour now, and I've had the door propped open) although there's still a faint sourness to it. I've learned: when you squat in another room, write your name on the reservations list -- and check even your assigned room to make sure it's breathable before you commit.

This is the second time this week that I've had someone take advantage of my own easy-goingness. If I had kicked out the person from Room A originally, I would have encountered the stink early enough to swap myself over to Room C (and if I had done it formally, it might have occurred to me to sign up for Room C on the spot). But I didn't, because I didn't want to disturb someone at work if I didn't need to.

The other time, the situation was a little different -- on the flight to Houston, I was assigned to a window seat, which I had been looking forward to. But when I got into the plane, a man was sitting there, with a woman next to him. He off-handedly told me he had the aisle seat, implying the question of whether he could keep the window, and he made no move to change seats, as people usually do when caught in a seat not assigned to them. At the moment, I was mostly concerned with figuring out where to stow my luggage -- the bag I was carrying is too big to fit under the seat and the overhead bins were full -- so I absent-mindedly complied.

We didn't have a bad flight, but I didn't get to look out the window even from a distance (he shut the shade immediately), and on top of that, he and his wife were grousers. They didn't talk to me (thank goodness) but they did complain to each other throughout the flight about everything, gave lip to the flight assistant, and generally did not give the impression of people who were respectful or caring about other people.

My knee jerk principle that it's best to leave people where they are, not to disturb them because they have as much right to be there as I do -- but this seems to have put me on the butt end of things, twice now. I wouldn't mind if I had a sense that the people who took advantage of me had the same chances of occasionally being on the butt end of things, too -- but my sense is that, no, these are people who take advantage of other people's sense of decency and respect, without sharing it.

It's a lesson I've learned before, and apparently forgotten and need to relearn: to assert myself, even when no assertion is genuinely needed (that is, I still got to Houston, comfortably, and I'm still getting my writing time, just with a little more mouth-breathing than usual). It doesn't hurt anyone, and it may make things a little better for me.

(As said by someone wittier than me, this entry would have been shorter, but I ran out of time.)