Ajay, a fine Southern lady of color, with a master’s degree in library science, and also my former roommate, fled Baltimore this time last year in the wake of the riots and the ongoing purge. Her rental was on the battlefront and she could not stand having the BPD chopper over her flat, pouring its spotlight in through her curtained window as hoodrats fled the popo past her condo. What was worse, was her job as a Baltimore City librarian was closer to being an adult daycare operator than to anything she had spent a lifetime in school for, such as being the caretaker of a portion of humanity’s brain trust.

I cannot reveal the East Dindustan City Ajay landed a job in, only to say that it is not nearly as bad a place as Baltimore, and that it has been targeted for ghettoization, which has put her, as a librarian, on the front line. Here she goes with a brief summary of her job description as assistant branch manager, in her new hometown, which I shall call Yotopia.

“It is not as dangerous as Baltimore. The people are not as violent—thank God. Yotopia is simultaneously being re-gentrified and importing addicts. My facility is part of a “new look initiative” for the city and we are busy making it look presentable for the rich white people. The crazy thing about a public library is that we have two kinds of patrons, the literate old money and the illiterate poor.

“The specific problem in Baltimore was teenage hoodlums whose mothers dropped them off as a free, unscheduled day care appointment, and who would then come back and threaten to beat you up—even fight the police—if you put their child out for disturbing the environment with their fist fights, pornography, rap music and obnoxious, loud swearing.

“At least here I have an on-duty uniformed police officer rather than a worthless rent-a-cop. But it would be nice if we had experienced cops. Unfortunately, they assign graduating cadets to the library as a training post. In that respect I am acting as a police training officer, as I am supposed to take the lead with interactions—the light touch policy. The Board of Directors does not want Mrs. Isenberg to have her reading of the latest novel disturbed by Officer So-in-so beating the shit out a homeless addict, or some welfare mamma arguing about her inalienable right to house her noxious—never-should-have-been-hatched—brood in the public library.

“You would love my boss. She does not know her job and depends on me for all necessary library science matters, as well as for actually abiding by policy in maintaining the facility, which is the major portion of the job. She’s milk chocolate, pretty, plenty of firm boobage, a small waste and plenty of butt—all jammed into something too damned tight for business casual, perfect for breeding an offensive backfield, I suppose. She told me straight up that I was running the place while she wrote her first novel. She even has me go into her wallet and get her card and make bank trips for her. She calls me “Goodie-goodie,” I suppose because I’m the first black person she has known who hasn’t stolen from her. It’s like she’s a queen and I’m her handmaiden, totally unprofessional on her end, with a swear word emerging from her mouth at least once in every sentence.

“So, while she’s writing the great American novel, I’m supervising the cleaning of homeless urine and feces and the resulting stains, off of the walls and sidewalks of the building, trimming back the bushes so that they cannot be used for primate nesting. Some organization is using the Trailways bus company to ship busloads of these homeless people and drug addicts to the gas station across the street. The bus line simply ends at the gas station! Maybe it is some other, more far gone, city, shipping their problems to us. Right now I’m speaking with the city maintenance people about re-bolting the toilets in the restrooms to the floor. We have junkies and needles all over the place. The police officers makes bathroom checks to make sure these people are not hiding in there shooting up, so they look under the stall for feet, consequently the junkies squat on the seats and this has unanchored the commodes from the floor.

“Oh, I am so glad I went into debt and spent four years becoming a master of library science so that I might charge late fees for DVDs and maintain a heroin shooting gallery and homeless latrine! Still, I keep reminding myself, it could be worse—I could be back in Baltimore!”