The Reminiscences of Mitch the Doorman
What follows are the adventures of our hero, currently employed as a doorman at the Doppelganger Hotel in New York City. Some of these tales my strain the bounds of your credulity, dear reader, but rest assured that I have faithfully recorded them from Mitch himself. My original intent was to present these in chronological order. I finally relinquished this idea as to know Mitch is to come to a whole new understanding of time as it would exist in a world without days, years, or any means of measuring time and it's passing. In fact, any appreciable time spent with Mitch will give you insight to the possibilities of parallel existence. As an early example let us consider the circumstances of Mitch's birth.
Many bastards proudly point to who their parents are, one, at least, being famous. Others will loudly proclaim the name of their orphanage as a badge of proletarian honor, these people's parents being decidedly not famous. Mitch is in neither group. He is reasonably sure that his parents included at least a man and a woman but beyond this he knows nothing, his memory being what it is. He is not among the later group as well. Though here again he is reasonably sure that sometime in the past someone had told him that he was raised in a house with cats. Not that he has any recollection of cats.
Thus, dear reader, I now present to you the story of Mitch the Doorman, exactly as it was related to me.
The Part One: Mitch Heads Into the Stacks
Mitch looked at his watch for a good ten seconds until he realized he was looking merely at the hairs of his wrist, having pawned his Timex three days prior to afford a cup of coffee. Sighing, he elevated his gaze, resting it upon the stone cold visage of a lion. Mitch made a funny face to the lion (which for Mitch usually entailed nothing more than showing his face.) Next he thumbed his nose. Mitch even considered mooning the lion but decided the effort involved in removing his heavy, braid encrusted overcoat was not worth the effort. Perhaps a taunt would provoke a response from the seemingly disinterested animal?
"Hey, Patience, getting any from Fortitude lately? Hahahaha"
No response.
Mitch finally decided that no antics of his would stir the stone lion, nor its companion on the other side of the stairs leading up to the 5
th
Avenue entrance of the main branch of the New York City Public Library. With a shrug he proceeded to mount those steps for his daily, afternoon session in the reading room.
(Now, lest you form some elevated opinion of Mitch's intellect I should interject a brief comment as to the reason for these daily visits. And yes, dear reader, I do know that interjecting myself into Mitch's story is bad form and a violation of several well known literary conventions. But, as I alluded to previously, this is done in the interest of keeping you firmly placed in this reality, not his.
Mitch, who in fact shares some traits with normal men, has a vast appetite for pornography whilst at the same time possessing a miniscule amount of money which he keeps in the form of coin inside his pillowcase. One day in order to get in out of the rain Mitch decided to duck into the nearest entrance that did not charge an admission fee thus finding himself standing in the main branch of the New York City Public Library. There he observed a painting of a nude woman. Once five minutes had passed and no one had approached him about paying a quarter to continue looking at it Mitch decided he was on to something.)
His first stop was at the card catalogue. He was dimly aware that something with small keys and a glowing screen was in the process of replacing this massive, wood bound collection of index cards but for him he hoped none to soon as he derived a tactile pleasure from slowly flicking through the cards, heart beating strongly at the thought of eminent discovery only a few cards away.
Now Mitch could be, with long experience of trial and error, fairly perceptive. Thus he was currently riffling through the ER section, not as one would expect the PO or even the very back of the SE sections for he had learned this – in this paragon of intellectual collections pornography disguised itself as eroticism. The former was unclean and regulated. The later was, ah, art! Who says simple words have no power.
His trembling finger stopped, the little nugget of his prurient search lay finally, and literally, at his fingertip.
Near Eastern Eroticism as Revealed in Byzantine Iconography
, Julius Ramsgate, Oxford, 1937. While Mitch had no notion whatsoever of the long and rich story of the Byzantine Empire, nor the vital role played by Icons in its tortuous religious life, nor for that matter any appreciation for that renowned center of scholarly pursuit in the valley of the Thames, he did know that one word, "Eroticism.," held forth the prospect of a pleasant afternoon in the main reading room. Added to this was his appreciation that if Billy Wanamaker could change his name to Johnny Hardman and score it big in porno films then some guy named Ramsgate was sure to know something.
Mitch murmured a pardon to the prim and proper lady standing next to him and asked her if she would not mind writing down the information on the index card his thumb was resting on, explaining that he was right handed and therefore could not move his hand without losing his place in the card file. (Using his other hand was a concept in physical dexterity that obviously never occurred to Mitch.)
The prim and proper lady responded that she was, to Mitch's good fortune, one of the librarians. She told Mitch to go take a seat and she would fetch the book for him. As she said this her hand descended down to cover Mitch's. The warm, soft, smooth womanly flesh produced a sensation in Mitch that most men only ever got when bedding their girlfriends while their cold, cold wives wait patiently at home. With a wistful sigh Mitch removed his hand and walked over to the reading area heart thumping madly and a slight damp spot appearing on his forehead, the sort one can get from eating too many jalapeño peppers.
A short while later the prim and proper librarian adorned in a medium grey suit with a simple white blouse, flats and her blonde hair pulled severely into a bun (in passing, Mitch took in her roots and concluded she was a natural blonde; doormen, over time, become minor experts on such things having so much opportunity to observe the comings and goings of their regulars) and metal rimmed glasses perched halfway down the bridge of her nose, appeared beside Mitch and laid the Ramsgate book down in front of him.
"Thank you," Mitch stammered.
"An interesting choice, are you studying strictly icons or do you have a more general interest in Byzantine art and history?"
Mitch flushed slightly knowing that he could not tell her his true interest nor willing to reveal the depth and breadth of his ignorance of anything connected to the Byzantine Empire.
"Um, ah, yes, just that," the last part mumbled.
The prim and proper librarian suddenly flashed a radiant smile at Mitch that reminded him of those times when the sun would suddenly burst forth in its full intensity after a long sojourn behind hard gray clouds. Then she turned, and it seemed to Mitch, literally skipped toward the book stacks. She stopped at the corner of one and gave Mitch what he swore was a seductive backwards glance.
Mitch was immediately in heat. In that state, the primeval state bred into a species keen on survival and dating back farther than our ancestors who first took that mighty leap from the security of their trees to the dangerous but vast with promise savannah. As our earliest forbearers rose up on sturdy bipedal legs, the better to see over the tall grasses and freeing their arms and hands for tasks other than locomotion, so too did Mitch raise himself to a fully erect position and shambled after his prey, proceeding into the stacks.
