I bore easily...so I need challenge(s). It's not that simple, exactly, but if you understand that base principle you'll be part-way to clarity.
I also loathe the mundane. Like APA format. God knows psychologists obviously need more to occupy their time, but the rest of academia needs a good kicking for giving over control of their final publishable work(s) to these thoroughly anal keepers of arcane trivia. God knows the codes of the Elizabethan era are child's-play when compared to APA, and those infamous ciphers were as complex as possible because the information they endeavored to disguise was literally life-or-death for those involved in their transportation and translation. And an unpleasant death at that. Often involving public humiliation, dismemberment and slow agonizing torment for hours or even days leading to the inevitable.
So why APA? Why bother? After all, we're really supposed to be actually sharing our research and product -- in direct contradiction to the purpose for complex codes and ciphers.
Yes, I could learn APA and apply it. If I chose. But I bore easily and I loathe the mundane, especially the gratuitous AND mundane. That's a lethal combination in terms of holding my interest.
So what happened is in part based in all of the aforementioned.
The rest somehow had to with Lydia. There was something intriguing and indefinably beyond the ordinary about Lydia. On the surface, she was the slim (what I call lightly 'dyed') blonde, forty-something Night Librarian for the floor housing the History collection. As you would expect in a librarian, she had a quiet disposition. She also had great eyes and a spectacularly graceful flow, especially if you happened to be following her, as she pushed her cart around, slowly but efficiently re-stocking and organizing the stacks from 4 pm to closing (midnight) Monday to Friday.
At first I was really confused by the absence of rings, etc. I even thought, as was entirely possible of course, that her preferences might be for her own gender. But as we came to know each other, there was no doubt she was interested. She would light up spontaneously when we ran into each other and cast those sly little glances women do when they think the male isn't paying attention.
And Lydia was an expert in APA.
In other words, she was a dream come true for a divorced forty-something -- who happened to be back at university on the company dime to do grad studies. I could've simply taken Lydia out for dinner, made the correct direct approach for our age cohort -- and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the two of us would have fucked each other's brains out while she taught me APA for my MBA papers and I enlightened her on the Elizabethan history and literature which were my true passion and lifelong study interest.
But as I said there was something indefinably 'different' about Lydia.
And of course I bore easily, well, that point is well established.
So instead, I hatched this complicated and challenging plot.
The whole plan hinged on a 30 minute break Lydia took every night from 9 to 9:30 pm precisely.
During this time, she would descend one flight of stairs and share coffee, yogurt and conversation with the Amelia -- the married and slightly out-of-place bling redhead who looked after the floor housing Sociology and all those similar ologies.
Friday, three nights before the deadline of a major term paper, I waited impatiently, indeed apprehensively, and with some excitement, for Lydia to roll her cart into the alcove beside the office. (That it was Friday night and therefore relatively quiet in the library was a considered element in the plan). I then watched from the shadows a few feet into the long row of stacks, as she entered the office, retrieved her yogurt and thermos of coffee, and, letting herself out, double-checked that the door was locked before flowing out through the glass doors to the landing and descending the stairs. Having prepared carefully over several days, and considered and re-considered every foreseeable facet and detail of my plan, I took a deep breath -- thought to myself, 'this is nuts, even by your standards', then chuckled, glancing around nervously to be sure that if the chuckle was audible no one had heard it and was therefore watching -- before proceeding to cross into the brightly lit area of the doorway to quickly pick the lock and let myself into the office. (Easy locks and a miss-spent youth. Let's leave it at that).
Once inside, I collected a spare office key from behind the door and pocketed it, then sat down in Lydia's rolling chair at her desk.
Even though the clock was now ticking, I forced myself to check and re-check the contents of the three remaining envelopes. Getting those in the incorrect order could be awkward, to put it mildly. (I'll freely admit here that the apprehension while I waited outside the office, watching, was now manifesting as perspiration, making my clothes adhere to my flesh...and that the tingle of excitement was now manifesting as an outright seething hard on. This latter condition had been contributed to, in no small way, by my steadfast refusal to masturbate since Tuesday -- the day when the plan first began to take shape). Taking a deep breath, I visualized the steps remaining in the plan one more time, and then set to work.
The first envelope was in place already.
The second envelope I slipped under Lydia's old fashioned blotter, with just the merest fraction of an inch of the corner poking out, but to my eye this latter was a clear flag on her otherwise pin neat desktop. I hesitated but that was the plan and she may not notice it, even if I didn't get back in time, so I left it and carried on. A moment later, I cracked open the door, checked the coast was clear, and slipped out, barefoot now, and commando as it happened, closing the door gently behind me. After secreting the third envelope with the office key inside a large enough volume on her cart, so that just the merest corner was showing once again, I set off at pace down the long long stacks to the study carrels along the windows on the outer wall. The sound of my bare feet on the hard floors seemed to echo outrageously so I went up on tiptoe. My blackberry said '9:07' so time was leaking away and I had to move at some speed.
At the end of the stacks I was pleased and relieved to find that Friday night, as intended, was working out. The younger undergrads thought working Friday night was against union rules and the majority of grad students would be in the appropriate collections, on other floors. With care, because there would be the odd other denizen around, I should be okay. Moving up two rows of stacks, I was again relieved, this time to find the correct volume in the Elizabethan collection still in place. I inserted the fourth and final envelope inside.
'9:09'.
Reaching in behind this row of volumes, I felt then retrieved the cuffs. (These hadn't been used in several months. Julie had been attractive and fit and fun, but we weren't quite 100% compatible. We parted good naturedly, agreeing that we would probably always be available to each other -- because neither of us was likely to hook up on a permanent basis at this stage and the fundamentals had been better than just good and so why not.) That bit of history aside, the cuffs had not on this evening been closed. That they were there, and still open, made it reasonable to assume Lydia had not discovered them when she worked in the area earlier in the evening. Exhaling slowly, counting to ten to calm my pounding heart -- no amount of time would calm my throbbing hard on -- I took the cuffs farther up the row of carrels to the one I had claimed earlier this evening.
Without sitting down, I opened the equipment bag on the desk surface, removing, opening and switching on my laptop. Only then, after further careful examination of the immediate area and determining it was unoccupied -- I couldn't control who might be passing by on campus and chance to glance up, from outside and four floors below, but that was part of the fun -- I applied my stiff, quivering and therefore uncooperative fingers to removing my shirt and my slacks, before sitting stark naked on the cool chair, a contrast I should've but somehow hadn't anticipated which caused me to suck in breath. I then closed the small padlock on the equipment bag. Then I fastened the cuffs to my own wrists.
'9:12'.
Naked, no realistic access to clothes and the key more accessible to others (Lydia?). Check.
Several items of my clothes elsewhere and more easily accessible to others (Lydia?). Check.
Handcuffed, and the key elsewhere and more easily accessible to others (Lydia?). Check.
18 minutes to complete this first task and retrieve at least three of the four envelopes, in the correct order. Check.
I had planned on having 20 minutes at this stage, but if I could concentrate -- something the challenge of the circumstances should assist me in doing -- it was still feasible. Check.
Not that I had any realistic options now but to succeed. Check.
'9:13'.
I had typed handcuffed before. No problem there. Clicking the mouse, I placed my fingers on the keyboard, and waited for the library homepage.
Very shortly thereafter it went wrong.
Within minutes, no amount of cursing, or panicking, could help me to retrieve the situation.
What followed was a horrifyingly long 19 minutes, contemplating then dismissing in sequence a host of potential but completely impossible solutions -- all the while watching for any movement and listening for every sound -- until, finally, the wheels of a rolling cart. The sound stopped in the vicinity of the Elizabethan collection.
Complete and utter humiliation was now inevitable. Check.
Nothing happened. She did not appear. Not a sound either. Where the hell was she? What was she doing? Was it even her? Oh god...5 minutes dragged by... and I was a sweating, panting mass of hopeless and paralyzed yet thoroughly aroused male. Another 3 minutes and every conceivable possibility, including the imminent arrival of the police, especially the imminent arrival of the police, had and continued to swirl through my mind. Even campus security would be a catastrophe, of course, but the police...
I froze, absolutely terrified. My blackberry was buzzing and moving across the surface of the desk. It almost made it to the edge before I could move to collect it.
'Ms Lydia Cashman here,' the text message read, 'report to my office immediately.'
My mind took a second to register the implications. Most of the implications at any rate. Other implications invaded while I was on the move. So I'll leave it to you to imagine that long walk down the rows of stacks. My legs were so stiff I felt like the cartoon character Gumby, from my childhood, yet so weak they could hardly hold my weight. I stopped once to catch my breath and noticed that I was glistening with perspiration all over my body but there was nothing I could do and I was anxious as well to find out the worst so I pressed on. All of which in mind, you can imagine how relieved I was to find no campus security, and no police...at least not outside the office. In fact, there was no one in sight.
You can also imagine my relief when it was her that opened the door and no one else appeared to be in the office. Taking my cuffs in one hand, she unlocked them with the key.
The KEY, note.
"Turn around," she said flatly. I did. Believe me. Feeling another frisson of panic when she re-cuffed me, hands now behind my back. (Part of me did register that this was expertly done...or maybe that was hindsight). The simple truth overall was that I was helpless, naked, and that she dragged me by the cuffs backward through the door and closed it.
