On his way to the library, with the first rays of the sun already well above the horizon, Godot imagined himself a tourist. The light this early in the morning made everything new. Instead of looking ahead and at nothing in particular, he felt the need to look up at the home and buildings around him. It wasn't like Europe, nothing was beautiful. No Rococo detailing and ornate balconies, nor frescoes, nor dramatic gothic overhangs to observe. Just the same functional, symmetrical colonial architecture; the cross gabled roofs, clapboard siding, and the austere wooden cornices representing the sole aesthetic afterthought. He passed a cookie cutter strip mall with a cookie cutter Pizza Hut, a large and empty parking lot, and then turned onto a small residential road with more of the same houses to cross the park that would land him on campus and at the library. He passed no one. He was alone. But there was a flutter in him.
When he'd gone off to college he and his high school girlfriend had tried to keep it going. They didn't make it past the first semester, but in those initial months when he still came home every couple of weekends, together in his car, she'd whisper in his ear while undoing his belt buckle, "Anticipation. Anticipation is the greatest pleasure." He felt something similar now, minus the hard-on, climbing the steps of the looming library. Here he could find things that weren't on any apps. Maybe even things that weren't on the internet. Something was pulling him towards classics, ancient Greeks, tragedies. He wanted to go down the rabbit hole of the pathos of human existence. He felt that in the floor to celling stacks, somewhere between dusty covers, he'd find the right thing - or at least something - that would get him to fall asleep with new thoughts.
When he'd gone off to college he and his high school girlfriend had tried to keep it going. They didn't make it past the first semester, but in those initial months when he still came home every couple of weekends, together in his car, she'd whisper in his ear while undoing his belt buckle, "Anticipation. Anticipation is the greatest pleasure." He felt something similar now, minus the hard-on, climbing the steps of the looming library. Here he could find things that weren't on any apps. Maybe even things that weren't on the internet. Something was pulling him towards classics, ancient Greeks, tragedies. He wanted to go down the rabbit hole of the pathos of human existence. He felt that in the floor to celling stacks, somewhere between dusty covers, he'd find the right thing - or at least something - that would get him to fall asleep with new thoughts.