Tale of a Shady Character.

All it took was a pervert masturbating in public to ruin my time at the library.

Yesterday afternoon, the family and I made a brief stop at our local library. Keeks needed to check out some books, my parents wanted to catch up on their Chinese newspapers, and I was more than happy to take the time to browse through my favorite magazines.

So, there I was enjoying The New Yorker when I happened to look up as I turned the page. This sad-excuse for a man, judging to be in his thirties, was wearing light but reflective sunglasses and sitting on a footstool facing the wall of newspaper stacks. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except he kept staring at me and when I looked up he jerked his head away abruptly and just stared off to the side in a very still and unnatural manner. A bit weirded out, I went back to my magazine but kept track of him in peripheral vision. Mere seconds later he was back to staring at me. I looked up a second time...and was totally creeped out that to see the tell-tale masturbating movement between his knee-length basketball shorts. With shock and thinly-veiled disgust, I jumped out of my seat and walk a few steps away. My mom who as sitting next to me (not in line of the pervert's sight), asked me what's wrong. In whispered Chinese, I only tell her about the creep staring at me (and I don't disclose the encounter in full until we're all in the car). She leans over and produces such a cold stare (my mom has the most expressive eyes) until he leaves. I go in search for my sister to alert her.

Call me naïve or whatever, but what the hell. This is a popular library, by a small park with a basketball court. Elderly people come here for leisure, little kids for story books, high school students to study.

My sister comes every weekend during the school year.

I'm not an insensible innocent that I don't know that such perverts exist in the world, but this was my first such encounter. And, I hate that it happened in a place that is a bookworm's beloved haven. The slimy bastard.

Actually, I label him more a coward. Not that I'm implying rape is a sign of courage. I have equal contempt for all scumbags.

But I take the self-defense course taught every year by my university's police force, and this experience tempered my hubris.

Definitely a humbling reminder that a female needs to always be on her guard.