I just got off the phone with a man who wanted to contribute to the zine collection at Barnard. Before I even heard that he was a nudist and wanted to make an appointment to come view the collection sans clothing, I tried to make sure he understood that we do not accept zines created by men. He pulled my own policy that we accept zines by anyone who identifies as a woman on me.

When I asked if he has an F on his driver's license or passport, he backed off of that and launched the "so you'll only accept help from women?" defense and told me how much he sympathizes with women. If only he knew how much that kind of crap makes me hate men. (By the way, I know that not every woman is represented as one on her official documentation, but I figured that he didn't.)

As I hope most librarians would, I tried to take him seriously as long as possible and to consider how to respect his lifestyle choice. I just couldn't imagine that he'd be able to get into the library naked, though, or that I'd want to help him if he were.

Most of the time I really tried to stick to the pertinent issues. Were these alleged zines he wanted to donate by women and about 3rd wave feminism or riot grrrl? He hedged on this and described the works as pictorial. Lucky for me we don't generally catalog art zines.

Although I know it's funny, I think I would have enjoyed this conversation more if I were my colleague Lois, who only heard my half of it, which got louder and louder from my cubicle until I said something like "I'm sorry, I really don't think I can help you. I'm sorry." and hung up. The sad thing is that I really would have tried to make it work if he weren't so damned irritating. (I would never make it in a public library!)