Old rural school, rural library, a comforting place, yet sad, deeply sad, it was where you always felt older than your mere nine years of life. There was a light blue hardcover edition of The Doors Complete, with all the sheet music and the words to all the songs The Doors ever recorded. I can still see the library card at the back of the book; scrawled in wide crooked lead strokes at least a dozen times is my name. I can’t really say what drew me to the book, perhaps it was the crisp and profound black and white photographs of the band displayed every few pages throughout, or perhaps I was attempting to read music, which was something I’d been struggling with over the past six months as I tried valiantly to learn how to play the saxophone in the school band. Whatever the reason, I checked the book out every two weeks when it came due. I wasn’t particularly a Doors fan, at that time I was obsessed with The Beatles, from their middle and late period, and listened to little else but their albums Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Magical Mystery Tour, and Abby Road.
Jim Morrison had been dead for eight years and The Beatles had been split up for nine years; perhaps I kept going back to The Doors Complete because I thought the book was so out of place in this most overly isolated and intensely Christian rural school library. The Doors Complete didn’t belong here at all and even as a child I was genuinely surprised that they allowed it to stay on the shelves, especially considering that the book was uncensored and included such lines from the Doors like “Do you hope to pluck this dusky jewel,” or “Father…yes son? I want to kill you,” or even, “Ode to My Cock.” Nevertheless, I was allowed to check it out every two weeks without question for months, until finally the librarian asked me what was in the book that I liked so much. At first, I didn’t know what to say, but I managed to mutter something about how much I liked the color of the book and how the bright shiny paper felt on the tips of my fingers. I went on to tell her I liked the weight of the book, and I liked the way it smelled, I liked the way the book felt in my hands.
And what still surprises me to this day is that this old racist white woman who prided herself on how well she played the part of a high-tone Christian Southerner didn’t at all appear to think my comments about the book were strange; she didn’t even appear suspicious that there might be something in The Doors Complete that I shouldn’t be reading, and she let me check it out, every two weeks, over and over, until I lost it.
