I am 89 years old. Every year seems to be more painful than the last. Each day that passes uneventfully nudges me into a deeper depression, with my secret growing like a weed taking the sunlight and nutrients that my soul could have used to blossom into a flower. Do you know how hard it is to be sedentary after a lifetime of adventure, secret-keeping, power, and purpose? After so many years I’ve been reduced to… what? This vegetative state of disgrace where I am entombed alive in the archives of the library as an honorable artifact.

“A leather-bound black folder”, or so my descriptive card reads. At least it got the first part right, but I’m so much more than a folder. I have a history that no one really knows but my late owner and me. I was made a folder, but I’m not a folder, not anymore anyway. After the things I’ve seen, the lives I’ve ruined, I’m not just a folder. I was bought a folder and turned into a book of names, numbers and countless secrets. Now in my old age, I’m ready to disclose all of the secrets that I’ve kept bound between my long lost pages, albeit names of course.

An address book, he called me when he picked me off of the shelf of the library. His warm hands felt my smooth leather and traced the school seal that had been imprinted on my face. He bought the paper separately and spent twenty-three minutes threading the leather string that bound me through each piece of paper that fits inside of my five by seven frame. I’ve never felt more important than that one late night at the library.

There was a beautiful woman sitting next to us with short, curly brown hair that framed her heart shaped face perfectly. Her cheekbones protruded proudly on each side and her round brown eyes seemed to be inviting me over. Her pink, bow-shaped lips smiling flirtatiously. She was completely mesmerizing. I believe that Owner loved her upon first sight. They got to introductions, but all I could concentrate on was the book that she was reading. It was a handsome, orange hardcover novel called This Side of Paradise by Fitzgerald. It looked amazing. Its pages all neatly cut and even, unlike my own. And its pages had words on them. I had never realized before how bare my pages were. I realized in that moment that I yearned to feel the sweet rush of a pen on my surface. I wanted to know the weight of ink drying on my thin pages. I had never known meaning more than existence, and that scared me. Was I bought solely to be an ornament or will Owner give me use more than merely being?

My fears subsided as the beautiful woman gave Owner her number, which in his flustered state, he tried to scribble on my leather surface, creating the first scratch in my cover that ran from northwest to southeast on the top. He looked up at the beautiful woman sheepishly, nervous that she would be embarrassed by him, but a beautiful grin graced her face and her musical laugh filled the library and received annoyed hushes from the studious pupils at the desks around us. This made Owner and the Woman laugh even more as he flipped to my first page and ran the pen across my surfaces writing down her name, number and dorm address. In between fits of giggles, there was a promise of a call tomorrow and then she gathered her books and left.

They dated seriously and exclusively for five months. After that day, he spent all of his time with her. I had never felt so unwanted in all of my short existence. Even when I was left pageless on a shelf or wordless in the library, this was the lowest I had ever felt. Maybe it is better to have never loved at all, I thought. But again, Owner quelled my fears when he found his roommate with the Woman in Owner’s bed. He was mine again, and in his grief and heartbreak, he was using me more than ever. His faithful little Black Book. In the span of two weeks, he already had 24 numbers in my pages, and he was able to call upon a different girl every night, sometimes even twice. I giggled when his drunken hand would guide the pen in a diagonal line scribbling the name of some girl that I could tell was not his type. And as I had predicted, the next night he would call his most recent addition, she would not meet his sober standards, and he would politely ask her to dinner. Needless to say, she was not invited up to his dorm after the date. His room was a sanctuary. He didn’t allow just anyone to come up. I was the only one he allowed up more than once after the Woman, and this made me feel special again.

Our adventures went on for years and I stood by him through it all. From the tirades that women threw when they found out that they weren’t the only woman in Owner’s life to his graduation, just in case he encountered a fellow graduate who he hadn’t slept with yet, and the interventions that his family had for him to help him get “back on track”, which only worked once: when they found a woman for him to marry. They practically forced his hand into matrimony, they shouldn’t have been surprised at the ending. They called him over for dinner, a secret arrangement to set him up with this new Lady suitor and before the dessert course was brought out, her number was on my page. I won’t lie, she was pretty. She had green eyes and fiery, red hair. She did a fine job of covering her sunspots and freckles with powder in order to fit in with the milky-skinned models of the era. She looked fine- not as beautiful as the Woman- but Lady was pretty nonetheless. The next week he invited her over, but she insisted that they have dinner together. I was on the first date. My presence justified to Owner on account of the potential cute waitresses that worked at the restaurant. Just because Owner was in college didn’t mean that he only dated college women. He didn’t discriminate.

That night, Lady didn’t come with us back to the apartment and I had said good riddance, as Owner usually said to the women who wouldn’t visit his room after he paid for expensive meals. But the next day, Lady surprised him and called first. This excitement caught his attention and by the end of the phone call, he was asking her on a second date. He wasn’t in love. Not really. He was intrigued. But this intrigue and mystery lasted too long and suddenly he wound up in a suit in front of an alter I suppose, with me tucked away in a drawer in his desk. I sat in that drawer collecting dust for a few years, but I didn’t panic. He always would come back. Even as the time stretched on and I longed for him, I knew he’d come back. He always did. And I was right.

When he came back, he looked different. The usual swagger that embodied him had been replaced with dark bags under the eyes and a gut that was extended out further than I remembered. His dark hair had a couple streaks of grey here and there, but nothing too noticeable. I remember he picked me up, concealed me in a business briefcase, and kissed his wife on his way out the door, wishing her luck on her business trip and saying he was looking forward to seeing her on Monday. I knew that this weekend was about to be great. And I was right, we were back at it. And we kept at it every weekend that Lady had to work. Neither of us felt guilty, we were doing what felt right, so how could it be wrong.

But Lady was cleaning one day when Owner was at work and she found me in our secret little desk drawer. She noticed how recent the entries were and became enraged. She took me in her claw-like hands and stormed down to the living room where the giant fireplace resided and placed me on the table. She sat for hours, anger brooding, until Owner came home, unaware of the tirade he was about to endure. Screams. Red faces. Slaps. I land on the floor with a thud. Then KICK I’m burning in the fire. “Nooo!” Master yells after me and plunges a hand into the fire, saving my leather binding but leaving the pages to ash. They divorced after that, and I like to think that he divorced her for me.

Our adventures were never the same. His family couldn’t handle his antics anymore and his elderly mother just couldn’t bare the thought of her bachelor of a son and his mistress Black Book, so she disowned him. By the time he was ready to start seeing women again, he was old and fat and the attractive women he was into were too young and beautiful to be attracted to him. At that point, we were really alone. He turned my remaining pages into a journal. He poured his heart out to me. It turned out that he had been feeling guilty about his antics for years. He was ashamed of me. He compared my charred leather binding to our blemished past. If I had had eyes or tear ducts, I imagine I would have cried in that moment. But I’m just a book. I’ve ever only been just a book to him. He stabbed the pen through my pages, shut my cover and shoved me in the secret drawer. I was there for what seemed like forever until unfamiliar hands picked me up and brought me to Wake Forest’s Library, where I would lay and lie forever with my misattributed identity as a simple folder.

On the bad days, I tumble into my current reality and dream of being destroyed. Here I lie on my eternal abode with a misattributed identity of honor. Despite the things I’ve seen and the secrets I’ve held, I’ve never felt dirtier. I have always been disguised as a regular notebook with the school’s seal on the front, practically condoning my owner’s actions, but my leather was only my owner’s to touch. On the good days, I am taken back in time to the memories of my owner before he slandered my being. The way that he used to gently slip his fingers beneath the tie that bound my pages together, how he would use his thumb to flip through my pages, how he would search for me after a drunken night where I had ended up under the desk or the sock drawer. I was the longest relationship that he had ever committed to, and for that, I loved him. I never judged him or left him, I always provided the names that he needed. I was the most loyal and constant thing in his life, and for that, he loved me. I know that he did. Otherwise, he would have stopped filling my pages and opening me up when he was loneliest.