The Librarian A l y s o n
Y
M a n n
ou have lost your friggin’ mind.”
She could almost hear Len’s voice, see the shake of the few hairs left on his head. He would have been proud of avoiding a swear, but completely unaware of the irony, using the word, “frig.” Here she was, 64-years-old, standing in line with her grandson, blushing at the thought of just speaking with a children’s librarian. The Librarian. Len would have loved that. Isn’t that rich, he might have said. Well, Len, you dropped dead at 63 so you can say whatever you want, and it’s only so much smoke. Jane knew the history of the word frig, though it seemed as antiquated as she felt. To perform lesbian sex, when the genitals are rubbed together. She had been researching. Yes, porn the obvious first step for the curious. Watching it felt ridiculous. It seemed as artificial as a couple blow ups dolls pressed together by unseen hands. Plus, she couldn’t help thinking of how young everyone in the pornos seemed. Were they coerced? These thoughts really took all the fun out of exploration. Not that it hadn’t turned her on. The body slides easily into things even as the mind chafes. After her dabble in porn, she turned to where she had always turned: science and history. She looked at the explosion of science around sexuality in the early 1900’s, starting with discussions of sexual deviance. Laughable descriptions masqueraded as data. Ogling doctors intent on measuring the length of the clitoris recorded every salacious detail of sexual interaction between women. They filled pages of “scientific” literature. Men trying to prove what they already believed to be true rather than discovering what they didn’t know and couldn’t possibly understand. The white male scientist of the day thought the Black female and the female homosexual were overly masculinized versions of the correct female prototype. The men in charge took out their rulers, pens, and 4
