While I was in high school, my aunt and uncle used to call me “Marian the librarian,” and predicted that’s what I would become. I knew nothing about The Music Man, a musical of bygone era, in which a traveling salesman invades a wholesome Midwestern town and attempts to steal the heart of Marian, the town librarian. Out of idle curiosity, I watched it one day, and enjoyed it very much indeed.

But that is not why I eventually became a librarian. That story is quite a bit less savory than the musical.

I was an ungainly, awkward teenager. Thin to a fault, hair too thick, lips too full, and the eyesight of a mole. With my plain cotton dresses, braided hair and tortoise shell glasses, I was not a prime candidate for Prom Queen.

I hated those people, the popular ones. Not that I resented their popularity, I just resented when they flexed their superior attitudes by dumping on the likes of me and my friends. They were bullies, plain and simple. Yet, I knew deep down that their good looks and arrogance would get them nowhere in life without some brains and humility, of which they were devoid. Sooner or later, I believed, someone would take them all down a few pegs, and they would know all about what it was like to be humiliated.

I had begun to be curious about sex, and even admit to becoming somewhat excited while watching some of the pornography that is all over the internet, but the idea of masturbating freaked me out. While most of my classmates were probably masturbating morning, noon and night, I’d never even given myself an orgasm, at least I don’t think I had. I had a skinny ass and small boobs, and none of the guys even so much as looked at me.

During the summer before my senior year, I underwent an odd transformation. My breasts grew, my hips filled. Other aspects of my body changed as well. It was as though I’d been given estrogen shots.

But it was the breasts that fascinated me, and while exploring them with my hands one night, flicking the hard, stiff nipples that were super sensitive, I felt the strange sensation deep inside me. It was delicious and terrifying. Exploring them, playing with them, awakened a curiosity that quickly became urgent, and suddenly the idea of masturbating didn’t repulse me. I didn’t know what I was doing or if I was doing it right, but it sure felt good, and I did it until I was raw.

But I still wasn’t sure about this orgasm experience. And while my fingers felt quite delicious inside me, I wondered what something bigger – like a man’s erect penis – would feel like.

I lived with my private masturbatory lifestyle through college, came close to having a guy touch me someplace, but either I said something or he heard something or whatever, and I was still a virgin when I graduated and began to study library sciences in a post-graduate program. It was that program that brought me to my internship, then provisional employment, at the Metropolitan Public Library.

It was a very slow day during my second week. Very warm, and the air conditioning was inefficient, so it was basically me and the head librarian, Marsha Sykes. After I had shelved all there was to shelve, I snuck off to continue some of my research on sexuality. I discovered a series of videos that actual teach about sexual technique, and in great detail! While a man and woman undress each other, pet and then have intercourse, a narrator speaks, describing the man’s technique of licking his partner’s clitoris, or his partner’s method of sucking on the head of his erect penis. They were quite attractive and seemed to be giving each other great pleasure, seemingly unaware of the cameras. When the man was licking his partner’s vagina, his face buried inside of her, she began to arch her back and buck and scream as she grasped the sheets in tight fists. The narrator explained that she was having an orgasm. I decided that that was not something I had experienced. Yet.

But tucked away in a corner booth with my headphones, as I watched that video, I felt myself become very wet, and when I went on to Episode Three, which was mutual masturbation, I did not even try to stop my hand as it traveled down between my legs, slipped under my skirt, inside the line of my panties, and down into my wet crevice. I watched how the man worked his fingers over the clitoris and slid two fingers inside of her. He was kneeling at her side, and as he played with her vagina, she took his penis into her mouth and moved her head forward and back. Time and again, she took the entire length of his large penis into her throat.

I paused the video for a moment, slid my panties off, stuffed them into my purse, and pressed “play.”

They got more and more excited and vigorous, and so did I, until the man put his fingers deep inside of the woman and began to really work his whole arm roughly back and forth, up and down. I thought he might be hurting her, but she started to scream again and grab his penis and suck on it and then her back arched again and she moaned long and low and his penis shot lines of white semen on her breasts and tummy.

I was so enraptured, I didn’t even realize what I was doing to myself! I had my legs open, three fingers jammed inside of me, doing the same thing the man had been doing. When I saw the man ejaculating on the woman’s breasts, something burst inside me and I began to shudder uncontrollably. For a moment, I was afraid I was having a stroke as my body twitched and breath exploded from my lungs.

As the twitching subsided, I pulled my hand from my lap. It was covered in a thin milky film. I felt the wetness between my legs. I had soaked myself. The seat of the chair was sticky. And the smell was both sour and sweet. I put a finger in my mouth and felt an instant lust.

That was my first orgasm. It would be the first of many to occur in the public library.

***

After my crash course, I spent some of my savings on a few “sex toys,” which I think is quite a euphemism. I spent quite a bit of time on the internet researching the various products and trying to understand (in some cases) how they worked. I was intrigued by the variations in the motor strengths of vibrators, and their sizes. With my limited budget, I got something small (a “silver bullet” for insertion, controlled by a wireless remote) and something shockingly large. I don’t know what made me do that and I don’t care to explore my subconscious about it. I am perfectly fine admitting that I (like most women, I am confident) have a strange fascination with the large erect penis. I had no expectation that I would ever actually meet one, so twelve inches of a thick rubber substitute would serve my educational purpose. The egg I bought, I admit, because I knew I could wear it at work. And when I imagined where and when I might first use it, I had every expectation that I would not be alone.

I had used my work time wisely, exploring all of the nooks and crannies of the physical layout, but also making note of where the more scandalous titles or genres were. Such as the sexuality topic in Non-fiction and a small number of novels that would qualify as literary erotica. I Am Curious (Yellow) was one that I found quite exhilarating. There were several volumes of erotic photography, Jean-Francoise Jonvelle, Robert Mapplethorpe, for instance, and it was quite obvious that those volumes had received more attention that most of their neighbors. I inferred from this that there might be other people who, like me, were impelled into the further reaches of the stacks for their own private erotic experiences. Once I had learned the cataloguing system, I made note of these titles, and in an admittedly criminal act (or so I though when I was doing it), I looked up the card members who had checked them out. This was the first hint of any sort of voyeuristic tendency, and it was prophetic.

The snooping was inconsequential - I discovered that, as popular as the books were, they never left the library. I became curious about who was looking at them, and paid closer attention to our visitors. I might say the curiosity became an obsession. I would not be exaggerating.

On a Saturday afternoon, deadsville in any library, I snuck up to the stacks with my little egg in place, intending to peruse some of the Mapplethorpe male erotic nudes and have a nice, private soul-searing orgasm. I was just beginning to get a little worked up when I heard footsteps on the stairs at the end of the aisle. I quickly closed the book, slid it back in place, and slipped around the back end of the stack to the next aisle, and crouched down, like I was examining titles on the bottom row. I had not turned the egg off, and I did not want to make a rustle retrieving the remote from my pocket.

The footsteps came slowly down the aisle, like someone trying to be quiet and listen for others. Beneath me, inside me, a low hum. Would it give me away? Maybe not, but the excitement of the moment was a great deal, and an orgasm now would be difficult to suppress. I fought to concentrate on the other person, not on me.

From my eye level, I saw through the gap above the booktops as a pair of jeans appeared and stopped. It was a male, young. Slim. Nice butt, if I had to say so. Tee shirt untucked. His back was to me, at the Mapplethorpe volume. He slid it out. I could not see above his waist, but could hear the flutter of thick pages as he flipped through the book in no apparent hurry. Then I noticed his breathing. It had increased. Then a hand dropped down to his side, and he reached around to his front and began to massage himself. He moaned softly. His body turned to the side, like he was checking for prying eyes. His jeans bulged with a very obvious erection. He turned back and moved to the end of the aisle, and ducked behind the end cap. I switched my perspective up a row and found I had a clear view of his midsection, found the remote, turned it up a few notches, and began to feel the warmth bubbling inside me.

He quickly undid his belt buckle. It clinked and he swore under his breath. He tucked the buckle in his pocket, undid the button then the zipper, slid his hand underneath black jockeys, pulled out a big red cock and jerked on it furiously as he panted. Seconds later, he orgasmed, his thick semen shooting onto the worn carpet, dripping on his hand and jockeys. He quickly stuffed it back in his pants, zipped up, buckled up and hustled down the aisle in ragged breaths.

Before his footsteps reached the stairs, the bubbling inside me let go, and I left my own puddle of wonder on the worn carpet beside stack number P-22. Before skirting off to the washroom to clean up, I went to the spot of the young man’s deed. I bent down close and inspected the milky white globs. I watched my fingers reach down and touch it, a viscous, slimy goo. I put my fingers up to my nose. Pungent testament to a gay young man’s lust.

As I walked to the ladies’ room, my fingers sticky, my vagina dripping its own precious nectar, I marveled at how far I had come, and how far I had fallen.