Never Mind the Bollocks, Librarians Invented Sex, Stupid

Alfred Kinsey's "Lost" Report on Librarians and Sexuality

Reporting and editing by @lbgilbert and @hmccormack. Art direction by @mauramae -- Library Journal, 02/13/2009

Library Journal has pieced together a shocking “lost” report by eminent sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Made up of excerpts from Dr. Kinsey’s recently discovered diaries, an unpublished manuscript found at the Herman B. Wells Library at Indiana University, and interviews with Kinsey associates, the following narrative reveals the root of the sexy librarian image, with Kinsey himself arguing that the profession, though viewed as repressed and coldly logical, actually “invented sex.” You read it here first, folks.

From Kinsey’s diary:

June 19, 1947: Strange noises were coming from the stacks—so strange and persistent that they halted my work. Annoyed, I wandered the library in a tizzy, tracing the commotion to a locked study carrel in the basement. Piled outside the room were curious piles of cat-eye and horn-rimmed glasses. Neat lines of sensible pumps and Oxfords ran parallel to a wall. A spy I am not, but something behooved me to wait until its occupants reappeared. Then, complete darkness and the smell of candles, sweat, and dust.

I awoke in the same spot the next morning, feeling foggy and hung-over. As I lay there, the memory of a dream that would recur for several weeks thereafter came to me. In it, a striking brunette wearing white gloves stamps my forehead repeatedly with the “Y2K,” while a male presence (I saw no face) struck my posterior with a volume of the Oxford English Dictionary…  

Here, the diary becomes unintelligible, as if Kinsey were writing in an erotic frenzy. (Paging Sigmund Freud: “Why, hello, Library Journal. Dr. Kinsey was in constant competition with books; here, as in many occasions in his life, they had their way with him. Their data was bigger than his, if you will.”) Several of Kinsey’s research assistants confirmed Kinsey’s discovery of the study carrel, though he didn’t report hearing or seeing any further unusual activity for a few weeks. He was, however, being needlessly and suggestively shushed by library staff, so much that he filed a complaint with the director.

A few weeks later, a young librarian named Miss Adelaide Johnson (pictured, left) passed “El Douché,” as she dubbed Kinsey, a note that warned him to “cease and desist, or else.” Undeterred, he hid in the library on the night of August 6, 1947.

Kinsey’s diary, coincidentally, picks up on that date:

Research is research, even if the topic is sex. A mystery will always prove more compelling in my limited experience. Hearing the tell-tale noises again, I abandoned my project and raced for the carrel, this time using a marble bust of Shakespeare to break down the door. A crowd of male and female librarians dressed in dark robes encircled Miss Adelaide Johnson, who glared at me with the desire and ferocity of Bette Davis as Jezebel.

What transpired next is difficult to describe, not because I am a prude but because words are insufficient to articulate the pleasures I experienced. Homo sapiens have obviously procreated for centuries, but on that night I collected sufficient evidence to suggest that librarians invented sex the way it should be practiced, without guilt, shame, or fear.

Many in our society would call them deviants because they gave and received pleasure so skillfully. I accused them of monumental selfishness, because they refused to share their techniques with the world beyond their carrel and threatened my life and researching privileges if I dared document or teach any myself.

“The world does not deserve our information,” Miss Adelaide Johnson lectured before knocking me unconscious with her naked hip.

Here, alas, the diary ends, though appearances would indicate that pages and pages were torn out, most likely those detailing the librarians’ fiercely guarded techniques. A number of Kinsey’s surviving protégés have told Library Journal that the great man theorized to them in confidence that the constant daily shushing motions performed by librarians primed their oral muscles for their mysterious erotic activities. The same protégés also attest that Kinsey was schooled by Miss Adelaide Johnson for several months in those activities that librarians had been perfecting “for millennia.”

In a fragment of his diary found just before press time (thank you, @rebachin), Kinsey described a narrative painted frieze starting with "a severe-haired woman wearing a prim toga, sternly guarding a wall of narrow slots containing rolled scrolls." In later scenes, this woman is depicted with long flowing hair, and the same, though inexplicably shorter toga, which hangs open suggestively. The paintings are poorly preserved, but Kinsey could still make out “several graphic depictions of erotic and literary activities performed by these so-called Keepers of the Scrolls.” He was also shocked to learn that the fire at the famed Library of Alexandria was caused by rose-scented candles used to set the mood during a particularly wild escapade.

In our lifetime, only Dan “Da Vinci Code” Brown has come close to uncovering the conspiracy, but he was repeatedly thwarted by the librarians upon whom he depended for his research, most of whom detest his abysmal prose. These modern-day Keepers of the Scrolls tend their prim image by day while exploring the ins and outs of Dewey Class 306.7 by night. There are rumors of a secret chamber in the Library of Congress where the nation’s top librarians meet to transfer ownership of the documents outlining the key role of their profession in the maintenance and continuation of human sexuality.

We at Library Journal hope this report will convince the powers that be to lift the bun of secrecy. The societal prudery that caused librarians to take this knowledge underground is largely a thing of the past, and we've entered the post-Bush, post-Britney, let's-check-out-sex-guides-at-the-library era.

A sad footnote to our story: In the early morning of February 14, 1949, Miss Adelaide Johnson was found hanging from the ceiling in the Periodical Reading Room by the cord attached to her pince-nez. With no leads, and under pressure from the head librarian, campus police ruled it a suicide.