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This is the story of how a librarian saved the life of a queer kid.
It’s about my friend, Daniel, my next-door neighbour, Mary, and her friend, Henry. Daniel grew up just off Commercial Road in Melbourne, a well-known gay strip then. He was the son of strict Jehovah’s Witness parents who home-schooled him until high school.
The only place he was allowed to go by himself was the local library and he went whenever he could.
Fortunately for him, as far back as the early 1990s, the librarians had taken it upon themselves to put small rainbow stickers on selected books. Daniel read every single book – fiction and non-fiction – that carried that sticker. Mostly he read them tucked away in a quiet corner, but occasionally he would borrow one, take it home and hide it under his bed.
The Library Was A Refuge
At thirteen, Daniel was aware that something was a little different about him and one afternoon, sitting between his two sisters in the back of the car, he announced to his mother: ”I will never be married to a woman and I will never have a family.’
His mother declared that he didn’t know what he was talking about, but shortly after she decided they were too close to the nefarious influences of Commercial Road and moved the family to St Kilda East. The irony was not lost on Daniel.
But irony aside, Daniel’s parents also started him on a regime of Bible study, prayer and penitence to overcome his same-sex attraction. At about this time, he started University High School where, introverted, awkward and a little lost, he automatically gravitated towards the library.
‘I Always Felt Safe’
When Daniel started at Uni High, there weren’t any rainbow-snickered books in the library. The head librarian at the time was old school and strait-laced; all the ‘controversial’ books – mostly about sex – were hidden behind her desk and if you wanted to borrow one, you got the third degree.
And then she went on long-service leave and Henry and his fellow librarian, Mary, squeezed $500 out of the school principal and bought a stack of books from Hares and Hyenas. We put them out on the shelves, Mary recalls, but they didn’t last long. I think a few went out on ‘permanent loan’, but Daniel read them all and I always tried to keep him well-stocked.
Daniel spent more and more time in the library and slowly started to open up to Mary. There was never any judgement with Mary and I always felt safe, he says. I could talk about what was going on at home and I did. I didn’t have to filter. Mary would find other kids who were a good match for me – socially and intellectually – and introduce us. And when I was bullied by the jocks it was Mary who sent them running and who mopped up my tears.
Steering Change
Throughout this whole time, Daniel was working hard on his Bible studies at home, doing what his parents asked and meeting with elders of the church who were trying to ‘fix’ him. I remember him coming in with big black rings under his eyes sometimes because he’d been up half the night reading the Bible, Mary recalls.
For Daniel, the library wasn’t just a place to read, to hide, to be safe. Mary and Henry made it a destination, he says, and it became part of my everyday routine.
‘And it wasn’t just me, Mary saved. It was like she and Henry collected all these queer kids and outliers together and we became a bit of a force.’
‘Between the two of them, they actually changed the culture of the school and by the time I left, it was very different. I was voted Queen of the Prom in my final year and by then if anyone threatened me, it was actually the jocks who’d defend me; it was cool to be friends with the queer kids by then. I didn’t realise it at the time, but Mary and Henry really steered that change,’ says Daniel.
Thank You
Fast forward a couple of decades and I am sitting at a dinner table listening to Mary and Daniel share this story. There is humour in the re-telling – as there often is in stories of great pain – but more than anything, there’s a profound sense of love and gratitude. And it strikes me that librarians, back then and right now, are our quiet unsung heroes.
Of late, they’ve been in the news a lot, bearing the brunt of attacks from the far right for asking drag queens to read stories to kids.
So, to all the librarians out there, past and present, on behalf of the queer community, I want to say: we know you’ve been creating safe spaces for us for decades; we know those spaces have provided comfort, shelter and safety for our most vulnerable, and we know you’re creating those spaces still.
For every book bought, for every rainbow sticker displayed, for every drag story time organised – and for every queer kid seen and saved, Daniel and I say, Thank you.
