Then what?
It really was something I had wanted to do my whole life. Some girls dream of big frothy wedding dresses, traveling the world, skydiving, or having babies. Me? I wanted to kiss a girl.
And by “wanted to kiss,” I mean that when I was with boys, I thought of girls. Always have. When I had sex for the first time at sixteen, I closed my eyes to block out the six-pack abs, broad shoulders, and chiseled jaw of the boy on top of me. The drunken escapades and one-night stands of my youth? There was never any desire for the person himself. There was the thrill of being a little trashy and a little rebellious, of racking up a reputation, of throwing it back at them, of letting them know we can be just as crude and uncaring as they can—but there was never the lust that I would hear my friends talk about. When they were oohing and aahing over the volleyball scene in Top Gun, I was thinking of Kelly McGillis with her pencil-skirt and clipboard and tousled bedhead hair. (I know. That plus the fact that I later drove a Subaru and listened to the Indigo Girls should have tipped me off.) I have always thought the female body was much more beautiful than the male; I have always been far more turned on by our magical, slippery little orchid than by their—what is that? A puppet? Some sort of sea creature? I have never had an orgasm with a male without thinking of a female. I have never had an orgasm from intercourse. I have faked orgasms to make it be over. When I have had an orgasm with a man, it’s usually because I’ve taken over and done it myself. And it’s always easier with my eyes closed, when I can pretend his fingers or mouth are a woman’s. I am not turned on by looking at them, their hairy chests, their shape, their size. And don’t get me started on testicles—are we really supposed to find those attractive?
You’d think I would have put these pieces together and found me a woman. It’s not like I lived in some uptight part of the country. It was Greenwich Village. In the ’80s. Everyone was doing everyone and everything, and there was no judgment and much freedom. I had always been a part of the performing arts culture, a world peppered with experimentation and avant-garde practices of all kinds—I may have even been among the minority in the circles in which I traveled: a mousy little hetero pixie surrounded by big Cuban bulldykes and smooth-waxed pretty boys. But I thought that since I lacked the sort of brazen knowledge about my sexuality that they possessed, since I wasn’t sure, that I must, by default, be straight. That if I knew, I would know. And since I didn’t know, I must not be. I didn’t have any internalized homophobia, I wasn’t worried about what others would think, I just didn’t want to be an imposter. I didn’t want to take something so real and so personal and trivialize it by trying it on like a costume. I didn’t want to use another person as a science experiment or a sex object. I didn’t want to take it lightly. I heard the way recreational fence-jumpers were talked about, and it wasn’t always pleasant. “Gay” was something you knew in your heart and felt in your bones and would fight to the death for. Something you earned, something you were, not something you did, or claimed to be just because you wonder sometimes, just because you find women aesthetically beautiful, just because you feel so much more yourself when you’re hanging around with lesbians than with straight women.
I thought sexual orientation was hardwired. Honestly. I didn’t get that it could change. Of course I was aware of places, families, or religions where homosexuality was not tolerated (or worse), so I understood why some people stay closeted—but I truly believed that coming out later in life was more a choice to reveal something known, not the unexpected appearance of something new. Most of my gay friends had always known they were gay whether they had spent any time in the closet or not; hence my assumption that people who came out after leading a heterosexual life always knew they were gay but denied it (either to themselves or others). Somehow I made it to adulthood without understanding that one could not know, that one could speculate and ponder but not conclude, or that one could find one’s self all grown up and suddenly in love—or lust, or some combination of the two—with someone of the same sex, and be just as surprised as everybody else that they are, now, as gay as the day is long.
I remember, when I was about twenty years old, telling a lesbian friend of mine that I didn’t want to “try it” because I might “like it too much.” She gave me The Look (if she had worn reading glasses she would have peered over the top of them) and said, “Honey, it’s sex. I think we’re supposed to like it too much.” We had a brief conversation about self-deprivation, self-worth, and why I would deny myself unbearable pleasure. I didn’t have any answers then, but now I can see how deep the “I don’t deserve happiness” groove is carved into my heart. And that’s where the work is now—it’s not about sex, it’s about love; and it’s not about loving her or him, it’s about me.
But back to the sex.
If that first kiss almost made me faint, you can imagine what happened the first time I touched her. Or she me. Our first several weeks can only be described as “furtive”: there were lots of stolen moments, lots of groping and grinding and grabbing that took place in stairwells and bathrooms and movie theaters, and it was a full two months of these clandestine trysts before we spent our first night together, before we were able to lie naked together, to shower together, to wake up together, to take our time, to slow down and breathe each other in. Everything about her delighted me, and vice-versa. We played with each other’s long hair, we traced the lines in our palms, we massaged feet and legs and backs, we made love quickly and slowly and roughly and gently, over and over and over, and I knew I would never tire of it. Though it embarrassed her at first, I loved to lie on my tummy between her legs, open her a little and gaze; alternately licking and looking, entranced by the beauty, amazed by the power and the ache of the desire I felt.
She was so . . . womanly. An hourglass figure, a way of putting on lipstick, lace-trimmed underthings, quick to laugh, quick to cry. I watched as she did her hair and makeup the morning after that first night, and felt like those old photos of the little boys backstage watching the women in the dressing room roll their stockings on. She pointed out that I had the same big-eyed look as them, and asked if I felt about twelve. I said that I did. She nodded, knowingly. She was a couple years older than I was and had been out for quite some time, and while we tried to avoid the teacher-student dynamic, sometimes it appeared in the form of a nod or a look that said she knew what I was feeling, how exhilarating it was to finally be setting that part of me free, what she meant to me.
However, just because she was older and wiser and had been the “top” in her past relationships, didn’t mean that I became meek or subservient in ours. We vied for top, and she got to discover the pleasure of yielding, submitting, surrendering. She allowed me to flip her over, to get her on her knees, to let me wear the strap-on in the family—all new things for her. We became sexual playgrounds for one another, exploring, discovering, coloring so far out of the lines that we were making whole new pictures. We gave each other the gift of complete trust, and not just sexually: our hearts, our little spirits, fell in love mind-body-soul. She was a best friend, a confidant, a partner. We could speak volumes just by silently staring into each other’s eyes. Hot bubble baths, handheld walks through the park at night in the snow, dessert dates. Private jokes were endless. Orgasms came fast and furious for both of us. “Intense” is an understatement. We were on fire. It was like we were the only two people in the world when we were together; nothing else mattered, nothing else existed.
But that quickly became a problem.
Because things did exist, and they were big things, and I was neglecting them. Two children. A home business. A marriage. A house. My parents. My siblings. My garden. My dogs. My own self-care. I started to feel guilty, sketchy—always hiding, sneaking, making up reasons to go out for the night, emailing her from the train on the days I commuted into the city, bringing the phone into the bathroom with me while I got ready in the morning and talking in hushed whispers under the white noise of the running water. I started to hate the feeling o
f always covering my tracks. I started to worry about getting caught. I started to tire of the double life. I was on an emotional rollercoaster, but not so much one with ups and downs as one with dizzying spins and inversions and sheer drops. After several months of holding on for dear life, I knew it was time to start making some choices and went about the hard work of cross-examining my sexuality and figuring out what this was: a fling, an awakening, a one-time romp in the hay, or the beginning of a whole new life. I was terrified, but ready to roll up my sleeves and unearth my truth.
So I did what any good soul-searcher does: I headed for the Internet.
I looked up everything I could find online and discovered a ton of resources: I ordered books; I read blogs, articles, and medical journals; I joined a chat room; I connected with a therapist who specializes in women coming out later in life (who herself had been through the same thing), and found a weekly group for married women coming to terms with their gayness (apparently we’re everywhere).
I arrived at my first therapy session with tears brimming in my eyes before I even knocked on the door, tears that flowed freely as I spilled my story. She sat before me, this impish mini-lesbian with silver hair cropped close to her head, wisdom and peace emanating from her like a guru, tiny quick mannerisms belying her seventy-plus years of age. She listened with rapt attention, jotted down some notes, and when I was through telling her everything, she leaned forward and said to me, with the faintest almost-wink of a smile, as if we shared a delicious and enchanting little secret:
“Startling, isn’t it?”
Indeed.
From there, we dove into my past and inspected my present (I couldn’t do future just yet). For a while I was fixated on figuring out if I had always been gay but just never acted on it, if this dalliance was an isolated incident, or if I had undergone some sort of a mid-life shift. Eventually I realized I could make a case for any of those explanations, but ultimately it didn’t matter if it had taken the train or a town car. It’s arrived, and what am I going to do about it?
Motivated by the guilt brought on by secret-keeping, my husband wondering why I was so moody, and my lover’s growing discomfort with my being married and closeted, What am I going to do about it? rapidly became How do I tell my husband?
And so one night after the kids were sound asleep, I turned off the TV, turned to face him, and told him exactly what my anguish and distance had been about. I told him I was really confused because I still loved him, but not in that way, and had no idea what this meant for me or for us. He wasn’t mad, and he wasn’t shocked. He was understanding and kind and supportive, and instead of heading straight to blame and resentment, we talked about how to move forward from here. Was the marriage over? Or was it just redefined? If so, as what? Did we want an open marriage, or a polyamorous arrangement, or a don’t ask/don’t tell policy? Did my questioning mean we needed to file for divorce immediately? Did “sexual fluidity” mean that I had cruised over to the other side and might just as easily cruise back someday? He made it clear that he didn’t want me to deny or stifle my true self, but that he was just as committed to the non-breakup of our family as I was, and asked if it was possible for these things to exist in harmony, and if so, how? He started therapy. He found a straight-spouse support group, went every week, and created his own network of men in the same situation. We had not been physically intimate for a long time anyway; we agreed to stay that way indefinitely. We had been married nearly seventeen years by then—neither of us wanted to do anything impulsive, and both of us wanted to exhaust every possibility before calling it quits, if that was what needed to happen (which we weren’t even sure was the answer).
Meanwhile, I started comparing—not so much her to him, but my life the way it was presently versus what it would be like with her. I started examining that relationship with a critical eye, and found myself thinking: Do I really want to leave this for that? Was I willing to trade no sex and stability for great sex and instability? She was fun, but not terribly reliable. She was successful and wealthy, but not happy. She was physically attractive, but not spiritually sound. There was a demanding, controlling quality to her that made me feel resentful and rebellious. I didn’t like her all-or-nothing attitude about our relationship and she didn’t like my not coming out more fully, not leaving my marriage faster, or my need for time and space. She was jealous of my business, my dogs, my children, and my husband. She refused to come to my home because of those things; and I was tired of traveling the hour-plus to hers. Eventually we went from feeling like we had our own secret club to feeling like we were speaking different languages.
The stress and pain of living in secrecy and uncertainty was taking its toll on her and me, our trust, our sanity. When one person is waiting alone on the sidelines tapping her watch and the other has a life so full she feels like she’s going to burst, emotions go horribly awry. Over the course of the year we went from the bliss of new love to the tedium of a long, drawn-out breakup between two inherently incompatible people. As I pulled back, she held tighter, and we spiraled into a cycle of push/pull, break up/get back together, ultimatums, misunderstandings, and drama after drama after drama. Finally it ran out of steam, but instead of sadness I felt freedom.
So now I am in limbo. I am celibate, and introspective, and shell-shocked.
I would love to have waited until I had a more popular, less ambiguous ending to write my story, to be able to say, “and now I’ve left my marriage and have a girlfriend and I’m happier than ever!” or “and then I fell in love with my husband all over again and I’m happier than ever!” I would love to be able to tell you that I have all the answers, or at least a definition or a label for my sexuality. There are days I know I am a lesbian, that I always have been and always will be, but for now I am choosing not to honor that part of myself purely out of a sense of responsibility and loyalty to my family. There are flashes of doubt, when I wonder if she was just a really good seducer (she has a pattern of going after married women, and bragged about her “conversion rate”) and I was in a ready place to do some exploration. There are times I think she was the great love of my life, and other times I thank my lucky stars I didn’t leave the security of my home for the passion of her bed. There are brief moments that I still wonder if my attraction to women was something dormant that came to life, or something brand-new that showed up when she did. (Like I said, “brief.” There is too much evidence pointing more toward dormant than new, and I know that if I were to find myself single, it would be women I would seek out, not men.)
Today my inner world is a maelstrom of anger and sorrow and loss and relief and chaos as I sort out what it all means. But I don’t have any regrets. Sometimes I feel a happy bittersweet-sad, as if I had been perfectly content with my cup of Folgers every morning (really—it was fine), and then one day I was handed the most delectable, creamy Caffé Vita breve latte, granules of brown sugar melting into the thick velvety foam, served in a gorgeous Italian china mug with handmade almond biscotti on the side—a delightful gift, but one that renders the Folgers, in comparison, pretty much undrinkable. So the sadness is more of a Smokey Robinson “a taste of honey is worse than none at all” wistful, nostalgic sadness than an emptiness or a grief. It’s a feeling that brings me both gratitude and heartache.
On my more melancholy days, I long for the ignorant girl who could swig that black coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and think nothing of it. On my more hopeful days, I know there is a world of designer espresso drinks that I will make my way back to someday. On my still-confused days, I put the whole drink order far back on the shelf and let myself awaken naturally, at my own pace, without trying to decide what I want, what I can or can’t have, what I should do, what I want to do, which is better, what I’m willing to fight for, and—these have been the two most interesting questions of the year—what I can live with, and what I can’t live without.
Over the Fence
Audrey Bilger
I was thirty-four when I
jumped the fence. I didn’t put it that way at the time and only learned this phrase a few months later, when a friend told me a male colleague had used it to ask her if that’s what had happened—if I’d become a lesbian. At first it seemed like a crass expression. Were heterosexual women kept behind chain-links? Was there a line between straight and gay that could only be crossed by leaping? Having lived as a lesbian for a decade and a half now, I understand better where the metaphor comes from. Mainstream culture likes to see things in black and white, with barricades to maintain order and stability. A straight woman who leaves the fold disrupts the pattern and must chart a new course. She has to put up her own guideposts and decide which directions to take.
My adult life so far divides evenly between two marriages and two ways of being a wife. When I got married the first time, I wanted to make an honest woman of myself. I had moved in with this man, and marriage seemed like the way to get back in the good graces of my community. The second time I married, having lived with my wife-to-be for eleven years, very little in the culture supported our union; in fact, forces were conspiring to eliminate this right. The clock was ticking on Proposition 8—the ballot initiative that would amend the California constitution to ban same-sex marriage—and we had a limited amount of time to get legally hitched. Different sets of pressures at radically different moments in history.
As I’ve discovered, marriage is never a purely personal matter between two people only (regardless of their genders). It always involves external approval—a license—from the state, and there are actual barriers erected to keep people in their place. Happily ever after may be out of your control. But if you can learn to jump a fence or two, you might find, as I did, your way to a better life.
“Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?”
Dear John, I Love Jane Page 6
