It’s hard when your wedding day is used as evidence that your life is a sham.
On a certain level, though, I understand the confusion. How can you be bisexual and married? If marriage isn’t about picking a team, what is?
My wedding day run-in with Elizabeth made me think. I never thought I’d marry, even before I fell in love with a female intern at my first magazine job in New York. That relationship—surprising, shocking, and thrilling all at once—jolted my identity. I had been a straight Midwestern gal; a bisexual city dweller began to emerge.
MY TWENTIES AND thirties were a series of big loves with men and women, but the biggest one of all was Amy. She was an electrifying, alluringly butch musician who also happened to be one half of the Indigo Girls. She had a Georgia accent, a kind soul, and such selfless politics, she made Jimmy Carter looked like Graydon Carter. We met in Montana when I flew out to cover a series of concerts the Indigo Girls were doing to support Native American environmental activists. It was love and lust at first sight, spurring me to break up with my boyfriend and confirming the fact that I was not a straight girl. Soon we were flying back and forth between Atlanta and New York City, meeting on the road during her long tours, and spending holidays with each other’s families. Her friends were attractive, progressive lesbians and inspiring musicians; mine were New York writers and feminists. I loved being in her world and she embraced mine.
I never wanted to marry Amy, but the fact that I couldn’t in most states made weddings attended with her poignant, vaguely itchy affairs—the celebration of heterosexual legal commitment was alienating. A friend once asked me if Amy and I were going to get hitched and I felt a surge of gratitude that almost made me cry—not because I had my dress all picked out, but because someone at least saw our wedding as an option. It’s difficult to reject something that has rejected you first.
Some of my resistance to marriage was driven by my feminist politics. I was keenly attuned to the compromises associated with being a wife—from being the helper, rather than the main event, to the endless unpaid tedious labor. “Why I Want a Wife,” an essay in an early issue of Ms. magazine (always on my mother’s coffee table) had a profound effect on my thinking at a young age. Poet Jan Clausen’s line “If I’m going to be a wife, I damn well get to have one, too,” was something I quoted approvingly. My five-year relationship with Amy was co-wifely: loving, healthy, and egalitarian. We discussed politics, hiked on the Appalachian Trail, hung out with our families, and supported each other’s work. We recycled, cooked together, rescued kittens, traveled to Cuba and all over the United States, and found lots and lots of time for sex. For once, orgasms were easy. I was amazed by how vulnerable I could be in bed with her.
By contrast, my relationships with men always left me feeling somewhat hopeless, like a clichéd version of myself—naggy, competitive, and quick to complain about how “emotionally unavailable” he was. I held something in reserve with men and I was dismissive of “typical couples,” with their public bickering and soothing of fragile male egos. I despaired of finding the kind of relationship I wanted with a guy and, because of my ability to fall in love with women, I didn’t try too hard. Men had their charms (lustful assertiveness, an air of mystery, fun body parts), but I had to acknowledge that my better self—the more confident, funny, fully Jenny Jennifer—came out with only one gender.
In 2002, Amy and I broke up. Traveling so much had gone from glamorous to onerous, and neither of us was willing to give up her home to live in the other’s city. I was feeling curious about men, too, and increasingly returned the flirtation of a sexy and misanthropic musician/public school teacher named Gordon. In part to shield myself from the fear and sadness I felt about leaving Amy, I threw myself into this new relationship. Within weeks I was making excuses to my friends about his rudeness and saying things like, “You just don’t get his sense of humor. He’s actually hilarious.” I swung between hating him and hating myself. Occasionally I hated both of us, but it was impossible to love us both at the same time. In a moment of self-respect, I broke up with him. In an ensuing moment of denial, we got pregnant. I had a baby, Skuli, but aborted the relationship with Gordon. I focused on my son, and romance slid off my radar and settled in a remote corner of my to-do list (“item #121: procure love life”).
The first three years of my son’s life were full with writing, book tours, friends, family, and the seemingly endless dramedies of the little boy with whom I lived. I was single for the first time in my adult life, and it felt surprisingly great. My whole romantic life had been reacting to things: I feared subsuming my ambitions under a man’s, so I partnered with women; I grew frustrated with the symbiosis I felt with Amy and threw myself into someone who was her (and my) opposite. I didn’t want to get married just because I was pregnant, it’s the most culturally acceptable, or my spouse wanted me to, so I took marriage off the menu. Being alone with Skuli felt very luxurious. Sometimes I would wake up in the dead of night, Skuli’s little form snuggled next to me, and think, Life is really good. But, delectable as it was, at thirty-seven, I sensed I was too young to have Skuli be my bedmate for eternity. I decided to put my love life on the top of my to-do list.
I dated men only this time around. It’s hard to know why, but my sexuality isn’t some equal opportunity employer, it has its own logic and serendipity. Just as I was starting to feel like I had my mojo back, I ran into Michael, an old friend of my sister’s, on a subway platform. He was broad-shouldered, big-eyed, and tall, his hair a thatch of floppy blondness. We exchanged pleasantries and as I was leaving, I squeezed his arm and said that I hoped our paths would cross again. That night, I Facebooked Michael. We agreed to meet for a drink later that week. When Michael arrived, he handed me a bag of chocolate chip cookies from a nearby bakery. “These are for Skuli,” he said, pronouncing my son’s odd Icelandic name perfectly. It was as if there was a bible for how to properly date a single mother and not only had Michael read it, he’d written it.
His single-mother handling skills were one thing, but he understood me as someone who can love women and men, and didn’t reduce my relationships to phases. Like many men of his age, he has dated bisexual women. He’s proudly supportive of my career as a feminist writer and activist, dedicated to making my chaotic life easier, and makes me, an exhausted mother of two, feel like the sexiest woman in the world.
Although Michael wanted to get married, he accepted that I didn’t and left it at that. Soon, we were pregnant and living together, and an insta-family of (almost) four. That’s when I took a breath and realized I kind of wanted to marry him. I had a child with someone else; I wanted something with Michael I hadn’t had with anyone. On the one-year anniversary of our first date, a little tipsy after dinner at Hearth, I proposed. Eight months later, in front of our parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, and our own children, we said, “I do.” My family was surprised and thrilled, but no one, thank God, acted relieved.
My lifelong mate is male, but it didn’t change my sexuality. I believe that my sexuality is something that emanates from me—not something conferred on me by my partner. On the other hand, I’m aware I appear straight, because bisexuality is invisible (or unbelievable) to many people. I know I’m not straight and never will be. I’m really proud of who I am and I’m lucky that Michael is, too.
If I had to pick the first moment I knew it might be safe, even wonderful, to be Michael’s wife, it was on our third date. “You’re the best boyfriend—or girlfriend—I have ever had,” I blurted. Michael paused. Then, in a way I knew meant he got it and me, he said, “Thank you.”
At our wedding, I forgot the bouquet I had run out to buy hours earlier. We fashioned a makeshift arrangement out of some flowers on the table. When I married Michael, I didn’t feel like I picked a team—but I do feel like I’m part of one.
—Originally published in Harper’s Bazaar, May 2011
Amy Ray
I REMEMBER VERY CLEARLY THE FIRST TIME I SAW AMY. It was 198
8, and the Indigo Girls’ video for “Closer to Fine” was on the bigscreen TV at the Lawrence University union. The Atlanta duo looked exciting and different to me. What was it? The sincere and direct gaze, the thin lips, seeing two women who could play guitar, walk, and sing at the same time? They weren’t chicks or eye candy; they seemed to occupy the same serious space as male musicians.
For a long time in my life, I couldn’t imagine someone who embodied what I thought an ideal feminist woman was more than Amy Ray, the throaty brunette Indigo Girl. She was strong, not only physically, but also as a presence. You noticed her for having substance: a deep, charmingly scratchy voice with something to say; large, watchful green eyes that signaled interest in and engagement with the world. There was nothing furtive or dodgy about Amy.
Elizabeth Wurtzel once wrote of her as embodying the female gaze, to counter the objectifying, flattening male gaze. She didn’t bother with makeup or skirts, yet she always looked alluring. Amy also had power I had most often associated with men. She earned her own considerable wealth, played guitar, and wrote loud, beseeching music. And she was deeply, unapologetically political—never ate anything that had a face, lived frugally, gave generously, and felt most at home with Native American environmentalists, Zapatistas, and queer kids. Two decades after I first laid eyes on her, she still embodies feminism to me, mainly because she struggles so valiantly to match her words to her actions.
Jennifer: What was it like for you growing up?
Amy: I had conservative parents, but they had an interesting relationship to feminism. Until puberty, they treated us pretty much as genderless, aside from sticking us in dresses for Easter. We were doing everything on an equal level as our little brother. So I didn’t really have a hard concept of how I would be treated differently. At puberty, my dad started having different expectations and my mom probably did, too, but she didn’t talk about them the same way. In my family, there were a lot of women who were equally strong as or stronger than the men in the family. Husbands left for one reason or another, and the women survived. But as I got older, gender got to be more of an issue. At the end of high school, I started playing out a lot musically, and with Emily, of course, we came up against lots of sexism.
J: In what way? Give me some examples.
A: A lack of respect. I had some technical ability to run sound. I’d set up our own sound system, and we’d run it ourselves. We would be sort of scoffed at by the house sound person. It was hard to bring things up on a technical level without getting the man who was in charge of our sound that night mad at us. It was always a man. We never had a sound woman until we hired one ourselves.
J: I remember her! What was her name, again?
A: Michelle Sabolchick. She’s worked with Melissa Etheridge, Jewel, Gwen Stefani . . . all those people. Sound men are always touchy with bands, but I felt there was less respect because I was a woman. The promoters were very patronizing. If I put my foot down in order to get paid, the “honeys” and the “babes” came out at that point. All of it was in language and body stance and tone. It’s hard to articulate it, because it was so constant that we got used to it and even became numb to it. I just remember we had to work extra hard to get paid what they said they were going to pay. We had to work extra hard to have the sound the way we wanted it. When we were booking our gigs, we were just “two girls with guitars.” We had to work extra hard to get respect.
J: What you are describing is the reason that the women’s music movement of the early ’70s created their own network: their own touring circuit, their own booking, and their own labels, like Olivia Records. They were indie before indie existed. Were you aware of the women’s music movement when you first started playing out as a teenager with Emily?
A: When I started playing, in the 1980s, I wasn’t aware any movement even happened. I don’t even think I knew who [groundbreaking Olivia Records recording artist] Cris Williamson was until ’83. That’s when I discovered her.
J: Do you remember how you discovered her?
A: I ended up with a couple of records, including Changer. I don’t remember why. It might have been someone I knew, or my sister. It’s pretty vague, because I listened to it a lot but I didn’t understand what the context of that record was, the idea of a women-run infrastructure. And even when I heard Ferron a few years later, I didn’t understand. I didn’t make the connection to the women’s bookstore in Atlanta that I went to quite a lot—Charis. I just didn’t make the connections.
They would ask us to do these events, and they would say it would be all women. We would be scared about it and be like, “Our college frat-boy friends can’t come? We can’t play it!” When we were at Emory, which was’84 to ’86 for me, a lot of our audience was a college audience, so the idea of playing a women’s function that was separatist was just scary to us. We acted self-righteous about it, but we were really just scared. I didn’t understand the value of it. The musicians that were mentoring us were women playing in Atlanta, and they also had this weird attitude about separatism stuff. They had been really jaded and scared into believing that the reason they weren’t getting further was because they had already been categorized as gay women musicians. They wanted to stay as far away from that as possible and not alienate anybody.
J: Is there some truth to being marginalized if you identify too closely with being a gay and/or feminist musician? Or do you think that was just internalized self-hatred?
A: Well, it’s internalized self-hatred, but it’s also true. If you rise above that self-hatred, you might still be marginalized, because there’re so many other people who have self-hatred. More has to change than just you. But the thing about the margins is that there are also fans on the margins. These artists resisted that separatist thing and an audience that would be there for them because they wanted another kind of success, and they didn’t get it either.
I think that’s the lesson I was learning. That’s what I was seeing, and it helped me let go of my fear. Just on a practical level, I was like, “Wow. You’re trying not to alienate an audience, but you’re alienating another audience.” You can’t really win. You really just have to play to the people who want to hear you. If that means it’s a women’s event, then that’s what you do. If that’s the gig that you get, you do that gig, because you just want your music to be heard and appreciated by somebody.
We got lucky and had a college audience. Things were going really well, and even though we were scared of the gay community and the women’s-space-only community, they forgave us and still supported us. We got lucky in their generosity, because we learned our lesson and became politicized.
J: I think it’s hard to value the beautiful margin. An infrastructure was created so that you didn’t have to deal with sexist sound technicians, but it’s hard to value that female-only creation if you don’t also feel like you can make it in the mainstream.
A: Everything society says about alternative women-created or queer spaces is so derogatory, it’s hard not to take that in and think that it’s less. When Emily and I started, we got to reap the benefits of Ferron and June Millington and the Roches being there before us, whether we knew it or not. These were women who were playing their own instruments. That was the big deal, right before us: producers that wouldn’t let women play their own guitar parts. I think we can’t really appreciate it, because we can’t conceive what it would be like to be told systematically that your job was to sing the song; you’re not good enough to play your own guitar.
J: What you’re describing is era-specific, in a way. In the ’80s, not only were you in danger of being marginalized as just having a separatist feminist community for women only, but it was also much more dangerous to be gay and out. How much did it feel like having an allfemale crowd also meant risking being out before you were ready?
A: Well, anything associated with separatist space meant gay. No one had the concept that women could be straight and want to be in a separate space for a while. It was hard to separa
te my internalized homophobia and the external homophobia and misogyny we were really experiencing. The ’80s were a time when I had a girlfriend and would go out to gay bars, but my music career was so important to me. I wanted to be accepted by the punk rock community and by a certain songwriter community. None of that was associated with gay. To be out felt like I was risking all of that. I might not get to hang out with Driving and Crying or play the 9:30 Club—things that I really valued artistically. To be aligned with women’s music felt like I was risking other communities I needed.
J: Those are terrible choices to have to make.
A: That’s the crux of it, too. Not only was I scared and homophobic, I was scared of losing an artistic thread I had. I felt lost in this place where I didn’t relate to women’s music—what I’d been exposed to, at least—and then it was hard to respect it. I felt like if I gave it its due, I’d be absorbed by that community and lose everything else. It takes a lot of experience to respect the contribution and even the art of this other thing that’s so scary, and even be in debt to it. At the same time, you can be developing your own movement for your own generation or community or whatever you define it as.
J: What provoked you to know that it was important for you and Emily to be out lesbian musicians?
A: I just felt like a hypocrite. We had made it pretty big. We were on our second or third record, and we were singing so much about strength and self-esteem and being an individual, believing in yourself. I started to recognize that there was a gay community in our audience. We weren’t lying. We didn’t ever make up boyfriends or anything like that, but we were skirting the issue. A press request from a gay publication would come, and Emily wouldn’t do it. I wanted to come out and Emily didn’t. But I knew I could count on her to feel that way, so sometimes I wondered if I used my loyalty to her to justify not coming out myself.
F 'em! Page 19
