Music From Another World: One of the most empowering books for women, bestselling author Robin Talley’s gripping new 2020 novel

by Robin Talley

  I’m just so sorry, Tammy. If you hate me, I guess I understand.

  Yours truly, Sharon

  Monday, December 5, 1977

  Dear Sharon,

  Okay, well…the truth is, I kind of assumed you’d already told your brother.

  He’s right, though, now that I’m thinking about it. You probably should’ve asked first.

  I can see why he wouldn’t trust me. I trust him, the same way I trust you, but that’s different. We’ve been writing to each other for so long and told each other so much that it feels as if we’ve met a hundred times already. But for your brother, it isn’t that way at all.

  I’m sorry you fought because of me, though. I hate that I’m messing things up for you.

  And I’m sorry things are tough with you and Kevin. It’s getting tough with Carolyn and me, too.

  We’re “together” now, I think—if you kiss every day you’re a real couple, right? Because that’s what we’ve started doing. There’s a stairwell no one ever uses by the north corridor, and we go there every day after our second-period Bible class. We only have three minutes between periods, so we have to be fast, but it’s exhilarating. There’s never time to ask questions. Or to talk at all.

  What usually happens is, she’ll leave class first and glance back at me. I’ll catch her eye. Then she’ll turn around and walk down the hall, fast, until she disappears around the corner. I’ll look around to make sure no one’s paying attention—which they never are, because everyone spends the class-change time making fun of the way Mrs. Harrington draws out the name “Baal” so it sounds like she’s talking about a guy’s balls—and then I’ll follow her.

  When we get into the stairwell, we listen to make sure we don’t hear footsteps, and then we start kissing. We don’t stop to smile nervously, or hold hands, or do any of the other things I used to do when I’d kiss boys. We just kiss, and kiss, and we don’t stop until the warning bell goes off. Then we spring apart and scramble to wipe our faces and fix our hair.

  I always leave first, so I can make sure the hall is clear. Carolyn doesn’t come out until after I’ve turned the corner. I know because when I look back, I never see her.

  I don’t even want to know what would happen if we got caught. It bothers me, though, that we never have time to talk. Especially when something’s happened.

  Like with yesterday. As we were leaving Sunday school, she was walking up ahead of me with Brett, and he asked her on a date. Just suddenly, out of nowhere. Carolyn said yes without even hesitating, and she gave him one of those nervous smiles she never gives me.

  I heard the whole thing. She must’ve known that. But when I tried to ask her about it today in the stairwell, she started kissing me before I could finish my sentence. I kissed her back, but after a minute I pulled away, and when I asked again, she rolled her eyes and said, “Duh. Come on, you know I don’t want people thinking there’s something wrong with me.” Then she kissed me again before I could say any more.

  I’ve been thinking about what she said all day. Especially the “wrong with me” part. She said it as though it was obvious. As if what’s happening between us is straight-up wrong.

  That’s how my aunt and everyone else here sees it. I used to think of it that way, too. Maybe I still do, sometimes.

  Not everyone thinks that, though. Those women you met at the bookstore, and your brother and his friends—they don’t think the way people here do.

  I know it’s only that Carolyn doesn’t want us to get caught. I don’t want that, either, of course. It’s the same for your brother, and I bet it’s the same way for his friend Dean at Stanford, too. Especially if his parents are paying his tuition.

  So what’s the answer? Who’s right, and who’s wrong? What are any of us supposed to do?

  Sorry. I know you don’t know the answers any more than I do. I just get so lost in the whole mess of it all sometimes.

  Yours truly, Tammy

  Wednesday, December 7, 1977

  Dear Tammy,

  I have to leave for confession, so I can’t write much, but I just read your letter and it made me realize something.

  You said a couple of letters ago that I was your best friend. Well, I think that you’re my best friend, too. Sorry it took me so long to figure that out.

  And I wanted to say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you, or with Carolyn for that matter. Or my brother, or anyone else. I understand about wanting to keep it secret, but that’s not the same thing as there being something wrong with you. That’s just what you have to do to survive from one day to the next.

  I’m so glad we’re still writing to each other, because there’s a lot I want to say to you. I want to hear everything you have to say, too.

  Shoot, got to go. I’ll write again tomorrow.

  Yours, Sharon

  Summer, 1978

  Saturday, May 20, 1978

  Dear Diary,

  I haven’t used this diary in months—not since I started writing every single thought in my head in my letters to Tammy. But I had to get it out again to write about tonight.

  I went to a show in North Beach. I’d thought about inviting Kevin, but I decided I’d rather be alone. Now I wish I’d called him after all.

  The show itself was great. This band called Crime opened, and then the Avengers came on. It was my first time seeing the Avengers live, and their singer had short, spiky bleached hair and cool makeup—big red circles of blush up high on her cheeks and dark, over-the-top eye makeup, as if she was making fun of girls who try to look like Farrah Fawcett-Majors.

  The way she moved around the stage when she wasn’t singing was cool, too. She gave off a very clear signal that she didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She was just moving the way she wanted to move.

  When the band took a break, everyone started churning toward the bar, as usual. I didn’t want to get crushed, so I headed for the front door and stepped outside. It was cold out, and I hadn’t brought a jacket since I always get sweaty from dancing, so I was shivering in my Clash T-shirt. It was one I’d found in the same secondhand store where I’d bought a bunch of things lately, but I’d worn it with jeans because the last couple of times I’d gone to clubs in my vinyl skirt, jerks had kept grabbing my butt.

  I got so cold so fast I gave up and turned around to go back inside. That was when I spotted the poster. It was one of a dozen worn, tattered posters that had been up on that wall by the door for ages, but it jumped out to me so clearly it might as well have been outlined in neon.

  It was the same poster I saw on the side of a phone booth on my way out of the Castro, almost a year ago now. The one with the picture of Midge Spelling in her leather skirt and tie.

  I froze, staring at it. The poster was gray and wrinkled, with a long tear running down the side. The picture of Midge was faded, but intact. She stared straight into the camera with no trace of a smile. As if she was looking right through me.

  I remember that night so clearly. The moment I first saw Midge onstage. The passion in her voice. The way she shut her eyes when she sang. The way her lips curled as she growled into the microphone. Everything about her was strong, and fierce, and beautiful, all at the same time.

  Suddenly, staring down at that worn poster, all I wanted in the entire world was to go back to that night, climb up onto that stage, and kiss her.

  Wait. What?

  I shut my eyes and sucked in a ragged breath. Had I imagined that thought?

  No. It was real. Completely, unavoidably real.

  I turned around. When I opened my eyes again, I was facing the cars and buses speeding by on the street in front of the club. I couldn’t see Midge’s photo, but I could feel it looming behind me.

  What did this mean? What was I supposed to do?

  I’m not gay.

  I have a boyfriend.
I like him. I like being with him. I like it a lot.And it’s not just Kevin, either. When Peter dragged me to see Star Wars for the third time, I spent the whole night imagining making out with Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon when it made the jump to light speed.

  I wouldn’t feel that way if I was gay. Right?

  Except…what if this was why I didn’t understand all those songs about love?

  A set of headlights swept across my eyes. I held up my arm in front of my face, blocking the light. It was the bus heading back downtown.

  I didn’t think anymore. I ran. When the bus slowed down at the stop by the end of the block, I jumped onto the bottom step.

  I had to get out of that place. I had to get somewhere I could really think.

  But thinking is all I’ve been doing since I got home, and I’m not any closer to understanding what happened outside that club than I was the first moment I saw that poster tonight.

  Yours, Sharon

  Tuesday, May 23, 1978

  Dear Diary,

  Well, now I’m even more confused.

  We lost again tonight. Anita Bryant and her people have been going from place to place, getting cities to overturn their gay rights laws. They already won in Kansas and Minnesota, and this time it was Eugene, Oregon.

  There have been marches in the Castro after every vote. Peter and I were driving back from the Eugene march tonight, both of us depressed, when I asked him.

  I don’t know why I did it then, of all times. Maybe I was too upset to think clearly. Maybe I just couldn’t stand to keep it inside one more second. Maybe both.

  “So, um…” I swallowed. “Something happened.”

  “Yeah?” He sounded tired. Too tired for this conversation. “What?”

  “Um, well…” I didn’t know where to start. I was starting to realize this was probably a bad idea.

  Things have been strained between Peter and me. He finally accepted my apology for telling Tammy about him, but I don’t think he believed me when I said she wasn’t as upset about it as he was. He was adamant that I didn’t understand—that I couldn’t.

  “Are you going to tell me what it was?” he asked. A Journey song came on the radio, and he leaned down to hit Play on the tape deck. The opening notes of the Ziggy Stardust album tinkled out. That was always our favorite when we were kids. “I’m kind of exhausted.”

  “Yeah. Um.” I shut my eyes and tried to focus on the music. “I… I think I might like a girl.”

  The car lurched.

  “Asshole!” shouted a guy from the right lane.

  “Oh, my gosh!” I grabbed the dashboard. “What was that?”

  My brother jerked the car back into the lane. “That was me reacting to you! What in Christ’s name are you doing, saying that shit while I’m driving?”

  “I wasn’t expecting you to kill us!”

  “Are you seriously telling me you’re gay?”

  “No. No! I don’t know. I don’t know what it means.”

  Peter glanced at me. For a second I thought he was going to steer the car into traffic again, but his eyes slid back to the road. “Is this why you’ve been hanging out with those girls at that bookstore?”

  “No. I wanted to help with the Prop 6 campaign.”

  “Uh-huh.” He didn’t look at me this time.

  “Look, I don’t know if I really like her. I thought I did, once, but it probably didn’t mean anything.”

  When I shut my eyes, I could see the picture of Midge perfectly, as though I was back outside the club all over again, but when I opened them, I was feeling too many things to sort them all out.

  “Shar?” Peter’s voice dropped as he glanced over at me. “It’s okay if you’re gay.”

  “I’m not.” I shook my head, my back still turned. I was seconds from crying. “I’m with Kevin, remember?”

  “Having a boyfriend doesn’t make you straight. Plenty of people live totally straight lives, but they’re still gay.”

  “Well, I’m not one of those people.”

  He sighed. “You’re talking as if there’s something wrong with being gay.”

  I wiped at my eyes roughly. “It isn’t that.”

  “Okay, well. Look, I’m only saying, I don’t think straight girls get crushes on other girls very often.”

  “Well, maybe I’m trying to start a new trend.” I gave up and tangled my fingers into the ends of my curly hair, letting the tears slip down my cheeks. “Besides, I never said it was a crush. I don’t know what it is. How did, um…how did you know?”

  “What, that I was gay?”

  I nodded.

  He shrugged. “I knew by junior high. The hard part was deciding what to do about it.”

  “Then I can’t be. I had no idea of anything back in junior high.”

  “I don’t think it’s the same for everyone. Dean didn’t know until he was already in college. He had a girlfriend all through high school, then he got to Stanford and one of the guys in his dorm took him to a gay bar, and he never looked back.”

  “Wow. Was he happy with his high-school girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk much about her. Leonard had a girlfriend in high school, too, but he knew he was gay and so did she. They only pretended to be together so their parents wouldn’t nag them while they both snuck out with guys.”

  Peter kept talking, telling me more about his friends, and I sat back to listen. These kinds of stories meant a lot more to me than they had before.

  I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do about all this, but it feels good to have told someone. Even though the person I want to tell is Tammy.

  But first, I have to think more. A lot more. So I can figure out what it means for myself.

  Yours, Sharon

  Tuesday, May 23, 1978

  Dear Sharon,

  You’ll probably think this is corny, but…I made Carolyn a collage. I know, I know, you said I should let her make the next move and you’re probably right, but I’m tired of waiting.

  I’ll give it to her on Saturday, at prom. I know that’s even cornier, but, well, we’re both going to this stupid dance with boys we don’t like. We might as well have something special to remember about it years from now.

  I didn’t have any photos of her to use in the collage, not unless I cut up one of my old school yearbooks, so I drew the background myself. I wanted to keep it simple, so I used a regular lead pencil and sketched a picture of us the night we first kissed. I didn’t draw the actual kissing part, obviously—I’m not stupid enough to put that down on paper—but I drew us lying by the water, with Carolyn perched on her elbow and me staring up at her. I’m mostly out of the frame, since it’s really a picture of Carolyn as I remember her that night. All light and warmth in the darkness.

  In the front of the drawing, I glued the words I’d cut out of my mom’s old issues of Life: TWO OF US AGAINST THE WORLD.

  On the back I wrote, “You’re the only one for me.”

  I hope she’ll like it. The drawing doesn’t do her justice, though. She has red hair that she’s always complaining about because it frizzes sometimes, but whenever we’re close, all I can see is how alive her hair looks. There’s no way you’d ever mistake her for anyone else.

  Meanwhile, my hair is generically blond and flat with a part down the middle. It hangs almost to my waist because my mom refuses to let me cut it. She says long hair is feminine and boys prefer it. As if either of those are good things.

  I wish I could chop my hair to my shoulders and wash it with dish soap so it puffed out, like Patti Smith’s. Or even steal my dad’s razor and shave it off completely. I don’t know which would freak out my mom and Aunt Mandy more.

  I’m dreading prom, Sharon. Tim Weiss probably plans to spend the entire night behind the gym getting stoned with the other guys
instead of dancing with me. He only asked me in the first place because Carolyn convinced Brett to get him to.

  Mom bought me this hideous dress. It’s sea-green gingham with fat sleeves and a fatter ruffle at the bottom of the skirt. She took me to a seamstress to get the hem let out, and now it’s even puffier than it was on the rack and it covers my feet completely. I’ll look like a legless gingham marshmallow.

  I’m so jealous that your school only lets seniors go to prom. I’m more jealous of your brother for having the nerve to just not go. Maybe next year I’ll be as brave as him.

  Are you excited for his graduation, though? I know you said you were nervous about him being at a different school from you for the first time, but at least he’s staying with you and your mom after he starts college. Maybe it’s kind of good that he can’t afford to live on his own yet. I bet he’s glad he’ll get to see you more, too, even if he won’t admit it.

  Got to go—Mom wants me to put my stupid dress on so she can take a Polaroid for Grandma. I cannot WAIT for this dance to be over.

  Yours, Tammy

  Friday, May 26, 1978

  Dear Tammy,

  Your collage for Carolyn sounds awesome. If she doesn’t like it, there’s definitely something wrong with her. I still have that one you sent me up on my wall, and I stare at it all the time. It’s strange how captivating it is.

  By the time you get this letter your prom will be over, so I hope it wasn’t too unbearable. Did Tim spend the whole night smoking behind the gym? If he did, did you actually mind? I could see how you might’ve had more fun if he wasn’t around to bother you much. At Kevin’s prom, there was a group of senior guys who disappeared five minutes after they got there and didn’t come back until the last song, reeking of smoke and falling all over the place. Father Murphy took them outside, and I have no idea what happened to them after that, but none of them were at graduation the next week.