“I try not to be, but maybe you should see for yourself.”
“You have a different attitude toward sexuality than I.”
Was she accusing me?
“Isn’t it true you can make love to someone you aren’t emotionally involved with? Someone you don’t even respect?”
“I think it is important to go with our sexual feelings. It is doubtful, although possible, I would be attracted to someone I didn’t care for or respect. If I did, I suppose we would have a purely sexual experience.”
“I don’t think I could ever do that, nor would I want to.”
There was more tension between us than the words told. Were we unable, as past lovers, to come together now as friends?
“What’s behind all this?” I asked, tears in my eyes. Couldn’t she see I was a sensitive individual, that I wasn’t into fucking around anymore, but at the same time I considered sex a basic drive and not one to be controlled?
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said, her eyes liquefying. “I guess I was trying to see if you had really changed, if I could trust you.”
“But I thought you had been seeing the change all along. And here you are accusing me again of the past.”
“I was so hurt when we were breaking up and you were cold and didn’t want to talk with me; there’s no going back, but there’s so much past hurt that I have to be truly sure before I can be open again.”
“That’s surely fair, but please, no devious techniques. I think we can have different ideas and attitudes about various things, sex being one of them, without letting those come between us. What a relationship if each of us were to agree all the time with the other. Trust me. I care for you and I don’t want to hurt you.” She stood in the bedroom nude as a gooseberry.
“I’m sorry. I need to know you wouldn’t hurt me. I just have an awkward way of getting to the point.” We embraced and in that embracing promised each other to try again.
Nearly every afternoon I would try to assuage the build-up of sexual tensions that would arise from a self-imposed dose of celibacy in the Latin climate where the overhead sun slowly turned my skin to a golden bronze, where the next-door neighbor danced seductively in the evenings, where I woke in a foamrubber bed day after day having slept beside Tove all night without touching. I had erogenous dreams of water and houses and empty rooms where women made love to each other only to be frightened later by angry Mexican men. I ate meals of omelets of all varieties stuffed with potatoes and onions or vegetables and cheese, I drank exotic drinks of rich milk and papaya, and I was totally reliant upon myself for sex. So, after a sunbath and a light lunch, I might sit comfortably in the back room with my bare back upon the cold stucco wall, and while reading or finishing the last swallows of a soothing drink, begin the slow but continuous circulation of my finger that would result in an intense and gratifying series of spasms. I didn’t know any other way to take care of myself during these times, and this seemed adequate; in fact, I began to look forward to the red rug session in the white-walled room as if it were a date with myself. I could do something different each time. I could fanaticize a seductive Chicana rolling her tongue and eating me out, there could be a woman with a dildo with the expertise of practice, there could be Dusty with her long blue eyes watching my every change of expression as my thighs tightened and my breathing grew short, there could be anything and everything I wanted within those four walls where I took care of myself. Everything, that is, but the live, warm body of a lover. That time lay yet ahead, and nothing I could do right now would shorten it.
Years later, I was speeding up the Sacramento Valley in the warm evening air of a summer day singing my lungs out into my yellow bubble-helmet shell. Louder and louder composing verse after verse to insulate and protect from the trial that lay ahead, I sang:
I’m an independent woman if ya know what I mean
I drive a motorcycle in my old faded jeans
I go anywhere I want, do anything I please
I’m an independent woman if ya know what that means
TOVE. BACK TO TOVE AND SHE WAS WITH CONSUELO. I was vulnerable to my rampant jealousy but determined to conquer it. I was an independent woman, didn’t believe in monogamy, would be free of household ties and patterned restrictions. I could drive in, share and give, and drive out. Easy, I said, and sang and sang and sang climbing the red-black buttes toward paradise. Paradise, I thought, what an appellation; home of grave-kickers and bible thumpers; a place where neighbors wear binoculars, regulation marks for eyebrows and a straight-on sneer for us queers. Well, they wouldn’t get me. It was my own self I feared.
Brrrrrm, click, pull the bike back on its stand, and there five feet from me standing with legs apart and arms at side as if frozen by not knowing what to do was Tove. No hug, no embrace, just a “look who’s here” expression. I was prepared. This could be a social visit like it was in Mexico. I knew it would feel strange but I was prepared; I’d visited my ex-husband two years after our divorce. I could be friendly, I could see objectively.
And Consuelo? I could accept her. The table was begging a spread in the old dog pen next to the shack. I was a guest for dinner come unexpectedly but nevertheless warmly invited. Stuffed peppers and a watercress salad.
There Consuelo sat. Brown and solid with a little color washed out from being indoors. Not as robust as before, lean with the summer heat and her hair had grown six inches. I smiled. It was going to be easy. Back in the plastic lounge chair with boots dipping the sand, I made the tale of my travels entertaining and fun. Only my hands were nervous, and two fingers kept rubbing, an old Tove tick.
“You still love me or don’t you?” The impetus of her question tipped her forward. She was nearly out of the chair and in my lap, my nervous lap. I found her question very hard to answer as if she were shaking me out of myself.
“Yes.” I hesitated, but I couldn’t define why she had no right to that question. It was like someone asking me if I wanted to live when I had one breath left.
BH self-portrait, ink, 1970.
I began my art life writing poetry, painting, and drawing. I’ve always kept journals. Interesting to see my tools in this drawing: a motorcycle helmet, drawing pad, and ink pen. I hold a gun for protection so I can make my work. Once I figured out that I was a second-class citizen, I was angry.
BH in Ludwigsburg Castle, 1972.
Marie and I lived on an Army base in Ludwigsburg, Germany, where we taught school to the children of US Army personnel. As lesbians, we felt dispossessed. We acted out by hanging back on a tour of this famous baroque castle and taking provocative photos of one another.
BH on monument column, Germany, 1972.
There were plenty of wistful moments during our nine-month stay in Germany. Before long I was ready to go home. I had saved up enough money to buy a BMW motorcycle, have it flown in an Army transport plane to Philadelphia, and then drive it home to California.
BH writing, “My Life as Henry Miller,” Yuba River, California, 1970.
I lived alone for a month in an old, isolated cabin without electricity or running water. Right across the road was a path that led down to a river. I would not let myself explore or swim without writing one thousand words each day. The first thirty pages of the story are here and the rest is in my archive. I strongly believe an artist must be disciplined.