“There’s something I think you should know.” She had the cutest impish grin on her face, real seductive-like.
“I’m gay.”
My attention focused on her and I could feel my body lean forward as I concentrated on this information. My tongue had the feel of orange peel. My mind went in circles trying to find a holdfast, some escaped knowledge code of the past. What did it mean to be gay? I had no idea, and my white, Protestant, middle-class background hung in shreds from my shoulders, leaving me without the least protection. There was nothing to do but admit my stupidity.
“What does that mean?”
With a straightforward attitude and no trip attached Diane began her explanation.
“It means I love women, and that my energies, time, and affection are given to one particular woman.”
Goddess I was curious! I felt like I was on the track of some hot scent. My ears felt like cauliflowers, I was straining so hard to catch the significance of every word.
“Is that the woman you’re living with?” I asked like a dumb cluck. My fantasies rose like winged mirrors before my eyes as I wondered what they did together.
“Yes.”
“Well,” I stumbled, “how can you get it on?” I was so inept.
“I follow my feelings. It’s not that I don’t like men, it’s that they don’t do anything for me, if you know what I mean.”
Did I! Hmm, I was thinking, this is a new element entering my world. I definitely cannot deny my interest. Look at me, I’m about ready to fall off the counter into the poor woman’s lap. This wasn’t the time or place, and my “good senses,” those that were socially trained, helped me to return the conversation to the guerrilla tactics to be used on the journalist.
As the weeks went by I noticed that Diane never came to meetings with her womanfriend. I asked Kate, who generally seemed to know a little about every one of us and who was somewhat of the central organizing figure, as much as anyone can be in a leaderless group. She seemed quite protective toward Diane and took me aside to share some special information.
“Diane’s really getting it on with us in the group and that wouldn’t be the case if Tove were around.”
“Tove,” the name was mentioned. I was transfixed. What power could this woman hold over another? Especially another such as Diane, who was so perky and independent-minded? Does she hit her over the head, I wondered; does she sit on her chest to prevent her breathing? It had only been three months since I’d been out of an oppressive marriage, yet here I was acting as if I didn’t understand. The problem was that I had never considered the ability or possibility of women sitting on women, keeping them down.
“How do you know this?” I asked.
She looked very correct and self-assured when she answered.
“Because that’s what Diane says.”
From that moment I became even more curious about this relationship. I told Diane that I would like to meet Tove. One time I called Diane up about a meeting and Tove answered the phone. Her voice was husky and warm. She had been working on a motorcycle, she explained. Well, we had something in common, for I’d long been a motorcycle fancier. Would she take me for a ride? Sure, she responded, in fact, next Wednesday she’d pick me up and drive me to the meeting.
“Are you going?” I asked with what probably sounded like amazement.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of shit going down about me and I want to get it cleared up, so I’m meeting with Kate and some others before the meeting so they can say whatever they have to say straight to my face.”
“That’s a good idea,” I responded, never liking back-talking among sisters.
I had seen her from a distance in the women’s class sitting next to Diane on the floor, but outside of the fact that I knew she was dark-haired, I had no idea what she looked like. There she was coming up the driveway, parking the red bike, taking off the helmet that made her look like any other catcher in a ballpark. Yes, her hair was dark. She was pushing open the screen door. Her cowboy boots added impetuous inches to her height. Her nose jaunted up in the air like a proud lady, and her eyes flashed when she saw me and said, “Hi.” She was wearing a dull black turtleneck sweatshirt, the kind that loses its sharp edge and fades into a comfy-looking, soft-wearing shirt. Her nipples were there. Standing right out in front of her and I could tell her breasts wanted to be gathered by hand. I am flustered. I make noises about changing clothes and run upstairs and change twice or three times before I can be satisfied. She waits. Finally, hips hugging the black leather seat, arms around Tove, the wind blowing the city sludge away, I look up at the branch patterns floating by and let everything go. We take the back way to the meeting, round and down the old farm road where the breezes are scented with ripe hay and turned earth. She is a careful driver and takes the curves with ease. Impulsively, she turns into a cemetery, and we stop to talk among the gravestones and irises, as was to be our fashion—though little did we know it then—for the next two years. The sun was setting. The vista and aromas were pleasant, but the impatient, entangling women were calling. We couldn’t be too late for this important meeting.
I wait outside, walking through the empty lot’s high yellow grass with Kate’s son while the others rap inside. When I enter the house for dinner all is quiet and a little strained as we sit munching around the PG&E wooden-spool table low to the floor. Later, I ask Tove what happened.
“Nothing, the cowards were too scared to talk.”
“But didn’t you bring it up?”
“I tried to but they wouldn’t have it.”
We stand in line next to each other laughing and talking. I am with Donna, and Tove and Diane are ahead of us. We buy our tickets and sit down. The lights dim in the theater and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starts flying. My knee is accidentally touching Tove’s, and I do not move it away. It stays there through the first two acts. At intermission we share a joint. Back to the seats. Her knee is conveniently free and I let mine slip over and be a part of her presence. Again, hers doesn’t move. I feel a passionate rush spread through my body and I recognize it for what it is. I sit and think. I am sexually aroused by this woman. I can ignore it and deny something that is a part of me and let it slip into herstory that won’t be told, or . . . Since I’d learned about Gestalt and Laing, and since I’d been in an encounter group and read a lot about getting in touch with feelings, it wasn’t difficult to decide then and there that I would admit to my emotions, and if the time came, I would follow them.
She slipped into bed beside me. Diane was on the other side reading a book, and didn’t want to be bothered with our feelings. I reached my leg out so that it was touching hers. I felt the same surge as I did that night watching the play. Could she care? Could she feel like me? I was too timid to ask, and lay there in my trained role of heterosexual countermate, passive female. Her hands began to touch parts of my body. Diane got up from the bed and went into the next room with her book. I scarcely noticed; I was responding by doing what was done to me. I touched her skin. It was soft! My Goddess it was soft! Not like the terribly thick and hairy skin of my ex-husband. Then and there I think I became committed to women’s liberation in an entirely new way. I had been denied the freedom of touching another woman warmly and intimately all these years because of heterosexual bias that had been fed to me, and that I gurgled up along with bottled milk and toilet training and table manners. Goddess what a product I was. Put in and you will get out. That’s how ma and pa made me. I can’t say all that was going through my head right then and there, for there wasn’t anything separating our total quivering, pulsing bodies together. Red and jelly-like, I could have been squashed that minute. I was without defense, without societal armor. I was clean and fairylike and we were children again! And on and on until the sun came through that upstairs window. I can remember it still: her knee pressing, her thigh pressing, our bodies burning like hot fires. She stroked