Tag: Gillian

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With Oxana on Waterloo Bridge by Gillian

In the early 1990s, right after the words glasnost and perestroika entered our vocabularies, I spent some weeks in Russia as a USAID volunteer.
I worked for a company located right in the middle of Leningrad, shortly to return to its pre-communist identity of St. Petersburg, on the edge of the Nyeva river. I had a tiny attic room in an apartment belonging to Vadim and Ludmila Desyatkov, and the wonderful Ludmila had provided me with a season pass to The Hermitage museum.
          So every lunchtime, while my male Russian cohorts tossed back a few vodkas in the nearest bar, I walked, or let the old rattling tram take me to the orgy of magnificent creations that is the Hermitage.
On my third day of discovery I walked through one of the innumerable doors into one of innumerable little rooms and found myself alone with Waterloo Bridge. Effect of Fog. By Claude Monet. Oil on canvas, 1903.

Waterloo Bridge. Effect of Fog. By Claude Monet.
Oil on canvas, 1903
I had never been so completely transported by any work of art in my life.
         I had seen prints of this painting, and I had seen enough other originals by that time to know that no print ever comes close, but for some reason this one left me speechless.
         I gazed in wonder. The lavender fog swirled around me. I felt its fuzzy coolness envelop me.
I moved forward.
I was jolted from by reverie by a shockingly loud sound behind me.
Almost unable to tear my focus from the painting, I slowly turned.
In the corner a tiny little old lady sat on what looked like an old kitchen chair. She was rapping on the ancient wooden floor with an ancient wooden cane and staring admonishingly at me from shining coal black eyes. The term giving someone the evil eye leapt into my mind.
Both my hands shot up in the air of their own free will, surrendering and simultaneously demonstrating that they had no intention of touching the painting. I felt much more fear of her than could ever have been instilled in me by one of our uniformed, armed guards.
What smattering of Russian I possessed fled from my brain. I reverted to that best of universal languages and smiled. She scowled. Those bleak black eyes continued to bore right into me.
I left.
Of course I couldn’t stay away.
And anyway, ferocious little old women abound in Russian museums. There is at least one stationed in every room, where they perch on rickety old stools and chairs, their hands never still as they slave diligently at their tatting, knitting, embroidery. There never seem to be any men, but then most Russian males wisely drink themselves to death at a considerably younger age.
I returned the next day, and those that followed, better prepared. Every day I flashed my very best smile and offered a cheery dobroye utro, which was received with the same stern glare but I remained free of cane-rapping as I drank in my new obsession from every angle, soon forgetting anyone else was there.
This was a small room, perhaps twelve feet square, and what I now thought of as my painting, hung in splendid isolation as the only work in the room. Often the little room, my room, was empty of other visitors. It was January, the weather was miserable and it was well before the start of the tourist season, in all senses, as tourism had not really reached Russia at that time.
A couple of weeks later I had made almost daily visits to my painting and had graduated to not only a Russian good morning but also goodbye and thank you in what I’m sure was a deplorable Russian accent. All I ever got in return was that evil eye.
Dasvidaniya, I said one more time, turning regretfully to leave.
Spaciba.
The wrinkled brown face broke into a wide smile.
Our relationship zoomed off into fast forward. Only three weeks of smiles went by before we graduated to light touches, a hand on an arm, and eventually an offer for me to admire her handiwork. It was some kind of doily and I was a little unclear what it would be when it grew up but I admired her embroidery skills and there was nothing fake about my oohs and aahs of praise.
Now there was no stopping her. Only a few days later she stood, placed her embroidery carefully on the vacated seat, took one of my hands in hers, held it to her old sagging breast and said, ‘Oxana Kalashnikova.’
‘Gillian Edwards,’ I solemnly replied.
Each day from then on, she rose when I entered the room, placed her embroidery neatly on the seat, took both my hands in hers and stated almost reverently,
‘Zjillian Ed-oo-ards.’
‘Oxana Kashlikova,’ I replied.
These mutual assertions were followed by a nod of the head, almost a bow, in what seemed to me a strangely Japanese ceremony.
I never saw anyone else in Russia doing this, I think it was a little ritual Oxana herself devised.
And, yes, her name was actually Kashlikova, not Kalashnikova but I always preferred to think of her as the second. I know ova means daughter of, and the thought of some ancestor of hers slaving in his workshop to invent the infamous Kalishikov AK-47 greatly appealed to me.
With Ludmila’s help I began delivering small gifts to Oxana. Nothing extravagant, and mainly food in some form as Ludmila insisted that was what she would really value. After Communism collapsed, the Russian people lost the safety nets previously provided by the system and with inflation running around a thousand percent many people were desperately poor. Most of the store shelves were empty, and what food there was few could afford.
She opened the rough paper bag holding my first gift, peeked inside, and when she turned those hard black eyes to me they were filled with tears. She thanked me profusely in a stream of Russian which had no need of translation, then neatly folded over the top of the bag, placed it in her apron pocket, and resumed her work. Of course I hadn’t expected her to eat it there, the very thought of the look she would bestow on another caught eating in the museum made my blood run cold, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she would actually eat it herself, at all, or if it would be shared out meticulously among several family members or maybe slipped to a favorite grandchild.
After three months it was time to leave. With the help of my pocket calendar, which happily contained a tiny map of the U.S., and various childlike flying gestures, I conveyed to Oxana that Friday would be my last visit to my painting, and on Saturday I would fly back home.
It was with truly heavy heart that I entered my room for the last time. Three months is long enough to spend alone in a foreign country where you understand little of the language and in some ways even less of the culture. I was ready to leave, but I wanted to take my painting with me. The prospect of never seeing it again was like losing a loved one or a body part.
And, yes, the thought of never seeing Oxana again filled me with sadness. Where else would I find someone to greet me every morning with clasped hands, a little bow, and that reverent utterance,
‘Zjillian Ed-oo-ards.’
I handed her my last paper bag, and without a peek she stuffed it into her voluminous pocket.  I was relieved she had not looked as I had tried to hide the last of my rubles and a $20 bill, a pearl beyond price at that time in Russia, under the stack of ponchiki, a kind of anorexic donut.
Silently she handed me a similar paper bag.
Snacks for the plane? I wondered a little hysterically.
Then I noticed that for the first time ever, she was without her embroidery.
Enough of the protocol.
I threw my arms around her, we both wept a little, and I walked out of the little room with its solitary wonderful painting watched over by its solitary wonderful guardian.
I have never managed to find a real use for that gift that means so much to me.
         But every time I look at it I see my painting, in my room, watched over by my babushka.
And her final words echo in my memory.
‘Gooood-bye, dasvidaniya,  Zjillian Ed-oo-ards.’

After I read this story to the group, Ray S. painted his own version of Waterloo Bridge for me. I treasure it. Thanks for the painting and permission to show it here.



About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.
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Over the River and Through the Woods by Gillian

As I start this, all I can guarantee is that Grandmother and her
house will not enter into it, nor come to that will Mother except in the sense
of Mother Russia, a phrase used by many older Russians, though perhaps not so
much the younger generation.
The Beginning
In the early 1990s, right after words like glasnost and perestroika
entered our vocabularies, I spent some weeks in Russia as a USAID volunteer.
I worked for a company located right in the middle of Leningrad,
shortly to return to its pre-communist identity of St. Petersburg, on the edge
of the Nyeva river.
I was there towards the end of the year, and for a city located at
roughly the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska, that’s not the greatest timing.
The Players
Towards the end of my weeks there, the Big Boss, Afanasiy, decided
that we should take a quick overnight trip to their supplier in Helsinki,
Finland. We meant me, Afanasiy and
his second in command Nikoail, and the security manager Vladimir.
          The instant
Communism disintegrated, the Mafia and miscellaneous other villains filled in
every nook and cranny of the power vacuum. The ex-Soviet bloc was a dangerous
place and all businesses had so-called Security Guards at every door, all armed
with vicious-looking weapons held ever at the ready.
They were all ex-KGB and they all terrified me.
Nikolai, a delightful young man with humorous crinkly eyes,
sometimes referred sardonically to Vladimir as Vlad, but only behind his back.
I wished he had never done so because it had caused me to make a mental
connection with a certain unlovely historical persona.
Oooh what fun! Endless hours in a car with Vlad the Impaler.
This should have been a boring journey. The whole trip is over flat,
watery country with lots of trees to obscure any view there might be.
But I had already learned that little in Russia is ever boring.
I didn’t know half of it!
The
Transportation
The company was struggling to get off the ground and didn’t yet
rise to things like Company Cars. The next evening we gathered, after work,
around Afanasiy’s old … what? I’m not sure what it was though I am sure about
the “old.” Any logo denoting its make had long since disappeared from a car
body of Swiss cheese.
          That thing was
more holes than metal, and what metal remained was dented and rusted.
I thought it was a Lada, or perhaps a Skoda, both very common in
Leningrad at the time, but on our way Nikolai began telling Trabant jokes so
maybe that was it.
Why should a Trabant have a
trunk heater?
So your hands don’t freeze
when you’re pushing it.
What
happens if you apply rust remover to a Trabant?
It
disappears.
How many people do you need to produce a Trabant?
Two. One to fold and one to glue.
I, to my great relief, sat in the back with Nikolai while Afanasiy
drove and Vladimir, quite literally, rode shotgun, or probably more correctly,
rode AK 47.
I was unhappy, however, to find that I had a clear vision of the
road below through a large hole between my feet and another one beside my knee.
I have to say they gave me the best spot, though, as Nikol essentially had to
prop his knees against the seat in front to stop his feet falling out of the
car all together.
It was miserably cold, with wind-blown sleet buffeting the car and
dirty slush splashing constantly onto our legs.
The Ticket
          We had barely
reached the outskirts of the city when sirens wailed behind us and Afanasiy
pulled over, plunging us into a deep ditch beside the road. He struggled out
into the slush, and even in the dim light outside I saw a wad of money changing
hands.
And we were on our way.
It seems that there are standard sort of “exit bribes” to get out
of the city, a bit like a toll road you might say. You know you’ll be accused
of speeding and you know just how much it takes to make this imagined
infraction disappear.
Standard practice, not even surreptitiously performed.
The Highway
I might have tried to sleep, but the constant scream of an abused
engine added to the fact that I was in a very short time frozen solid with my
legs encased in an oozing mess of grimy icy slush, made success seem unlikely.
I was disinclined to relax too much anyway, as my horrified
landlady had informed me that this was the most dangerous highway in Russia,
and I imagine it has some pretty steep competition as all Russian drivers treat
their vehicles like bumper cars at the fair.
But, alas, it was not just the combined realities of dreadful
Russian drivers and dreadful Russian weather and dreadful Russian roads, and a
two-lane highway serving an endless stream of trucks ancient and modern between
the nearest point in the East and a newly accessible West.
No, it was the crime rate. I have since read that at that time,
this was the most notorious stretch of highway in the world for murders and hijackings.
So we roared through the night, I would like to say, it has a nice
ring to it, but rather we strained and groaned and choked our way along the
Gulf of Finland, crossing endless little rivers and streams barely moving for the
ice, and heading deeper into deep dark coniferous forests.
The Booze
The three of them were on their third bottle of vodka; one
driving, one becoming maudlin beside me, and one carelessly fingering the
trigger of an assault rifle. And was the safety catch on, or did they even have such things, I wondered, and wished
I hadn’t.
This at least was no surprise to me as they regularly broke open
the first one each day at work around eight in the morning and continued
steadily thereafter.
Nikolai talked of his time as a conscript in the Soviet Army. He
had been among the first troops on the ground after the Chernobyl disaster. No
one had told them anything; they had no protective clothing.
He shrugged in the darkness.
“I will die soon, I think.”
“But not here,” he added with his typical cheer.
“We have Vladimir! Vladimir means immortal.” He chuckled.
“We will not die here!”
I was mighty happy to hear it.
After the fourth vodka bottle made its rounds, Nikolai and
Afanasiy began to sing.
The Russian media had only recently been open to post WW11 Western
entertainment and they seemed to be in a kind of fast-forward mode through it.
          They were at
that time in the 60’s which was fine with me, I’m kind of stuck there too!
          We reveled in
Beatles hits, and sang happily, if soggilly, through the forests.
The Toilet
I had been contemplating the indignity of screaming toalet, pohshzahloostah, after all I was
in Russia and had lost all hope of dignity, when Afanasyi shouted above various
car/road/weather noises,
“Taolet, dah?”
To be met by a chorus of agreement.
Oh thank you God, I thought. Even on this benighted highway there apparently was
some kind of truck stop of the kind I had been expecting to see, but had not,
every few minutes since we had left the city.
The car swerved suddenly to the edge of the road into a foot of
dirty snow, and came to a halt.
My exaltation collapsed.
The three men scrambled from the car and politely turned their
backs to me, which caused them to be highlighted by the endless stream of passing
headlights.
          Zipping himself
up, Afanasyi faced the car and, with a courtly bow and a gesture towards the
trees, yelled,
“Djillian, dah?”
“Dah!” I agreed glumly, and crept from the car.
“What the Hell?” I thought.
“So there’s a foot of snow in the trees. I can’t feel my feet
anyway so, so what?”
          I tumbled
thankfully behind a reasonably sturdy tree trunk and ignored the snow, and the
wind, and the endless flow of passing headlights.
Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!
Taking additional advantage of the stop, I got my overnight bag
from the trunk and put it over the hole in the floor, rested my feet on it and
managed a much more comfortable and considerably drier ride as we progressed.
The Customs
Checks
Next time I woke we were slowing again.
Looking out once more into the blackness, I saw a clearing in the
trees.
A no man’s land from all
those Cold War movies. Really! We’ve all seen them!
Miles of forests and darkness and suddenly  –  that
clearing, all scrub and snow;
          and Soviet agents!
We pulled over to a dark hut with dim lights showing.
This was the first of several, I lost count of them, border
crossings, most just a little shack with a metal arm across the road where a
silent uniform took your passport, looked suspiciously at it and you, grunted,
and returned it.
But at this one the car was searched and
examined in detail. This took a cold miserable hour. We had to empty the car of
every unattached item but the luggage itself was not examined; this apparently
was to be the responsibility of another guard post.
Eventually we went on our way.
Only to pull over a few hundred yards
ahead. Another dreary corrugated metal shed.
The luggage was dispatched onto a rickety
metal table.
We were instructed to empty all pockets.
The Money
My pathetic little pile of banknotes was
counted rapidly with little interest, though the amount was entered solemnly
onto a form I was required to sign.
Russian rubles – 2341.
U.S. dollars – 47
My overnight case was treated with disdain
and barely searched.
Then they opened up the hard-sided case
brought in by Afanasyi and I stopped breathing.
Money.
It was full of money.
Cash, in the form of bundles of U.S.
hundred- and thousand-dollar bills.
Just like in some bank-robbery movie.
The three guards held sub-machine guns and
assault rifles swinging lazily in our direction, the triggers lightly caressed
by fingers controlled, or not, by doubtlessly vodka-sodden brains.
Vladimir clutched his, aimed vaguely in
their direction, in similar fashion.
It was unclear to me whether I was going
to pass out or throw up or both.
In fact I just stood frozen to the spot.
We were dead.
I knew it.
Recalling my landlady’s dire warnings I
knew it.
If I wasn’t immediately mown down by one
or all of the four armed men in the hut, I would be shot on sight by the Mafia
thugs I just knew were about to burst through the door.
Calmly, two of the guards stacked the
mounds of bills on the table and counted.
Each guard openly, casually, pocketed one
bundle.
Another ‘toll” along the road.
Afanasyi signed the form.
U.S. dollars – 1,277,362.
The suitcase was refilled, tossed
carelessly back in the trunk, and we continued into Finland. The only thing we
lost, a great relief to me, was Vladimir’s rifle, which he left at the guard
hut where he would retrieve it on the return journey. He could not take it
across the border.
The Ending
When I regained the power of speech I had
lots of questions.
They shrugged in that typical Russian
manner.
Of course they had to have cash to do
business.
Nobody trusted Russians, or Russia, or its
money.
So cash was king but rubles were
worthless, it had to be German deutschmarks, U.S. dollars, or British pounds.
The Mafia? The gangs? The crimes on this
most dangerous road?
Dah, dah! You never knew. You took your chances.
More shrugged shoulders.
Maybe next week, next month, next year.
Who knew?
I lost contact with them all years ago,
but I choose to believe that they have survived.
I see there is now a high-speed train that
gets you from St. Petersburg to Helsinki in just over two hours, and that
includes what are apparently still lengthy checks at the border.
Do I wish such a train had been available
when I was there, and that we had ridden it that night instead of spending
eight hours of physical and mental anguish on the most dangerous highway in the
world?
No way! After all, who wants to listen to
a story about a two-hour train ride through which I sleep, and nothing worth
recounting ever happens?

About the Author

I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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NEVER-never Land by Gillian

I
completely inhabit a never-never land all of my own making.
Growing
up in remote farm country I said I could NEVER be happy living in the city,
and here I am living happily
in the middle of three million people in the Denver metro area.
With
that same rural attitude I said I could NEVER be happy working in some big corporation,
and here I am retired after
thirty wonderful years with IBM.
After
I got divorced I said I shall NEVER get married again,
and here I am after 25
wonderful years with Betsy.
And we know we are married even
if the Government does not.
So
if ever you hear me say I could NEVER live …
wherever,  just look for me there.
Never-never
land seems where I’m destined to be!

About the Author

I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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Dance by Gillian

I’ve always loved what
we used to call “ballroom dancing.” In my youth, in England anyway, it was one
of those “social skills” taught in schools. Being trundled around the gym by
gawky boys in farm boots and with sweaty palms was totally uninviting, but I was
lucky. For some reason there was a serious female surplus in my year, so many
girls had to dance together. Hey! I learned to lead at about thirteen.
          No wonder I’m gay!
My husband also loved to
dance. We could waltz and two-step for hours.
Betsy loved to dance. We
could waltz and two-step for hours.
Alas, with Betsy’s back
problems and my bum knee, not to mention that miscellany of other age-induced
aches and pains, we slowly cut back on the dancing until now we only take to
the floor a few times in one evening, and skip the faster numbers.
We were a bit
discouraged about it, one more joy severely minimized by that bloody aging
thing, along with all-day hikes and backpacking trips. 
Betsy fears that her
days of tennis and skiing are perhaps for the chop before long: things that
have meant so much to her practically since she was just a little butch baby.
So we are working on our
attitudes.
If you can no longer do
things that have brought you endless joy over many years, be grateful for those
many years.
Be content to remember
the many, many things you have been fortunate enough to enjoy for so long:
things that many others less fortunate have never experienced.

         Wallow in your happy memories rather than resentment and regrets.
We sometimes sit, on a
cold snowy winter morning, and sip at our coffee while watching a computer
slideshow of one of the many warm and wonderful places we have been, and
fortunately traveling is still something we can do. But we see a vision of the
future in which we watch those rotating photos of endless things we can no
longer do, and that’s OK.
We are fortunate enough
to know what it is like to do them, and that’s enough.

         And with luck our writing abilities, limited as they may be, will
continue for a while yet.

         So through this wonderful story telling group we can relive
endless experiences by sharing them with others who do the same.
Perhaps we are only just
beginning to see the endless positives to come from and to this group, and each
and every one of us in it.

About the Author

I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
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Epiphany by Gillian

I have been
fortunate enough to have several epiphanies in my life. None has taught me
anything new, but simply emblazoned on my consciousness what my sub-conscious
already knew.  For that reason they have
a certain comic aspect. In retrospect I always envision myself at these moments
as a comic strip character, slapping my forehead while a starburst leaps from
my head containing those immortal words: 
“Well, duh!”

The time and
place of these revelations is burned in my brain the way those of our
generation all remember where we were when Kennedy was shot.

I don’t think
I could say I have ever had a huge epiphanic (can it be an adjective?) moment,
but rather several little epiphanettes.

I was nine
years old when I had my first “well, duh!” moment.

I was in
church on Christmas Eve, surrounded by friends, neighbors and family lustily
belting out the traditional tried-and-true carols. Even at nine I could sing
them all with little attention and meanwhile was surveying the obligatory
stable and manger set piece reposing on a rickety table before the old stone
font. The nativity scene had been hand carved sometime doubtless during Queen
Victoria’s reign and was dutifully dusted off for a few days every Christmas
season. Eyeing the Baby Jesus’ tarnished wire hallow it came upon me.

Now, given the
time and place one might well expect a Visitation from Christ, but I fear it
was more from the Antichrist.

“This is just a load of codswallop,”  came to me in a blinding flash.  “I
don’t need any of it. I will find my own way to God in my own time and my own
space and the last thing I need is interference from this mumbling, bumbling
old bishop.”

And here
endeth my participation in organized religion.

I loved my
college years. They were probably the happiest days of my life, until now that
is; now is the best ever, but that’s another story. Those happy days were
marred by only one thing; this man/woman business. I had no interest in any of
it.  But I played my part and went on
dates and petted in dark corners and hated it all.

Then suddenly,
hiking beside a trickling stream on a purple hillside one weekend, it hit
me  I didn’t have to  play the game. Nobody was forcing me. I could
simply say “no” to the dates and the dances and the mixers, enjoy my ever
widening circle of friends and revel in my new learning. That was what I was
there for after all.

“Well, duh!”

I had just let
the letter slip through the slot of one of those very British bright red
mailboxes. The rain poured down its shiny red sides as my wet hair dripped into
my eyes and I wriggled cold toes in soggy shoes.

Why had I
mailed that application? I didn’t even want the job. But in a Britain still
suffering from post war austerity there were not many jobs to chose from. I had
graduated from college and left that particular bubble of unreality, so with
wet feet now firmly on wet ground, I had to do something.

Standing
staring at that dripping mailbox, all was suddenly illuminated.  I didn’t have to stay here, in this place
where the future looked as gray and bleak as the weather. I was young and fit
and fairly intelligent, with my shiny new degree in my back pocket I could go
anywhere, do anything.   I was free.

“Well, duh!”

I loved my new
job at IBM, but I had taken it for the sole purpose of saving enough money for
the airfare back to Britain. After all, I had only left home for a year or so,
just to see something of the world before settling down to a career and, I
supposed, a family. I hadn’t emigrated.
That rang too much of finality, of no return; of stinking ships’ holds and
Ellis Island.

After only
three months with IBM I had enough money for the fare. But if I stayed just a little longer ….

And then it
was summer, and the sun shone and the mountains were beautiful, so why rush
home to the cold rain of an English summer? 
And then it was Fall, and the aspen trees glowed …..And I was driving
down North Wadsworth one day, through the peaceful farming country that still existed
in those days, and it came just like a flash of dazzling light. (Apparently
epiphanies come the road to Denver as well as the road to Damascus!)  I didn’t have to leave Colorado. Ever. There
was no rule, no law. I could stay here in this beautiful place where the sun
shone 300 days of the year; where I had a job I loved and many wonderful
friends.  Forever.

“Well, duh!”

I never should
have married. At some level of consciousness I knew that before I married and
for every minute that I remained married. But I took those vows seriously, had
chosen my path of my own free will, and made it work.  I was happy.

Sitting in the
departure lounge of Raleigh-Durham airport, waiting for a delayed flight home
from a business trip, I realized with sudden blinding clarity that I didn’t
want that plane to turn up. I didn’t want to go home.

When sitting
for interminable hours in an airport is preferable to something else, you know
there’s a whole lot wrong with the something else.  I was not happy.   Not, at least with the married part of
my life.  My stepchildren, whom I would
never have abandoned, were essentially grown up.  It was just my husband and I, and I didn’t
want to go home.  But I didn’t have to
struggle on, making it work. I would not be the first woman to get divorced,
and certainly not the last.

“Well, duh!”

Once I had
settled comfortably into my divorced skin, I had one last revelation to go. I
was sitting on my deck with the cat on my lap and morning coffee in my hand,
listening to Anne Murray tapes. Now you may not know this, but many a lesbian
of my age was at one time madly in love with old Annie.  I was slowly realizing that the feelings in
my groin, not entirely appropriate for six o’clock on a Sunday morning were,
even less appropriately, entirely engendered by Ms. Murray.

The lightning
struck.

“Oh my God!
I’m gay! I’m queer! I’m a lesbian!”

Far from being
scary, it was thrilling and uplifting, powerful with promise.

“Oh … my …
God!”

Half the
people in the world are women and a certain percentage of them feel like I do.
And there is nothing in this world to stop me getting out and finding them.

“Oh … my …
God!”

“Well, duh!”

About the Author

I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.

Posted on

Marriage by Gillian

Hey, you only have to look around my family to see.

IT  …  DOESN’T  
…   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My paternal grandfather was what we would call these days a
recovering alcoholic. In his day he was just one of several local drunks. The
fact that he no longer touched the booze seemed to be ignored and he was still
thought of as a drunk by neighbors and family alike. Certainly my grandmother
never gave him any credit, or even acknowledgement, for having quit.

He had drunk his way out of a good job, lost the lovely old house
that they had owned when my dad was a little boy, and had to settle for moving
to the cold dark damp dreary dwelling I lived in as a child.

My grandfather rarely spoke, or moved for that matter. He sat in
his armchair beside the fireplace which rarely had a fire in it, hour after
hour, doing nothing.

For all the attention he paid us, we all might as well not have
been there.

At least he was harmless; unlike my grandmother.

She never spoke a civil word to anyone, but droned on with an
endless litany of complaints about my grandfather.

In some circumstances two negatives equal a positive but alas not
in human relationships.

MARRIAGE  …  DOESN’T  
…   FREEKIN’ …     WORK!!

My mother’s parents were very different.

Her mother actually did approach the storybook grandma image;
endless hours in the kitchen in a faded flowered apron, and my Irish maternal
grandpa was one of the delights of my youth. He was a stonemason, creating
gravestones from the local marble. I loved to sit and watch him, and
occasionally I was even allowed to help. He sang or whistled while he worked,
or regaled my juvenile ears with endless fantastical tales in which I doubt
there was an ounce of truth.

They lived in a gorgeous rambling old house, built in 1742. It
was light and warm with welcome, and different in every way from that of my
other grandparents.

But I can’t recall a single time when they talked to each other.

They lived separate lives, I think, and so survived.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
My mother hated my father.

It took me many years to understand why; he had done nothing as
far as I could tell.

A therapist friend explained it to me many years after I left
home.

My parents had two children who died of meningitis within a week
of each other, before I was born.

Under such circumstances it is apparently not uncommon for one
parent, more frequently the mother, to blame the other, not from any logical
reason but because they have a huge need to hate someone for the dreadful thing
that has happened, and raving at God or a disease is just not personal enough,
not close enough, not cathartic enough.

At least, right or wrong, it’s an explanation that works for me
as I remember my mother’s inexplicable seething hatred constantly simmering
just beneath the surface, and frequently erupting, ostensibly over minor
things.

These days they would have divorced, I’m sure, but in those days
you just soldiered on.

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

My aunts’ and uncles’ marriages were little better and would, I
believe, also have ended in divorce had that been the ready option it is today.
I did have one uncle whose fifty years with the same woman seemed to be
mutually rewarding, but ironically we discovered, after his death, that they
were in fact never married at all.

Needless to say, my family history did nothing to foster a
particularly positive view of marriage.

I knew
that MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
But I got married anyway. How else was I to prove to myself that
I was NOT gay?

My ex-husband and I have personalities that were born to clash,
so even without that teensy wee
detail of my suppressed homosexuality, our marriage was doomed.

My cousin, who lives in London is on her third marriage so there
you go…

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!

And it sure as Hell isn’t just my family.

Statistically, over fifty percent of marriages now end in
divorce.

So what do we, the GLBT Community, seem to want most in the
world????

Would we fight to get a surgical procedure that has a less than
fifty percent success rate?

Would we rush to get on a flight with a less than fifty percent
chance of ever reaching its destination?

Why are we rushing like some pack of crazed lemmings towards the
sea, when …

MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
Of course I do understand; and agree.

We should have the opportunity, the right, to accept or refuse that seat on the doomed flight.

Yet, if it were freely offered, would we really want it?

Betsy and I sometimes mull over the question of whether we would
in fact marry if the opportunity arose. (Not a question we are likely to have
to answer in our lifetime, I think, though I do believe it’s coming.)

The answer is probably in the affirmative simply for practical
fiscal considerations, but certainly not for spiritual reasons.

I have two dreams for Gay Marriage.

The first is that when it finally becomes legal nobody does it!

They give a party and nobody comes!

How great would that be?

Thanks but no thanks, folks, we are above your failed
institutions.

I can see them now, the huge rainbow banners saying …..
MARRIAGE DOESN’T FREEKIN’ WORK!!
My second, serious dream, is that we can indeed be better than
our hetero brethren

and perhaps even help them out of the marriage doldrums into
relationships that actually work.

That should be our goal, way above and beyond getting that legal
sanction.

What if we had such successful relationships ourselves that we
could shine a light to guide the het-set out of the darkness they have created?

They would envy us, and copy us, and just maybe the world would
become a better place.

I can see the banners now, all those straight folks coming over
from the Dark Side, marching down Broadway.
GAY MARRIAGE FREEKIN’ WORKS!!!!!

About the Author

I was born and raised in England.
After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered
Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965,
working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got
divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have
now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.
Posted on

The Interview by Gillian

In 1965/66 IBM built their facility in Boulder, and in roughly twelve months hired 4,000 people.

Those were the days!

I could no more get a job with IBM these days than I could sprout wings and fly to Mars, but back then you basically just had to walk through the door.

I remember very little about what was probably the most important interview of my life, except that it was very short and it was followed up by a test.

Now I know that computer programming and complex math is leaping into your heads, but remember in 1965 IBM was hiring assembly personnel to do the kind of work that has long since been outsourced to far off countries. I think a few of us are old enough to recall when we actually did that work here?

Those were the days!

Anyway, this test was not exactly sophisticated.

I was given a pencil and a piece of paper covered in tiny circles perhaps a tenth of an inch in diameter. I was given three minutes to place a pencil dot inside as many circles as possible.

That was it.

Those were the days!

Apparently my eye-hand coordination was deemed sufficient, and I began my employment at $82.00 a week, more than I had ever earned or ever dreamed of. After all a first-class stamp cost five cents, a McDonald’s hamburger fifteen, a dozen eggs fifty cents and you could buy a  house for $15,000. 

Those were the days!

I spent thirty wonderful years with IBM, doing many different jobs, all of which I loved, and getting several promotions. 

I traveled extensively on business in this country and to several others, obtaining skills which enabled me to travel again to foreign countries in a volunteer capacity during retirement.

At IBM I met the man who was to be my husband, and an irretrievably straight woman with whom I fell madly in love. She is now with her third husband and I am happily, incredibly, with the wonderful Ms. Betsy, but Mo and I continue to love each other like sisters after fifty years.

I came out at IBM, hardly an adventure as IBM was one of the first corporations to include GLBTs in it’s non-discrimination directive, and to offer benefits to same-sex couples.

Of course I cannot hazard a guess as to where my life might have gone had I failed that interview and that challenging dot test, but it is hard for me to imagine a better life than the one I had, and a great deal of it involved IBM.

That your life should turn on pencil dots in tiny circles!

Those were the days!

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.