Tag: lesbianism

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Reading, by Gillian

I was probably lonely as a child. I had good friends at school but when school was out I had no nearby children to play with, and I had no siblings. But I don’t recall ever feeling lonely as I was always accompanied by friends from books. (I originally wrote ‘from fiction’ but as The Bible was one of the few books available to me, I imagine some might take exception to including The Bible as fiction.)

I say few books were available not because of any failure on the part of my family to love books, but because paper was scarce in post-war Britain and so few books were published. There was a library in the local town but that was a long and infrequent bus ride away.

So my personal book collection contained four Winnie the Pooh books, published long before the war and once belonging to my mother, an old and very tattered family Bible, and a book called Mystery at Witchend by Malcolm Saville, a prolific author of children’s books in Britain in the 1940’s and ’50’s.

So I roamed the countryside accompanied sometimes by the roly poly Pooh and a bouncing Tigger, sometimes by all or some of the five children from Witchend who formed The Lone Pine Club and together had many harmless adventures and solved gentle crimes with never a hint of violence. Indeed the only violence I ever read about was in The Bible. But the Jesus who occasionally accompanied me was the gentle fatherly figure depicted in The Children’s Pictorial Bible which we read in Sunday School. Because of one of the pictures in this book, my friend Jesus always had a lamb draped around his neck like a fat wooly scarf. Looking back I rather suspect that my child mind had confused the picture of Jesus with one of the shepherds greeting His birth, but never mind. As Jesus and I frequently walked through fields dotted with grazing sheep my vision was appropriate enough.

Fast forward a few decades. I am in my early forties and finally coming out to myself, and very shortly after, to others. So. I was homosexual. A lesbian. What did that mean? Obviously I knew the meaning of the words, the definition, but what did it mean? To me, to my life. Where did I go from here? I felt very alone. Who could I talk to about all this? My friends might be very supportive, but what could they tell me? No-one I knew would have any answers.

So of course I turned to books and headed for the library. This was before the advent of internet so I searched through the catalog card files, in their long narrow boxes, for the pertinent categories. Although I was ‘out’ to anyone who mattered, I must confess to peeking furtively over my shoulder as I searched the LESBIAN section, the word seeming about a foot high and glaringly obvious to all who passed by.

There was amazingly little available regarding lesbians at that time, fiction or non-fiction.

What little there was, was awful. I rushed home with the few books on the library shelf, avidly read them, and wondered why I had bothered. Beyond depressing, they were just plain frightening. If this was where I was headed, I was in serious trouble. The Well of Loneliness, by Radcliffe Hall, was my introduction to lesbian fiction; one of the most depressing books I have ever read. The title alone, if you know that is the road you are now taking, is enough to to make you rush back in the closet and throw away the key. This book has become something of ‘classic’ in the lesbian world, in the sense that most of us have read it, though not a ‘classic’ in a positive sense as any mention of it is greeted by groans. I don’t recall now the titles of the other few books, but in all of them the lesbian character seemed destined for a life of abject misery, or suicide, or else they are saved by a return to heterosexuality. My reaction to this introduction to lesbian fiction was, essentially, what the hell have I done??

So, lacking new characters to jump from the pages and accompany me, I thought longingly of my childhood buddies. Somehow I didn’t think they would be much help. Pooh Bear would just sink his chubby head further into his honey pot, Tigger and Kanga are too busy bouncing and hopping to listen. Eeyore would say, as always,

‘It doesn’t matter anyway.’

But it does. It matters very much.

Those kids from the heterogeneous, clean-scrubbed families of Witchend, would look ascanse at each other and say,

‘Oh dear oh dear but this is awfully difficult,’

and probably run home to mother.

I, who do not identify as a Christian, actually did have a little chat with Jesus. And He actually helped. Asking myself the question what would Jesus do, I answered myself, with every confidence, that he would love me and accept me whoever and whatever I am.

Pretty soon, I discovered Beebo’s bookstore in Louisville and discovered that there really were positive portrayals of fictional lesbians. Claimed as the first of these is Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, in which neither of the two women has a nervous breakdown, dies tragically, faces a lonely and desolate future, commits suicide, or returns to being with a male. But by then I no longer had need for fictitious playmates. Women at Beebo’s had introduced me to the life-saving – or at least lesbian-saving – Boulder group TLC, The Lesbian Connection, which in turn introduced me to many wonderful women; real women, who in turn led me to my Beautiful Betsy.

With a real woman like that, who needs fiction?

© November 2017

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Resist, by Gillian

As we get older we tend to deal less well with change. We don’t like it. Unfortunately, at this stage of life, changes are all too frequently thrust upon us by forces we are unable to resist.
But I tend to see myself as someone who has never liked change – very much a status quo kind of person, even when I was younger. Thinking about this topic for today, I am forced to wonder why I see myself that way. I left home and went away to college, I emigrated to another country, I got married and then divorced. Finally, I completely changed my vision of myself by accepting and then embracing my lesbianism, embarking upon a lifetime commitment, and eventually marriage, to another woman. I have had something like twenty different addresses throughout my life. This does not really sound like someone who resists change.
Perhaps in fact what I did was fail to resist change. I didn’t initiate it. I didn’t own it. I simply went with the flow, falling in with the plans of others. It was not until I came out. morphing into the real me, that I truly began to take responsibility for my own life. Coming out in itself was, of course, my first and greatest resistance. There can be little more challenging than pushing back against your very self, or at least the self you always thought you were.
Ever after that sea change in my mid-forties, I have been much more cognizant of, and proactive about, change. Not all change is good, not all change is bad. Sometimes we resist change, sometimes we resist remaining the same. And, inevitably, we can never all agree on which is which. Change can also be very deceptive. The voters who gave the world both Trump and Brexit, insisted they were voting for change. In fact, they were for the most part resisting change, or perhaps hoping for things to start moving back in time, to return to a former world, which is change of a sort I suppose. Trump supporters want to return to a time of high-wage car factories; a land where coal is king. Brexit supporters hunger for the days when the British invaded other countries, rather than the people of those countries surging into Britain. Britain first. America first. In both countries, there are large segments of the population resisting any kind of positive, forward-moving change.
But it all depends, of course, on what your own vision is of positive change. I feel like I have been resisting, pushing back, against changes I thought to be negative all my life. Though, as I said before, in my earlier life I fear I did very little thinking, and more especially feeling, for myself. At least I can say, in my own defense, that I chose those I followed along with, very wisely. All the protests I took part in then are the same ones I would choose now, now I am the real me. I resisted nuclear missiles both in the UK and later in the US. I protested against the Vietnam war for what feels like forever. I marched for support of AIDS victims for another forever.
Now I am resisting as I have never resisted before. And now it is I who resist change. I resist Trump’s evil changes not only in protest marches but with daily actions; phone calls and e-mails dispatched at a rate I never before dreamed of. Since election day 2016 I feel that I am living some awful nightmare from which, every day, I am ready to wake up. I just hope this particular resistance is not yet another of those forevers.
© March 2017 
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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.
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The Women in My Life, by Lewis

I.  TRUDY
I
think I am on safe ground in saying that I am likely the serendipitous product
of the unlikely coupling of a lesbian with a man who never seems to have had a
prurient thought in his lifetime.
I
wrote extensively about my mother back on December 2nd of last year.  Back then, I did not delve into the
circumstantial evidence for my mother’s lesbianism.  I will wade into that somewhat sticky thicket
today, however, as it is the earliest historical instance of the almost
fantastical history of the women in my experience.
Let
us turn the imaginary clock back to May 15th, 1939.  The scene is Pratt, Kansas, a place scarcely
touched by the Renaissance, let alone the Enlightenment.  Married to Bernard for 12-years with
children, B.J., aged 10, and Joyce, aged 8, Mother filed for divorce on the
grounds of “extreme cruelty”.  The Divorce Agreement goes on to claim that
“unfortunate differences and disputes have arisen between the parties and
they have separated with the intention of living separate and apart from each
other during the remainder of their natural life [sic]”.
The
only complaints Mother ever expressed to me about Bernard were that he was an
alcoholic and once came onto their porch distraught and tearfully imploring her
to take him back.  She berated his lack
of manliness.  My half-sister and
-brother, who continued to see their father until his death, told me that he was
not an alcoholic.
Here’s
where the Divorce Agreement gets bizarre: 
“There have been two children born of this marriage…They are now
living with the husband and he is to have the care and custody of said children
in the future.  In this connection the
said husband agrees to be responsible for the support and maintenance of said
children.  It is further agreed that the
wife shall be permitted to see and visit said children and said children are to
be allowed to see and visit with her.
“It
is further understood and agreed that the husband and wife, since their
marriage, have accumulated but little real and personal property…and they
have some personal property, including an automobile.  All of said property is to belong to the
husband, except any items of personal property belonging to the wife.”
Then,
comes this little tidbit:  “…[T]he
said wife does hereby release and discharge the said husband from all
obligations of support and from all claims and duties arising out of their
marital relations.”
Within
a year-and-a-half, my mother had married again, this time to my father.  It was his first marriage.  I’m not certain of the date of their first
meeting, but I do know where it took place. 
Dad had an office on the second floor of the Sears department store in downtown
Pratt where my mother and another woman operated a beauty parlor.  At some point in this interval between
“Hello” and “I do”, Mom’s business partner unceremoniously
departed for California.  My suspicion is
that Mom got caught in a gay tryst and surrendered all rights to parentage and
property to silence Bernard.  That would
also explain the sudden departure of mom’s business partner for the west coast.
Since
I have covered some of this ground before, I will not repeat myself.  Suffice it to say that for as long as I can
remember, Mom and Dad slept in twin beds. 
From the time I was six, Dad dressed in another room.  I never remember seeing them kissing or
hugging or showing any form of physical affection during their 49-year marriage.  Was Mom gay? 
Dad?  Both?  Neither? 
Perhaps they were perfectly suited marital partners–each as cover for
the other at a time when being gay was strictly verboten.  I’ll probably never know for certain. 
II.  JOYCE
Joyce
was Mom’s second child by her first husband, Bernard.  I have mentioned her before in one of these stories
as the young woman who gave me such a thrill when she stayed overnight in my
bed when I was about 3 or 4 years old. 
She was truly beautiful and a dear, sweet person.  I adored her and so did my mother.
As
long as I can remember, Joyce was married to Moe.  Moe was an engineer on the railroad.  They lived in Pratt.  They had two children, a boy, Damon, followed
a couple years later by a girl, DeeAnn. 
I was an uncle at the age of 9. 
When they came to visit, Mom and Joyce would go shopping and I would
play with my niece and nephew.  We all
got along famously.
When
she was 55, Joyce was afflicted with pancreatic cancer and soon died.  It was a terrible blow to the family, and my
mother in particular.  I will treasure
her memory forever.
III.  SANDY SUE
Before
I started school, my best friend was Sandy Sue. 
She lived in a corner house at the far end of the block.  She had a basement where we could play
hide-and-seek.  Sometimes, when other
kids were around, we would play spin-the-bottle.  On one occasion, Sandy Sue and I were in the
basement playing with matches.  Somehow–I’m
pretty certain I had a roll to play–a wastebasket was set on fire.  The flames shot up as high as my head.  We both panicked.   Sandy’s mother must have heard something or
smelled smoke because she came running down the stairs and put out the
fire.  I was sent home, now as a persona
non grata. 
IV.  JUDY
When
I was half-way through kindergarten, my parents moved into a small ranch house
with three bedrooms so my maternal Granddad could live with us and Dad could
have an office at home.  On moving day, I
was standing in the front yard taking in the new surroundings when I heard a
voice approaching from behind.   It was
Judy.  She was what they used to call a
tomboy.  She grew up with three older
brothers and liked to do things that boys like to do.  Although I was pretty shy, we became the best
of friends.
I
should have known by then that playing in basements invited risky behaviors.  When we were about 10–Judy was 12 days
younger than I–we were playing hide-and-seek in her basement when she said,
“Let’s play doctor!”
“How do you play
‘doctor’?”, I naively queried.
“Well, I’ll be the
doctor first and you’ll be the patient, then we’ll switch”, she
replied.  “You’ll start by taking
off your clothes.”
“Oh, no,” I blurted
out.
“Don’t worry.  I do it with my brother and he doesn’t
mind.”
“If you insist, I’m
leaving.”
“OK, I won’t
insist,” she said.
I’ve
often wondered whether, had I not been so unaccustomed to being naked in the
presence of others or had I not been an inchoate gay boy, might I have
responded differently to Judy’s entreaty.
When
we were 5th graders, Judy and her family moved to Wichita.  Much later, on a visit when we were 19, she
proposed to me.  By that time, I
understood why “playing doctor” with her had not aroused my
curiosity.  I told her “No”,
once again.  By that time, her family was
living in Evergreen, CO, and I saw her only infrequently.  She married, then divorced, then married
again and is now living in Arvada.  We
are still friends though no longer close.
V.  JANET
After
graduating from the University of Kansas with a Mechanical Engineering degree
in January of 1970, I took a job with Ford in Dearborn, MI.  For the first time in my life, I had neither
school nor friends to keep me busy.  I
had lots of time to think about who I was and where my life was going.  I decided to get some professional counseling.  After many visits, I told my psychologist
that I was sexually attracted to men. 
His advice was to tell me that I would be happy if I simply found the right
woman.  Within less than a year, I had met
a woman and we started dating.  I was
very uncomfortable and must have telegraphed my discomfort.  It only lasted a couple of months. 
Soon,
I was feeling secure enough in my orientation that I wanted to come out to my
parents back in Kansas.  I told my
therapist that I was thinking of writing them a “coming out” letter.  He said that would be a terrible mistake, so
I didn’t.
About
six months later I went to a Christmas party attended by clients of my
therapist’s two group sessions.  I struck
up a conversation with a young woman who was a member of the other group or,
should I say, she struck up a conversation with me.  Her name was Janet and we talked for two
hours.  Like Judy, she was extroverted,
very down-to-earth, and knew her own mind. 
Not liking to linger at parties, I politely excused myself, said my
“goodbyes” and left.  As I was
getting into my car, a man known to both Janet and me came rushing out of the
house with a note in his hand.  It was
Janet’s phone number.
Well,
I did call her a few days later.  We had
many interests in common and began to see each other regularly.  I even told her of my interest in men.  Janet had been “around the block”,
shall I say, sexually, having once been a member of the Sexual Freedom League,
an organization formed in 1963 in New York City which, to quote Wikipedia, “existed to promote and conduct
sexual activity among its members and to agitate for political reform,
especially for the repeal of laws against abortion and censorship, and had many
female leaders”.  The fact that
Janet had been raised in a Polish Catholic family but had rejected the Church
while still in college for its sexism, only made her more attractive to me.
Within
three months or so, we were having sex regularly.  I can remember driving to work from her
apartment after spending the night wondering if my co-workers could detect the
odor of our coupling. 
We
were about to have sex in my bedroom on one day that July of 1972 when Janet
asked me if I was still attracted to men. 
I answered truthfully, “Yes”. 
She then wanted to know if I was still committed to marital monogamy, a
subject we had discussed at length.  I
answered in the affirmative.  She was
happy with that. 
We
married that fall in the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockford, IL.  The minister had been at the Detroit UU
Church when we first met.  Her family came
from Michigan, mine from Minnesota and Kansas, so the location was a good
compromise. 
That
night, there was no latex involved in our love-making.  By Thanksgiving, Janet began spotting.  Something was wrong.  I have already told this story, so I’ll spare
you now, except to say that we lost that child. 
Eventually, luck being with us, we had two children, a girl and a boy.
I
was absolutely true to my word and remained faithful to Janet throughout the 26
years of our marriage, as she was to me. 
Oh, I had a rich fantasy life and that kept me going, so to speak.  We both had careers, she as an elementary
school teacher and I as an automotive engineer. 
Neither of us lived to work, however, and no housework nor child care
activity was beneath either of our dignities.
As
time went on, however, I found it increasingly difficult to sublimate my gay
inner persona.  I began to focus more and
more at home on my hobby, thinking that merely being “present” was
parenting enough.  It wasn’t, though it
took me many years to figure that out–at a cost of much pain to my kids.  I won’t dwell on this now.  That will be the subject for another Monday
afternoon.
Let
it suffice to say that Janet and I are still friends to this day, despite
divorcing in 1999.  Janet stated emphatically
that she would never remarry and she has held true to that conviction.  She lives close enough to both kids to see
them regularly.  She spends her time
playing clarinet in three community bands, taking watercolor classes, and
visiting friends.  She has a number of
serious health issues and is scheduled for hip replacement surgery in December.
For
a quarter century, we were as close as any man and woman I have ever
known.  She brought me blessings by the
bucketful.  I couldn’t have asked for a
more loving companion and partner. 
LAURA/CALIX
I
have already written about Laura’s difficult delivery using forceps on her head
while the doctor pulled the delivery table, a nurse, and me across the delivery
room floor.  I also told about the first
time I held her in my arms when she was less than a day old, removing the
hospital gown I had been given only to find a blob of baby poop on my dress
shirt.  Yes, it was very early in my
daughter’s life that I knew who was calling the shots.
Calix
was not the name Janet and I gave her at birth. 
That was “Laura”. 
“Calix” is the name our daughter assumed when she became an
adult.  Other than both consisting of
five letters, the second of which is ‘a’, the two names could hardly sound more
different.  It was just another milestone
on her journey toward becoming her own person.
Is
it a rule of parenting that, if one of your children is neat, punctual,
compliant, unassuming and shy, the other will be passive-aggressive, messy,
contrary, and stubborn?  If so, how much of
that is rebellion, how much life experience, and how much luck-of-the-draw?
In
1980, Janet and I, with our daughter about to enter kindergarten, moved from
Detroit to the tony suburb of Grosse Pointe Farms, where Janet taught 4th
grade.  For the 7-1/2 years we lived in
the big city, we had not had so much as a lawn sprinkler stolen, although it
had been slightly unnerving to watch the tree limbs drop to the ground as the
next-door neighbors and their friends fired their guns into the sky on New
Years’ Eve.
Five
months after moving in, Janet and I attended a Detroit Symphony Orchestra
concert.  The baby-sitter we had hired–and
her parents–were known to Janet through her teaching.  The girl was 13 but kind of new to
baby-sitting, certainly new to us.  After
the concert, we had been invited to the home of one of Janet’s fellow teachers for
coffee.  Driving home around 12:30 AM, we
could see from a couple of blocks away flashing red lights in the vicinity of
our house.  As we pulled into the drive,
the side door opened and a plainclothes policeman approached the car.  He ushered us inside.  There had been some trouble.
Earlier
in the evening, a woman known only superficially to Janet had been in the
emergency waiting room of a local hospital with a couple of friends.  They were trying to get her committed for
psychiatric care but needed the signature of a second doctor because it was
without the patient’s consent.  At some
point, the distraught woman had simply walked out of the hospital and took off on
foot in the direction of our house.  She
had gone nearly two miles when a neighbor noticed her in the middle of the
street, shedding clothes as she went. 
The neighbor called the police. 
We had left the side porch light on. 
Whether that was what attracted the woman to our house or not, I don’t
know.  She walked up to the side door naked
from the waist up and rang the bell.  I’m
sure she was verbalizing, as well.
When
the baby-sitter saw her, she turned back and ran to the kitchen, where there
was a phone.  She called her home.  Her dad answered.  Meanwhile, the woman broke a small window
glass in the side door and let herself in. 
She walked up to the sitter and began running her fingers through the
girl’s hair, upon which the babysitter dropped the phone and ran out the
door.  At this point, the woman began
rummaging through the kitchen drawers, looking for something to use as a
weapon.  All she found, luckily, was a
pair of vegetable shears.  She set out
looking for a victim. 
The
babysitter ran screaming toward a couple across the street walking their
dog.  She tried to tell them which house
she had come from but, in her panic and unfamiliarity, wasn’t sure.  At just this moment, a cop car came down the
street in response to the phone call reporting that a woman was taking off her
clothes and dropping them on the street.
The
distraught woman walked right past the bedroom where our two-year-old son was
sleeping to the far end of the ranch house and into Laura’s bedroom.  Waking her, she knelt over her and began to
make mostly superficial stab wounds over Laura’s face, torso, and near her
vagina.  The most serious of the wounds
penetrated Laura’s lower lip.
When
the police entered the house, they saw the woman wielding the scissors while
repeating, “I have to kill the children”.  It took three officers to wrestle the woman
to the floor and put her coat back on to take her away.
Laura
was not seriously hurt physically.  All
of the wounds healed on their own except for the one to the lip, which required
a stitch or two.  At the commitment
hearing for the woman, I sat just in front of her husband, who whispered to me that
all women are just a hair away from mental instability once a month
anyway.  She was committed to a mental
hospital for 90 days, after which she was released to the care of her loving
husband.
Janet
and I sought counseling for Laura immediately. 
Some of the advice we got was less than useful, though we did not
realize it right away.  I’m sure some of
it did more harm than good, including setting up a point system to reward good
behavior and punish bad.  Laura had
always been late for everything, slow to dress, having to be coaxed to get
ready for school, on and on.  She started
sucking her thumb and continued doing it into high school.  It caused her mother and me no end of
frustration.
In
high school, Laura befriended a girl who also was an outsider.  Their relationship was so close that other
kids thought they were lesbians.  Our
son, Nolan, two years younger, was teased about that when he started high
school.  In their senior year, Laura and
the other girl had a falling out.  The
other girl brought a knife to school and threatened Laura with it.  Laura became depressed.  She was hospitalized and diagnosed with PTSD,
probably from the incident when she was four.
Calix
was a talented poet and artist.  She went
on to college hoping to teach philosophy but ran into a brick wall when it came
to writing term papers.  She not only had
PTSD but also ADD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  At age 38, she is still a year away from a
bachelor’s degree and works for $9 an hour at a clothes cleaning establishment.
Four
years ago, she married the love of her life, Scott.  He works at Walgreen’s as a clerk though he
holds an MBA which he earned online. 
Together, they made $25K last year and have, between them, over $70K in
college loan debt.  They are living
almost from hand-to-mouth and their future is far from bright.   They seem happy, though they cannot afford
to have the child they so much desire, and I am happy for them.  It’s nothing like the life Janet and I wanted
for her but it will have to do.
EPILOGUE
There
is another woman who has played a critical role in my life.  She was my son’s girlfriend back in
2008.  Her name was Jasmine.  Nolan has a penchant for dating women with
exotic names–Alethea, Jasmine, and Destiny among them.
One
night in late February of 2008, Jasmine came to confront Nolan in his apartment
after he had sought to break off the relationship.  Jasmine picked up a knife and stabbed Nolan
in the throat, just missing his carotid artery by 2 mm.  He ran down the stairs and into the attached
garage.  He got into his car and pressed
the garage door opener.  Jasmine followed
him to the garage and used the button near the inside door to close the garage
door again.  She still clutched the
knife.  Nolan got out of the car, ducked
under the closing door and ran from neighbor to neighbor, barefoot, pajama-clad
and bleeding in the snow, seeking help. 
After several rebuffs, an elderly woman let him in.  Jasmine was tried and went to jail for four
months following a plea bargain, despite evidence that she had used Nolan’s
computer to research the anatomy of the human neck, including the location of
the critical artery.
I
believe I am truly unique in the fact that both of my children were at one point
in their lives stabbed by emotionally distraught, if not downright loony,
women.  I think that gives me a somewhat
unique perspective although I have no idea as to what.
© 24 Nov 2012 
About
the Author 

I came to the beautiful state
of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I
married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas
by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working
as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman
for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured
that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I
wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just
happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both
fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we
moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years
together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One
possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group
was there to light the way.
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The Essence of GLBTQ by Lewis

Wiktionary defines “essence” — in usage relevant to this topic — as 
     1) “the inherent nature of a thing or an idea” and 
     2) “a significant feature of something.”

Therefore, the “essence of GLBTQ” might be otherwise stated as, “What is it about gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer people that makes them unique from everyone else?” The inclusion of the terms “transgender” and “queer” complicates the answer to a degree that makes generalizations meaningless. In fact, the word “queer,” when appropriated to describe oneself, seems intended to obviate any attempt to characterize it in any meaningful, shorthand way. “Transgender,” because it has nothing to do with sexual attraction but is rather gender identity related, seems to me to also lie outside any attempt to describe the “essence” of the first three letters — GLB — which are primary referent to an individual’s sexual attractions.

Those who condemn homosexuality invariably do so on the basis of same-sex erotic behaviors. Those behaviors are not the “essence” of homosexuality but the manifestation — or “womanifestation,” if you prefer — of it. The essence is the innate part of our nature that is drawn to members of our gender, rather than the opposite gender. This seems to fly in the face of everything we know about Adam and Eve and Charles Darwin’s theory on the survival of the species. Consequently, it is subject to accusations that we are operating against the Will of God and Nature and, therefore, must be deviant, if not evil. It is as if we are the ugly duckling whose ugliness is on the inside and, therefore, never changing.

What distinguishes gay and lesbian individuals from heterosexuals is our being forced into the position of having either to conform to erotic behaviors that are unnatural — even repugnant — to us by repressing those desires that are such a vital part of who we are in order to appear “normal” or to act on our own natural inclinations at the risk of being ostracized by a significant portion of society. Our “essence,” in my opinion, is the strength of our characters that has developed during what is an existential struggle to be both true to ourselves and successful members of an intolerant society.

There are many gay men and women who have never allowed the prejudices of our society to interfere with what they see as their own natural and true behavior. A tip of my hat to them. They have displayed a courage and self-knowledge that I can only admire from a distance. Their “essence” has been knowing their own heart and following it wherever it might lead. This is a rare quality, even among those who have never experienced self doubt and the fear of social opprobrium.

For some who count themselves among the “GLB,” however, finding some sense of authenticity has come only with the undertaking of behaviors that are in themselves self-defacing — drug or alcohol abuse or unprotected sex, for example. For these, “essence” might well be overcoming addiction or dealing with the life-long consequences of HIV/AIDS.

Others of us have “gone along to get along.” We married in the traditional way, perhaps even had children. For these — and I count myself among them — our “essence” might be qualitatively analyzed in how we have related to our opposite-gender spouses and children, how we “came out” to them, whether or not we were faithful during the marriage, and what kind of relationship we have with them after moving on toward a state of greater authenticity.

I’m certain that there are gay men and lesbians who do not fall into any of the aforementioned categories. That is why I do not think that the notion of a “GLBTQ essence” is all that pragmatic. If anything, there may be an added layer or two of “essence” on our psychological auras. But, at the same time, we are all 99-94/100% pure human being, with, perhaps, a few more rough edges and/or a more highly-polished-surface here and there. I think the rest of the world is coming around to this view … and fairly rapidly. May it continue to be so.

We, the GLBTQ members of the most remarkable species of animal in the known universe have been granted a very special charter. We have been commissioned by the Great Mystery of All Existence not only to share our very special talents with the world but, in order to do so, to first learn to look in the mirror and see, not the “ugly duckling” that some of those we have loved may have so ignorantly and, perhaps, unknowingly branded us, but ourselves as whole and wholesome human beings whose lives will encompass a level of adventure that will make for many wonderful stories that beg to be shared.

[Everything that I have said above about “GLB” people would also apply to those on the “third rail” of sexual attraction discourse — men and women who are attracted to juveniles of either sex. Unfortunately, this subject is so fraught with phobia and loathing that merely to state that the sexual attraction toward children is akin to same-sex attractions to adults tends to elicit reactions one might expect from confessing to mass murder. I merely would state that none of us picked the type of persons to whom we are sexually attracted from a list like choosing the color of our next car. There are still perhaps 40% of Americans who believe that having same sex attractions is immoral. Those of us with a “glb” orientation should be the last to condemn anyone for attractions over which they have absolutely no control, unlike actions taken on those feelings, which are properly proscribed, just as statutory rape is properly proscribed.]

© 15 July 2013


About the Author


I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Ambitious Changes by Gillian

For many years I was driven by just one ambition. It ruled the major decisions of my life.
I was going to find a way to fix this unidentified, at best only subliminally recognized, problem.

In high school, and for that matter as far back as I could remember, I simply felt zero excitement over boys. 
I liked them, I had plenty of boy friends, but not boyfriends; sexual stimulations of puberty were engendered exclusively by girls. I was in love with my best girl friend all through high school.

Well. This would not do.
It was all the problem of these country bumpkin boys of the remote hill country I inhabited. Somehow I failed to notice that the girls came from the same place.
I would go off to College and there the young men would at least be intellectually stimulating which in turn would surely lead to……?

That worked well. 
I was madly in love with the same woman all through college. There were many intellectually stimulating men but that failed to lead to …….? 

Well. This would not do.
It was all the problem of these dull boring Englishmen. After all, the jokes are endless.
The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn’t sex but something else. 
The rest of the world has sex, the Englishman has cricket.
I didn’t know he was dead; I thought he was British.
On and on.
I would go off to the United States where men were men and that would lead to….?

That worked well. 
I was in love with my female workmate in no time. 

Well. This would not do. 
I had simply not found the RIGHT man. I became quite promiscuous in my search.

That worked well. 
I remained madly in love with the same woman. Even when it is all confined to some underground segment of my being, I am hopelessly monogamous.

Well. This would not do. 
The problem was all these one night stands, all this messing around. I would find a good man and get married.

That worked well.
I remained in love with the same incurably hetero woman, but increasingly more consciously. The reality of what I was became abundantly clear.

Well. This would not do. 
I would get divorced. And I would stand my ambition on its head.

And that did work well. My ambition became to embrace, if sadly belatedly, my sexuality. 
I would not hide it, I would come out to my family and friends and coworkers almost as soon as I came out to myself.

I met Betsy, fell madly in love, and in my monogamous way have loved her for twenty-five years.
I do, completely, embrace my lesbianism. 
In fact, I have to put it more strongly. 
After I turned my ambition around 180 degrees I can honestly say that I am grateful to be gay. It has brought so much meaning and purpose, such joy, such support. (This storytelling group is the perfect example.)

I have been buffeted by one ambition, then by another in the completely opposite direction. 
And now, not driven at all, I am content simply to be.

© 18 July
2011

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.