The Family Silver: Essays on Relationships among Women

Two. Becoming a Lesbian

Two becoming a lesbian Twenty years ago, I ¤rst lived with another woman. This is a story about that experience, excerpted from a novel I later wrote. Although written in the third person, it is strictly autobiographical. To me, this story is not only about lesbians, but also about female-female relating and the challenge of intimacy between women. I call it “Becoming a Lesbian” because, for me, being a lesbian is an ongoing process of seeking intimacy, personal value, and happiness with another woman.1 This process may have an initial stage, but it does not have an end. Often, I think, becoming a lesbian involves challenging basic assumptions about oneself. For me, it has required admitting my most basic needs of other women rather than walling these needs off, or denying them. It has required discarding some of my previous ways of being female, and¤nding new ones. As this story suggests, women often teach each other how to be lesbian. Fran, my lover, taught me, as she was taught by a previous lover. I hope this tale indicates that I think lesbianism is a choice, rather than an inborn nature. At some point, I chose, for the ¤rst time with awareness, to meet my most intimate needs with other women. However , I think I did not become a lesbian suddenly, or as a result of any 3 4 single cause, but rather as a result of many small experiences and invisible choices I had made along the way. Eventually I found myself living withanotherwoman,sharingsexualityandinterpersonalattentiveness, andfeelingquiteunpreparedforit.Ithenhadtolearnagreatdealabout what was involved. I had to grow to appreciate the speci¤c emotional contours of a lesbian relationship. I think that lesbian relationships touch the deepest emotions women have. They are important far beyond what one expects. A two-year lesbian relationship lasts for a century and leaves the parties to it forever changed. When a lesbian relationship ends, there is no overstating the heartbreak. In part to mend an early break, I wrote this story about a lesbian love. from “jenny’s world” I Often these days Jenny thought about Fran, the ¤rst woman she had lived with. Fran was the ¤rst in a series of dreams that now haunted Jenny like broken glass. Jenny was younger then, although at the time she felt old, for she was in her late twenties. Fran was eleven years older. Fran was wiser, Jenny thought. She wore her graying hair short, her clothes tailored. She drank regularly, often heavily, chain-smoked, and spoke to Jenny with a tone of affection and of reason. Fran’s father was a fundamentalist minister. Fran had therefore become a scientist. Each day she went to her lab. She knew how to tune her car and how to ¤x things around the house. Anything that moved she believed she could take apart and then put back together again. Her very way of speaking conveyed precision and depth. She was one kind of dream come true for Jenny. Jenny had ¤rst met Fran at meetings of a lesbian group they both attended in which Jenny was outspoken, making more enemies, she felt, than friends. Fran came up to her after one of those meetings and asked for her phone number. Within a few days, Fran called to ask her for a date, her way of proposing it formal and somewhat nervous. When Jenny accepted, Fran had responded by saying “Nifty,” which made Jenny wonder about her. The people Jenny knew did not say “nifty.” be c o m i n g a l e s bi a n 3 5 That night of their ¤rst date was as clear to Jenny now as if it had happened yesterday. She pulled her car up to the front of a large mockTudor style house in a section of town where the lawns were deep and the houses big, some of them huge as mansions. Fran had told her on the phone that a dirty white VW bus would be parked in front of the housewhereshelived,soJennycouldnotmissit.Asshedroveup,Jenny saw the bus, but since it was dark out, she was not sure exactly how she was supposed to tell if it was clean or dirty. She did know, however, that sheoughttobeontime.ThathadseemedimpliedinFran’stoneof voice on the phone. Jenny walked up to the house, crossing the damp front lawn to reach an entrance that reminded her of entrances to buildings...