Originally mailed on February 25, 1995
I was going to write you on Tuesday night, and tell you that things had settled into a routine around here: work, Composition class, lunch with Louella, one night a weekend with Splash, a couple of dinners a week with Esther. But just as I was sitting to put pen to paper the phone rang -- seems like the shit had hit the fan over at Louella's place. Here's the story: Buddy, Louella's girlfriend, has been getting antsy about Louella's marital status, and keeps asking Louella to please come clean with the hubby so that Buddy and Louella can bring their love fully into the light of day. Louella's been hedging, saying she's not sure if she's ready to burn any bridges. "I love Buddy, but I love Sam, too." Sam is Louella's husband. Well, apparently Buddy had reached her lying-and-sneaking limit, and she told Louella she couldn't keep seeing her if Louella was still married to a man and was cheating on him.
Well, Louella sent the kids to her mother's and sat down with Sam to have The Big Talk. "Sam," she said, "there's something we need to talk about. A good marriage is based on honesty, and for quite awhile now there hasn't been honesty between us. I love you, and I think we need to get some things out in the open." And it was just like some bad sitcom; Sam said, "Oh, Louella, I should have told you before, I never meant for you to find out any other way except from me, but I've been so cowardly." Louella stared at him, and said, "Uh, Sam, this is about me." Sam tried to recover: "Well, then, what did you want to talk about, sweetheart?" but Louella was like, "Uh-uh. Spill the beans, fella." What a hoot. Turns out Sam's gay, and has been practicing casual but safe sex with men off and on for several years. Louella said to me, "What do you think the chances are of that?" and I said, "Pretty high, actually." I know a half dozen dykes who used to be married to gay men; most of my lesbian friends have old boyfriends who turned out to be a little light in the loafers. And Sam and Louella did get married mighty young. "Proto-Queer Magnetism," I explained to Louella. "That mysterious something that causes us to recognize each other when we don't even recognize ourselves yet."
So Louella and Sam are in a big dither. They both feel hurt and angry that the other one lied, but they also both feel enormous relief, and a sense of, "OK, we're in this together now." I have a good time imagining them going to a coming out support group together. "Hi, I'm Louella and this is my husband Sam and we think we're gay." Another event I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall at: dinner last night, when Buddy was coming to Louella and Sam's to meet the family. I wonder if the kids will pick up on vibes or if they're too young.
In other news, things have been going better than I anticipated with Splash -- I think her declaration of love back in January was just a momentary flare-up. She hasn't actually said, "Um, Harriet, what I said about being in love -- let's just forget it, OK?" but that's what I think is going on. After a tense several weeks, with me bending over backward not to say or do anything that might be painful to her, and her bending over backward not to seem too lovestruck and make me uncomfortable, we seem to have settled back into our happy routine. She took a short hiatus from other girls but it didn't last; someone in one of her women's studies classes asked her for coffee, and once she said yes to that it was like women came crawling out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, she's taken up with the cocaine-sniffer again. I think it's a bad idea, but who am I to tell Splash that? Every one of us has to make her own mistakes -- er, I mean, decisions.
I've been seeing Esther, but seeing is about it. Man, are we moving slow for lesbians. It's all Esther's doing. I went head-over-heels the minute I saw her, but she won't be rushed. She likes to get to know a woman before she sleeps with her. I said, "Geez, Esther, if I'd done that I wouldn't have had half the lovers I've had," and Esther said, "My point exactly." I get to have dinner with Esther a couple of times a week, take her to a movie once in a while, meet for coffee on Sunday afternoons. She lets me hold her hand, and a couple of times has given me a kiss goodnight. It's driving me crazy, I'm so attracted to her. I even considered breaking up with Splash because I can hardly tell anymore whether I'm really attracted to Splash or if I'm just using her to burn off some of the overload from my desire for Esther. I tried to talk to Splash about it, and she said, "It's all a part of non-monogamy, Harriet. Of course your sexual feelings for different women get confused sometimes, but it's OK. It will all sort itself out eventually." I admit I was relieved, because if I stop seeing Splash I'll have no outlet at all.
Esther works my mind in a crazy way. When I'm with her, I feel adolescent and awkward, and at the same time I feel powerful and protective (OK, butch). I dress for her. I've even started ironing my shirts (no, not my T-shirts. I've started wearing button-downs again). And the other day when we went to dinner I even put on a tie and jacket, and I polished my boots. And I'm using gel in my hair. It's like I'm being transformed. I didn't used to think at all about what I put on; I'd wear the same T-shirt five days in a row if it didn't smell too bad. I didn't worry about if things matched, or if I made a good impression. Dorothy used to shake her head sometimes and send me back into the bedroom to try again. It didn't bother me much. I figured if I didn't care what I was wearing, it didn't matter if Dorothy picked it out. But now I want to be a fashion plate. I want to look sharp and smell good and I want Esther to know I dressed for her. Sometimes she opens the door to me and gets this look on her face like, "Um-hm, Harriet, got dressed special for me, eh?" It embarrasses me and at the same time I want her to know I care enough to look good for her, to try to please her.
The thing is, Esther won't give me the satisfaction of being impressed. Every now and then she drops a hint that she thinks I look good, like once when we were on the phone setting up a dinner date she said, "Wear that black silk shirt," and I thought, "Ah, she liked the black silk shirt." She hadn't said a word when I wore it before. I didn't even know she had noticed it.
Does Esther dress for me? I can't tell. She always wears beautiful clothes, and it seems so natural on her. Of course, part of the effect is her; she is so pretty and holds herself so nicely that she makes clothes look beautiful. I don't think she makes herself pretty for me; I think she's just always that way. Even when I just drop by in the evening to type a paper on her computer, her lounging clothes are loose and graceful and about six hundred rungs up the fashion ladder from my old sweats.
This whole situation with Esther is disconcerting. Usually by the time I've been seeing someone for six weeks there's been a passionate flare-up if there is ever going to be one. Isn't that true of most lesbians? Just the fact that Esther can control herself around me makes me glum and pessimistic. I'm getting desperate for a sign from her, some kind of movement, and I think I'm embarrassing myself by bringing it up all the time. It seems like every time I see her, even though I promise myself I won't, I end up whining and begging for her to let the relationship go somewhere. "Harriet, I've told you I need to know someone very well before I'll sleep with her." "But, Esther, how can we get to know each other if you won't let us get more intimate?" Aargh! It's humiliating!
So last night, after my weekly whine-and-beg-fest, she says, "Harriet, the truth is I'm worried about your drinking. I need to know that I can trust a woman, and a woman who needs to drink or whose personality changes when she drinks can't be trusted. I don't want to believe something you say to me, or believe in something that happens between us, and find out later it didn't count because you were drunk when it happened." Esther had an ex-lover who, it turns out, was in a blackout when they made love the first time. Esther didn't find out for a long time because her lover faked remembering it (even pulled a very good trick along the lines of, "Tell me every detail, Esther, so I can relive it through your eyes and know it meant as much to you as it did to me."). She felt betrayed when she found out about it (and about other, related, things as well), and she's gun-shy now.
Anyway, I said, "Esther, I like to drink, but I'm not dependent on it. Believe me, I used to be a drunk in my younger days and I know the difference between the way I drank then and the way I drink now. I've worked through a lot of stuff and you don't need to worry that I'm an alcoholic." I was ready to take her into my arms and comfort her, because she was upset from telling me about her ex and all, so I was heading in her direction expecting that she'd melt into my arms, you know, and be reassured. But she did not melt, not the least little bit. Instead, she got icy, stared at me with her eyes narrowed, and said, "Easy to say, Harriet. Hard to prove."
Which made me a little mad. Why should I have to prove anything to her? I know myself, and that should be good enough. I told her so, and she said, "It's not good enough for me. I need to be around you for a long time, see you in a lot of different situations, get to know how and when you drink and whether that changes and how it affects you, and then I'll know whether I can trust you or not."
I said, "So you're asking me to keep seeing you the way we've been doing, until some unspecified time in the distant future when you may or may not decide you can get romantic with me?" Esther said yes. I said, "Aren't you afraid I'll get tired of waiting and find someone else?" Esther said, "I am afraid of that. I'm afraid you'll fall in love with Splash and stop seeing me, or that you'll meet someone else who's willing to move faster. But I can't risk getting into a bad relationship, or compromising what I know I need to be safe." I said, "Esther, I can't stand the uncertainty, and I can't wait forever, as attracted as I am to you and as much as I already care about you. You need to make up your mind sooner than someday." I was feeling mean. I was tired of listening to her healthy-speak psychobabble, I thought she was just too scared from being hurt before and was hiding behind this excuse that she thought I drank too much, and I thought she'd cave in if I sounded like I might actually decide not to see her anymore.
Did she cave? No. She said, "Well, Harriet, there is a way I can think of to speed up the process. If you really don't need alcohol, you could give it up for awhile. If I thought you cared enough about me to stop drinking for, say, 30 days, and if you'd go to AA a few times and really think about your relationship with alcohol, and if you'd be honest about what it was like to try to go without it, well, it'd go a long way toward reassuring me." I just sat there staring at her. I said, "I can hardly believe you're asking me that!" And she said, "I got a schedule of AA meetings for you, if you want it." Well, I just blew! I said, "Oh, I see, this whole thing has been a setup to get me to go to AA, because you've already decided I'm an alcoholic and nothing I do or say is going to change your mind. This has been one sweet little manipulation, Esther." And I left.
I called Splash, and she came over, and we had sex, and the whole time I was thinking, "Take that, Esther. There are other women who want me even if you don't." But this morning I woke up and looked at Splash and felt so remorseful, because Splash deserves better than to be my revenge on Esther. Splash is so honest with everybody; people may get hurt when they're seeing her but it's not because she lies or treats anybody badly. They just fall in love with her because she's so swell and then can't deal with the limits she sets.
Man, what a rotten morning! I ended up apologizing to Splash and then crying in her arms for about an hour (I guess I'm only the big protective butch when I'm with Esther!), all about how I'm in love with Esther and we're never going to be together, and how I felt so bad about the way I'd treated Splash, and about how I screwed things up with Dorothy by sleeping with Pan and what a mistake that was. More credit to Splash: she didn't get mad at me when I told her what I'd been thinking last night, just sad and sympathetic. But then she said, "Tell me about your drinking."
Damn. Like I took her to bed to be my therapist. I said, "I don't want to talk about it." She said, "OK, but answer some questions for me?" and I was just livid, like everybody in my fucking life is an AA spy out to recruit people into their 12-step cult. All her questions were like those "Are you an alcoholic?" quizzes, and my answers to all of them were, "Yes, but not lately." Have you ever missed work because you were hungover? Have you ever used alcohol to loosen yourself up in a social situation? To help you go to sleep? Do you drink when you feel bad? Have you ever done anything drunk that you wouldn't do sober? Yes, but not lately. I told Splash, I was a lush in high school, drunk six days out of seven, but I pulled myself out of it. I was drunk on New Year's Eve and a little hungover the next morning, but I don't know when the last time was I'd been drunk before that. And Splash said, "I bet I do." I just looked at her. She said, "Multiple choice: Before New Year's Eve, the last time you were really drunk was: A) The night you slept with Pan the first time; B) The night Dorothy dumped you; C) The night Pan dumped you; D) All of the above." I said, "Fuck you, Doris. Like you're a big expert, Miss 'I know I shouldn't get so involved with this drug-dealing coke-head but I just can't help myself because the sex is so good.'" And Splash just laughed at me and said, "Yeah, but I've got perspective on your life."
Damn, I feel mean. I've got three friends here, and they're all on my case -- even Louella dragged me to that damn ACOA meeting last fall after she met my grandma. I'm in my apartment all alone but I'm having fights with the three of them: "Look, just because my grandmother and both my parents are alcoholics, it doesn't necessarily mean anything." And then I think that sounds really stupid.
I don't know. I think our culture is just too sensitive about all this stuff, so somebody sees a couple of bottles of Anchor Steam in my fridge and automatically thinks there's something wrong with me. And lesbians are the worst, everybody getting so in touch with their dysfunctional families, and they want to drag everyone into that web. Well, I can't argue that my family was functional by any stretch of the imagination but I turned out OK. I mean, I've got a pretty good job, I'm in school, I had a good relationship with Dorothy for a long time. But if everybody thinks I've got a problem and won't have a relationship with me because of it, that's a problem. I feel like there's no way to convince them all I'm OK except to do what Esther wants, and stop drinking for awhile. But I also feel like to do that is like admitting I've got a problem, which I am not willing to do. Damn, I need a beer (just kidding!).
What I really need is somebody with some perspective. Esther doesn't have any because of her ex-lover, and Louella sees an alcoholic in every dark alley because of her father and everything he put her family through. I need to talk to someone who doesn't have an axe to grind. I have no idea who that might be.
Bleh. I didn't plan to write such a dismal letter. On the bright side, my composition class is going well. We've been doing argumentative writing. I've written two papers so far, one arguing in favor of the civil rights ordinance that they're trying to get passed in Lansing (it includes "sexual orientation" as a protected category). Oddly enough, I was the only one in the class to argue in favor of it. But what was a real hoot was the second paper. The teacher didn't want us to all write papers on the 20 classic freshman comp topics (teenage pregnancy, drugs, abortion, and so on) because, she said, it's boring for her to read them. So our assignment was to pick a topic of current interest in a group we're a part of. Like, is our church trying to decide whether to oppose women being ordained or something. And I thought, "Hm, what group do I belong to that might have some controversies?" Heh heh. I did my paper on whether male-to-female transsexuals should be admitted to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and other women-only spaces. I wasn't sure how my teacher would handle getting a paper that said the word "lesbian" about six hundred times and included discussions of a variety of types of queers. But the school has a non-discrimination policy and I hear there's an out lesbian who teaches in the department, and I figured if I thought I'd been graded unfairly I could talk to her and get some help. I turned the paper in last week and haven't gotten it back yet. I'll let you know the results. I got a 3.5 on my first paper so if I get a really bad grade on this one I'll figure something's up.
I should go. I want to call Esther but I'm afraid to. Maybe I'll spend the afternoon at a movie and just not worry about Esther or Splash or drinking or anything for awhile. Think about it all later.
Love,
© Copyright 1994-1999 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.
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