I knew when I was growing up that wearing pants, boy’s sneakers, and a hat were comfortable to me. I knew I’d rather be swinging a bat or running a play into the end zone between the two perfectly placed Sycamore trees in Jon Tarr’s back yard. I knew that when the other girls were having tea parties for their Barbie dolls and stuffed animals that I’d rather be climbing a tree or riding my bike, pushing the envelope beyond the invisible line my mom said I was not to cross. As I grew up, I felt odd-girl out. I didn’t conform to the gender roles I could see blossoming in my classmates right before my eyes. The pressure was subtle. I was forced to wear dresses, taught to sit “like a lady” instead of sprawling out all over the place, given gifts at birthday and Christmas that didn’t fit, by relatives who didn’t know me. My parents always got me the things I wanted, not the things they thought I should want—I think they knew something on an subconscious level even if it wasn’t what they wanted to believe. I’d tear off any vestiges of femininity as soon as I hit the door at home after school—I felt like a schizophrenic trapped in a Librium haze without my pants and hat. As time went on and I attempted to goose-step into puberty, it was normal for my friends to suddenly become boy crazy. In moments, I tried that on for size. It didn’t feel totally right, but it seemed to bring my friends such great joy, I thought I must just be doing it wrong. It was really difficult, at times, to be different – if not always on the outside, then on the inside. The struggle was always in the forefront of all I said and did. It made for some lonely days as a kid—thank God for those other people who were having trouble conforming for their own reasons—we found each other. Eventually, I got comfortable in my body, this body of a woman I was somehow given. And, then, I reveled in being a woman. I got that I could have the body I had and be the person I wanted to be and if people thought me odd, well, I could live with that—it just took a while to get there. It just struck me one day, that there had been no room for shades of grey in those days.
The big breasted German nurse looking down at my newly arrived screeching, hungry form in the crib at the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt a/M, West Germany was the first woman to whom I was attracted. That’s what I tell people. Boys were for football and baseball, and digging in the dirt. For racing GI Joe jeeps down Garden Avenue. For the endless summer games of neighborhood kickball until the streetlights went on or the crisp fall evenings that brought games of twilight hide and seek. Or for casual, uncomplicated experimentation.
Girls were for listening to raptly, lying on my stomach, my hands tucked in little fists under my chin and legs swinging upward in the air behind me, as we lounged on the bed, gazing into each other’s eyes – Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake & Palmer playing in the background – as they told me their secrets. Or for Saturday nights cuddled up with me in the sleeping bag during sleepovers on the basement floor. Girls were for playing strip poker in my room. Ending up under the covers with a rush of pubescent excitement that meant one thing to her and quite another to me. Poker seemed to be the only way to get her there. A warning to all mothers who require their daughters to keep the bedroom door open only if boys are visiting – this is probably not an entirely effective strategy.
To hear a particular girl whisper in my ear and rub my back and allow her fingers to linger and trace the rest of me, pausing deliberately here and there in our two-man tent during Girl Scout camp, after a long day spelunking and rappelling. We met in a “Same Time, Next Year” kind of way at camp each summer for many years. Dad, I hope you understand now why I declined attending your wedding – you see, you picked a day during those two weeks. There was no real choice. Though she lived in the same area and probably fifteen minutes from me, our time together was exclusively held to that two weeks each summer. We had one brief, but excited phone call each March when the Girl Scout camp schedule arrived by mail. I was beginning to understand what felt right. There was no one there in my Iowa hometown to talk with and no one to help me traverse what I was feeling or thinking. There was this secret life I led in my bed and in my head. I didn’t know what to call it or what it meant. I just knew that in the life I’d been dealt there, there was no room for shades of grey.
Punctuation marks. Men in my life have been but punctuation marks on my way to the next sentence, paragraph, or chapter. There was the question mark – the man I had to try just to say I had. There was the exclamation point – one of a pair of cowboys whom the woman I then longed for with all of my being and I picked up while traveling in West Texas one weekend – she going her way and I mine with said exclamation points. What was I gonna’ do? Scream out, “I want you, don’t go with him!!!” She came back all aglow and I, well, I just wanted to die for a whole bunch of reasons now all distilled down into that moment I saw her face as she walked back in the door. She’d right that with me eventually, if only for a time. There was a comma – the one who was just a pause – and, as is the case with many commas, entirely misplaced. And, then there was the period – the one I connected with and who was my friend for years – the one who had my back and made me laugh. Until the day the laughter stopped for good and I could no longer live in the black and white world that did not allow for my shades of grey.
But what did I meet when I was finally out and true and righteous and full of self-love and understanding? I found yet another world that was not always accepting of shades of grey. I found women who would not see me for who I am, but only as yet another newly out woman without the requisite pristine lesbian credentials on my Sapphic Vitae. Women who had apparently been blessed with a bravery I seemingly lacked or who had crashed head-on into self-understanding long before they were lead astray by the patriarchy. Women who identified me as not truly lesbian because I had, as encultured, made a segue or two on my way to being one with my shades of grey. I heard things like, “I only see women who are biologically lesbian.” What the fuck? I am! I was! But, my history was something they couldn’t see clearly through. So, I made a decision to leave out facts, keep things at a superficial level, and just play. That didn’t work either; it made me feel as though I was betraying the single thing I had fought so hard to find. It kept me unavailable. It had other costs as well which provided some of life’s hardest lessons. I’ve heard more than once, from friends who came out later in life that it had, “Never occurred to me, but it sure makes sense now.” How could that be? Well, it can be. That’s enough. It just is. That’s their truth. Not mine. We each get to carry our own truth.
This all happened many years ago, but, occasionally, I admit, I’ll still visit a “what if” moment—and just as quickly realize I had no other path to travel but the one I walked. I have a well of empathy for those who haven’t found the way to be true to themselves—and I know the price they are paying all too well. Those who deny or self-loathe or want to keep the safety and security of the trappings of their straight lives. Those who may want a 100% guarantee that if they make a leap, they won’t have regrets. Those who are ruled by fear or complacency or a misplaced understanding of fate. Those who simply say, “I can’t.” How grand life would be if there was a clear roadmap, where all detours and roadblocks and traffic jams and treacherous winding mountain roads could easily be avoided.
What I’ve come to realize is that there a world of nuance; each person’s path no more valid or worthy than another. There are women who are born lesbian, those who make a choice, those who dabble, those who identify as bisexual, those who come out late—those who live within a spectrum of subtlety. And, there are those, unfortunately, who will continue to struggle in their lives because they will never be able to find the way to break free and slip into the warm, enveloping, healing waters of that pool full of shades of grey.
