}

A CONVERSATION (continued from page 7).

amount of time or less, who knows? It just affects everything I do. There's nothing that's not touched by my being a lesbian,

Jan: Because it's like your core, your center.... Pat: It still is my core, too....In the reality that 1 build, that is my primary reality. It is no longer...a conscious primary thing for me anymore. The fact that it's primary is indicated by the fact that I surround myself with good, strong, lesbian women, Obviously that's important to me and I can't survive without that.

Jan: It feels to me that finding a relationship that works is such a fluke. I don't mean that it doesn't take work, but there's nothing that'll make me give it up easily. I think it's real precious. I still can hardly believe that I have the ability to relate to somebody in a way that works. I've never seen it before in my family. I've never done it before in my life. It seems like a miracle, except I don't believe in miracles.

Ellen: I think that if we ever broke up, I feel clear that I'd become celibate at that point. The chances of finding another person with whom I could have the same kind of relationship, really pressing on each other, kicking each other in the ass, and taking care of each other in the way we have, is just so small. If it happened, I'd make the choice to be single. The

GROWING UP GAY (continued from page 3)

Junior high school was torture. I was entering puberty. My hormones were beginning to flow. I couldn't help that mine chose to flow in a different direction! It was always painful to be replaced by a "him"-and often the "him" was such a jerk! Falling in love in junior high school meant finding out her schedule and going to the bathroom a lot. You couldn't ask her what her schedule was outright because you did not exist in her world. So you did a lot of eavesdropping until you found the precious information. And if she should have the same lunch hour, oh, what heaven! So with this golden information, I would rush madly to my class and beg for a pass to the lavatory and then rush like hell so that I would ever so nonchalantly just pass her as she was going into her class. The big thrill was if she should respond with a "Hi' to my incoherent mumbled greeting. When I missed my timing, I hoped that she would be sitting within view of the door, and trying hard not to get caught by the teacher or the hall guard, I would peer in and catch a glimpse of my beloved.

Not until I was 16 did I get a response to my adolescent passion. She was 14 going on 28, and something else. I met her at the Girl Scout camp where I had the honor of being "Staff" because I washed pots in the kitchen. With my white T-shirt rolled up, just enough to reveal my budding biceps (hoping my budding breasts would not overpower the biceps), I was the answer to every young girl's dreanis. Or so I thought. Here I met ML, and into the night we would creep to cuddle and snuggle in the woods. At the end of two weeks I was hopelessly in love and commenced to write love letters that must have burned holes in the mailman's bag. They may not have burned holes in his bag, but they did burn in her mother's hands, and hence into my mom's. My mother was a gem. She said, “I know you care a lot, but her mother says no more". But we did: back to the Cleveland Public Library and into the last cubicle in the lavatory in the basement we met to cuddle and snuggle...and cry!

When I was 18, I met my first lesbian, God, she scared me to death and she scared most of the men she was throwing out of the bar, too. Dressed in trousers, loafers, work shirt with white T-shirt underneath and with a man's haircut, she was called Ruth. She was the only lesbian 1 had ever met and 1 knew I was not like her. I was in a hell of a mess now-I wasn't like anybody!

.. A mál The T-

-Anonymous

1

energy we've put into developing this relationship...just thinking of it makes me tired! I'm not about to do that with someone else. [That is] one of the reasons to stay together.

Karen: It is.

Ellen: It is. You really have to work out those things between you. It's a big choice to try again with someone else.

Pat: I think it's special that it's Karen and me, that that doesn't happen very often....I try to reconcile

that some people are doing it as couples and some think that's not right; I just have to say, "This is good for me, this is working out." Other people do what they need to do. I still feel guilty sometimes, like "You're not supposed to be in these stable, longterm relationships," like there's something wrong with it. But that's what suits me real well. I keep doing it!

Jan: Politically incorrect!

Ellen: The politics should be that you have to recognize that people are different. Different things feel right for different people. Stay in touch with what your choices are doing for you.

Interviewer: Some people aren't in touch enough with themsleves to know what feels right. They're only stumbling around in the dark. Maybe if they were really feeling all right about themselves, they could have it together to make a couple thing work. Jan: I think it definitely starts with yourself.

Ellen: We're in transition from community comprised of relatives to a community which is chosen. Interviewer: Allies.

Jan: Or no community. You live on a street and you don't even know your neighbor's name.

Ellen: That's what's happening now, there's no community. Everyone expresses the wish that there

was one.

Interviewer: But not willing to do anything active to make it happen.

Jan: 1 despair when thinking of the kinds of changes we talk about, Woman on the Edge of Time is still one of the most graphic descriptions of how a world could be that would be feminist and liveable to me. That stands opposed to a nice intimate relationship with somebody. It stands opposed to my being willing to put aside things that I want and need for the greater community. People are always looking for things, and I'm not making the adjustments in

my own personal life that could build the kind of community that I envision.

Interviewer: Few are. Some people in other places are trying that. I don't want it [community] to be limited by any sexual dimensions, or age, or race, or any anything. To be able to get a community that's totally integrated like that would be a tremendous thing. So many people have found a degree of satisfaction and support within couples or in nuclear families that it's safe. There's just enough safety there that they don't risk going in new directions trying to make the larger community happen. It would mean that I would touch base with people who aren't doing anything like I'm doing on a regular basis, and we'd just share, offer suggestions, bounce ideas off one another. I'd listen to their stories, they to mine. and we'd get fresh perspectives out of that interaction. We all really need that! Without it, we all just sort of burrow in. There's all kinds of things we could do together, but initially we've got to at least recognize that some basic sharing has to happen, ai acknowledgment of this world view we have.

Pat: It takes a hell of a lot of energy. It's been only recently that I've been wanting to reach out, thinking about making alliances with other groups. I don't know what they've been doing, whether they've been doing similar kinds of things as I have. My need to concentrate, give and get energy from lesbian women, was a real need, so that's what I've been doing. I now see myself being ready. My primary focus was to put energy into women. Whereas now I've come to think of ways I can influence others.

Interviewer: My reaching out might have been experienced earlier because I needed to be together with women, but it didn't come out of the lesbian experience, so while I did a number of things with lesbian women, I didn't go for a period of time into a sort of exclusive environment of women.

Jan: Well, we really didn't either.

Karen: Being a separatist was for nurturance. Jan: I would have defined myself as a separatist too, but that didn't mean that I really could be that, because I did have to interact with men.

Pat: 1 mean in terms of making any connections with any other movements, or allies or anything. Now I want to be able to take over the city a little bit. Before I didn't think about those things.

Jan: Like Heights Community Congress might be a way to start. They have a women's rights class. That's getting into a political arena that seems manageable and where I as an individual might be able to have an influence. That's for now. The world is next!

Interviewer: That's an outreach service. I think from my perspective what's missing in doing that is "What's in it for me?" What's going to happen to me if I take on Heights Community Congress? It might be a good challenge, but it's like one more task if my needs aren't being met. If a cross-pollination of various political perspectives isn't happening as an underpinning of that activity, then it's just one more way for me to spend some energy. It may have some meaning, but it's going to drain ine, and what comes back? Can they really give me anything back? Probably not, so where's it going to come back from? ! don't feel that taking on any conventional politics and moving some radical thought into it is worth it to me without reasonably good communication with other radicals or liberal-radical folks. So that community-building that hasn't begun to happen, some liaisons between groups, is the next step, as I see it. Whether it will happen through an issue, like nukes, which in my mind is possible, or through community issues, or....But I think it's got to start there, that has to happen first.

-Prepared by Barb Reusch and Carol Epstein

June, 1979/What She Wants/Page 11