Barbara’s Story

From the time I was tiny, I was very active and I became a tomboy as I got older. I tolerated dresses because there was not really any choice – girls couldn’t wear pants to school until I was in 9th grade. I was tall and lanky. Girls’ clothes didn’t fit me and I always felt I didn’t fit, either. After school, of course, I pulled on my pants and went outside to play.

My family and neighborhood allowed quite a bit of androgyny while we were young, which relieved my growing alienation from girls at school. There were a number of female friends that I had (what I now understand to be) crushes on, but they never seemed to feel the same about me. It was lonely, confusing and I knew that I could never talk about it.

In the 60’s and 70’s, there were no public figures who were out. Kids had no access to information about homosexuality. Girls who were athletic had no outlet – it was pre-Title 9- so there were no sports for girls. Our mothers were usually subordinate to fathers, who were the “heads of the family”. I had never heard of lesbians but I knew that I didn’t want to get married.

I high school, I started feeling more like an outsider. I didn’t date at all and, to make things worse, I wasn’t interested! I thought I was “supposed” to have sexual thoughts about boys and that grossed me out, so I got involved in a Christian youth group. I wanted to be a good Christian girl, so I couldn’t do or think anything inappropriate about boys. Even though I didn’t understand that I was gay, this gave me cover to avoid pressure to date boys. In addition, we had girls’ prayer groups where we all held hands. I was in heaven!

In my last year in high school, I became very close to two girls. After school sometimes, we would go over to J’s house and sit in a beanbag chair and hug. Nothing else, but I felt like I was home. I found out later that these two friends were lovers at the time. They would go to the airport and go to adjoining gates. Then they would run toward each other, calling each other’s names and throwing their arms around each other as one “met” her friend getting off the plane. This was how they could express their love in a public place. They didn’t come out to me until 1976, when I was 20.

I went to college in 1974 and my world opened up in many ways. I gave up what felt to me to be a sexist religion. I discovered feminism, which made me understand my femaleness in a new, positive light. Even so, I still felt like a freak; there seemed to be no one like me. I was 19 and still didn’t know any gay people; and had never even seen a book about lesbians. This “I Understand You” website would have been so helpful for me then!

In the summer of 1976, the National Women’s Music Festival was held at the University of Illinois, where I was attending. I went to as many of the concerts as I could around my school and work schedules. Sweet Honey in the Rock, Chris Williamson, 6-foot tall butchy Maxine Feldman belting out “I am WOMAN hear me ROOAAARRRR!!!!!.” I walked into these spaces filled with women just like me! Comfortable in their bodies. Androgynous clothes-nothing to fuss over- just what I liked to wear. They sat with their arms around each other, relaxed and affectionate. I felt like I could breathe. I could be myself. These women had come here from all over the country. I only knew the two lesbians from high school. One was in California and the other in Missouri! How could I find lesbians in Champaign, Illinois? Would I ever fall in love? Have a girlfriend? A partner? So, I looked in the college newspaper and saw that there was to be a “Women’s Dance”. What do you wear to that? I put on a pair of my dad’s pants and a flannel shirt (like women wore at the Music Festival) and went to the“dance”. There were about 30 women, between the ages of 19 and 50, in a small room, upstairs in a church building. I saw that there would be few choices in picking a girlfriend and that I would have to make it work.

At that dance, I met a woman about my age, we got together the next day and stayed together for almost 5 years. R and I were not a particularly good match but we became a part of a gay community. In a year we had joined a gay male couple and rented an apartment. We were what was known as “downwardly mobile”, living very frugally (mattress on the floor, very rarely eating out, no credit cards) and we were tremendously happy.

I told my siblings that I was gay but did not tell my parents. When I graduated, R and I spent a year abroad. While I was gone, my mother was cleaning my room and found a letter I had written and thus learned about R and me. A few weeks later she wrote, saying she was afraid to tell my father. I promptly wrote my father, who responded by saying that he would always love me, despite my arrested emotional development.

In 1979, R and I moved to Seattle because we had heard that lesbians were more likely to be monogamous there than in other big cities. I think it was basically true. As a young lesbian and gay person, I had no role models for a lasting lesbian relationship. At 4 years, ours was about the longest of anyone we knew. Imagine if straight people had never met a couple who had been together longer than 5 or 10 years – not their parents, grandparents, neighbors. Not anyone.

By the time I was 25, R and I were struggling. I felt trapped and unhappy. I met Susan and we became lovers, then partners in life. We have now been together for 40 years and are still in love. We have had an interesting life together. For 25-years, we rewrote opera and pop tunes as comic social satire, describing lesbian life and our relationships with each other, our families and the world around us. My parents and extended family have been loving and supportive. They adore Susan.

People ask us how we made such a lasting, loving relationship and we say: Remember that you are always on the same team, facing problems together, even when the conflict is between you. Always be respectful and polite and remember to say that you love her/him. Find ways to laugh together. Be responsible and do your share of the housework. And finally, it’s not WHO you love, it’s HOW you love that’s important.