---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue of cc&d (v240) (the January 2013 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Guilt by Association cc&d 2013 collection book		get the 374 page Jan. - June 2013 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Safe Harbor at the Isle of Lesbos¹

Jodi McMaster

    I have often told the story of moving in 1972 to Prattville, Alabama, at age 11, after living almost five years in Japan and all but the first few months of kindergarten in Department of Defense schools. We lived most of my father’s tour on base at Yokota; the last 18 months were at Kadena AFB in Okinawa.
    On Okinawa, we lived next door to an African-American officer and his family. I occasionally babysat their two little boys; I found the fact of penises during the change from daywear to pjs far more disconcerting than skin tones. Skin I understood; penises, not so much.
    I may have heard someone say the word “nigger”² at some point; if I did, my understanding was pretty much limited to the fact it was a bad word because of the chorus that resounded after the use of any taboo language on a DoD schoolbus: “You can’t say that! Your dad could be courtmartialed.” In Alabama, it wasn’t hard to figure out, and I probably heard it more times in sixth grade than in the rest of my 51 years.
    My main sense of racism came from the Ali-Frazier fight, the thrilla in Manila, which we listened to and argued about at recess during fourth grade at Hamura Elementary. Nothing overt, but there was more to it than the “damned draft-dodger” rhetoric against Mohammed Ali.
    Therefore, it was quite the shock when my mother sat me down and told me two things before my first day of school in Prattville at the school for sixth and seventh graders. “Don’t talk to the black kids,” she said, “And don’t drink any coke from a bottle you haven’t opened yourself.³”
    The first piece of advice was explained within the first ten minutes of my arrival at school when a race fight broke out between two boys getting off the school busses. They didn’t get past the sidewalk just off the bus stop before they were trading blows. It turned out to be something on the order of a weekly event. I was horrified and shocked then; later I was horrified and ashamed by the fact that all the white kids who were military brats went along with the racism, ostracizing the couple of black kids in otherwise all white classes. Of course, during the transition into adolescence and the general freaking out over hair growing in new places, bulging bits that had been flat and this whole bleeding every month thing, it might be a bit much to expect a bunch of us to see the bigger social issue in front of us.
    The part I omit from that story is my personal experience of ostracization. Coming to Prattville, I was a precocious twit and an only child with no close relatives near my age, a combination I tend to blame for my complete inability to comprehend my peers until I was much older.
    My few close friends had always been boys, but there was a tacit agreement that those relationships did not exist on school grounds. As far as girls went, I was always the third girl tolerated (at best) by a pair of best friends. My belief is that since my father treated me and my ideas with respect, and my mother was unpredictably volatile, I felt a little safer with the boys (at least until they turned into adolescents, at which point things could get more complicated).
    So I was delighted to actually click with another girl. I had a best friend. We were pretty much inseparable for the first couple of months of school. But sometime before or after Halloween, things changed drastically.
    In social studies class, one of the boys asked me, accusingly, if I were a lesbian. I gawped for a bit, trying to process the question itself and where it had come from. During my brain freeze, he went on to tell me he’d heard it from someone else. Luckily the teacher was observant and saw that I was about to burst into tears. He took me into the hall before the tears hit. I cannot remember whether I told the teacher the exact content or if I’d made a general statement that the boy had said something mean. I rather believe the latter. He gave me a pass to go to the bathroom until I got myself under control.
    My best friend apparently experienced something similar. We never discussed it, but we avoided each other from then until the end of the year, when my family was moving anyway. We were in a place where punches were not pulled, and no one would have scrupled at the word “dyke,”⁴ as the treatment of black students demonstrated very clearly. Hate was in the air. I felt the whispers and stares for a few days and spent more lunches than I care to recall eating by myself for the remainder of the school year.
    That was tough for me; I cannot imagine what a similar situation would have been like for someone who knew her sexual orientation was toward her own sex. For me, it created doubts in my mind that took a later encounter to resolve. Was I a lesbian? How would I know? I knew that I often dreamed of being a guy heroically rescuing the damsel in distress. Was that about power and a lack of female role models, or an indication of what my true desires were? I had no answers; I had no one to ask.
    At around this same time, my parents became involved with the Methodist church and increasingly drawn to the more fundamentalist, evangelical forms of Christianity. By eighth grade, I was in a private conservative Christian school. Even so, homosexuality was not really a hot topic those days, probably because it never occurred to the powers that ran my school that a non-heterosexual could walk the halls without bursting into flame. Or they thought homosexuals came in only drag queen or ultra-butch⁵ models.
    They were far more interested in pounding three other rules into our heads: 1) Do not rebel; thou shalt obey your parents (until you’re married, if you’re a girl) and their appointed agents without hesitation or question; 2) No PDA,⁶ as that would lead to the abyss of fornication, in which case you were permanently tied to that sexual partner regardless of outcome; and 3) No “missionary dating”—thou shalt not date anyone whose theology does not match ours point by point.
    Despite other philosophical differences I’ve experienced with my mother, she’s always been very liberal about gays. The first person I knew to be a lesbian was an Air Force nurse. My mother passed the information along to me with the same sort of gossipy interest she passed along the other “secret” she knew about the woman: she had lupus. I’d been a bit afraid of the woman, but she was no more scary than my straight aunt who was a nurse. I thought it was a nurse thing, not a lesbian thing.
    Several years later, between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I was in a summer production of “Guys and Dolls,” cast as Adelaide. My director wanted me to make six different costume changes. When I was taken to the wardrobe closet by the costume design/director, he pulled out several period pieces for me to try. It was pretty crowded in what was essentially an attic space with a few clothes racks in it, and I was doing my best to modestly change clothes. Noticing this, he remarked, “Oh, honey. Don’t worry; I’m one of the girls.” I relaxed and started trying things on with a little more speed.
    Because of all the costume changes I was given a dresser, Miri. The trickiest change was from when I had the last line in one scene and made a clothing change before re-entering with the first line in the next scene. As a result, I was pretty much pulling my clothes off over my head the second I got behind the flat and stripping everything but my panties while Miri was pulling the next costume over my head. We became good friends during the rehearsals and the run of the show. But the show ended, and I left town to return to my university.
    In the following production, Miri had the lead. I came back for the final show and went out with a bunch of the cast and crew. Miri and another gay friend kept giggling and whispering, and it became apparent that he was giving her a hard time, and it somehow involved me. By the end of the evening I asked Miri what was going on. She asked if we could speak privately, so we went and sat in my car.
    Miri confessed to me that she had a crush on me. My gaydar is only good for the male persuasion⁷; it’s completely useless on women. I was taken aback because I’d had no idea (I’d have characterized her as a tomboy, but not gay). However, I was flattered, and I told her so. I learned that night that I was almost definitely heterosexual and that turning down a lesbian was far easier than dealing with a guy who you aren’t interested in. There’s nothing personal about it when she knows I’m straight; there’s no way to make it not personal with a guy.
    We talked for a while about Miri’s⁸ sexual orientation. I don’t think she’d had many opportunities to talk about it with someone who didn’t freak out over it. It was a story that I’d learn was sadly too common: her admission of being a lesbian met with rejection and denial. We continued to be friends for a while after that; she joined the Navy (yes, it is the gayest branch of the service, no matter how much they protest) and we lost touch. But it was Miri that helped me recover from the trauma I’d experienced in Prattville. I wasn’t a lesbian, and even if I had been, it really wasn’t a big deal.⁹
    I found it interesting that one of my few female friends turned out to be a lesbian. It has happened a few times since. I think that for me, as a straight woman who has difficulties trusting other women, a lesbian woman is less of a risk. It takes out all the underlying competitive crap I was raised with: how to catch a man. I’m competitive in some ways (particularly if I think someone is trying to patronize me as part of their competitive strategy), but I always thought gamesmanship in relationships was stupid. No matter how many times I was counseled by my mother and grandmother to let the boys win or to play hard to get, I just was myself. If I could beat them at a game, I did. If I liked them, I didn’t pretend I didn’t.
    So when one of my daughter’s teachers was outted by another teacher, a gay man.¹⁰ I was shocked by some of the attitudes her classmates expressed. Some of the girls were concerned the teacher would hit on them. My immediate response was “I’d be more concerned about the male teachers. What the hell is wrong with them?” I took it upon myself to let the teacher know that she’d been outted so that she could be prepared.¹¹ One of my daughter’s friends who came out was bombarded by hate calls; I couldn’t see how they could be threatened by a lesbian girl.
    “Ignorance,” says my husband. I don’t see it. I understand why men get wigged out by gay men; they don’t grow up with sexual predators as an accepted fact of life, and the idea that it could happen to them is disconcerting. But women, regardless of orientation, grow up with some sense of the looming danger, whether it’s in the shadowy form of the Big Bad Wolf or more explicitly discussed. Or, tragically, experienced. The guys need to get over it; I just don’t understand the issue with women. I’ve never met a lesbian who tried to force me into trying it on for size. I dated plenty of guys who had trouble with the word “No,” although I was fortunate enough to have them all back off when they crossed that line and I lost my temper with them.
    Clearly I do not have a representative sample of all lesbians everywhere. There doesn’t seem to be a “friend matching” site like there are “mate finding” sites that claim to use science to find your “perfect match” or to give you a scientifically randomized sample. So my limited experiences with friends who have been close enough or vocal enough to let me know their orientation is just that: limited.
    But I can say that as a heterosexual woman, I value my lesbian friends. They have been safe harbors for me while I try to figure out how to be friends with other straight women. Miri told me I flirt¹² with everybody; I probably flirt more with my gay friends of either gender. We all know the score; it’s all just play and no one is lead on.
    My most recent experience is what lead me to this musing. I met a very distinguished, outdoorsy woman with a gorgeous head of that white hair that people rarely seem to be able to attain. She was a member of a training group I was in, and before the session was over, I’d thought to myself, “I want to be like her.” Not just the gray hair, although I’d be glad to have a transplant to take the place of my dirty gray and brown natural color. No, there was something in her presence that I wanted to emulate.
    I had no idea at that time what her orientation was. Like I said, my gaydar only works on guys. When it comes to women, mine is akin to the description another friend gives of his: “It was manufactured in the USSR during the Cold War with spare parts by a trainee.” She later made a couple of mentions of her partner, and, although I didn’t get a specific clarification, I am fairly sure I read the code correctly.
    And by the end of the training, I knew why I wanted to be like her. She’d figured out who she was, was strong enough to stand up for it and caring enough to be able to cry when the occasion called for it. She was whole, all on her own. And she assured me I’d get there, too.
    The Isle of Lesbos for me is a safe and welcoming harbor. I hope someday everyone will see it as I do.

 

 

    ¹ The Isle of Lesbos was the home of Sappho, one of the earliest known female poets, who wrote about her love for other women circa 630 BCE. Her home is where the word “lesbian” comes from. See http://www.sappho.com/poetry/sappho.html for more information. Thanks to Elyce and Gary for pointing out to me that in common usage these days, “lesbo” is a slur.

    ² I always pause before using the term, even in quotes. I’m a white, heterosexual female, so it’s not my term to appropriate, but there is some merit to the argument that never saying it gives it more, rather than less, power. Just because I know it doesn’t mean I use it; just because I don’t use it doesn’t mean it’s not out there.

    ³ It was far later that I figured out the coke warning; she was afraid someone would put LSD in my drink. Why she didn’t just tell me that is a mystery; I’d been through more drug awareness programs in the previous three years than I had on sex education. The military was big on bringing samples in a glass case and burning what was purported to be something that smelled like pot. I’m a bit skeptical now that it was anything other than the “MaryJane” we were told to avoid. I actually did, and am one of the few people I know that’s never tried it.

    ⁴ The most offensive term I knew of at the time; maybe others had a wider vocabulary of hate.

    ⁵ To be fair, I didn’t learn the term “lipstick lesbians” until I was in my forties. I was aware, though, that there was more to the lesbian population than the stereotypes.

    ⁶ Public displays of affection, which included the simple act of holding hands.

    ⁷ My theory is that when you meet a straight guy, there’s some split-second spark of recognition in the man that goes something like “I man. You woman. We could have sex.” It happens regardless of the amount of interest the guy may actually have in sleeping with you, although I have noticed it doesn’t seem to happen with much younger men now that my son is in his late twenties, which is a relief. I think that’d just be creepy. It never happens with gay men. I register nothing off when I meet gay women.

    ⁸ Not her real name. I don’t have any way to contact her now, and I don’t believe in outing people.

    ⁹ Although I have wondered from time to time if flashing her three performances a week for six weeks had any relevance.

    ¹⁰ The bitch.

    ¹¹ She later told me that there was a period when she dreaded talking to me because it seemed like I was always the bearer of bad news.

    ¹² My husband and I found early in our marriage that we have completely different connotations for “flirting.” For him, there is no possibility of “harmless flirting”; by definition, flirting is with intent to seduce under false pretense. For me, it’s just playing around. We finally agreed on “kibitzing” as an acceptable alternative to convey what I mean when I say flirting.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...