Dear John, I Love Jane

by Candace Walsh;Laura Andre

  There was a great deal of preaching and teaching about remaining sexually pure until marriage. Sex was connected to love, joy, marriage, and righteousness, but also to misery, sin, loneliness, and uncleanliness. We heard sad stories about young women and men who had defiled their bodies—which we were to think of as temples that housed our spirits—by having premarital sex. These stories were always filled with shame and remorse, creating a disturbing mix of titillation and disgust that washed over the whole idea of sex for me. As a young teenager, I was in the habit of reading whatever was in my parents’ bookcase, and I found Marjorie Morningstar in their collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. I carried it to school with me, and as I was reading in class one day, I stopped and closed the book. I had come to the part of the story in which Marjorie has sex for the first time, and the description includes the words “horrible uncoverings . . . and then it was over.” As I read those words, I experienced physical sensations I had never felt before—sensations involving pleasure and revulsion. That I still remember the exact words of the passage forty-six years later attests to their power for me. In the following years, I tried to understand why sex would be bad the day before you got married and wonderful the day after. But I was sure it would be true.

  So, we Mormon youths thought about sex all the time and felt guilty about our thoughts all the time. In an attempt to protect us from ourselves, church guidelines state that we are not to date until we are sixteen, and necking and petting are taboo. Like most people, young Mormons are not able to adhere to such guidelines, so they are tortured with guilt about their weakness. I was no exception. I dated a few boys steadily, and I liked to make out with them, but I came home from my dates feeling sinful and wretched, full of promises to Heavenly Father and myself that I would not give in to temptation again. Of course, I did. However, I did not have much trouble saying no to actual intercourse and remained a virgin until my wedding night on September 24, 1970, one month after my twentieth birthday.

  In spite of all that talk about sex, though, I don’t remember anyone at church ever mentioning homosexuality. No invitations were issued to us young people to explore our sexuality. No consideration seemed to be given to the possibility that there might be gays and lesbians among us. The first time I heard the word “homosexual” out loud was from the lips of my mother when I was about fifteen. I danced in a ballet company, and one of our principal dancers was Henry; somehow (the story is hazy), Henry got into trouble with one of his male art students. My mother explained to me that Henry was gay—homosexual. Her explanation was direct and unencumbered, as I recall, by judgment or moralizing. She said some men loved other men and Henry was one of those men. She did not say anything about women, and I would be several years older before I realized women could be gay too. I did not even make the connection between Henry’s story and the relationship I had with my friend Sharon when I was thirteen.

  For about six months during my eighth-grade year, Sharon and I got together every Friday night. As time went on, we began to pretend we were on a date. One of us would be the boy and one would be the girl. At first one of us would put an arm around the other one, or we held hands, but soon we escalated to making out. Truthfully, Friday nights could not come soon enough for me; if we spent the night together, we slept in the same bed and eventually had all our clothes off. We pretended to have sex, still thinking of one of us as the boy and one of us as the girl. We couldn’t really have straight sex of course, and we didn’t know girls could have sex. In our minds, we were practicing making out for when we had boyfriends and for when we had sex with our husbands. And we were sure we would have the same feelings when we were married to the men of our dreams. We carried on this junior high friendship, punctuated by hot and heavy make-out sessions, but we did not talk about our relationship. And somehow we sensed it was important that no one knew what we were doing. We didn’t know about lesbians, but we knew we would be in trouble if anyone caught us. I had some inkling then that I was different, but I could not articulate why I did not fit in, and I certainly did not attribute my difference to my sexual orientation. Years later, after I came out to my parents, my mother admitted that she had never known what to do with me.

  In the fall of 1969, when I was a sophomore at the University of Utah, I began dating the man who would be my husband for twenty-three years. Up until he asked me out, he had only dated cheerleaders and sorority girls, so my long blond hair and dancer’s body made me exotic; and I think he was as fascinated by my serious, non-bubbly personality as I was by his happy-go-lucky Mormon one. He was the kind of man every Mormon girl wants to marry: former missionary, clean cut, funny, athletic, attentive, cute. He wanted lots of children and he planned to become a dentist so he could support them. He declared his love for me. How could I not marry him? I was almost twenty, the time had come for me to take on the role I had been taught was my destiny, and here was John to marry me. He was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, so we got “pinned” in November, became engaged in February of 1970, and married later that year. The path of our relationship did not deviate from the one expected in the Mormon culture, and to any observer, we were the right fit for each other—the perfect couple.

  But our dating, and the months leading up to our wedding, were fraught with contention that was soon to be sharpened by the pain of rejection and guilt. After all the positive attention we got on the day of our marriage, I had to get in the car and drive away with my new husband for our honeymoon. Years later, my mother told me she had seen me through the car window, sitting very still, staring straight ahead. I looked trapped. But I don’t think she was surprised by that. A few weeks earlier, I had gone to her room, sat on her bed, and told her I wasn’t sure I wanted to get married. Her words to me were, “The invitations are out.” She believed I was just nervous about the big step I was taking, that I would be fine once the wedding was over. And I wanted desperately to believe that too. I clearly had my doubts or I would not have expressed them to my mother, but I clung to the belief that having sex with my husband once we were married would make me fall in love with him. I wanted to be in love with him—someone who loved me, loved children, lived a faithful Mormon life. Love, marriage, sex—I had been taught these things went together. I had not really experienced a longing for sexual intercourse, but I believed that as soon as I had sex, I would like it and I would be an enthusiastic partner.

  After our reception, my new husband and I drove to Park City, Utah, for our first night as husband and wife. My mother had bought me a light-blue negligée, and John and I were both excited to finally experience the big event we had been saving ourselves for. I know it sounds incongruous to say I felt trapped and yet looked forward to having sex, but I was sure I would love sex and therefore all my misgivings about getting married would magically disappear. But we were woefully unprepared. John had not known how babies were made until he was a senior in high school, and the only advice he got about lovemaking was from his older sister: “Take your time.” I knew the mechanics of what was going to happen, but nothing about the fine points of pleasure. So, neither of us had any experience—we thought it would just come to us naturally.

  What I remember about that night was the darkly paneled, unfamiliar, downstairs room that reminded me of a cheap motel. I remember the physical discomfort, the stickiness and stiffness, the too-bright bathroom light. I was shocked to discover that intercourse hurt, but worse, that it was messy. I lay awake that night as John slept, thinking about the movies I’d seen in which people had sex. In Butterfield 8, Elizabeth Taylor just gets up and gets dressed—I didn’t see her wipe herself off—and no one had told me I’d have to sleep on the wet side of the bed. No one had told me about the feeling of violation, either. Or the sense of suffocation. Or the stark loneliness of lying under someone while he labors to an ecstatic conclusion in which you have no part except to be the receptacle. We both had all the right parts anatomically, but we did not fit together. There was little sense of
“give,” of comfort, of rightness. John woke me for sex three more times that night, and I kept thinking of bumper cars. I finally got up, filled the tub with water, and tried to figure out how to hold the douche bag (a gift from my mother) aloft so the Massengill would flow down the tube into my vagina, thus flushing me out. I imagined a lifetime of this distasteful operation. When I was squeaky clean, I dried off and got back into bed. I lay there in the dark, thinking about the life I had made for myself.

  Morning finally came and we headed to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I had convinced myself that after the first experience with sex it would get better, and I was actually looking forward to trying again. The sex didn’t get better, though, and the car trip back to Salt Lake City a few days later was long and quiet. We had decided to live in John’s parents’ house while they were out of the country, so it was there, about a week later, that we had our first conversation about divorce. We stood in his parents’ bedroom, their bed between us. I don’t remember who brought up the possibility of ending our marriage—I suspect John did in hopes that I would ridicule such a suggestion. When I didn’t—I do faintly remember feeling a glimmer of hope—he insisted that we would not break his mother’s heart by divorcing, that we had been married in the temple for time and all eternity so divorce was not an option. He pointed out how young we were—he was twenty-two, I was twenty—we were inexperienced newlyweds, but we had a lifetime to learn to make each other happy. Heavenly Father would help us if we honored our temple vows and kept the commandments. I was humbled. I just needed to have more faith, so I resolved to try harder. And every day from then on, I awoke with that resolution.

  Six years later, John and I were living in Texas, where he was stationed with the Navy. By then, we had three children, and on the surface, we were a happy little Mormon family. On the outside, I was an exemplary Mormon housewife and homemaker; but deep down, I knew I was trying to compensate for my inadequacies as a mother, and that I was not cut out to be a wife either. John and I had sex about once every three weeks, and I had never had an orgasm except for the occasional one that woke me up from a deep sleep. Understandably, John resented the time and energy I put into cooking, canning, sewing, taking care of the boys, and my church jobs because there was very little left over for him. We were both sure I was frigid, so we decided to do something about my problem. He learned of a Navy psychiatrist who specialized in working with sexually dysfunctional couples, and we began seeing him once a week. During the first session, I learned that many women do not have orgasms with intercourse, and I also learned that I needed to be responsible for my own orgasm. Of course, I did not have a clue about how to take on that responsibility, so to help me, the doctor showed John and me a video of a woman masturbating. I watched in amazement—I had not known women could masturbate, and watching that video was one of the most sexually stimulating experiences I’d had in years.

  About a week later, using my memories of the video as a guide, I had sex with myself for the first time and discovered my dormant libido. My body did work! I had believed I was doomed to live my life without ever experiencing the pleasure I was sure everyone else in the world enjoyed. My husband had been away, so I greeted him at the door with the good news, and in the following weeks, I taught him how to help me have an orgasm. We believed we had found the solution to the one obstacle to our married bliss, and we were so confident we decided to have another baby.

  We continued to visit the psychiatrist for several months, and in the course of our therapy, the doctor also showed us videos of straight couples making love. I found these less enjoyable and not as sexually stimulating as the video of the woman masturbating, and my husband found them embarrassing, so we discontinued our therapy. Shortly after that, I realized I enjoyed having sex with myself more than I enjoyed having it with my husband. Then I found myself imagining making love with a woman, even though I had never even seen a movie in which two women had sex. For some reason, I remember one day in particular: I was dressed in a denim maternity jumper and red knee socks, standing in the middle of the living room, contemplating driving to Corpus Christi to find a female prostitute. Learning how to have an orgasm had made me begin to think of what turned me on the most, and evidently that was women’s bodies. So, the frequency of John’s and my lovemaking tapered off, and bedtime once again became fraught with tension, guilt, and, sometimes, anger and recrimination. I consented to sex every few weeks out of guilt and obligation, and I lay there hoping it would be over soon. When we did have sex, I envisioned the woman in the video. I did not share these fantasies with anyone, but for the rest of my marriage, which was about fifteen more years, I fantasized about women when I was fantasizing at all.

  By June of 1994, those fifteen years had come and gone, and I began a doctoral program. I was forty-four years old. My husband and I had divorced the previous year, and I felt stronger, smarter, and more beautiful than I had ever felt in my life. I no longer woke up every morning with the loop playing over and over in my head that said, “I’ll do better today.” On the first day of classes, I walked up the hill to campus feeling powerful. That morning, our linguistics class met for the first time, and I have a clear memory of one member of our cohort, Michele, sitting at a desk after class as the rest of us stood around her talking about our reading list. I also have a clear memory of her looking up at me. She held my gaze for just a second or two. Her eyes were green, and I thought, “I’d like to know this person.” Lightning did not strike. The earth did not move. It should have, though. In that instant, my life was changed profoundly and irrevocably.

  I was fascinated by Michele—I had never known anyone like her. She swore, smoked Camels, drank bourbon, and told dirty jokes. At one point during that first week, I mentioned I was not getting enough hot water to finish my shower in the morning. Michele offered to check out my water heater—it seems she had been a plumber in another life. Knowing that bit of information was strangely exciting to me, and watching her work on my water heater made me feel something I could not define.

  A few nights later, Michele and I met in a fellow student’s apartment so the three of us could study. When we finished, Michele and I walked to my apartment (we had decided to share a few textbooks to save money, and she needed one to prepare for class the next day). On the way over, she complained of a backache, so I offered to give her a backrub. We were hitting every cliché in the book, but it all felt fresh and dangerous and exciting to me. She lay on the floor of my apartment, and I sat astride her back, making the massage last as long as I could. It began to rain, then pour, so I suggested she hang around—we could do some work until the weather cleared up. She sat at my desk, ostensibly reading a text about research methods, and I sat on the couch, pretending to read about linguistics. When we heard the rain stop, Michele said she’d better go, and she left. I sat on my bed wondering how I was ever going to get any work done that night. I thought I had seen her writing something in the book she was reading, so I leafed through it hoping to find her handwriting. What I found was a yellow sticky note that read “Hey.” I turned pages in a frenzy and found nine more notes. The second said “Kami,” and the third read “would.” The remaining seven read, one word at a time, “it be intimidating to you if I.” I was frantic. “Would it be intimidating to you if I what?” Michele had given me her phone number, so I punched it in and she answered immediately. “I need to talk to you,” I said with no preliminaries. As soon as I heard “Okay, meet me in the oak grove,” I was out the door.

  The most famous landmark on the campus is the oak grove, a quad surrounded on three sides by old university buildings, criss-crossed by paths, and populated with huge, old oak trees. I ran most of the way to the grove, and when I got there, I saw Michele entering it from the opposite side. We came together like lovers do in those cheesy movie scenes—the only thing missing was the swelling musical soundtrack. Not one to waste time on small talk, I blurted, “I’m in love with you.” She walked me back to my apartment and asked if
she could kiss me. I was terrified, but I submitted to a small kiss and then backed away. “That’s enough,” I said. “I have to think about it.” She just gave me a look that implied she knew something I didn’t know yet and said, “Okay. We’ll see.”

  The next evening I tried to study before Michele arrived, but it was hopeless, and she and I had no illusions about studying together. She kissed me. I liked it. And then we went to bed. We left the lamp on so we could see each other in its warm light, and as we lay on my favorite patchwork quilt, Michele filled my vision and I thought about nothing else. I admit, though, that the details are not clear—I feel more than I remember. Fear, desire, excitement, wonder. Amazement at how our bodies worked together. Delight in Michele’s body, so different from my own. Fascination with the matter-of-factness of her desire, her acceptance of her own body and what she wanted and enjoyed, her lack of shame. Relief that I could enjoy sex with another human being so much. My strongest memory of that night is being held very tightly, and even fifteen years later, being held is still one of the things I love in our physical relationship. Her roundness fit my hollows, her parts matched mine. We didn’t spend the night together that night, but inside of a week, we were sleeping together every night, spooned in a single bed.

  After Michele left, I forced myself to perform the ordinary ablutions of brushing my teeth and washing my face, even though I was feeling so extraordinary. I tried to sleep, but it was a long night. I didn’t think about what would happen the rest of the summer, or, indeed, anytime in the future. I didn’t think about whether I was a lesbian. I didn’t think about what my family would say if they knew I had had sex with a woman. I didn’t think about anything but what making love with Michele felt like and how much I wanted to do it again. I finally slept, but I awoke the same way I awoke every morning for the rest of the summer: after a few seconds of blankness, I remembered Michele and I began to feel as if my body was literally buzzing. I was besotted and I was horny, but I was sure there was something more. I knew it might be best if we thought of our relationship as a summer fling, but I didn’t believe that was going to be possible.