“Of course,” I replied to the English Department chair.
Trish and I overlapped in the faculty lounge on Tuesdays and Thursdays, twenty minutes between the end of my class and the beginning of hers. It was a natural time to check in, see how things were going, make easy conversation. She was reserved, in the way people are who take care to be polite. She was also kind, smart, funny, and I wanted to know more of her.
I still remember the day I admitted to myself how attracted I felt to her. She stood near the copy machine, I on the other side of the conference table across from her. Our eyes met across the table, hers gray-green, clear and shining with a light that seemed to pierce me deep in my gut, and it was as if she could see what was hidden there—or maybe it was I who could see it and know it for what it was. Something in my chest caught, like the creak of a door hinge the moment before it opens.
That fall, I had been married seventeen years to my second husband. The marriage wasn’t going well—had not gone well for most of its duration—but I’d stayed for the usual reasons women stay: the illusion of security, the status and privilege marriage conveys, a comfortable lifestyle, a reluctance to admit failure, the dread of upheaval and going it alone, the thinking that things will magically get better if only I persevere, the voice that rationalized, it’s not that bad, it could be so much worse.
When we got together, my two children were small, and I believed that by marrying again I could knit my little family back together. More than anything, I wanted to be a good mother, to create a nurturing, harmonious home for my children. But there were problems: step-parent problems, relationship problems, financial problems. Seven years in, I had almost left, and from that point on the marriage had felt like an endurance test. I have got to get out of this marriage, I would tell myself, when the kids are older, when I earn more money, when I feel stronger.
We lived in a two-story brick colonial on a winding lane, a small neighborhood of gently rolling lots and open spaces. I loved my house, its sunny kitchen, the way the rooms flowed one to the next, the perennial beds and herb garden I had cultivated outside. Over the years, I had poured myself into making the house a home—paint, wallpaper, window treatments, furniture—bit by bit, piece by piece, the selection of each detail slow and painstaking, as if something huge hung in the balance of each decision, as if the composition of tastefully appointed rooms could hold the marriage together.
At one point, we remodeled the master bathroom, enlarging the space to include a separate vanity for me, whirlpool tub, multi-sprayer shower, and private toilet stall. The room felt airy, serene, indulgent. Sometimes in the middle of the night when I’d get up to use the bathroom, I’d sit there in the dark and think, How can I give up this bathroom that makes me so happy?
Though it had not been a conscious intention, pursuing a master’s degree proved a step away from the marriage, taking me far from home twice a year for on-site residencies, directing my energy and focus into a whole new world that was mine alone, allowing me a kind of separateness I hadn’t known in a very long time. The distance, both physical and psychological, gave me the clarity to see how miserable I was in the marriage, how much it damaged my spirit to stay, how I was compromising myself, tolerating conditions that should have been unacceptable. With each completed semester, I could feel the strength in me churning, mounting, and I began to picture a different kind of life for myself.
I fantasized about finding a cottage on the river or in the woods and fixing it up to suit me, painting all the walls pink if I wanted to. I didn’t care if it was small or run-down. I could feel the relief of living alone, the space all mine, female, peaceful and serene. I couldn’t imagine wanting to be with another man for a long time, if ever. Yet I wanted to believe that somewhere out there was the kind of love I’d always longed for, a deep connection that was passionate, profound, soul-stirring.
At times during the marriage, I had told my husband outright that if things didn’t improve, I would leave him one day. Now, as I began to envision my escape, I kept quiet. I feared his anger, the verbal and emotional abuse that would rain down on me once he learned I was leaving for sure. If I didn’t maintain the status quo, I risked losing control of the process that would see me through the successful completion of graduate school before the chaos of splitting up began. I was not going to let this man ruin the best thing I had done for myself in years.
That fall, I was reading Carolyn Heilbrun. Her 1988 book, Writing a Woman’s Life, resonated so deeply it had become the backbone of my third-semester critical thesis. She talked of patriarchy, its continued hold on women’s lives despite two decades of radical feminism, the subtle ways it still silenced us, forbade our most authentic emotions, isolated us from one another. She talked of the bonds between women, our ability to give each other something men could not. She talked of the power of autobiographical writing to transform women’s lives, to free us from “the stories and houses of men.”
Born and raised Southern, I knew about patriarchy, knew first-hand the power of male privilege. I called myself a feminist. Yet my upbringing had been one of such privilege, such seductive beauty and grace, that I still lingered under its influence, still acquiesced to its unwritten codes, so deeply internalized I wasn’t even aware of them. In response to an essay I’d written the previous winter about my father buying me, at age fifty, a Lexus, my very liberal male professor had exclaimed in disgust, “Where is the rage?” and I hadn’t understood. Reading Heilbrun’s book, I finally felt in my emotional gut the depth and breadth of what patriarchy had stolen from me. It was a loss of self, my female spirit denied the opportunity to explore its own bounds, flex its own muscles, discover its own voice. Instead, I had been groomed to dress, speak, and behave in ways that would win the approval of men in exchange for the promise of protection, security, status—even a luxury car.
“Women come to writing simultaneously with self-creation,” was one of Heilbrun’s lines I kept returning to, ignited by the thought of my work, my writing, leading me further into the undiscovered self I could sense there, ready to emerge. My critical thesis may have focused on other women’s lives and works, but the inquiry was ultimately about me, about breaking free from a way of being that had held me prisoner from the moment I was born.
That fall, I decided to ditch one of the two medications I took for depression. My doctor had added Lexapro for anxiety several years before, after my older son left for college and the younger one totaled my car. I had been fragile and shaky then, had lost too much weight. But now I felt strong, on top of things—teaching three composition classes, taking yoga twice a week, stimulated by the work of my critical thesis.
I wanted a different relationship with my body: more accepting of its limitations and weaknesses, more compassionate and respectful. Surely there were other ways to achieve at least some of what antidepressants did for me—more yoga, meditation, time outdoors, exercise. Maybe I needed one antidepressant, but did I really need two? Was the relief they provided even as good and necessary as I had believed?
Without them, my life had sometimes seemed jagged and raw, a precarious, high-strung balance on a thin, shaky wire. But maybe there was good reason for the depression I experienced. Maybe it came from something real and painful I needed to look at. Maybe, instead of smoothing out the rough edges with medication, I needed to feel them, let them cut into me, allow myself to bleed for a change. Without consulting my doctor or telling my husband, I tapered off Lexapro, just to see what would happen.
What happened was that I became unleashed. Within days, it became clear that my twin doses of antidepressants had been keeping my marriage intact. I had managed to tolerate my husband only by taking drugs. Now, everything he did irritated me, even the way he breathed. Perhaps it was mutual. Tensions between us mounted to new highs, exacerbated by the presence of my older son—the one he’d never gotten along with—who had moved home for a few months to save money. Watching the churlish way he interacted with my son
brought into sharp focus the blunt truth that I needed to free myself from this man, sooner rather than later. In the bathroom at night, I sat in the quiet of my little stall and sighed, Even if I have to live in a trailer, it will be better than this.
Then, something else shook loose, released from its medicated numbness. I knew Lexapro had dulled my libido. But this was a surprise, an aching desire from a place deep within, a place that had nothing to do with my husband.
One Friday, alone in the house after a morning yoga class, I took a bath, telling myself a long, hot soak would help me settle down to write afterward. I lay back, letting the water soothe sore muscles, relinquishing myself to its warm embrace, and the hand sprayer became my new lover, a gentle lover who knew what I wanted, how to touch me, when and where.
The bath became a Friday morning ritual, me and the hand sprayer, the warm force of it kneading and plying me to exquisite tension, shattering, and release. It was delicious and satisfying that I could do this myself, my own way, in my own time, and then soak in the pleasure of my body. It was not that I’d never done this before, but it was different in the way I regarded my body—not as an instrument of sexual release, but as companion and friend.
And different because one day, I imagined a touch that was not my own but that of another woman, the one I couldn’t stop thinking about. I imagined unbuttoning my blouse to her, closing my eyes as her fingers reached in to lightly brush my left nipple—the sensitive one—just a whisper of touch. I touched myself there, need and want spiraling through me, down into the deepest part of me. I imagined her hands moving over me as I reached for her, drunk with desire, saying yes, go ahead, I am yours. I had never imagined kissing another woman, but now I did, wanting to know the gentleness of soft skin, the taste of female, this female.
This is crazy, I told myself. A diversion. A backlash against my husband. A secret, wicked little fantasy that will pass. What are you doing? Carolyn Heilbrun has titillated you with her talk of female friendships and women loving each other. I might have been offended by these ideas two years before, six months before, maybe last month. But now they seemed wondrous, at least with Trish, and I felt myself wanting to go there, to experience it for real.
That fall, for a road trip to visit my parents in North Carolina, I checked out a book on CD from the library. The title was She Is Me by Cathleen Schine, and I knew nothing about it except what the turquoise cover revealed: three women, a mother, daughter, and grandmother, and a line about the unexpected twists and turns of their lives. What unfolded as I made my way through Virginia and across my home state proved so uncanny, I longed to bypass my exit and drive to the end of the story.
I was spellbound as the story unfolded: Greta, age fifty-three, married, unexpectedly falls for another woman. It was as if a benevolent voice was speaking to me through the story, offering reassurance that my new feelings were okay, normal even. Greta spoke my own fears: What is happening to me? I’m not a lesbian—am I? How can this be? What would my family say if they knew?
Back at home, tensions were so high “divorce” might as well have been scrawled all over the walls. Separately and without discussion, we each took off our wedding rings. I hoped Trish would notice, see me as available. I wanted her to know I was interested, but I had no idea how to do that. How do women flirt with one another? I wondered. I was so afraid of making a fool of myself, I went the opposite extreme, friendly but professional, keeping the focus on teaching matters rather than anything personal. But I longed to know the details of her life. How does she spend her nights? What does she eat? Where does she live? What does she do on weekends?
She had no idea how I pined for her, how thoughts of her consumed me. When my noon class ended, I’d stop by the restroom to check my appearance, then dash up the stairs tingling with excitement, pausing outside the faculty lounge to collect myself. She always sat in the same place, opposite the door on the other side of the conference table, the place where my eyes went first. I felt like a giddy teen surging with newfound lust and extreme emotions. Later, I learned that a second adolescence is often brought on by the self-discovery of coming out to oneself.
Little by little, Trish opened up. She had recently split with her partner of nine years, confirming that she was both lesbian and unattached. She, too, was a writer—a poet and playwright. She knew more about teaching than I did. She worked in her family’s business and devoted her free time to rescuing animals; she even traveled to Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina to help care for homeless cats and dogs. She was eleven years younger than I. She had always wanted children but it hadn’t worked out. With every new detail, I adored her more.
All the while, I watched myself with detached fascination, safe in the secret of my longing. Was I crazy to think that anything could ever happen between us? I had no idea, but I wanted to find out, letting this newfound desire take me where it would.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, our conversation lagged, offering me little to hold on to during the week that would pass until I saw her again. After she left for class, I slumped in my chair, bereft. I fiddled at the computer, checked my email, then succumbed to the horoscope link on my home page, as if in search of answers.
You thought the two of you were just friends, and you’ve been conducting yourself accordingly. While you’ve been worried about discretion, caution and not jumping the gun, they’ve been thinking about how to lure you closer. If either of you happens to be unavailable at the moment, however, be very, very careful, even if you’re sure you’re just flirting. You know how quickly an attraction can take off.
I wasn’t one to take horoscopes seriously or even read them on a regular basis. But this one spoke directly to me, lifting my sagging spirits. I stared at it, taking it in, and then suddenly, Trish reappeared.
“You’re back!” I blurted out. She sat, explaining she’d left her students to complete their class evaluations in privacy. We talked, more animatedly this time, trading stories about how we’d spend Thanksgiving. I listened, unable to take my eyes off her face, my own cheeks warm and prickly with the excitement of her. I wondered if I was blushing, if she could sense the elation that flooded every part of me. I knew she felt it, too. She had to. How could she not? It swelled in the air, flying about, palpable, almost visible. We spoke quietly, yet I was certain everyone in the room knew I was swooning, madly in love. I didn’t care.
She rose to leave, and my eyes followed her as she disappeared beyond the open door, something inside me stretching and pulling.
The night before Thanksgiving, my husband and I had the worst fight of our marriage. He was subdued and repentant for our Thanksgiving meal, but the next morning, he faced me in the kitchen and asked, “What do you want to do?”
It was his usual tactic for handling difficult topics. He put the question to me rather than stating his own position, a strategy that absolved him of any responsibility for the outcome. Nevertheless, I seized the moment.
“I want to get the house ready to sell, put it on the market, and split up.”
By that afternoon, I’d typed up a list of all the work that needed to be done on the house and posted it on the refrigerator. I wanted to be ready.
As the term moved into its last weeks, Trish told me she didn’t plan to teach the next semester. The days ticked away like a death march. I couldn’t let her just walk out of my life forever. Then, a plan. We’d never had a real opportunity to talk about our writing, though once or twice one of us had commented that we should. On the last day of school, I would suggest we meet for lunch after grades were in to talk writing.
I waited anxiously as the last day approached, afraid of bungling this final opportunity to secure a connection with Trish beyond work, afraid I would sound foolish, afraid of rejection. But I awoke that last morning to an unexplainable sense of peace and calm, a feeling of certainty that the day’s outcome was out my hands. It was as if a voice were assuring me that all would be well, that all I needed to do was relax an
d let the day unfold.
When Trish left the faculty room for her last class that afternoon, I didn’t say goodbye or suggest that we get together later. I knew she would come back after the class was over. She did. We talked for a while, end of semester chat. Then she got up to leave.
“Thank you for being my mentor,” she said, walking toward the door.
“I’ll miss you next semester. You’ve been my favorite mentee of all time.” My words sounded ridiculously corny.
Trish turned. Standing on the threshold of that open doorway, she looked at me and said, “We should get together and talk writing, maybe have lunch?”
Now, four years later, I still think of that fall as magical, miraculous, mystical even. So much happened. Yes, I left my husband for a woman, a woman who has claimed my heart with a love that is passionate, profound, soul-stirring. But the real story is about claiming my own heart. It is about the serendipity of circumstances coming together at precisely the right moment to find me standing before that door opening out to a self that is, at last, strong and safe and free.
We Don’t Do Stereotypes
Sabrina Porterfield
Looking back on my formative years, I keep thinking I will somehow magically find that exact moment when I realized Hey! I like girls!
Dear John, I Love Jane Page 21