Greetings From Janeland

by Candace Walsh

  So, of course, I promptly shoved those feelings way, way down and decided not to address them. Although I was starting to have more-than-friendly feelings toward my friend, which corresponded to the awareness that my partner and I were living more like housemates than soul mates, I wasn’t going to rock the boat.

  I dealt with the anxiety by finding new and better ways to keep myself busy and out of the house. She and I were moving beyond simple, close female friendship and toying with something more, but both of us were in long-term, committed relationships, and we weren’t willing or able to end our relationships with our respective spouses.

  Through it all, we skated. We sweated through grueling practices, pushed ourselves further physically than we’d ever thought we could go, and reveled in the pain, the bruises, the breaks. With this renewed dedication came increased empowerment, camara-derie—and fun. From the very first month of our league’s inception (when at least three people left practice with broken bones), we became adept at having each other’s backs through injuries and other traumas. Our meal trees were incredible. We developed strategies to help each other with childcare, we helped each other move. . . . We knew that we could count on each other both on and off the track.

  It was common for very close friendships to emerge within the league, but eventually, after what felt like years—but was really just a few months—of agony, we had to admit that our efforts to keep our friendship platonic were failing.

  I knew that once I acknowledged my feelings for her, my relationship with my partner was over. Not simply because I anticipated being in a relationship with my friend, but because the introspection made me realize that I’d been slowly disengaging from my partner for a while. The spark just wasn’t there. So I forced myself, finally, to be genuine and firm, and told my partner that I just knew that taking time to “work on things” would be fruitless. It was heartbreaking to admit that there was no hope, but I knew without a doubt that this was true. And so we began the tedious and agonizing process of disentangling our lives while keeping our kids’ lives as stable as possible.

  It didn’t work out that way for her—she stayed in her relationship, and one of the conditions of mending her marriage was that she no longer have me in her life. I tried to put myself in her partner’s shoes, but I was crushed. I both grieved the loss of my fourteen-year relationship that I’d thought would last forever, and mourned the loss of this dear friend, who had pushed me to ask myself so many hard questions that would change my life completely. It felt so unfair to have made this huge jump—based on the emotions, wants, and needs that she and I had talked about for hours and hours—and not to be able to tell her about it.

  And still I skated. She left the league, the sport, the city, and I skated on—longer, harder, pushing myself. I needed this sport and these people more than I ever had before, and they did not let me down. When I had my kids with me (half-time), I kept it together, getting meals on the table and keeping daily routines intact. When I didn’t, these women in my derby community kept me moving forward. They offered couches, food, drinks, coffee, kid care, and hours and hours of talking: dissecting everything that had happened and every possibility for the future. There was always another practice, another game, another meeting, and they made sure I was there: weak and wobbly for a while, and increasingly strong as I settled into my new normal.

  About a year after my separation, I was playing an away game, with my mom and kids in the crowd, when I felt a sharp pain in my ankle. At half-time, I put some ice on it until it was time to hit the track again, and as we were driving home, I asked my mom to stop for some painkillers and more ice. By the time I unlaced my sneakers at home, my ankle was as wide as my calf and deep purple, green, and yellow. Sure it was just a funny twist, I opted not to take my kids to the emergency room with me and waited it out for the rest of the weekend until I dropped them at school Monday morning. Several hours and x-rays later, the slightly surprised doctor told me I had broken my fibula in the first five minutes of the game and would now be looking at life in a cast for six weeks or so. Whatever, I thought, I’m incredibly self-sufficient, and I’m in really good shape—this’ll be no sweat. Besides, I’ve always thought crutches were cool.

  I quickly learned that life with one leg is no small deal and leaned on my teammates once more: they drove me places, walked my kids to and from school, brought us meals, and dragged me along to watch practices to keep me motivated and my head in the game.

  Kristi, a woman I knew peripherally in the league, was one of the first to offer to bring me a meal, and when she came by, I invited her in to join me while I ate. Being stranded at home (and completely alone when the kids were with their dad), I was anxious for company, and it seemed like a good opportunity to get to know her better. She’d always seemed funny, smart, and talented, but we’d never really talked much; our relationship was mostly confined to the derby venue. But that night, we really got to know each other, and after a lot of laughter, we made plans to get together again.

  As time passed, I became comfortable with single parenthood and committed to the life I’d created for myself, postseparation. I loved being able to have my house set up exactly as I wanted it. I found that the time I spent with my kids was more meaningful. And I continued to enjoy hours of derby. Dating didn’t even cross my mind. My heart was still bruised after the year I’d just been through. So, while I was thrilled to have made a new friend, I certainly wasn’t thinking that it would move toward romance. But after a few months of close friendship, carefully getting to know each other, I think we were both starting to feel a bit more sparkly about each other than we’d anticipated.

  When she told me that she planned to go visit family for a couple of weeks, my heart leapt into my throat, feeling sick at the thought of being apart for that long.

  But her time away brought things into focus. Over the course of countless texts and phone calls, she decided to come home a bit early. This would be the beginning of us.

  We were both nervous about what it would be like to cross this line. But when she returned, we raced into each other’s arms—and headed off to practice. Afterward, she came over, and we spent the night together.

  I almost wept.

  I had felt like I could have lived the rest of my life just not that interested in sex. I was sad that it had taken such a dramatic upheaval and such loss to get me to understand that I did, in fact, want and need a sexual relationship—it just needed to be different than the one I’d had. I wished I had been braver. I wished I had understood and had said earlier, “I want more, and it’s not you, but this isn’t right for me.” But it didn’t play out that way. While I was glad that I had gotten to this new place, my heart hurt when I thought of how I’d gotten there.

  But we skated through this, too—through the turbulence and into the calm. We packed each other’s bags, bandaged each other’s wounds, pushed each other when we felt too tired to go on. We came home together—eyes bright, adrenaline pumping—and sat on the couch, devouring whatever food we could get our hands on, debriefing every drill, every move, every decision, until we couldn’t possibly stay awake any longer. Then we would crawl into bed, wrap around each other and sleep.

  While I still grieve the relationships lost, I rejoice in the love I found. And I thank my lucky stars for roller derby, too, in all of its imperfect glory. None of this would have happened without those skates, that concrete, and my league. When I had no idea where things were going, I knew exactly what would happen at practice: my teammates would clear a path for me, push me through, and protect me from anyone trying to stop me from getting where I wanted to be.

  Unexpected Expedition

  BY K. ASTRE

  I thought I knew, but I wasn’t sure, so I waited. Almost like when you suspect something has gone bad in the fridge. You notice that the food has been in there a long time, but you put off dealing with it until a later time when you’re less busy or less overwhelmed. You check the expiration date but d
oubt the accuracy of its timing. Then you sniff. Smells fine. You think. What does sour cream smell like, anyway? But then you taste it, and the bitterness has depth, like it’s been incubating, germinating. Exactly how long has this been in here, you wonder, to achieve this level of rot, to reach this height of denial?

  I may not have been able to solve the rudimentary riddle of rotting, but I learned that, like food, identities can also lose shape, quality, and flavor the longer they remain uninspected.

  For many years I didn’t know what else to call myself but bisexual. During and immediately following college, I dated women but it was casual, light-hearted, short term, and in between stints with semi-serious boyfriends. I had no plans of growing old with these girls. We had never exchanged declarations of forever. In fact, we didn’t intend to introduce one another to our parents or families, ever. Although my experiences with men had never been entirely satisfying emotionally, I had every intention of marrying a man, having children, and living my life in the convenient, if not constraining, comforts of compulsory heterosexuality.

  I learned about men the way children learn about most things—through observations at home, out in the world, and on screen. I tried to find another way to understand men outside of them being generally burdensome to the women around them. Women got the short end of the stick—they cooked, cleaned, reared children, and worked while begging their male counter-parts for empathy, emotional support, and to take out trash or clean the toilet without being asked.

  A lot of men seemed to get away with being innocently chauvinistic providers who acted as the head of household yet rarely contributed to the actual care of the home or family unit. I didn’t want to believe in the narrative of the permanently adolescent man, but it seemed inescapable. Though I had every intention of getting married and having a traditional marriage, I fantasized that after my children had grown up and gone to college, I would find a nice woman to settle down with. Only after my politely homophobic parents died, of course.

  I couldn’t stand the idea of my parents disowning me or being disappointed by my decision to spend my life with a woman. During my elementary school obsession with the Spice Girls, I made it my mission to watch every performance I could catch. I sat eagerly in the living room, absorbing all the girl power, as my dad came in and out of the room. Often their background dancers were men, and my dad rarely missed an opportunity to make fun of them because he assumed they were gay. His comments, smirks, scoffs, and snickers told me that he would not approve of me unless I was straight.

  I was already Black and fat—two items on the infinite list of attributes that make it difficult to feel celebrated in America—and as an adult, I didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to broadcast romantic love for another woman. It would make me even more of a target. Psychologically, I was just not prepared to weather the cultural consequences of exposing another layer of my identity. I grew up believing the world saw gay people as confused, traumatized, mentally ill, or evil. It wasn’t just my dad. I wasn’t just afraid of being ostracized by my religious family and embarrassing my god-fearing mother. I felt like the world at large would reject me.

  I allowed myself to be led by societal expectations. This was easy; it didn’t require any mental or emotional introspection, nor did it require any profound examination. I found a nice but deeply troubled young man who loved me as much as he needed me, and as we dated we made plans to do what people our age did: move in together, get engaged, stay happily married, raise a family. Though I often felt like something nameless was missing, I forged on. He was as sweet and as accommodating as I figured any man could be. I hadn’t witnessed very much gentlemanly conduct growing up; my expectations for chivalry were admittedly low. He opened doors for me, carried my bags, loved my cooking, held my hand at every opportunity, and was proud to be with me. I didn’t think there was much else to ask for out of a relationship because I didn’t know what heights my senses could scale.

  And then I met Theary, an openly gay woman, at a meditation retreat. There was an electricity between us that I had never felt before. Not because it was new and exciting, but because it was authentic. Theary exhilarated me. Her beautiful deep-brown skin, low-cut fade, and soft, full body moved me.

  Our friendship continued after the retreat, but I was desperate for more. She made regular cameos in my dreams, sometimes walking through them like an omen. My need to belong to her took over. It was the sweetest possession I had ever known. I was attracted to her boldness, her confidence, and her insistence that the world accept her as she is. We sent each other poems and journal entries. I was blindsided by the intensity of my desire. While my anxieties remained, I couldn’t control my emotions, couldn’t find an internal compartment vast enough to stuff the sensations back into, even if I wanted to. That’s when I knew I had to break up with him and tell her exactly how I was feeling.

  Theary and I spent a lot of time together following my confession. One day after coffee, her car suddenly stopped working. We called roadside assistance and talked in the car while we waited. Hours passed, and I could feel something changing. A sweetness settled in between us. I was struck by the depth of our connection, the richness of our conversations, the density of our desire. Our world together was kaleidoscopic. That evening, after she dropped me off at home, she texted me something that changed everything: “I fell in love with you today.”

  I had already fallen in love with her, but her admission inspired me to unfold and investigate myself in a way I had never allowed. I discovered, to my delight, a woman within myself who had the courage to live authentically and honestly, and who would give herself permission to love another woman. Though I had found a place of acceptance within myself, I still had no idea what was to come. I realized I had no compass, no map, and no directions for how to move forward.

  I came out in tender, timid layers. First, to my family. The day I decided to come out to my mother, I was ready to shed my fear. I called her in the afternoon while she was at work and abruptly told her that I had a girlfriend. She was quiet for a while. She sighed. I paced around my living room, waiting for her to say something. Finally, she calmly started asking me questions. I was so relieved by her tone. She was curious and confused, but not angry or upset. She wanted to know some basics, like when I became interested in women, but most importantly, why I had never told her. She blamed herself, worried that my lifestyle was a result of not having many positive male role models in my youth. As a child, I was surrounded by women. Intelligent, beautiful, innovative, resilient, strong-willed, trailblazing women who served as an example of the type of supportive, loyal, responsible, and emotionally present partner that anyone—man or woman—would want to be with. But that was not the reason.

  “I’ve found someone that I want to spend the rest of my life with,” I said.

  Next, I came out to my friends and colleagues. I felt liberated, lost, relieved, petrified, enlivened.

  My relationship with Theary evolved quickly. We moved in together. The intimacy of sharing space made us grow closer than ever. Everything was magical—from eating dinner to running errands—just because we were together. On one trip to the store, we were having a conversation about how delighted we were to have found each other. We were so immersed in our talk that we parked and stayed in the car for almost an hour. Then one of us (in such a blur of emotion, I can’t remember which) blurted out, “Let’s just get married right now!”

  The tone of the conversation changed from whimsical to serious. This was something we both wanted, although we soon realized we had definitely gotten carried away. We made a pact with each other that if we still wanted to get married by the next Valentine’s Day, we would.

  And we did. Our ceremony took place in our backyard in front of some of our family and closest friends. Committing to a lifelong partnership with my wife was an act of both rising in truth and plunging deeper into the folds of my true self. My mother and father sat in the front row on our special day, smilin
g and being as supportive as they could.

  Haitian Kompa and R&B songs played in the background as laughs and happy voices filled the air after the ceremony. Throughout the evening, I caught my mom smiling at me and watching with so much love in her eyes. When I had a moment to myself, she pulled me aside.

  “I am so proud of you, dear,” she said.

  “Oh, Mom . . . ”

  “No, I really am. All I want is for you to be happy, even if that means your father and I have to be a little uncomfortable. We will deal with our own feelings, but what’s most important is that you live your life. That’s all we care about.”

  “Thank you, Mom. I’m very happy,” I assured her.

  “I can tell.”

  Sometimes I felt like I had tainted the relationship I had with my parents by not being honest with them earlier, but Mom’s blessing showed there was room for growth in our relationship because of her unconditional love. Tears welled up in her eyes as she hugged me for a long time. My dad spotted us embracing and came over, smiling.

  “Hey, I want a hug, too,” he teased.

  We laughed as we opened our arms to him. I was glad I hadn’t waited until my parents were gone to live my fantasy life. My truthfulness had transformed us all—individually and collectively.

  When Did You Know ?

  BY TRISH BENDIX

  WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE STRAIGHT?