Greetings From Janeland

by Candace Walsh

Was it in preschool? When playtime meant the girls baked in the pretend kitchenettes and the boys were given rubber balls and you made believe you were your mother, making dinner for your dad because that’s just what you do? Or was it in kindergarten when you watched Disney movies where the happy ending came in the form of a long-awaited kiss from a charming prince? Was it when the neighborhood boys told you to meet them behind the garage and dared you to show them your privates before they’d show you theirs?

  Maybe it was in first grade when recess was dedicated to chasing boys with your friends. Or every Ken doll purchased for Barbie or Skipper and her friends, so they had someone to impress.

  It could have been the New Kids on the Block—having to pick one of the boy-band members to be the focus of your adoration. Then you’d kiss his face on your pillow and your wall before you went to sleep and dream of the day you could finally meet and maybe even hold hands. He’d sing you a love song with his impressive falsetto, and you’d feel like you were the most special girl in all of the world because he chose you.

  Perhaps it was in middle school, when real boyfriends replaced girls’ celebrity fantasies. Your friends were suddenly so grown up, with bras and periods and parties where their parents weren’t home. Expectations became different. Songs were more sensual. You went to the mall with your friend and she changed in the bathroom—she brought a shirt that shows off her stomach, and her underwear was strategically poking out of the top of her low-rise jeans. You’d walk around in loops looking for boys that went to different schools—maybe even high schools.

  Was it at the teen dance club where you could be thirteen or fourteen and tell anyone who asked that you were seventeen? When you felt lucky that an older guy wanted to dance with you and then secretly scared when he danced too close and invited you to a party at his friend’s house afterward, or embarrassed when you had to tell him no because your mom was picking you up, or mortified when he said, “Excuse me, I have to use the bathroom,” and you saw him a few minutes later dancing with another girl?

  Confirmation could have come when everyone coupled up for homecomings and proms and you wanted to be asked because it meant something if you weren’t. You said yes to someone you barely knew and felt uncomfortable when he decided you’d drive separately from the rest of your friends. He dropped you off early so he could go out and party and you felt like you must be some buzzkill.

  But then you finally had a boyfriend—someone who was into the same kinds of things as you: music, theater, family, friends. And yet the only thing you shared was interests. It wasn’t anything like the movies had promised—sparks, fireworks, butterflies. You tried to make things happen so you wouldn’t have empty answers for your inquiring friends, but it never felt good, and once while you were kissing, he stopped, telling you he was bored. You were devastated, but only because you felt inadequate, like you were doing something wrong. It all felt wrong.

  You moved away to the big city to go to college, where you knew you were destined to meet the kind of guy you’d connect with: the Prince Charming, Jordan Knight, Ken doll you’d been promised since you were old enough to know what your future looked like. And you kept trying. You went to classes and parties and met all kinds of new and different people—and there was that one girl who, for some reason, you saw and thought I want to know her. She just walked right into the auditorium and found a seat that wasn’t next to yours, but you could still watch her from where you sat, elevated, and wondered about her—her crooked nose, her effortless cool, her pierced lip, her loose curls dyed a shade of sun-tinged pink, like the color of a tongue after licking a dreamsicle.

  It took a while, but eventually your paths crossed and you became friends, and you never thought you’d have so much fun with someone. Together you’d write silly songs—she was a real musician—and try to find albums that matched perfectly with movies on mute. When the lyrics and the moment synced like a surprise soundtrack, it gave you both so much satisfaction—although maybe it was the weed.

  Not yet old enough to drink, twenty-four-hour diners and coffee shops were worth the walk, even in the cruelest of Chicago winters, and you found yourself jealous when she gave the tattooed server a mix tape, but you didn’t understand why.

  You’d play Tegan and Sara albums and Never Have I Ever and Truth or Dare, and when you were dared to kiss her, you liked it so much, you wanted to play all the time. You wanted to play alone, and you didn’t want her to invite guys over like she sometimes did. And then she turned twenty-one, and things changed. She got a new roommate, started going out more, leaving you young and confused about why you felt so hurt and abandoned.

  It wasn’t long after that that you met another girl who put you under a similar spell. You realized you weren’t who you’d assumed yourself to be, and things started to make a new kind of sense. You were less lonely. You understood why, for twenty years, you felt out of touch with the world and what it was supposed to be for you, and what you were supposed to be in it. Love seemed possible, like something you could finally give and receive in a way you’d longed to, though you’d never quite known how.

  Other moments presented themselves in retrospect, clues that you’d somehow missed—like your fascination with your unmarried English teacher who came to school some days crying about the terrible fights she’d had with her “roommate.” Or how you skipped your senior prom to go see your favorite singer play her band’s last gig—oh, how you loved watching her on stage. You even interviewed her for the school paper and inquired if she had a boyfriend. It was so disappointing that the answer was yes.

  You fit into some stereotypes, playing soccer and softball and basketball and having intense, close friendships with other girls on the team. One, in particular. You were each other’s dates to most dances and traveled together for spring break, spending a week together, sleeping in the same bed—until a huge blow-up fight that left you both heartbroken, walking solemnly side by side at graduation and not talking for years.

  But even before that, you would read your grandma’s True Story magazines and pore over the advertisements for women’s bathing suits. The busty models posed in bikinis and high-cut one-pieces in monochrome colors, stirring something in you that you didn’t want to consider.

  Later, you somehow stumbled upon some erotica about lesbian cheerleaders, thanks to the Internet. Still, you didn’t question what it meant that it turned you on. It was sex—it was sexy. That was enough. That’s all it was. Sexuality is a spectrum, after all, you convinced yourself.

  Benign things, though, that weren’t about sex, but instead about rightness—those were things you knew you supported. In speech class, you gave a passionate talk about support for gay people, but didn’t consider yourself one. You debated on behalf of a group you didn’t think you belonged to, yet it was something you felt so strongly about that it emanated from your core, and anyone who dared question the truth of what was right was wrong for attempting the challenge. That’s how you saw it. That’s what you believed.

  There was that movie, though: But I’m a Cheerleader. Something about that girl in the black button-down shirt. She summoned something that made you nervous to be watching her, like someone could walk in any second and accusingly ask what you were watching and why, even if it was just a still frame of her face. This was the first movie you’d ever seen with someone like her as the object of affection, of wanting. You’d seen covers for things like Bound at the local Blockbuster, but you’d been too young, too nervous to ever try and rent them. Still, curiosity was there, and you’d stumbled upon Clea DuVall on a premium cable network and she was saying she liked girls and then she was dancing with a girl, kissing a girl, having what could only be assumed was sex with a girl—damn those censors and the need to keep things so ambiguous and darkly lit, flashes of sapphism and orgasm and hands and mouths and caresses of the abdomen.

  All of these things—signs, symbols, clues—were still so easy to ignore because an option to be something other than a g
irl looking for her boy did not exist. Gay was something only boys could be; gay was something you knew from the day you were born. Gay was an identity you were certain of, a statement, not a question. Right? Right? Right?

  But then you asked yourself, and it was the first time anyone had ever posed the question—might as well be you. Am I straight?

  The question is scary; the answer scarier. The alternative is hiding, lying, denying, something you’re just not able to. Because now you’re really sitting with yourself, knowing yourself, and finding that the answer is no.

  You are not the thing you thought you were, that everyone else wants you to be. And they can’t help it, because that’s what was wanted for them, predestined without much thought, really. It’s just The Way Things Are.

  Not for you, though. You are faced with something different, something no one else in your family seems to have ever had to wonder about themselves, because they have always been able to answer “when did you know you were straight?” with every feeling they’ve ever had, every minute that’s passed, every experience they’ve lived. And you have questions, questions that seemed to have no logical answers until now, because you are actually asking yourself the right one: Am I gay?

  It’s instantly inescapable. You know it as soon as you ask; there’s no need to try harder with men—you’re not “selling yourself short” as your mom will offer. “Gay” isn’t a consolation prize you’ve given yourself because you haven’t found “the right guy.”

  Who are you? you ask. And you’re young, but what you do know now, for sure—because nothing has ever felt more like a predetermined, clear, and exciting discovery for you—is that you are gay. You are a lesbian. You deserve love just the same as you always have. And now that you know this and love this about yourself, the world will know this and love this, too.

  You realize it might take time. Maybe it will take twenty more years. But things will reinforce this answer, this truth, for you; things will assure you and guide you throughout your life. Some people’s answers may shift or flow or change, but all you needed was that question.

  When did you know you were straight?

  The answer is never.

  Here’s to Me

  BY JEANNOT JONTE BOUCHER

  GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS, IS HOME. IT’S A LIVED-IN WORKING-class suburb of Dallas where Spanish is heard more often in the grocery store than English. Grand Prairie’s Immaculate Conception Catholic Church had a glass room at the back for mothers to sit with crying children, the Cry Box. This way, the children wouldn’t disturb other parishioners during mass.

  Nearly ten years ago, I felt fortunate to have a way to participate in my faith in this tangle of babies and toddlers who nursed and pinched us, dug in our purses, and played with our keys. I loved to have a place to sing the hymns, which made me feel connected to something bigger than myself; to sing an old song in harmony feels like community to me. On the other side of the glass, in the back row, sat nuns in traditional black habits. I watched them kneel. I didn’t attempt it, seven months pregnant. I was twenty, almost twenty-one. As I held my toddler’s hand and tried to keep her from running laps around the Cry Box, the crying around us drowned out the singing of the Pater Noster, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. My husband, James, sat next to me. There were no other fathers. He looked tired.

  I was at times aware of my unhappiness, and other times I felt the weight of suffering that comes with being a woman, but I heard the priest’s homily over the Cry Box speaker: “Wasn’t it suffering that redeemed our souls?” Couldn’t I offer this small suffering in prayer? I begged my soul for patience, impatient with my own unease with the woman’s role. The homily continued, but my attention wandered. Why was I here, living like this? It was a discontent sometimes as small and persistent as the itching of a sweater, other times so vast and profound that I felt incapacitated. After mass, I stood in front of the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, looking at her starry blue and gold mantle and her lowered eyes. If you had asked me what was wrong at that moment, I could have told you that everything was wrong—or, if I lied, that nothing was wrong. In the car, I confessed to my husband I’d rather stay home the next Sunday.

  When I was a teenager, I had loved the Roman Catholic faith for giving me answers about the world. The complex philosophical systems gave me a framework in which to begin young adult-hood. I had answers that the Church Fathers had written about in extreme detail. It seemed unchanging through the ages, like a rock, an anchor. When peers wrestled with questions of sexuality, abortion, marriage, family, the Consecrated Sisters taught me that humility and obedience were good for a woman’s soul. Part of me was at least initially relieved not to worry about so many difficult questions. But that relief was slowly displaced by a quiet pain, a loud warning—a sign that something was very wrong.

  In my early twenties, with two babies, I was alone so often: while I nursed them or put them down for naps or prayed and rocked them while they cried. “Nearer my God, to thee, nearer to thee,” I sang, listening to Christian radio to hear another voice in my home while my husband worked early and then late shifts. Every morning I made sure to tune in to Ave Maria radio, to listen to husband-and-wife relationship coaches giving faith-based counsel. With my hands busy in the warm water as I washed dishes, I became fixated: a young man had called in to ask the couple holiday advice regarding a homosexual relative. The wife advised, “Oh no, you can’t send that message that their sin is acceptable in the eyes of the Lord by letting him in your home during the holiday. Send a firm message that you cannot condone the sin of homosexuality in your home. Not until he is willing to disavow his lifestyle.” I dropped my favorite holiday dish, a yellow-edged one with blueberries. My throat felt tight; I could hear my pulse and feel my face getting hot. If I could close my eyes tightly enough, I wouldn’t be able to cry, I thought. My mother told me if you touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth, no tears will come out. The clatter of the falling dish woke my younger baby after a hard-won nap.

  Staying home with a newborn and a toddler, I counted the minutes until my husband would be home from work. The whole day of chores stretched backwards. I read magazines for mothers and books about babies, and after one of them ran a blurb about lesbian mothers and children’s well-being, I got the wildest hair to go to the library’s LGBT resource center and learn more about the perspectives of those outside my faith and what their lives might be like. The relationship coach’s advice about homosexuals and the holiday was in my heart. I could say the interest sprung from nowhere, but I was the kind of teen who fell in love with best friends, who were sometimes girls. I took it as the gift of holy grace that I had been able to follow the Church’s doctrine on sexuality and marry according to teaching. But, still, there was some nagging question in me. I knew what St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about morbid curiosity, that it was a sin. Regardless, I packed the diaper bag and drove off on an adventure. Plus, there would be people at the library, and for a stay-at-home mom, that was as big a draw as any.

  I brought the babies in with me, one in a tummy pack strapped above my long skirt and sleeves, and introduced myself to a librarian. I asked if they could help me get a book I had read about in a magazine. “What book might that be?” she asked. I glanced around the room to see who was looking, then pronounced the title: Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write about Leaving Men for Women.

  “Of course, I love my husband,” I explained, “and have no intention of leaving him, but I just, well, I would like to know about those stories.”

  When it came in, I devoured the stories while I breastfed and stew simmered in the crock pot—the routine in those days. The women in the book had been sad, and they hadn’t known why. Like . . . me?

  When James came home, I invited him to sit with me on the couch to talk. He cocked his head at the unusually formal invitation. In little more than a whisper, I explained that I didn’t want to go back to Immaculate Conception another Sunday—or ever. I felt embold
ened after saying something so impossible. His eyebrows raised with curiosity, waiting for an explanation.

  “I would like an open relationship,” I said, “to be able to see a woman.” He sighed and left the room. He had never been the kind of man whose emotions were easy to read, but this time I heard exasperation and avoidance in his sigh. I couldn’t be dismissed. Not this time.

  I followed him and told him breathlessly about the stories I had read, women who found happiness going on a few dates, and how “we could still be a happy family.” He looked at his computer screen while I spoke, as I tried to get his attention back. “It would be nice to know someone like me who—” and then a baby woke up, and the toddler poured a big bucket of dog food all over the floor.

  I waited for him to be ready. Without pestering, every few weeks, I asked if I might be able to make a dating profile online and just go for coffee with a girl. The librarian at the LGBT center made me fascinating stacks of books, like The Paradox of Natural Mothering, where I learned about women who gave and gave to their families but left nothing for themselves. She gave me The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, and while I fed and dandled the children on my knee, between planting roses and herbs in the garden, I pondered how I was this other kind of being, and man came first. One thing led to another in these books, and I started exploring the LGBT library on my own. I found a cracked paper-back, Androgyne, 1976, and I read a description of this androgyne, a soul of worlds within worlds. I copied down the words of this book, handwritten, because they sounded like me. At lightning speed, and all alone except for the babies, I tore through countless pages, seeking something. Longing.

  Eventually my husband gave me permission to see women—after I stormed into his office and demanded it. If I couldn’t be free to determine who I could love or touch, I had no business in this marriage. He didn’t say much, but he suggested I was eaten up with postpartum depression, and I had been reading too many feminist books. I told him I meant it, that I needed this. I wanted to be fierce and smash everything that held me back, but instead, my eyes implored him. “Please, James,” I finally begged, “I need this—or I have to go.” Whether it was the pestering or the ultimatum neither of us wanted, he finally agreed.