One of my friends in the support group visited her family for Christmas and New Years. She offered me use of her house and her VW bus for two weeks. Since I lived in a one-room apartment and shared a bathroom on a hall, I was thrilled. A bathroom to myself!
I called Nancy and arranged to drive to Worcester to pick her up at Clark University, expecting a romantic weekend in the house, snuggled up in front of the big stone fireplace. When we got back to the house, I made a big fire and got a couple of beers for us, but Nancy kept pushing me away, both physically and emotionally. I didn’t understand why she was as thrilled with having time alone with me as I was having time alone with her. We were young; my libido was in full bloom – why weren’t we having wild sex?
Even the Bible says there’s a time for all things – a time for intellectualizing and a time for, well, sex. All Nancy did was talk. I am as chatty as the next person, but I did not go through everything I did to come out and live as a lesbian so I could talk more often. It was a frustrating weekend, and I was not sorry to take her back to college.
New Year’s Eve was more in line with how I wanted my life to go. My friend MV called the house and told me about a lesbian party, somewhere in Hatfield, MA. With only the sketchiest of directions in hand, she picked me up around 8pm. We stopped at the liquor store on Rte 9, Hadley, got a couple of six packs and began our search.
Hatfield may be a small town, but it’s honeycombed with little streets. I’m not sure we would have ever found the house if MV hadn’t spotted a car she recognized. We figured they were probably going to the same party, but when we got there we only saw a couple of other cars. Neither of us knew the women throwing the party and we hadn’t really been invited. We expected to get lost in the crowd, expecting to see women we knew eventually. So we sat in the car, with the heater running, and consumed a couple of beers each before the number of partygoers had reached a reasonable number in which we could get lost.
Taking our remaining beers in with us, we were both immediately swallowed up by the crowd. Other women from our support group were there, including Mo who was involved with a group starting a battered women’s shelter in nearby Franklin County. The rooms were pretty dark, beer was flowing freely, and the music was loud. More people came in. Then even more people came in. We were trying to dance, but there wasn’t much room.
Among the women Mo was working with on the battered women’s shelter were two straight women whom everyone knew were in love with each other. They said they were “best friends.” They way they held each other when they danced said something else. One of them was tall, had loads of hair and was a totally knockout. As midnight neared, she was standing in front of me. When I asked her to dance, she said okay. When people counted down to the New Year, she was in my arms, and we were kissing, really kissing. Holy cow. She didn’t kiss like she was straight. In my mind, I tried to remember how much I’d had to drink. Possibly I was misinterpreting our interaction. Finally, she pulled away, and I could breathe again. She leaned in, gave me a short hug and moved off through the crowd. I didn’t move until MV came over and asked me if I was okay.
Both of the women eventually married and had children. They were always “best friends,” and years later they came to a lesbian dance where, once again, they danced like lovers. Fifteen years later I found myself working with that woman’s husband. When he told me who his wife was, I think I must have looked like a deer in the headlights.
The woman died of breast cancer three or four years ago. She was always beautiful, had two lovely daughters and a devoted husband, and was well known in western Mass. for her work on behalf of women’s issues. I respected her for all of that, but my breath still catches when I remember that long, passionate kiss in a dark house one New Year’s Even in Hatfield, MA, so many years ago.
© 2011 jgschenck
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