Julie and I took a road trip to Florida in June to take my mind off the wedding I wasn’t going to have. We drove her new lemon yellow Datsun, a gift from her father for graduation. I hadn’t lost my penchant for sunbathing since the days Gina and I spread out on picnic tables slathered in baby oil. Advancing to an oceanside version of tanning made the prospect thrilling. I was ecstatic to get out of town, to listen to the hum of tires on the freeway, to be soothed by salty air and ocean breezes. A major destination on our way south was Knoxville, Tennessee, to visit my Great-Aunt Noreen. I couldn’t wait for them to meet, and I entertained Julie on the way with memories of my favorite relative.
Aunt Noreen was my grandmother’s sister. I first met her when I was twelve when she attended my grandma’s funeral. She was dressed then in a purple tweed suit with a fake mink collar and a wide-brimmed scarlet hat with a single ostrich feather. Her sturdy calves, partially visible below her skirt, were anchored in the same black stacked heels my grandmother wore—her lips painted a shade that matched her hat. A pair of crimson gloves completed the outfit. Wisps of fine red hair swept out from underneath her headgear; her face had rivers of lines flowing in all directions. She wore round, rimless glasses, and when she smiled, a smudge of lipstick was often visible on her front tooth. Unaware that my grandma had any siblings, I was enchanted by this discovery and mesmerized by Aunt Noreen’s physical presentation as well as her directness. We got on well, and my mother promised we would visit her in a few years, when my brother turned seventeen and could help with the driving.
Aunt Noreen was the only relative on my mother’s side that I had the slightest interest in knowing. All of the others were distant and stuffy, but Aunt Noreen was bold and funny. Her bawdy humor and disrespect for rules was appealing to a fifteen-year-old with little concern for other’s expectations. She was a shining star in the dark night of extended family members whose greatest joy in life, it seemed, was finding fault with me. But she knew how to talk to me, and she listened to what I had to say.
My favored memory of that visit was the evening we stood out on her postage-sized patio in the chilled night air and listened to stories about my grandmother that made us wince. As she held court, she reached for a beer out of the carton on the table and popped the top. Feeling emboldened by her audacious attitude, I piped up and said, “I want a beer, too.” Without flinching, she grabbed another and handed it to me, making me embarrassed not to drink at least part of it, though I knew from the sips I’d taken with Gina that I wouldn’t like it. But I liked having the gumption to ask for one. My mother looked on but never said a word.
Though I refrained from telling my mother, I secretly wished Aunt Noreen had been my grandma instead of the one I got.
The roads through the mountains were much improved since my last visit, years before, allowing us to cut off a couple hours of travel time. My excitement built as we arrived in the city and followed the directions to her address. Her mobile home was still marked by a string of Chinese lanterns made of crepe paper that hung across her patio. Her pristine white ’57 Chevy was parked at its standard forty-five-degree angle on the hill in the woods, facing toward the road as though to make a quick getaway—just as I remembered it.
Aunt Noreen had been through a recent surgery, and from the moment we arrived, I sensed a difference in her. The familiar smells of ancient things mixed with perfume flooded us as we entered the living room. The same bright-colored afghans were strewn about. But her voice was different—angry and abrupt. “What took you so long? Come in and get yourselves something to eat. I already ate.”
My stomach roiled, and the moisture on my palms brought chills in the evening air. This was not her customary animated voice, full of warmth and mischief. I didn’t know if we should get our luggage or maybe look for a hotel. I made introductions. Then we sat down at the table, ate dinner, and joined her in the living room. She sat in her rocker, nodding off in the middle of conversation, occasionally jerking herself to attention to speak. We talked about our trip, how the roads had changed, and how happy we were to be on vacation. I sat on the couch and inhaled the smells of perfume and musty blankets. She no longer asked interesting questions; she felt distant to me, old in a somber way, more like my grandmother, with whom I was never close.
“I arranged for you to see Dr. Ruth and your Aunt Pearl,” (my grandmother’s other sisters), “while you are here. I don’t know if I will feel well enough to come along.”
I nodded graciously and said that would be nice. At 9:00 p.m. she said good night. Julie and I stayed up late, enjoying our freedom and anticipating our time at the ocean. Our laughter must have awakened her, and she shuffled out in her baggy blue flannel bathrobe, shouting. “What in the hell are you doing up at this hour? I am exhausted and trying to sleep,” she said in a belittling and irritated tone. I refused to cry or offer apology, though I wanted to bolt out the door, down the steps, and back into the yellow Datsun and drive to Florida without stopping. Where was my exciting, eccentric, understanding Aunt Noreen? She left the room, and we turned out the lights. Tears stung my eyes as I pressed my face into the antique pillowcase lying on the cot across from Julie.
The next day we went out to dinner with Dr. Ruth and Pearl, plus Billie and Buddy, my cousins. We talked about the nothings that relatives talk about when they don’t know each other well.
“My how you’ve grown,” Ruth said. “How is your mother?”
Then my Aunt Pearl chimed in, “It has been so hard for her all these years with your dad being so sick and all. Could you please pass the coleslaw—I just love how they make it here.”
A chorus of voices slid over each other as I sat and acted polite on the outside, though my insides felt ragged from the night before. At the end of the meal, we went back to Aunt Noreen’s house—full of food, but not so full of the love I had remembered. Julie and I left the next day. After our visit, she wrote my mother a letter that caused them to break ties altogether. It would be another eight years before I learned the content of that message.
As we rolled down the road toward I-85, Julie turned off the radio and asked how I felt.
“Well, that didn’t turn out like I thought it would,” I said. “She used to be different—fun and funny, with a great sense of humor. I’m sorry she was so mean.”
“That’s okay. You should meet some of my relatives,” Julie said with a laugh.
I glanced her way again and saw that she still had her eyes fixed on me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, worried that this bad start to the vacation had really put a damper on the whole thing.
“I want to tell you something.”
I had no idea what she was about to say, but I feared that she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. Maybe she had heard stories about me being gay. I gripped the wheel a little tighter and waited for the bad news.
“What is it?” Jesus, I thought—just spit it out. I can take it.
“I was thinking that I would really like to kiss you.”
I turned sharply in her direction to see if she was joking or if some weird spell had come over her. Not only was that the last thing I expected; it was also way beyond the last thing I wanted, and my immediate response was a resounding, “Oh, no you wouldn’t.” It wasn’t the most sensitive approach, but I was having none of that again. I thought Julie was straight. I certainly knew that I wanted to be. What now? I wondered. Do I explain what happened to me with Nicky, and how horrible it was in spite of how wonderful it was, too? Do I admit that, even though I have been fighting against it, I am attracted to her, also? Or do I just keep my mouth shut?
I pulled off at the first rest area and stopped the car. My uneasiness increased as I turned toward her. Before I spoke, I made her promise that she would never tell anyone what I was about say. She swore that she wouldn’t, and I spilled out my whole story. I told her about Nicky and the terror I felt in having those feelings because of my Christian upbringing, and about the guilt that followed me everywhere because I loved Mike and he was such a good person. I told her about the horror of being confronted by the other RAs, the dread my parents would find out, and how I was terrorized each time the phone rang at home, certain someone was calling to tell them I was gay. And that, even though I could feel the intermittent waves of attraction to her, I was not, for any reason, under any circumstance, ever going to act on them.
Now I felt totally exposed—first for sharing what I had done before, and second for telling her I had similar feelings toward her. She was quiet for a while as I sat nervously wishing I could roll the words I had spoken back up into my mouth.
“I’m really sorry that you were so hurt by what happened,” she said. She reached over and touched my hand reassuringly. “I can understand why you would come to that decision—I just wanted you to know what I was feeling.”
The problem was that I was feeling that same pull toward her and had been for months. I was sure that on a subconscious level my awareness of these feelings was part of the reason I broke my engagement with Mike. My attraction to Nicky was scary enough, but now, here it was again. With women it was so much harder because it snuck up on me. It always began as friendship, and love grew out of an intense emotional bond that was unparalleled with men. Yet I could never imagine living as a lesbian. Though I had never met one, my imaginings about gay women were the worst: I had heard stories about butch and fem partnerships, one person trying to act like a man, the other like a woman. In my mind they all rode motorcycles, smoked cigarettes, and were unemployed. God knows why I had such ridiculous ideas. They appeared to be thought forms that hung in the social ether. Wherever they came from, I couldn’t see myself in that group.
The envisioned pain of acting on the lure of Julie’s charm was enough to keep my promise to myself not to get involved with her throughout the vacation. No wonder she hadn’t been that keen on dating Mike’s brother when I introduced them last fall, though we double dated for a few months. If I were to be honest, there were signs that we were more attracted to each other than I was to most friends, even then. I remembered when we were together how close she stood to me, and the physical pleasure I derived from that. Or how she would touch me lightly in passing, seemingly by accident, and the tingling sensation that would arise as a result. The final occasion the four of us spent together was the wedding of a good friend in St. Joseph, Michigan. It was winter, and, after the reception, we’d gone to the dunes on Lake Michigan and sat in the parking lot at the beach, watching the wind and snow whip across the ice and sand. Julie was in the front seat making out with Steve, and Mike and I were in the back seat doing the same. I recalled the flash of desire I’d had to be kissing her, instead—a thought I instinctively buried the moment it came.
Now she was free to say aloud what I intuitively knew but didn’t want to acknowledge. And because Julie hadn’t been subject to the overpowering, harsh indoctrination of the Baptist church—or any other such religious paradigm that invoked visions of damnation for having hopes of a relationship—she had no qualms about telling me what she wanted. That made it all the harder to keep my word to myself. Our time in Florida was as healing as it was captivating with the now-open disclosure of our attraction. She was the first person I ever told about Nicky, and, as much as I had feared that level of honesty, her compassionate response was reassuring beyond any I had imagined in my terrified mind. My secret was out—even if only to one person.
We returned to Kalamazoo, and our emotional intimacy deepened as we spent more time together, as did the desire to act on the physical attraction. My yearning for depth and complexity in thought and discourse felt like an addiction—a drug that was hard to find with people in general and most especially for me with men. It was the absence of this quality in Mike that, in spite of all his other wonderful traits, made it impossible for me to marry him.
One night Julie came for dinner at my apartment and stayed to talk until it was midnight. Sitting on the couch, we shared more deeply about our childhood experiences and our plans for the future—laughing at ourselves and with each other. Each time we got up to get something, we sat back down closer together, until we were right up next to each other. My body continued to betray my will as we talked on, the rush of lust combined with tenderness reaching out to all my nerve endings—the terrible longing to touch her face, to hold her close, to yield to the hunger for physical connection. That night my intention to never sleep with a woman again was overpowered by the sweet craving of the moment. I couldn’t believe I was allowing myself to drop over this cliff once more. Somehow the darkness felt like it could protect me and us from any negative outcome, and I gave in. It was the first of many nights we slept together, arms and legs entwined, loving the freedom the night allowed and wishing the sun would never rise.
Here I was, once again, splitting internally into a public and private self—two parts of me that never found a unified home. Julie’s intelligence and creativity were so seductive, and physical desire seemed so natural when I was attracted to the substance of a person. Yet, even after all my doubts about Christianity, I couldn’t rid myself of the shame that always descended to crush the rousing pleasure of being together. The wounds caused by loving Nicky were still too fresh and haunting, and I knew I could never be happy choosing a life that was in such opposition to my family’s beliefs—and my own.
I often wished I had been raised in a household without any religion. There were legions of wonderful people walking the earth unencumbered by internal threats of punishment—people who cared for the poor, were generous to others, and worked for positive change. They were Christian in their deeds, but they didn’t suffer the agony of living with a “God albatross” about their collar, robbing them of their daily joy.
I didn’t know how to be brave in this situation and couldn’t tell if it took greater courage to stay or to leave. What did it mean to be fearless—to follow your heart when your heart was torn in two directions? It seemed the only way to combat the power of my feelings for Julie was to find a job in another city and force myself to leave.