It had been two years since my father died, and I had graduated and become a school psychologist in the town where my mother lived, making it easy for me to stop by on my lunch hour or pop in after work. My relationship with Kathy, while brief, was the beginning of finding my identity as a gay woman. I was not alone in this arena, as many people (gay and straight alike) were investigating all kinds of sexual freedom, getting away from rigid and oppressive attitudes about sex—a long-lasting gift from the Puritans. It was a stimulating and refreshing time for those bold enough to plunge into the experimental fray.
I started attending women’s dances at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, where I met lesbians of all types and sizes dressed in many different styles. Gone were images of butch and fem, replaced by a plethora of real-life alternatives. There were women like me—committed to professional careers, intelligent, and fun loving; there were women who inspired and challenged me with vibrant discussions about politics and women’s roles in the world. More important than their being gay, these were feminists who wanted to make a difference through taking on roles beyond that of being a mother, a housewife, a secretary, or a teacher. Not that those weren’t noble pursuits when chosen by the women themselves, rather than imposed or prescribed by men, who, until now, had set the standards for what women should do and who they could be.
I had also returned to my love of athletics and joined a women’s softball team sponsored by the Blind Pig, a local bar in town. This early summer day, I was recovering from a pulled muscle in my leg, injured during practice the night before. Linda, one of my teammates, had dropped off a heating pad at my apartment afterward and was stopping by this evening to pick it up. I was a little surprised she had gone to the trouble, since we didn’t know each other well, but I opened the door and invited her in for a drink. It was a reasonable gesture, since she had come all the way across town to check on me. We sat on the floor in my small living room, leaning up against pillows, a bottle of wine between us. After a few minutes of small talk, she got right to the point. “I’ve been watching you play ball for the last two years, and I’ve always been attracted to you.”
I choked on my wine, and my eyes widened—had I heard her correctly?
She continued, “You know, I’ve never been with a woman, and I might get nauseous if you kissed me, but I would really like to go out with you.”
Gulping my wine now, I was shocked and intrigued. “But I thought you were married,” I said, though the look on my face alone must have expressed my confusion.
“I am, but my husband and I have an open marriage.”
It was 1977, and open marriage was one of the latest fads for heterosexual couples. I slugged down the rest of my wine and looked at her with an amused smile. “Okay, back up a little bit here. What exactly do you mean by ‘open’?” I poured another glass of wine for myself as she went on.
“We are free to sleep with anyone we want as long as we tell each other in advance. If either of us is available when the other is, we get first choice to spend time together.”
“It seems like being sexually involved with other people would cause a lot of jealousy.” Certain I would never want a relationship so open, it was hard to imagine how two people could navigate such emotional complexity.
“Sometimes it does, but we have been able to work that out.”
“Wow,” was about all I could manage.
Of the numerous opening lines I’d ever heard from either a man or a woman, this was the most memorable and hilarious. I didn’t know whether to laugh or kiss her on the spot to find out what her reaction would be
In the last two years, I had found people who were open and proud of their lifestyles, whatever they were. This had nurtured a sense of normalcy in me. While I was not prepared to “come out” to the world, I had at least come out to myself and a few close friends, leaving the judgment and damnation of the Baptist church far behind in favor of a more benevolent spiritual path of my own design. I felt increasingly connected to the Divine through nature and found greater peace on a walk in the woods than in a church of any kind. The beauty of the world around me became my cathedral, and it was easy to marvel at the grandeur of the stars without the need to attribute their creation to God. Best of all, nature accepted the reverence I offered without judgment.
While I had been successful in attracting men and had even fallen in love with a few, I was often reminded by my mother that I should defer to them, be less intense or demanding. I also found that many men of my generation agreed with her proposition and were caught by surprise with the new demands made by feminists who wanted equality. Even if a few men favored these shifts, they were without much-needed support in learning how to navigate a world where partnership took precedence over patriarchy. With women, I felt my strength and independence were assets—traits most women found attractive. I could be strong or vulnerable, or both, as the situation required. There was no set role for me, no limited female part to play, and this created greater room for self-discovery.
Linda was the most recent of several romantic pursuers since I started attending dances and playing softball. I seemed to be going through a kind of gay adolescence, discovering myself attractive on multiple levels to the women around me in ways and on a scale that had never happened with men. So hungry for physical connection after years of stuffing away my emotional and sexual feelings for women, it was like unleashing a spring-loaded can of confetti. I was easily seduced by them all, and Linda was the most unforgettable.
She stayed for another drink, and we continued to talk— about our upbringings, our parents and siblings, and members of the softball team. I hadn’t paid much attention to Linda before because I knew she was straight. This night, I noticed she was quite attractive in both appearance and energy: her mid-length brown hair, parted on the left, curled in a wayward fashion; her blue eyes focused on me felt inviting; and her wide smile revealed a small dimple in her cheek, suggesting a penchant for mischief. She was tall and slender and looked striking in her pressed shorts and checkered shirt. More than anything, I appreciated her flat-out, no-holds-barred, unabashed honesty. It was evident she knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. “So what do you think about going out?” she asked as she got up off the floor and picked up her car keys.
Given her explanation about her agreement with her husband, her invitation seemed harmless. Everything was out in the open. No one was lying about anything, so there was nothing to feel guilty about. “Why not?” I said, bemused by the whole encounter. We hugged goodbye and promised to meet the following Thursday for dinner. Meanwhile, I spent a different night with each of the other women in my new romantic orbit, grateful for the summer vacation afforded by my new job as a school psychologist; I wouldn’t otherwise have had enough time to fit in all my paramours.
Over the next two months, Linda and I spent countless hours together. It turned out that kissing me didn’t make her nauseous at all, and our emotional closeness led to a fiery sexual attraction that was both sweet and raucous—creating the insistent desire to be together all of the time. Because her husband was a surgery resident on-call around the clock, she had significant time available. We went out to dinner, hung out with her children at the park, and shared picnics and canoeing trips down the Huron River. I should have been more attuned to the danger such a liaison posed, after my experience with Mike; but I was living in the moment and didn’t want to pay attention.
Later that summer, Linda took me to her high school reunion in Muskegon and to meet her parents on their farm there—all in the guise of friendship. Linda had been a star in high school— the straight-A student, co-valedictorian, the gregarious and charming head of her class. Being married and having children was a great cover. No one would suspect that instead of bringing a casual friend along to this gathering, she had actually brought her lover. After the social events, we shimmied down the sandy hillside of her parents’ beachside property on Lake Michigan and built a fire in the sand. Listening to the water lap the shore and watching the moon rise over the lake, spreading a beam of light as far as we could see, was intoxicating. We lay down on the ground together and felt the weight of our bodies press into the earth, eyes revealing a new level of connection.
Something changed on that trip, and by the time we returned from Muskegon, it was clear we had crossed into fresh territory. It was a space rich with new thrills yet fraught with familiar haunts, including the longing to be with someone I loved though society said I shouldn’t—not because she was a woman, but because she was married, and in spite of the few couples exploring open marriages, it wasn’t the norm. New pains, too, accompanied this deeper longing. We would make plans for dinner only to have them cancelled at the last minute because Joe was off of his shift at the hospital and wanted to spend time with her. They would head out on a family vacation, leaving me alone to wonder if she was sleeping with him. Why wouldn’t she be? They were married. But I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else—I had no desire to—and I hoped that even if she were sleeping with her husband, it only increased her desire to be waking up next to me.
Soon we were having long conversations by phone when she couldn’t get away, and I started feeling the same agony I had felt with Mike while he was still married. I was repeating the same pattern, only with a woman. Despite their open relationship, the above-board announcement, and clear guidelines, Linda and Joe had no protection against forming deep attachments with outsiders. They had no formal way to agree not to fall in love with someone else, and, by September, it was clear that Linda and I had jumped off that emotional precipice and were in free fall.
I was grateful to return to work and get involved with projects that would require my full attention. I knew it was time to let go of this relationship, so, one night, with a weary heart, I broached the subject. We were lying on the floor by the fireplace in my apartment. She had on jeans, and her long legs stretched out across the cream-colored rug in a casual pose made her look especially beautiful. I fingered a glass of chardonnay and took a long, slow sip before speaking.
“As much as it pains me, I think it is time for us to stop this. It’s just too excruciating,” I said. She looked at me, her face soft in the reflected light. It was hard to go on, but I knew I had to. “It’s has become unbearable for me, when you have to leave at the end of every day we spend together.” I knew what I was getting into when this started, but neither one of us ever expected it would grow into what it had.
Her hair fell over one eye, and, in that moment, as she reached up and pushed the brown strands over her ear, she reminded me of Nicky. “It’s not the way I want it to be,” she finally said as she moved closer and took my hand.
“I don’t think there is any other way,” I replied.
She laced her fingers with mine and asked me to look at her. “For the first time in my life, I can imagine a partnership of equality—where there is a deep emotional intimacy, where both people take responsibility for the household chores, and childcare, and all the other things that require attention in life. I never thought it could be like this.”
I was perplexed. I didn’t imagine her ever leaving Joe; I didn’t necessarily want her to because that didn’t seem right. It wasn’t part of the original agreement. I simply couldn’t go on, craving something I could never have. “What are you trying to say?” I asked.
“I told Joe this morning that I wanted a trial separation.”
“You did what?” My eyes widened in shock as my body absorbed the gravity of her statement.
“I love you, and I want us to be together,” she said.
I raised my glass of wine to my lips and took a long slow sip, as though that would keep my heart from pounding ferociously. Had I heard her correctly? I was figuring out my response as the oaky taste of the chardonnay circled inside my mouth.
“I want that, too,” I finally said softly, racked by the realization of what such wanting had led to. This whole thing had begun as an innocent lark—sparked by her admission of attraction to me. I would never have pursued a married woman. And, as she explained it to me, open marriage seemed like such a mature thing—civilized even, with partners able to explore their sexuality with others without risk to their primary relationship. In retrospect it seemed like an insane proposition and quite uncivilized. In this moment I saw the naïveté with which I had embarked on this engagement with her and the real threat it presented to their relationship—and to me.
Linda stayed a little while longer, and we lay in front of the fire imagining that one day we might be together permanently and she would no longer have to get up and leave at the end of the night. As we rested in silence, we were both aware of what a leap this would be—excited and terrified at the prospect as we held tightly to each other.
I lay awake for a long time after she left, wondering if she and Joe had an open marriage because they weren’t happy with each other and it was a way to keep things interesting. I wondered if I had just happened along at the right time or if I was personally responsible for their potential breakup. If it hadn’t been me, would it have been someone else? What impact would this have on her children? I wondered if Linda would really go through with it. Half the time, I was giddy at the possibility, and the other half, I was overwhelmed with fear that she really would.