Ch. 2 The Rising Moon
1973
When I first “came out” a common question was “How did you become
a bisexual?” It’s a fair question asked by generally intelligent and curious
folks, but now, in hindsight, since so much study has been conducted on the origins
of homosexuality, it seems naïve of those who asked, and naïve of me, who tried
seriously to answer it.
Of
course, I knew the answer was: “I was born.” But that sounded specious and
rude.
But
was this any better? “I fell in love with a woman.”
My
favorite riposte, aimed at known bigots and homophobes, was “How
did you become a heterosexual?”
But
for serious inquirers—colleagues, my ex-husband, and my sons’
girlfriends—I tried to explain.
“Well,” I began, “A straight woman and two lesbians walked into a
bar…”
It’s a true story. In 1973, eight years after my exodus from Utah,
was “very straight” (as I repeatedly assured all who cared or didn’t care),
married to Wink, the mother of a 3-year old son, Greg, and eight months in
progress toward producing yet another, when Gayle and Schobeth persuaded me to
go with them to The Rising Moon, a local lesbian bar. The moment I entered, lesbians
who wanted to feel the baby in my stomach surrounded me.
So, how did this happen—me in a lesbian bar?
You may be too young to remember the Second-Wave women’s movement
of the 1970’s, but I was so there. Dissatisfied
housewives (including me) were reading The Feminine Mystique and
going to “consciousness raising” groups at each other’s houses, where we talked
about unpaid housework, unhelpful husbands, and unrealized dreams. We confessed
what we’d really wanted to be. We examined our mirrored
vaginas in an effort to love our bodies. We examined traditional assumptions
about women and tried to learn to love ourselves.
Sex roles and behavior were predetermined, and we played them
well. Sex discrimination (it wasn’t even called that yet) was not yet a
reasonable cause for complaint, and the first of such lawsuits was laughed out
of court by a humored, ruddy-faced judge.
Women were rising and demanding attention to their needs. Wives
began asking—asking! — husbands to “help” with the children and dishes in a
tone of voice that should have warned the men that their time was almost up.
"Radical bra-burning feminists” in New York and Chicago were attending
conferences about domestic violence, equal pay, and the “modern woman.”
In Portland, Oregon, it was an advertisement for just such a local
conference that attracted my attention. “A planning committee is forming,” the
posters announced:
Come and join the planning
committee for
Portland's First Annual
Conference on
The New Woman
at The Woman's Place Bookstore
on SE Grand
Monday night, _, 1973 7PM
I
had ideas. I would go. After all, there was a place for married women in the
burgeoning women’s movement, no? Polyamory and wife-swapping were
welcomed trends with the men; childcare was a problem for the women. Women were
trying to wear heels and the pants in the family at the same time, trying to
work both outside and inside the home, trying to be the many-armed,
multi-tasking Goddess depicted on the cover of Ms Magazine—such
acrobatics called for discussion and a clever teacher. By now, I had some
experience. Wives needed tools to manage husbands resistant to change. Children
must be raised in non-sexist, non-racist milieus. Such a conference
needed me. And I needed such a conference.
I
wrote all of my ideas on index cards, with possible names for workshops
addressing the problems. “Child-Rearing in the New World,” “Training Your Man
About the House,” “He Loves You and Her and Her - Is Polyamory
Possible?"
Preparing for these creative programs
was easy to problem-solve. The dilemma for me, however, was what to wear to the
planning session. I landed on my blue, sleeveless, cotton jumper dotted with
red and white stars; it flowed smoothly over my huge protruding belly. Festive,
patriotic, yet daring for its time in how it exposed my pregnancy. Nylons, of
course, of a tan shade (it was late summer, hot in Oregon, but I hadn’t been
able to “lay out,” because my three-year old didn’t care to do so with
me.) Shoes: not too high-heeled, modest, patent leathered. A charm bracelet.
Flag-red lipstick and Color Me Sexy mascara.
My husband said I looked very nice. “I’ll come,
too,” he announced. “After all, I’m a planner.” A rare joke from him, but
apt—he was an urban planner for the city. “I have ideas, too,” he said. “Men
are getting a raw deal with this ‘new woman’ stuff.” He drove.
The Woman’s Place Bookstore was a hole in the wall on Grand
Avenue, tucked between a laundromat and a pub, books stacked and T-shirts
hanging under a hand-painted sign in the window. I had expected Powell’s Books,
or some such larger venue, but conceded that we women had to start somewhere.
Wink parked the car and we entered.
The bookstore was small but comfortable-looking. To the
side, several bookshelves held neatly signed sections of books: Fiction;
Adventure; Politics; Gay/Lesbian; Nonfiction. In a small reading section,
telephone wire spools served as coffee tables, and racks of journals and
magazines leaned against the walls. A big, overstuffed chair covered with
chenille spread was lighted by a floor lamp with a faux Tiffany shade.
A short, robust woman with huge biceps and skinny legs
walked toward us, lifting an arm and waving, “Hi, there, you here for the
meeting?”
“We are,” I said, cheered.
“Great, OK, wonderful. We’re meeting right through there.” She
pointed to a door opening at the back of the store, the entrance strung with
long strings of colored beads. The scent of cannabis wafted in.
“Right.” We moved toward the door.
She looked at my husband and put her hand up. “Hey, no offense,”
she said with a smile, “but men aren’t allowed. This is just for women.”
How awkward. I was sure he expected me to defend his presence. We
would say thanks anyway and leave, go to the Cheerful Tortoise for a beer and
some dancing, maybe pay the babysitter more to stay later. But something
propelled me forward. I had come this far.
“No problem,” I replied, turning to him. “Look, dear, you can wait
here in that chair. There’s stuff to read. I’m sure I won’t be too long.”
Don’t you think he should have known then? What the year ahead had
in store for him? But, then again, how could he know when I didn’t?
I hugged my purse a little tighter under my arms and marched forward
toward the beads, not waiting for his reply.
I entered the back room. The shock! What had I
expected? Folding chairs lined up in rows? A podium for a speaker? A black
board on which scribes would chalk our ideas in columns?
Ten or so women sat in a circle, dressed in jeans, sweatshirts or
Tees, sock-footed or booted, cropped hair, no make-up. Low light from
various-styled lamps seeped into dark corners. No chairs, everyone
lounged on the floor, cross-legged or head resting on an angled arm. A joint
passed languidly between them. Snacks on plates. I was a cruise ship
in a fishing harbor, a peacock among pigeons, and suddenly I trembled in my
high heels, as though balancing on a construction beam high off the
ground.
We all froze, looking at each other. “Well, hey,” a woman named
Joan jumped up. “Maybe you’d like a chair?” She gestured to the woman next to
her. “Sally, get a chair for the lady.”
Sally jumped up and moved to a closet.
“No, no,” I braved, “I can sit on the floor, too. But have you a
pillow?” Sally tossed a tasseled pillow to Portia, who handed it gently to me.
I sat, pulling my jumper down over my bared but nyloned knees, legs cuddled
decorously beneath me, like spoons. “My name is Katharine,” I
cleared my throat, which had suddenly become wet with phlegm. “I’m here on
behalf of married women.”
Several weeks passed in a flurry of preparation. We
discussed my ideas, which met with some doubt. I held my ground, however, and
the committee members relented, though they suggested revisions, and though at
times I thought they smiled behind my back. Even so, we all worked well together.
These new women, these lesbians, one and all as I learned, welcomed me kindly
and sometimes even enthusiastically.
They designated me to rent the venue, to arrange for the rental of
chairs, and to hire childcare workers from Fruit and Flower. I set up
the non-profit bank account and negotiated a fee at the printer’s. I worked
with the librarian at Portland State College to print the flyers, the programs,
and the postcards on the college’s new-fangled copy machine. We plastered the
flyers on telephone polls and bulletin boards, and mailed them to members
of “the community,” as the gay membership was called, and to the YWCA’s
mailing list.
It didn’t occur to me then that I was handy to use as the
conservative-looking front-woman assigned to deal with the traditional public.
I felt important and needed.
I began to like these strange women, who didn’t seem so
strange after a while. In fact, they seemed admirable. Astonishingly, they all
worked in what I called “outside the home,” in non-traditional jobs. Gayle was
a photographer for the Oregonian, though a man carried her cameras
for her; Schobeth was an ENT doctor, and Portia administered two shelter
programs for women escaping domestic violence. True, after having put Wink
through college, I had returned to school and become a middle-school teacher,
an acceptable job for a woman, though Wink had chafed and preferred that I stay
home. Now, I was earning my masters degree in education, with Wink's begrudging
approval, taking women's studies courses for social studies credits. Still, I
continued to maintain the home, cleaning and cooking, washing and ironing, and
taking major responsibility for raising our son.
Caligula (the short, big-bicepped woman) operated a backhoe for
Thomas Landscape Design—the only woman on the crew. For her first six months,
men had posted crude posters of naked women inside her locker at work; not to
be intimidated, she had posted on their lockers pictures of naked men and of
penises wearing hats. The coup de grace occurred the
morning Caligula came in waving a battery-operated vibrator at them, chasing
them around the locker room. Eventually, they slapped her on the back, began to
call her “Cal,” and called off the hunt.
I liked these lesbians, but I was repulsed by the fact of
lesbianism, and feared for my safety among them. My rules were clear, and I
made them known by issuing a printed Declaration of Rules:
1) I was not to be touched, even inadvertently
2) no hugs (they were a hugging bunch);
3) no putting our heads together (they were a huddling bunch,
grouped too closely for my comfort, looking over floor plans, studying menus);
and
4) no attempting to seduce me (“Heyyyy, Kath, ever thought
about…?” – NOT allowed.)
For the most part, they seemed to find my Declaration of Rules
amusing. But Caligula smarted. "I'm so sick of this shit," she said.
"Why would we want to touch you.”? I felt oddly hurt.
I am embarrassed now at my arrogance then; saddened that I so
well-reflected the tenor of the times, the hatred of gays; and amazed at how
tolerant these friends were of my homophobia.
The YWCA was the chosen venue because it had a large conference
room, several breakout small rooms for workshops, and a fully stocked kitchen
with dishes, pots and bowls, folding tables—everything needed for the simple
lunch we would serve. I set up the sound system (a record player and some ‘45s
and a couple of LPs) and assigned a “music director” who would make sure
appropriate music played during the lunch, though I lost the contest between
classical music and the new mail-ordered women’s music (I recall Alix
Dobkin’s Lavender Jane Loves Women. Or Cris Williamson’s The
Changer and the Changed. The Deadly Nightshade, for sure.)
We were all very excited. Over 100 women signed up and
paid the $10 registration fee. More came and paid at the door. A few brought
children, who were lodged in the front lobby. I had been in charge of stocking
the childcare room; I brought my son Greg's play garage, Etch-a-Sketch, books,
plastic animals, and Mr. Potato Head. Gayle brought her niece's
dolls—Baby Tender Love and Raggedy Ann and Andy. A conflict on the planning
committee had been whether or not to bring the ever-popular GI Joes (I didn't)
Barbie dolls (Gayle didn’t) or a toy kitchen (she did.) The favorite
– Greg's Big Wheel – raced through the lobby until a stiff-lipped volunteer put
an end to the noise.
I lay awake most of the night before the conference, practicing my
presentation for my workshop, “Married Women in the Women’s Movement - How Do
We Fit?” I had compiled a packet of handouts, like “Family Management is a
Full-Time Job,” “Quick 3-Minute Meals Any Husband Can Make;” and “Hairdos
Without Bothersome Curlers,” all designed for the housewife on the go.
No one came to my workshop. I waited ten minutes but not a single
woman showed up. Disappointed, devastated really, I was also interested. What
had happened? Was there no role for married women in this
movement? The problem for us, as we had eagerly explored in our
consciousness-raising groups, was where do we belong, and doing what? How can
we combine our busy lives as mothers and wives with the realization of other
dreams, other goals, work, professions, and the like?
Over the past months of introspection and confessions, some of us
realized we were deeply unhappy with the direction our lives were taking. I,
for one, had wanted to go to New York and become an actress, or become a lawyer
and fight for people’s basic rights, but here I was married, at home, going to
graduate school in a respectable—for a woman—field; education. I had come from
a broken, crazy childhood home and hadn’t planned on having children, but here
I was with a three-year old son, conceived to save a breaking marriage, and
another child on the way. My husband, like me, had been raised with traditional
expectations: he would make the money to support the family; I would make
babies, dinner, and a happy home. What had happened to my dreams?
I wandered into the YWCA hall, looking for comfort. Next door, in
a much larger room, women were packed, sitting on the floor or in folding
chairs, listening to Schobeth speak. The name of the workshop? “ Hair Today,
Gone Tomorrow.” I went in and sat down. Schobeth had computed the time it takes
for women to shave their legs and under their arms during the course of their
lives. She proposed that in that amount of time, a woman could have become a
doctor, or built a log cabin from scratch. At the Q and A, a woman added to
that computation the time it takes for a woman to coif her hair: style it,
color it, put it in curlers, and rat it, during which she could have driven on
an adventure cross-country in a convertible, or planted, harvested, and sold a
fortune in marijuana. The workshop erupted in a wild, wonderful exposure of
time lost in cooking, cleaning, dressing up, putting on nylons and makeup, and
attending hours-long concerts of untalented little children. One woman even
produced a pair of scissors and clipped off her braids. It was a sparkling
pandemonium. I never shaved my legs or under my arms again. Or
wore that blue jumper. Or high heels and make-up.
I moved through the conference that day in a trance of thrill. The
months that followed were a miasma of chaos and revolution.
Following advice from the workshop “And Why Shouldn’t He?” I
refused to do the dishes or cook every meal. “You want dinner?” I said
querulously to Wink. "Do you have hands?" He would ask, "Where's
breakfast?" and I would snipe, "Do the dinner dishes, so I have
something to serve it on.” Poor Wink. He was befuddled and sad.
The workshop “We are All Lesbians,” terrified me, and I had overly
defensive arguments with other participants, who kept asking “Why not?” I still
maintained my distance, though I puzzled the answer.
The workshop “Give Credit Where Credit is Due” led me to a
blistering fight with Nordstrom’s over whether I could have a credit card in my
own name.
“What’s In A Name” was the workshop that set me off on the
road to my eventual name change—from my mother-designated given names (Kathleen
Bahen), my father’s last name (Welch), and my husband's last name (Brooks), to
my new, agonized-over, then carefully chosen “name of my own”—Katharine
English: “Katharine” after my favorite actress, Katharine Hepburn—would it make
me tall, svelte, and sophisticated? Only in my own mind. And “English”—I had
just finished Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and
loved the serene and enigmatic English countryside. (I must have forgotten the
book's scene in which flocks of sheep had stampeded and leapt over a cliff to
their deaths.)
The First Annual Conference on The New Woman conference was over.
“A great success” everyone cheered. We cleaned up, sang songs as we did
the dishes, and rehashed salient moments in the workshops. Caligula took a spin
on the Big Wheel. We turned out the lights, locked the building, and loaded
Greg's toys in my car. “Let’s celebrate,” Gayle suggested. “Beer is half-price
tonight at The Rising Moon.” She turned to me, “Come on, Kath, and join us for
once.”
I wanted to. I liked these brassy women with whom I had been
working so closely for weeks, wanted to spend the evening with them, longing
for a cold beer. "OK," I conceded, "But only on one
condition.”
They all laughed. “OK, hit us with it.” Portia rolled her eyes.
“I don’t want any of you to ask me to dance.”
————
The Rising Moon was a dark, smoky, red-velvety bar, unmarked on
the outside; a brutish bouncer sat on a stool at the door, turning away men.
The Byrds blared from the jukebox, two booted, overalled, short-haired dykes
named Lou and Les) hunched at the pool table, sinking balls like pro. A
long-haired femme fatale named Sappho shot darts into a poster of Nixon; and
two beauties kissed at the bar—Ocean’s hand simultaneously cupped her beer on
the counter, while her other hand held Angel's waist. Cigarette
smoke curled around Angel’s long chestnut hair.
Women packed into red-vinyled booths—some sitting on laps, others
sitting backwards on chairs at a booth’s end, feet tapping to the music. To
order drinks, a woman shouted at the bartender-owner, “Sally, over here, two
Heinekens and a Bud Light.” “Comin’ up,” Sally yelled back, over
blasting music and squeals from somewhere. The mood was festive, invigorating;
several couples hip-bumped on the sawdust-strewn dance floor.
Two women were locked together on
the dance floor, swaying to “Desperado.” A slinky blond in high
boots was at the pool table, her long hair brushing the green felt as she sunk
the #3, then #2, then #1, slowly chalking her cue between strikes. A
stocky woman in overalls and climbing boots stepped up to the bouncer, said
"Hi" to Schobeth, then waved a dart she was holding at my red, white,
and blue jumper, and yelled out friendly-like, “Nice duds.”
“Hey, Portia,” a short, pony-tailed woman shouted at us as we
entered. “Finally got her to come, did you? ‘Bout time. I'll join you?” She
joined us as we headed for a booth. “How’d it go, the
conference?” We sat. The dart woman, Hera, pressed into me as we
squished into the booth, looked at my protruding stomach. “Wow,
girl, can I feel that babe kick? “ She hailed the bartender. “Hey, Sally, come
on over. We gotta baby here.” Women followed Sally over.
What was I to do? They wanted to feel the baby kick. They wanted
to feel the taut skin under my jumper, the roundness, and the quickening life.
I let them. When they placed their hands on my belly, they quieted, as though
they would hear bells ring and horns blow. They started at each kick, then
oohed and aahed, called more friends over for a feel.
I had heard and had believed that lesbians were out to convert
straight women, so I was vigilant. I imagined these hordes of lesbians
molesting me, a disgusting depravity. I was ready with a slap, an alarmed “Stop
that!” The Exit was in sight, and I had money for a cab. I was nervous
and afraid.
Yet no woman moved her hands up to my breasts or down to my
crotch. Their hands were soft and gentle on my stomach. Angel laid her head on
my belly, and her hair swept over my hips and tickled my nyloned leg. A woman
whose name I never learned, sang and said that the song would bring the baby
luck. Hera tapped my stomach and talked at it, "Hey there, little
one. You have no idea!" I began to relax, blooming with pride. While
the ladies lined up to check out this baby, Cal got me a beer. Unaware, back in
the early ‘70s, of the damage alcohol can cause to a fetus, I relished the cold
liquid, the frost on the mug, and the strong smell of hops. We began to
talk about babies, about bringing them into this world of the '70s, how by the
turn of the century—the year 2000—this new human would be twenty-seven years
old. What would it be like then? One beer went down pretty fast, and
someone stuck another in front of me.
“What’s it like, carrying that dude around?” Helen (“Harpy” they
called her) asked, as though it might be like carrying the Queen’s crown on a
pillow. I didn’t tell her it was a bitch; it was like carting an anvil hanging
from your belt.
“How do you sleep? What position?” Naomi asked. Ha! Sleep?
Eight months pregnant? In your dreams. “On my side,” I answered.
"Whatcha gonna name it?" I would name a girl Cean,
because she was conceived at the ocean. They liked that. I would name a boy
Nathanael, after the writer Nathanael West.
"Oh my God, why?" exclaimed Hera, who, as I found out,
taught English at a magnet school. "A writer who had four failed books?
Wrote about scummy Hollywood? Died young in a car crash?"
I smiled. "West was a great artist. Take Miss
Lonelyhearts. What a soul that man had."
"Ha," she laughed. "We'll see what your son thinks
about that."
As it turns out, my son Nathan, a geo-chemist by profession, was
not happy about that.
“Shit, “ Portia said sadly. “Margo and Sabrina tried getting
pregnant with a turkey baster. Her ex- gave them the sperm.” I should have been
shocked, but the smoky air, the women squashed happily in the booth, the
raucous shouts of “Bulls-eye!” floating from the dart players, cast a spell.
“Don’t any of you have kids?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, some do,” Cal said. “But none of us gets to see them.
The Courts, you know.”
A definite pause fell over the women. Then Hera said, “You know,
that’s gonna change someday. You wait and see.” She turned to me. “Hey, you’re
taking that Women and the Law class at PSU, right? Maybe you should become a
lawyer.”
“I’ll drink to that,” the singing woman cheered, raising her mug
in the air. Several women, myself included, clinked our mugs and cheered,
“Hurrah! Here's to our future lawyer!”
I slipped comfortably down a bit in the booth, opened my legs
under the table, for air, to unstick my thighs. Another beer appeared before
me. The women were telling jokes now.
I told a joke: “How many lawyer jokes are there?”
A pregnant pause. "OK, tell us. How many," Schobeth
asked.
“Only one. The rest are true.” We all laughed. The
Eagles crooned from the jukebox.
I wanted someone to ask me to dance.
No comments:
Post a Comment