WE WERE HERE

Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake lived together for over 40 years in a relationship that was, for all intents and purposes, a marriage. Their community recognized it. Their relatives recognized it. They did not live in the shadows, have relationships with men to throw off the scent, or cower from public duty. They were considered to be good neighbors, trusted friends to members of the community, and a couple in whom local families placed a great deal of trust, when it came to educating young women in the seamstress/tailor trade. While they died years apart, they are buried in the same plot, and share a tombstone.

None of this sounds all that shocking: this could be a story about two women living in Park Slope, in 2019. It isn't. Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake lived in rural Vermont, in the first half of the 19th century.

Until very recently, erasure of gay lives has been the norm (and still is, in many places). The well-documented lives Charity and Sylvia led as a loving, devoted couple, however, makes me think of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We don't - we CAN'T - know the names of all of those who have been erased over the centuries, but we do know the names Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake. More than 200 years after they first got together, their names scream out:

 "WE WERE HERE, AND WE STILL ARE"

To Be Fair....You're Part of the Problem

I've now encountered several people online who point out that HBO's series, Gentleman Jack, reminds them of Sarah Waters' novels, specifically Tipping the Velvet. I take serious issue with this comparison, as it is nothing more than an example of the fact that we live in a heteronormative society which demands - sometimes loudly, but sometimes very quietly - that queer people remain content with the status quo.

One person who noted the similarities between Gentleman Jack and Waters' novels even prefaced her impression with the phrase, "To be fair" As in, "To be fair, Sarah Waters books are what came to mind...."

To be fair? Fair about what? About heteronormative society's ongoing insistence that one narrative or aesthetic which doesn't conform to the status quo is exactly like any other?

Gentleman Jack is based on the diaries of a very real woman, named Anne Lister. Lister lived in the late 18th and first half of the 19th century. She was a wealthy landowner and businesswoman. She traveled the world. She often wore what were considered to be manly clothes because they suited her. She did this openly, without subterfuge. I do not believe there is a single account of Lister impersonating a man. If there is, the HBO show has not at all touched on it, and I see no indication that it will ever be the case. Gentleman Jack is a story about a homosexual, arguably cross-dressing woman who was wealthy enough to live life on her own terms, as early as 1820 or so. It is set in rural Halifax, England, where Lister's significant holdings  - including coal mines - were.

Sarah Waters has written several novels - most of them very, very good. Read them. They're worth the time. But they have nothing to do with Anne Lister, and they bear no resemblance to Gentleman Jack, except for the fact that most of them revolve around protagonists who are lesbians, or women who fall in love with other women (there IS a difference.) There are few enough of them that going over them is pretty simple.

Tipping the Velvet is a picaresque novel set in the 1890s, and revolves around a young, working class woman from, I believe, Cornwall. She becomes enamored of a celebrated singer/dancer whose schtick is performing in male garb, and impersonating a man. The protagonist, Nan, eventually ends up having a steamy love affair with this actress, and herself taking to the stage as a male impersonator. While the the two women perform in male garb, their act is NOT a lesbian act, per se. It is mainstream, family-friendly entertainment where the very idea of two pretty women dressed up as men is all a bit of a joke. The real joke, of course, is on the mainstream audience, who have no idea that the two women are lovers off stage. This is only a small portion of the novel. The bulk of the novel takes place in seedy London, where Nan has a series of adventures - and misadventures - which include: leading a secret life as rough trade: impersonating a young man and providing sexual favors to older men, in exchange for money...living in the lap of luxury, but also complete servitude, as the sex slave of a very wealthy lesbian...ending up homeless and starving...finding true love with a woman from her past...and finding a real home and family in the burgeoning socialist movement.

Fingersmith is a heist/double-cross novel set in 1800s England - no specific year is given, but I'd hazard to guess mid-century. Its plot revolves around a hardscrabble group of pickpockets and conmen and women, and a plan to carry out a major heist, in the way of cheating an heiress out of her fortune. There are two protagonists: Sue and Maud. Sue is an orphan and life-long criminal - a master thief. Maud is a seemingly innocent, naive young woman who has been cloistered in the home of her wealthy, tyrannical uncle. The two women, who each have plans to cheat and swindle the other, end up becoming sexually attracted to one another and, eventually, falling in love. The novel delves into the dark world of 19th century pornographic trade, and the entire story is built upon a series of secrets and lies: secrets and lies about people's identities, their sexual natures, their true intentions, their true feelings about one another.

Affinity is a gothic novel set in Victorian England, and revolves around the spiritualism fad which overtook the nation during this era. It involves an upper-class woman who volunteers her time as a visitor to convicted women who are serving their sentences at a local prison. Margaret is taken in by not only the sexual charms of one of the female inmates, but also by an elaborate plot which relies on her gullibility regarding the spiritualist movement, and messages from beyond. Like Fingersmith, it's a multi-layered story about a con job.

The Night Watch is a sweeping historical novel which chronicles the interconnected lives of a group of characters in London - including two lesbians - before, during and after WWII.

The Little Stranger is an old-fashioned, spooky yarn, set in the late 1940s. The backdrop is a once-grand country estate which is falling to ruin, and seems to be suffering from a sort of curse or haunting. This novel is best described as a ghost story where the real ghost is the past, itself. The main characters are  Dr. Faraday,  a country doctor, and Caroline Ayres, the spinster who runs the crumbling estate and tries to keep order for her rapidly deteriorating family. Themes in this novel include: post-war reconstruction, socialism, class distinction, and shell shock/PTSD. There is not a gay person in sight.

The Paying Guests is a sort of literary noir set in post WWI England which revolves around a boarding house, two women engaged in a lesbian affair, and a murder. Themes include class, post-war reconstruction and economic change, abortion, and the nature of love.

The ONLY thing Anne Lister's life and Gentleman Jack have in common with Sarah Waters' novels is that almost all of Waters' pieces revolve around women who exhibit romantic love for other women.

Not one of the novels is set in the same place and time as Lister.

Not a one of them has a plot even remotely like the life story of Anne Lister - either in history, or as portrayed thus far on HBO's series.


"To be fair," it's not reasonable or rational for anyone to equate one of these with the other, and such a thing can only happen when a person has it in their mind that one lesbian's story is just like any other lesbian's story. It's like saying that A Raisin in the Sun reminds one of The Wiz, because both involve black characters. It's THAT ridiculous.

If you're still not getting why this bothers me, and bothers me A LOT, and still think it's a perfectly reasonable comparison because, after all, Waters usually writes about lesbians and Anne Lister was a lesbian? Think about someone saying that Sophie's Choice reminds them of The Sting, because Robert Redford and Peter Macnicol both wore caps in their roles. That sounds incredibly stupid, doesn't it? Of course it does. Because it IS incredibly stupid. And, if I were to say, "To be fair, one reminds me of the other because of the caps," you'd think I was a pretty damned shallow person who based my ideas about film on fucking HATS, instead of actual content. And you'd be right.

To be fair: lesbians are pretty much just like other people in most respects, and lesbian stories are as varied as stories about heterosexual people are. If you really think it's ok to ask me to be "fair" and accept your assessment that one lesbian-themed story is just like any other, what you're asking me to do is get in line and accept the heteronormative code of nonsense. If you know me, you know that's just not going to happen.

Antidote

Four Inches

The scar is just over four inches across. Just above the pubic area, under my lower-most bits of belly fat. It hurts like hell. My understanding is that they opened up this wound and discovered a much bigger mass than they expected. Almost certainly nothing but a benign - if painful - fibroid tumor. But, still. They were expecting a tangerine. They got a grapefruit. From the four inch incision they removed my uterus (which housed the tumor), my cervix, and my fallopian tubes. My healthy and productive ovaries remain in tact. Of course, getting to this meant cutting through not only skin, but fat and muscle and I-don't-know-what-else. Which is why this hurts so much, even a week later, and will keep hurting, I hear, for several weeks.

Imagine someone kicking the shit out of you with his steel-toe Doc Martins. Now imagine that guy is giving you this ass-kicking not from the curb or some street corner, but from the inside out. Yes. Imagine this steel-toe-booted thug is living in your abdominal cavity, and kicking the ever-living shit out of you from inside your own body. That's what it feels like. That little bastard is lucky to have such excellent cover. If anyone tried to pull this shit on me from the outside, I'm pretty sure I'd murder them. Instead, I just keep taking pain-killers that do little more than take the edge off, and brace myself before doing anything drastic. Like breathing. Or sitting. Or standing. So, yeah....I brace myself for everything. This morning, a sneeze made me see stars and call out for my mother, who hasn't been alive since 2010.

I expected the physical pain (although I have to admit I never imagined it being quite THIS intense and unrelenting) but the other pain comes as a surprise to me. The uterus they cut out of me never housed anything more than a fibroid. Babies never sprung from it. George Washington did NOT sleep here. I'm sad about this, and a little guilty. Not that I was in any position ten days ago to do anything about it: I am 47 years old and perimenopausal. Still, the finality of this is really difficult to deal with. I keep thinking about my mother and my grandmother, both of whom seemed made for motherhood. They were both really fucking good at it, too. Growing up under their auspices, I learned to value motherhood above all other callings. Somehow, though, I never felt it would be right to try and tackle it myself, even though I love children, and have always wanted them. Now, long after it's too late to double back and rethink the choices I've made, I'm filled with both sadness and guilt. Sadness for obvious reasons. Guilt? I feel as if I've let the fine women who came before me down. They set such a great example, but I never picked up the proverbial ball and ran with it. They shared so much with me, in a way that one can only share with one's flesh and blood. I don't have a daughter to pass it all along to. It's ridiculous that I should find this painful: I've never even WANTED a daughter, but a son.  Now, though, at 47, and medically barren, I feel sad about not having brought another generation of girls into my direct line. In fact, my direct line will end, forever, with me. I can't help but think this would make both my mother and my grandmother a little sad; that they gave me so much, and I haven't made provisions for it all to keep going forward. And, now, through the decision to get this surgery (which will improve my quality of life, but was in no way an emergency procedure that saved my life in any way, as far as I know) I've made it all very final. My brain knows that they would understand. That, in fact, they DO understand, wherever they are, now, both part of everything.  My gut, though, my aching gut keeps wanting to apologize and tell the best women I've ever known that I've meant no disrespect by making such different choices. I'm not even completely happy with some of those choices, but they're irrevocable, and I have no choice but to make peace with them.

A couple of days ago, a doctor who is not my regular physician had occasion to look at my scar.  "How beautiful!" She exclaimed, "That's a lovely bit of work and a gorgeous scar. And it's healing so well and so quickly. You and your surgeon could be the poster children for tidy surgery and optimal healing! You're barely going to see this, when the healing is complete."

I'll see it.  Always. All four inches of it.

Be Scared

Unless you've been living under a rock, and a rock with no wifi or 3G signal, you know it's one hell of a time to be alive in the world. Sure, DOMA has been overturned, but all's not exactly honky dory in the world:

• Texas has handed women a great, big "fuck you."  
• A Florida jury has decided shooting an unarmed black kid sounds like self-defense, and
• Russia has made my very existence illegal.

Last week, all of this upset me. A lot. I'm usually a pretty tough customer,  and I rarely take things to heart, but enough is enough because:

• I'm a woman. 
• I'm of mixed race.
• I'm a lesbian. 

On account of who I am and how I live my life, this crap, all at once, hit a little too close to home. For a couple of days, I chose to just unplug and avoid the Internet, except for the occasional private message. I was that upset. And, when I say "upset," I mean both angry AND hurt. I have to admit it: I was feeling really, fucking injured.

And then, this morning, I saw this, and it changed everything. It made me angry. And I felt injured for a moment. And then I laughed. I laughed at the the world because:

• I'm a woman.
• I'm of mixed race.
• I'm a lesbian.
• I'm Puerto Rican.

In short, I pose more of threat to close-minded,  shaking-in-their boots redneck assholes than anyone else I can think of. Not just in Texas or Florida, but globally. Even Russia is afraid of me. And guess what, motherfuckers? I'm all of those things AND I'm a U.S. citizen by birth (as all Puerto Ricans are, you idiots) and I never, ever miss an opportunity to vote. I am your worst fucking nightmare come true: a mixed race, hispanic lesbian who is well-educated, articulate, and politically active.  To add insult to injury, I'm from Brooklyn. Not the Brooklyn of whiney, privileged Lena Dunham. The Brooklyn of Azimov and Auden, Basquiat and Chisolm, Dershowitz and Fierstein. The Brooklyn of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  And, in case you haven't noticed? I never shut the fuck up.

Scared yet? You should be. We're legion.

Whatever: On National Coming Out Day

So, it's National Coming Out Day. I'm of divided minds about this. 

On the one hand, I think it's a little lame and that the whole idea of having a coming out day even further oversimplifies the whole thing. People who aren’t gay have this idea that coming out is something a person does and gets over with, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. There is no getting it over with. Coming out is something most gay people have to do over and over again, during our lives. We come out to parents. To friends. To neighbors. To nosy people who get it into their heads to fix us up with nice guys they know. To nice guys (and not so nice guys) who have other ideas. And, really the bad parts about coming out do not ever get any better. I mean, the words, themselves, are easier to say, but the feeling that the bottom might fall out from under my feet once I’ve spilled the beans to a particular person? That feeling has never gone away, and probably never will. Because there will always be assholes and bigots in the world. Because there are still lots of places where being gay can mean losing a job, losing an apartment, losing custody of one's children...even losing friends and family.

I'm annoyed by National Coming Out Day because I want coming out to be over and done with, once and for all. Because coming out over and over, again can be like pulling off a scab before a cut has fully healed. Who fucking needs it?


On the other hand...


Anyone who knows me or has read this blog for any length of time knows that my appreciation of Maureen Garrett runs deep and true. A fine, fine actress who really should have made the jump from soaps to the big screen, the way Julianne Moore (and so many others) did. Her long-term relationship with another woman was never a secret - lots of us knew about it. I've never met Garrett, and even I knew about it. But she, herself, never discussed it publicly - which was her prerogative. I have to say, though, as much of a cynic about this whole coming out business as I may be, it does my heart good to find out that Garrett has decided to officially come out and talk about her partner and their children.

Way back when, I had this idea that the writers at Guiding Light passed on what could have been a great opportunity when they had Garrett on hand for a short time. But, hey - who cares what they did or didn't do on a tv show? A television show may be the reason I know this woman exists, and how I came to appreciate her talent, but the real-life milestone she's just marked is so much more significant than anything Holly Norris could have imagined.

In spite of myself, I find myself appreciating stupid, old National Coming Out Day.

Give It A Rest - NSFW

Lately, I've found the whole business of being gay really fucking exhausting. This isn't to say I hate being a lesbian...or that I wish I could switch teams (although, let's be honest - just about anyone who claims they've never wished for an easier path is full of shit.) I'm saying it's a freaking exhausting business, because there's so much to be said about it. And everyone has an opinion, good or bad. Chick-fil-A, Westboro Church, the LDS, those crazy housewives who hate JC Penney.....they're so sickening, so tiresome. And exhausting. Don't they ever stop? Don't they ever just get tired of talking about how much they hate me, and how I'm going to hell? Really, it's ok that you hate me. I don't mind it. Go ahead and hate me. Just shut the fuck up about it, will you? I GET IT, YOU HATE ME. I JUST DON'T CARE IF YOU LIKE ME OR APPROVE OF ME. I JUST WANT YOU TO SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT, ALREADY.

Here's the thing: since the beginning of time there have people who found homosexuality repugnant and evil. People who have written and passed laws to punish homosexuals. People who have restricted the rights of homosexuals. People who have dedicated their lives to smear campaigns against homosexuals. Hating gays is old as shit, but here's the thing about it: hate me all you want, disapprove of who I am all you want, tell me I can't marry a woman, or hold a certain job, or have certain rights...do that all you want. You can open clinics  where you try and "cure" gays, and start churches that force gay people to behave as straight people would...you can do whatever the hell you want, but it doesn't change one very crucial piece of this whole puzzle: I WILL ALWAYS LOVE WOMEN. And not just women as an idea. I mean I LOVE WOMEN AND I LOVE THEIR VAGINAS. Pussies. Cunts. Quims. Bearded Oysters. Punani. Poontang. Fannies. Beavers.  Nappy Dugouts. Chochas. Box Lunches at the Y. Honey Pots. Hush Puppies. Cooters.  And, just so you don't think I'm all one-note and crude about this: I'm also attracted to the way women walk, talk, reason, laugh, tell stories, get shit done, argue, cook, have babies, and generally frustrate me and drive me insane. But, yeah, I like vag. I always will. No amount of back-assward-activism is going to change that about me - or about ANY lesbian - so what the fuck is the point?

Give it a fucking rest.

Carved

"You coming?' she called out.
"I'm right here," I replied from a dozen feet behind.
The sun had gone down and the tall grass made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, even by the light of a flashlight. She stopped and waited for me to catch up as I moved in the darkness. When I reached her, she took my hand and said, "We're almost there," and we walked on. As we walked, we heard the faint sound of a band practicing in an abandoned barn a quarter mile away. Vermont was like that at night - an amphitheater for whatever dared cut through the darkness. On this night it was a Grateful Dead cover band, crickets, and the sound of our Sorels cracking through dry mud.

After a minute or two the tall grass gave way to a clearing where cattle had recently grazed.
"There," she said, training the flashlight beam on a lone maple about 15 feet away. It was a big, full tree. I imagined the cattle must meet in clusters under it on sunny days, as it would have provided the only shade to be had. We walked on and, when we reached it, she gave the trunk a pat with her hand.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"You were right. It's perfect," I said, taking off my backpack and digging around in the front pocket, "How did you ever find this spot?"
"Just taking a long walk, one day." she answered,  shining the flashlight into my bag to help me  in my search, "No one knows I come here. Except you. We share a secret, now."

I found what I'd been looking for, and pulled it out of my backpack. The day before, we'd gone to the general store and chosen the one that felt right. An old-fashioned canoe knife, with two blades. Having never done this before, we'd agreed that having two blades to choose from would be an advantage. The knife had just felt right when we'd taken turns holding it in our hands. There'd been that, too.
I handed the knife to her.
"You go first. I'll hold the flashlight," I said.
"You sure?" she asked, "This was your idea - you should go first.."
"Yeah, but it's your secret spot. You go first."
She handed me the flashlight and opened the pocket knife, looking at both blades.
"Which do you think?" she asked.
"The shorter one," I answered, "better leverage."
"That's what I was thinking, too."
She tucked the longer of the two blades back into the handle, and chose a spot on the maple's trunk.
She leaned in and pressed her cheek against the tree, closing her eyes.
"Sorry if this hurts," she whispered. Then, opening her eyes, she looked at me and we smiled at each other.
Even though the bark is thin, maple is a hard wood. It took a few tries before she figured out how to hold the knife and get the blade to cut, and cut deeply enough. Mere scratches, after all, heal. For our purposes, what she needed to do was carve deeply, not just scratch the surface.
The first letter took a while but, in the end, it was a clean carving, and a deep one. It wouldn't disappear over time. She stepped back and looked at her progress, brushing away bits of bark. She moved back in and got to work on the second letter, which went more quickly. She'd worked out a rhythm, figured out how much pressure to use. In another minute she was done. We silently swapped knife for flashlight, and she lit the way as I went to work on my portion of our masterpiece. My process was much the same as hers had been - scratching away the thin, easy bark, and then carving into and scooping away the hard wood underneath. It took elbow grease.

When I was done, we both stepped back and admired our handiwork. I reached out and traced the deep grooves of my initials and hers.
"How old do you reckon this tree is?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said, "Pretty old, though," she answered.
"And how long does a maple tree live?"
"A long, long time," she said, "Longer than people. We'll probably be long gone and our initials will still be here for someone to find."
"That's sort of a comfort," I said.
"Could you find this place, again, if you had to?" she asked.
I shrugged, "I guess. I don't know. Yeah, sure."
"Let's make a promise, then," she whispered, putting her arm through mine, "Whichever one of us dies first, the other will come to this spot. This is where we'll visit one another."
I thought about that for a moment. "What if we die together? You know you're a speed demon on the road." I asked.
She laughed and, after pulling me in close and kissing me on the cheek, said, "In that case, we won't have to visit, because we'll really be together once and for all, won't we? Did you remember to bring the hot chocolate?"

We sat down on the ground. She propped the flashlight up against the tree trunk so that the beam of light shot straight up, illuminating the branches and spring leaves above us. I pulled the thermos out of my backpack and poured a cup of cocoa for her.  As she drank,  I took her free hand, playing with it,   examining it. I wanted to commit to memory how it looked, how it felt. I was fascinated by how different we were. Her hands were bony, with long, slender fingers and neatly cut nails. My own hands, small and fleshy, my nails bitten down low. After a few sips, she put down her cup of cocoa and leaned back against the tree. I lay my head down on her lap, and she gently stroked her fingers through my hair.

"I don't think I've ever told you about the house my parents used to have in Bermuda," she said, "We spent summers there. I had a best friend who was from the island. Gina and I would spend just about every day together. Every August, when it was time for my family to leave, Gina and I would cry and hug each other. My father would roll his eyes and say we were being tragic, but I hated to leave her and she hated to see me go. When we were 10, we decided to become blood sisters. We cut each others hands with a razor, rubbed palms together, mingling our blood, and took an oath to always be best friends."
I looked up. Her eyes were closed. She was in Bermuda.
"Did you keep that oath?" I asked.
"When I was 14, my parents had money troubles, and decided to sell the house in Bermuda. It was our last summer there. Gina and I were inconsolable. Before, even though it had been hard to leave, we'd always known I'd be back. This was different. I would be leaving and not coming back. My father didn't have much time for the whole thing, and said we were just creating drama, but Mum felt bad for me. She arranged for Gina to stay at our house for the whole last week we were there. We were together all the time. At night, we'd lie on mats in the screened-in porch, listening to tree frogs until we fell sleep. And then my parents took me back to London, and I haven't been back to Bermuda, since."
"And Gina?"
"I never saw her, again." she said. Then she opened her eyes, leaned down, and kissed my forehead, "But that's really ok."

© 2012 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves 

Wish You Were Here

It is the end of spring in New England. Mud season is coming to a close and the vast puddles of the stuff are drying up. I am 20. I am walking along a country road. Not a back road, but a paved rural route used by travelers and truckers. Having spent the night before drinking shots of rum, and the better part of the morning drinking beer, I am very drunk. In my mind, I am walking a straight line along the wide, gravel-covered shoulder, safe from traffic. In fact, I am a swaggering drunk, teetering towards the middle of a windy road. Any car coming up from behind one of the many bends  will find it almost impossible to avoid hitting me. Luckily, there seems to be no traffic on this overcast day. 

I stagger like this, aimlessly, for more than a mile before I hear a sound. Two sounds combined: a diesel engine, and a horn. I turn around in time to see the truck coming up behind me from around the bend. Self preservation is a powerful instinct. It kicks in and pushes me out of harm's way, to the outer edge of the shoulder, as the truck cruises by. The driver yells out, "idiot!" And rightfully so. I'm in no shape to be taking a walk.

It's true that self preservation is a powerful force, but so is a night of heavy drinking. I make it safely out of harm's way, but I do not land on my feet. Instead, I lose my balance as I jump from the paved road to the gravel shoulder,  and end up rolling into one of the last vestiges of mud season. It isn't a deep puddle, and it's almost dried up, but it's muddy, just the same. Now I'm muddy, too. I stand up, but the slippery mud sends me back onto my ass. Common sense takes over and I decide that crawling out of the mud and back onto the dry, gravel shoulder on hands and knees is my best bet. In a reenactment of the birth of man, I begin my crawl out of the primordial ooze just as I hear a car pulling up on the road, about 15 feet away. I do not look up. 

"Do you need help?" the driver calls out. I recognize the voice. My heart soars, and then sinks, again. It's her. She's the reason I'm drunk, in the first place. And now she sees me at my worst. Rock bottom. (Hardee har har. You have a hell of a sense of humor, God). Still, I don't look up. I hear the car door opening and then slamming shut. I hear her footsteps on the gravel, getting closer. "Are you ok?"   She asks and then, close enough to see through the mud, "Oh - it's you!"  I look up, and take the hand she offers me, and pull myself upright.

"I was taking a walk." I say, smiling, as if this happens every day, "I fell. Mud season isn't quite over, I guess."
She smiles, and I lose my breath for a moment.
"Are you still drunk?" she asks.
I just give her a puzzled look.
"You don't remember, do you? You called me last night. You were drunk. When I couldn't find you this morning, I got worried." She takes my hand and pulls me towards her car, "Come on, turkey - I'm buying you brunch." 
(Who says 'turkey"? She does.)
We get to her Toyota, she opens the back door, reaches in and sorts through a bunch of clothing that's piled on the back seat. She grabs a towel and spreads it over the the front passenger seat. Then she hands me a wadded up blue sweatshirt and says, "There's no one around - change into this. It's not exactly clean, but at least it's dry."
She is tall and slender. A dancer.  
"Your stuff will never fit me." I say, handing it back.
She sucks her teeth, and says, putting the shirt back in my hands "It's my gym shirt. It's really  baggy. It's a little stinky, but it'll fit. Hurry, while there's no one around." 
I change into the shirt. She's right - it fits. She's right about it being stinky, too, but I don't mind. It smells like her. 
A moment later I am sitting next to her and we are driving down the road, in search of waffles and coffee, as I wonder what it is I said the night before when I drunk dialed her. 

We have been to this place many times together. It's a funny, homey, New England diner tucked away in an unlikely strip mall. It's got a name. The Village Cafe. Or Country Cooking. Something like that. We never remember what it's really called, because the sign just says, "RESTAURANT."  That's become our private joke: "I'm hungry - let's go to RESTAURANT." 

At RESTAURANT, we sit opposite one another at a table in the corner, away from most of the other diners. The waitress is busy, and forgets to take our order, or even pour us coffee. Neither of us says anything about it. I'm not even sure we're actually hungry. We just sit there, looking at each other, talking about nothing in particular, humming along to the  music coming from the jukebox. The Eagles: Lyin Eyes.

"Are you warming up?' she asks me.
"I'm fine," I answer, "This shirt is cozy. I might steal it from you. My hands are cold, though. I should remind the waitress we're here and get her to pour me some coffee so I can warm them up."
She reaches across the table and takes my cold hands in her warm ones, brings them up to her mouth, and blows on them.
"Poor baby." she says, and I think my heart will break through my chest. Surely, everyone else in the room can hear it pounding. 
Lyin Eyes finishes and we hear the jukebox shuffling through the 45s as it gets ready to play the next song. She is still holding my hands, transferring the heat from her body to mine, when we hear the record drop and the stylus make contact with the vinyl. The gentle guitar intro is unmistakable. 
"This song -" I say, before she cuts me off.
"I know," she whispers, squeezing my hands tighter, "Me, too." 

© 2012 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves 

It Begins At Home

Recently, a young woman I know reached out to me for help in coming out to her friends. I hadn't even known that Cath (not her real name) was a lesbian. I really hadn't given it much thought. I like Cath but I don't know her well. At 20,  she's someone I think of as a "nice kid." I was touched that she chose me to talk to about something so important, and that she wanted my advice and support. Not only is our relationship more of an acquaintance than a friendship, but I'm not in any way an expert on this topic. I'm no longer young.  I'm not a social worker or counselor. I'm not someone who's experienced any significant struggles in this area.

What emerged, as Cath told me about her situation, was that her parents know she's a lesbian, and have known for a while. She disclosed to them years ago, assuming they'd be fine with it. Cath's parents, you see, are very liberal. They have lots of friends in the gay community. They've advocated for the rights of homosexuals. They raised Cath with the idea that people are people, and that homosexuality is just as normal as anything else.  In fact, Cath was born and raised in San Francisco, where her parents always took her to the annual Pride parade.  So, when Cath - then in her late teens -  disclosed to her parents, she did so with the expectation that she'd have their full support.  Sadly, this has not been the case.

Cath's parents did not take the news well, at all. Now, several years later, they're no closer to embracing who and what she is...no closer to supporting her as she prepares to disclose to her peers. Let me make this clear - Cath's parents are decent people. They love their daughter. They support, in theory, the equality of homosexuals to heterosexuals. They just don't seem very good at coping when faced with theory becoming a reality within their own family. They want to know where they went wrong. They want to know if they should have raised Cath differently. They've witnessed, first hand, how difficult life can be for homosexuals, and wonder why their child has "chosen" such a difficult path to tread. They are not bad people, but they are cliches. I hate to say it, but these good people are not being good parents. They're certainly not being friends to their daughter, when that's what she desperately needs, right now from them: friendship.  They probably don't realize it, but their lack of support is actually a rejection. And their rejection of who and what Cath is has undermined her self-confidence. She tested the waters with her parents - her nearest and dearest - and they blew it. Instead of finding the waters warm and calm, her parents' initial reaction and continued rejection has been as cold as an Alpine lake. This is one of the reasons she's turned to me - someone she barely knows - for friendship and support.

This morning, I woke up to this story, about a father who contacted a radio show, upset to discover his daughter may be a lesbian, and the radio show host suggesting that the father have one of his friends "screw her straight." Somewhere in America, some idiot father is getting advice from a shock-jockey, instead of sitting down and assuring his gay kid that she'll always be his kid, and that he'll always love her. Somewhere in America, some animal is suggesting rape as an antidote to female homosexuality.

This upsetting story made me think about Cath. While her parents are not fundamentally bad people, they're behaving badly. Their rejection has had a profound impact on her. They need to step back and realize that this is not about them, that Cath didn't open up to them because she wanted to punish them, or send them into a 4-year exercise in self-pity and self-absorption. She opened up to them because she thought she could count on them to be there for her. Sadly, they've failed her. They've failed her so badly that she's finally turned, after years of just quietly living with her parents' rejection, (Cath tells me her parents doubt she's really gay, and expect she'll "snap out of it" soon enough) to someone who is practically a stranger for friendship and validation.

I like Cath. I'm happy to be a friend to her. As I said, though, I'm not a social worker or a counselor. More importantly, though, I'm not a parent. I'm not Cath's parent. In her frustration, this young woman has turned to me because she likes what she knows about me and figures I won't insult her or question her decision to start coming out to her friends. And I won't. But I'm no substitute for a supportive parent, and a young person in this position who has parents shouldn't have to look for surrogates.

This stuff is supposed to begin at home, and it's not charity.

What are words worth?

Tom Tom Club said it best: Words are stupid, words are fun, words can put you on the run.

Rush Limbaugh used the word "slut" to describe a young woman who had the audacity to speak up about the healthcare needs of women with gynecological conditions requiring hormone therapy, and the walls came tumbling down.

Consider it a clarion call, I say. Words have power, but human beings have more power. Isn't it high time women reclaimed and re-appropriated this word? The LGBT community has successfully re-appropriated "dyke," "queer," and, to an extent, "fag." Feminists took back "spinster." Why can't American women do the same with "Slut"? How about we start owning the word, and not shy away from it? How about we take it on as our own, so it can never be used against us? How about a million of us wear t-shirts that say "SLUT" and show up outside of Rush Limbaugh's workplace? Or maybe just wear them around our own corners of the world to make a statement.

We Are The Ones We've Dreaded - Apologies to Alice Walker, Hot Woman of Color

When I was a kid, whenever the news reported about some Puerto Rican guy shooting someone, or we'd hear about a family member in trouble with drugs or the law, my dad would say, "Damn it - sometimes I think we're our own worst enemy!" I know how he felt.

While the queer community makes noise about Prop 8, the Tea Party assholes, DADT, Obama, and a million other injustices, it keeps missing one very important point: sometimes we're our own worst enemy. Sometimes, the bad guy isn't a conservative talk show host or a liberal apologist, a self-righteous straight person, a hospital administrator, or a religious zealot. Sometimes the enemy is the gay boy next door who lacks compassion. Sometimes it's the lesbian who, given the opportunity to make a statement about the way the media portrays us chooses, instead, to perpetuate the myth of lesbians as angry, damaged, co-dependent losers. This week? This week our worst enemy is AfterEllen.com, the website that's supposedly created an online community for lesbians. 

What, besides providing a messy, badly designed, poorly written online place for lesbians to get news, share ideas and chat about The L Word has AfterEllen.com done? I mean, it's an annoying site, but it's fun and harmless, right? Wrong. So wrong. This week AE unveiled their Hot 100 list because - hey, if straight guys get to objectify women, why shouldn't lesbians?  And, really, being a lesbian really is all about women drooling over other women, and not a hell of a lot else. (And, before you send me emails about how the Hot 100 list is chosen based on so much more than looks and sex appeal,  keep in mind the whole thing about the Miss America pageant being a scholarship competition.) 

What's so bad about AE's Hot 100 list, you may ask? What's so bad is that it's not a list, it's lists. Plural. One list consists of out lesbians. One list consists of women over 40. The third list? WOMEN OF COLOR. That's right - there's a separate list of minority Sapphic hotness!  

Why is this offensive, and why does it make me say that AE is our worst enemy this week? Think about it: when you make a list of hotness, and a separate list of ethnic hotness the implication is that one is REGULAR, and the other is, well, OTHER. According to AE, white is right and brown is a fetish. Way to go, AfterEllen.com - George Wallace would be proud of you!

As a "woman of color," I cordially invite the women of AfterEllen.com to kiss my fat, brown ass. 

 © 2010 Lana M. Nieves
Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves

Good Night, Lady

A couple of days ago the world lost Dixie Carter. If you listened hard enough, you heard an audible sigh from the LGBT community. Actually, you didn't have to strain your ears too much, because the mourners were so many. Dixie Carter, you see, was a rare gem: as iconic to gay women as she was to gay men. Where gay men and lesbians often come to figurative blows over how the world should be, what qualities we should look for in our idols, and exactly how important man-made constructs are when it comes to gender, Dixie Carter was the great equalizer. An icon we all adopted and loved. And it's all thanks to Julia Sugarbaker.

The Boys

The gay boys I know loved Dixie Carter/Julia Sugarbaker because she was bigger than life. Brash. Always well put together. A torch singer. Funny as hell. She was like - and I say this with love and respect - the best fucking drag queen you could ever hope to see. A lady, in the most traditional sense of that word.

The Girls

We loved Dixie Carter/Julia Sugarbaker because she was a strong woman. Her own boss. Practical. Not afraid to speak her mind. A woman who valued sisterhood and the friendship of other women. Witty as hell. A lady in the most nontraditional sense of that word.

Dixie's Julia Sugarbaker took the word "lady" and turned it on its ear. She wasn't a lady just because she was trained in old school Southern gentility, but because she managed to never let go of that composure, even when she was reaming someone a new one. Many people would say that a "lady" knows her place. Julia Sugarbaker knew her place, alright - up front and center. And, if a "lady" knows when to keep quiet, the lady Dixie Carter brought to life knew when to speak the hell up. She was a living example that being a "lady" has bugger all to do with accessorizing, and EVERYTHING to do with finesse, decency, and standing up for what's right.

The butchest butches and the femmiest femmes loved you, Julia Sugarbaker, as did bears, twinks, and every flavor in between. Maybe in part because we live in a world that often wishes we would sit down and shut up - two things you never, ever did until you were damned good and ready.

We will miss you Dixie Carter: actress, singer, stroppy woman, friend of the gay community. And, yes, a Republican.

And so it begins...

After months of teasers, anticipation, too much talk about booze and underwear, and a whole lot of hype, Crystal Chappell's Venice premiered last night amidst much fanfare. Fangirls welcomed the first installment with predictable enthusiasm: for so many, Crystal Chappell can do no wrong. Others declared it laughable and a failure. Both the praise and the shaudenfraude are premature and, I suspect, knee-jerk reactions. People who have invested months of of their time, and God-knows-how-much money supporting this project in anticipation of it being the great white hope of the lesbian community were going to declare it a work of brilliance, no matter what. People who decided, long ago, that they were rooting for the project's failure, whether because they dislike Crystal Chappell, hated Otalia, or were turned off by unsavory behavior on Twitter were going to declare Venice the worst show, ever, no matter what.

In my opinion, it's too soon to tell, either way.

Details, details, details

Before I even talk about the episode, itself, there are other details that really do need to be addressed.

First off, Venice is a web series. Why, then, have there been serious problems with the Venice website from day one? And why have these problems never been properly addressed? It was clear, very early on, that a server capable of handling heavy traffic would be needed for this project. The Venice team has supposedly upgraded to a bigger server at least twice, now and yet, on the very day of the show's premiere, www.venicetheseries.com crashed yet again. Last night, the night of the show's premiere? The Venicetheseries.com crashed, forcing most to view the first episode on Youtube.

All of this is irrelevant, anyhow, I guess, because the Venice website, when it was accessible, was a mess. The design is sloppy and illogical, and the site is full of stuff that simply doesn't belong there. Why, for instance, does the Venice website include community forum threads covering such topics as football, how to meet women, and Bad Girls? It's clear there has been absolutely no moderation of the community forums, and no efforts to keep the forum threads focused on Venice. Note to Crystal, Hope and Kimmy: Venicetheweries.com is not a series' website. It's clearly a social networking site for lesbians. (Sorry I can't give a more concise list of irrelevant topics covered in the Venice community forum area; the site is yet again down as I write this, making it impossible for me to get a complete list)

If the Venice website includes lots of irrelevant content, there has also been some very important stuff missing. Up until last night, there was no description of the series, itself. No character profiles. No actor bios. Until two days before the premiere, the specific details of the subscription rate was not made public on the Venice website. In fact, it was through an article in an obscure Israeli magazine that many fans found out about the $9.99 subscription rate. This lack of information until the 11th hour reeks of an unprofessional project.

Much has been made of this subscription scheme. Lots of people are angry about it. While I think $9.99 per season is too steep (there will be several seasons a year, with each season consisting of approximately an hour of actual footage), I think it's perfectly reasonable for the producers of Venice to charge for a subscription to this series. It has to make money somehow, and major sponsorship has either eluded the project or not been sought. The $9.99 rate, IMO, should cover an entire year of Venice. To those who claim they never knew Venice would have a price tag attached to it, I call bullshit: there has been talk of some sort of pricing scheme for this show for months- basically since Crystal Chappell first started talking about the project. The fact that there is a subscription rate is perfectly fair and reasonable - people can choose to subscribe or not subscribe, just as we do with cable television. The fact that the specific details of this subscription scheme were kept under wraps until just a day before Venice premiered? Unprofessional and, IMO, unacceptable. Not the way to treat loyal fans.

The Content

What works

The set-up: Episode one of Venice is short and sweet. It does a decent job of setting things up. For anyone who knows nothing, at all, about the premise the following is made perfectly clear: Gina and Ani used to be either girlfriends or fuck-buddies. Ani wanted a serious relationship. Gina didn't. It's clearly a dance they've been doing for a while.

Jessica Leccia: Of the three actors featured in episode one, Jessica Leccia looks most comfortable in front of the camera, and is the most natural.

A realistic touch: Unlike the typical morning-after girl on television, CC's Gina wakes up looking as if she really has just woken up - no make-up, morning eyes, less than perfect hair. Refreshing.

What doesn't work

Cringe-worthy Cliches: The initial shot, panning across a floor littered with Gina and Ani's discarded clothing must have been set up and filmed by Captain Obvious. I guess some people think this shot is sexy or enticing. I think it's just an example of lazy film-making. It's a cliche that has been used to death on both daytime and nighttime television. It's a shot that we really never need to see, again.

Lack of realism: I understand that this isn't a porn film, but why are two women who we are to believe stripped off in a fit of passion, leaving their clothing strewn all over the floor, in a mad rush to have sex waking up with clothing on? Lesbians have sex with tank tops and panties on? Really?

The dialogue: I know a lot of fangirls loved the morning-after talk, but if you stop and actually think about it, it doesn't make sense. The conversation these two women have in bed about Ani having returned to town? It's a conversation they would have had the night before, not the morning after. Again, it's a cliche of bad television and filmmaking: awkward use of dialogue to recap. The most annoying thing about this is that it could have easily been avoided - dialogue that provided a smooth recap would be easy enough to write. Instead of Gina and Ani having a conversation that they obviously would have had the minute they ran into one another at the bar, why not just refer to such a conversation for the audience's sake? Gina: I cant believe you've been in town for days and never thought to call me. Good thing I ran into you, or I never would have known you were back.

Also, if there were ever a phrase that should be banned from television and the movies, it's this one: "I can't do this. We've been down this road so many times."

Note to Kimmy: If this is the great, amazing writing we've been hearing about for so long, you're in trouble.

The soundtrack: I've noticed that even some of the most ardent fangirls are making some noise about how annoying the soundtrack is. I don't like the song but, even if I did, it's too loud and it overpowers the action and the dialogue. Hopefully the complaints about this will be taken seriously by the Venice team, because the music is really over-the-top. Use it as a theme song, and tone it down for background music. No one is watching this to hear that droning voice. They're watching to see and hear the actors act and the story unfold.

Believability factor: Sorry, but I just wasn't feeling it between Gina and Ani. Where Olivia and Natalia had mad chemistry, for some odd reason the same actors playing other characters just didn't take me there and believe them as a couple. Maybe it's because the bed scene felt more like an obligatory bit of girl-on-girl action for all the Otalia fans who got ripped off than anything else. I didn't find it believable or sexy. I didn't feel as if I was watching two characters who'd just had sex and wanted to have more sex with one another; I felt I was watching two actors who were awkwardly pretending they'd just had sex.

The Future of Venice

Who can say? It's much too soon to say where this show will end up going. The fans who have decided Venice is the second coming of Christ are jumping the gun. So, however, are critics who have already written the project off.

Of all the things that I found wrong with the Venice premiere, not one thing is beyond fixing. Fans of the wonderful, edgy Santa Barbara may remember that the first few months of that innovative soap were virtually unwatchable. Knots Landing, possibly the best nighttime serial drama, ever, limped its way through the first season or two before hitting its stride.

On the other hand, these are the days when few projects of this kind get very long to catch on and find their way. It's not unusual for television shows to be cancelled after just two or three episodes, if they don't deliver viewers. This hardly seems fair. Can Venice survive to see a second season? I'm pretty sure it can. Will it be any good? That remains to be seen.

Next Up: Gotham

Mad Men, Mad Times: Art Imitates Life

"It's makes me wonder about civil rights. Maybe it's not supposed to happen right now."

On tonight's episode of Mad Men, this was Betty's comment to Carla, the black house servant. They were discussing the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham that left four little girls dead. Four murdered children, and Betty's response wasn't about finding the murderer or drawing a line once and for all on hate crime and racism. Betty, an ultra-privileged white woman living the American Dream instead questioned if the time was right for "negroes" to get a little bit of equity. Maybe, the implication was, black America should just wait.

If this business of suggesting that the disenfranchised not make so much noise and piss off their oppressors sounds like a deja vu it might be because serendipity called for Mad Men to air on the night of the day that tens of thousands of gays and lesbians marched on Washington to demand their basic civil rights. It's also the day after our president, Barack Obama, made a speech before the Human Rights Campaign in which he spoke vaguely and without commitment about his intention to champion equal rights for gays and lesbians in the United States.

If you're anything like me, you found Betsy's "Maybe it's not supposed to happen right now" appalling, and all too familiar. By her twisted, privileged logic, those four little girls from Birmingham died not because of the murderous act of a cowardly bigot, but because of the black community's impatience. Betty believes in desegregation in theory but, really, how dare they expect equity a mere 100 years after the civil war!

This is exactly the sentiment Barak Obama puts forth every time he talks about his deep and abiding belief, in theory, in equal rights for gays and lesbians: sure, you queers deserve some satisfaction, but not right now...and the more you hem and haw about it, the more problems you're going to cause for yourselves.

When Obama says that he intends to do away with the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy, but wriggles his way out of committing to a time line he's echoing Betty Draper's half-assed, not-in-my neighborhood brand of liberalism. In 2009, looking back at this logic in action in 1962 on a fictional television drama is appalling. Seeing it in action today, in real life, and from the leader of the most powerful nation in the world? Unacceptable.

© 2009 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves

Thank you to FlyingPeanuts for use of her photo.

Scrambling for Scraps

Twitter all but broke down yesterday, as Natalia Rivera waltzed back into Springfield knowing what she wanted. That noise you heard? The sound of a million lesbians SQUEEing. Actually, a million minus one. Natalia's return did not make me SQUEE. Not in that way, anyhow.

I'm glad Natalia is back, because this show is winding down and I need closure. I'm glad Natalia's back because I like Jessica Leccia and have missed seeing her on television. Mostly, I'm glad Natalia is back because it means Olivia will finally get to let loose and tell her exactly how betrayed she feels, and how incredibly shitty it was for Natalia to take off without so much as a word. 

At the very least, Natalia needs and deserves a good telling off.

Vision Quest or Act of Incredible Thoughtlessness?

Among the messages zooming around the Twitterverse yesterday were cries of "This is a love story!" and "Yay! Your girl's home, Liv!" and "Kiss her!" Another set of messages addressed blogs such as this one, and chastised those of us who have the audacity to be angry at Natalia for "ruining it for the rest of us." One Tweeter went into a long diatribe about how lucky we should all feel to have this story line, no matter how messed up it's been, because it's better than The Children's Hour, which ends with the lesbian character comitting suicide. Natalia's journey, according to this apologist, was a "vision quest" and one she had to take in order to move towards a healthy same-sex love.

So, let me make sure I've got this right: 

1) By pointing out what's gone so wrong with the Otalia story line, and making a rally cry for positive, realistic portrayals of same-sex love on television bloggers such as myself are ruining it for the rest of the lesbians out there.

2) We should be grateful for whatever lesbian scraps the networks throw our way and just be grateful that Natalia didn't hang herself from the rafters of her lonely room in the convent. 

3) When a man leaves his woman without so much as a phone call, leaving her to think she's unworthy of love, it's an act of selfish abandonment and incredible thoughtlessness. When a woman does this to her female partner, it's a vision quest.

With all due respect, I call "bullshit." Do people really believe this crock? 

Unless viewers take a stand and make our voices heard, we will never see anything resembling positive portrayals of same-sex relationships in the mass media. And make no mistake about this: if we do see an Otalia kiss, it won't be because fans sat back and accepted the ridiculously chaste relationship these two supposed-lovers share. If we see a kiss between these two characters, it will be because the pressure from viewers became too great to ignore. It will be because journalists and bloggers have been critical and pointed out how incredibly stupid and unrealistic it's been for CBS to expect us to believe that two adult women in love wouldn't even kiss one another. If we see a kiss, it will be because certain GL actors spoke out, and made TPTB aware of the Internet buzz about this issue. If we see a kiss it will not be thanks to people who sat back and didn't make any noise for fear of "ruining" things for everyone.

So what if they're neutered? We should just be happy to have lesbians who don't kill themselves. Really? Isn't that like telling a battered wife that she should just be glad her batterer stops before she actually bleeds? This argument reaches a level of sad, pathetic stupidity that I'm not sure I was aware was possible.  Yay! They're not suicidal. Sorry, Liz, but I'm hot snacking.

Natalia went on a vision quest. Okay, I'll buy that. Did she forget that she wasn't a 19th century Native American teen, but a 21st century, middle-aged woman with a fucking cellphone????? Does having big questions about one's future exempt one from taking even minimal steps to care for one's beloved? The traditional vision quest wasn't taken in secret. It wasn't a covert operation designed to worry the shit out of a kid's family. It was a rite of passage that was expected. Natalia didn't just go out to find her answers, which would have been perfectly reasonable. Instead, she dropped the ball and betrayed the very person whose heart she should have been taking pains to care for. She was thoughtless. She was selfish. Even in her return, she's thus far been incredibly cavalier. Does she go directly to Olivia? No. She visits her priest. She meets Blake who, I should remind you all, she barely knows. How healthy is a safe-sex love that currently revolves around one person completely disregarding the well-being of the other? 

But, hey, at least Natalia got back before Olivia hanged herself from the rafters at The Beacon. 

Breaking Ground, Until the Bitter End

If you watched Guiding Light on June 10, 2009, you didn't just watch Olivia Spencer walk into a store and shop for a vibrator. You watched a television milestone.

Think about it - when was the last time you turned on the television at 3pm, and watched the better part of an hour devoted to a female character's sexual frustration? When was the last time you saw an attractive female character opt out of a sexual situation with an attractive man and turn, instead, to her own devices? When was the last time you watched two female soap opera characters run into one another at a sex shop and actually acknowledge that there's no shame in "taking care of one's self?" I'll tell you when: NEVER. You've never seen this on daytime television. You've probably never seen this on any television show that doesn't require a cable decoder.

Guiding Light is slated to end a 72 year run on September 18th and, true to form, the show is pushing the envelope and addressing social taboos right until the bitter end. Not satisfied with just presenting a same-sex love story that focuses on the love part, first and foremost, or posing a challenging response to the question "what is family?", the writers of GL have chosen to go one step further.

Otalia and The Noble Savage

There is a tendency, in some circles, to relegate gays and lesbians (and yes - I know this is a story without labels...but come on...it's a story about two women who are in love and who want to have sex with one another. Lesbian sex. There. I said it.) to Noble Savage status. A lot of people can tolerate the idea of two women falling beautifully in love with one another, and making beautiful, poetic, choreographed, rose-petal-covered-bed, 10,000-candles-surrounding-them, Adagio-for-Strings-as-background-music, under-the-satin-sheets, tear-inducing, serving-a higher-purpose love with one another, but they can't take it any other way. And I'm not pointing at the religious right, either. I'm thinking about the supposedly tolerant left, some misguided feminists, and even factions of the lesbian community. I'm thinking about a good friend of mine - a good, strong, progressive feminist who once said in complete earnest that, despite her undeniable sexual attraction to men, she longed to be a lesbian because, "straight people fuck, but lesbians make love." (I told her to go to NYC's Clit Club on a Friday night, spend some time in the bathroom, and think again about this ridiculous theory.)

Ellen Wheeler and Jill Lorie Hurst have wisely made the decision to avoid this Noble Savage territory. Considering the fact that Olivia Spencer is well established as a sexual being, to suddenly squash any hint of raw, sexual need in her would have been foolish, and it wouldn't have rung true. Olivia loves sex. She's rarely gone for very long without having sex with someone. When she was close to death, one of the first things she pursued to "feel alive" was sex. Spoilers indicate that Olivia will tell Natalia that sex is not something that has to happen for them but, make no mistake about it: sex is most definitely something that has to happen for Olivia. If it weren't important, she wouldn't be kissing Josh (and yes, people, she kissed him as much as he kissed her - that exchange was mutual.) If it weren't important, Olivia wouldn't be walking around looking like a lost tourist. If it weren't important, she wouldn't be groaning in frustration at upward-facing dog. If sex weren't important to Olivia, if she were some sort of Noble Sapphic Savage, completely devoid carnal desire, she wouldn't be trying to decide between the Pearl Rabbit and the Pocket Rocket.

If, as a viewer, you're frustrated about Otalia's thus-far sexual stalemate, Olivia Spencer is just plain horny. And it is not a bad thing. It is a normal, natural thing for which there are remedies. Women - all sorts of women - deal with this every day. Wheeler and Hurst want you to know this.

Pushing the Envelope

How easy it would have been to keep Olivia and Natalia on a chaste, Noble Savage trajectory! How safe! Even Father Ray could live with the idea of Natalia "having feelings" for Olivia, as long as she had no intention of acting on those feelings. This, however, will not be the case. It really can't be the case, because one of the characters involved in this pairing is someone who we know loves and craves sex. Does anyone really believe Olivia capable of entering into and sticking with a committed, monogamous relationship that doesn't include sex? She may say that she's willing to do this, but nothing we know about Olivia indicates that this is even a possibility for her.

While the big Otalia consummation scene will almost certainly be a very fanciful, poetic, choreographed affair, (this is pretty much de riguer for any soap super couple's first time - unless it's Luke raping Laura, but I digress) Wheeler and Hurst are pushing the envelope and breaking ground by visiting Olivia's sexual frustration well in advance of The Big Event. And visiting Springfield's low-rent version of Toys in Babeland, no less.

Olivia Spencer is no Noble Savage. She's just a normal, healthy, horny woman. And, between you, me and the lamppost? If she doesn't already have a Pocket Rocket, it's only because she lost it in the move.

© 2009 Lana M. Nieves

Limited Licensing: I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, granting distribution of my copyrighted work without making changes, with mandatory attribution to Lana M. Nieves and for non-commercial purposes only. - Lana M. Nieves