On Being A Lesbian

All my pre-teen and young adult life, I expended a lot of energy on trying not to be identified as a bulldagger.  I felt myself too soft for so harsh a word.  Did not want to be tagged with that word.  As a grade school student and when I was in high school, I always averted my eyes away from other girls, in locker rooms, as we changed clothes or showered.  It was as if I had tasted the apple from the tree of knowledge and realized my own nakedness and the nakedness of others.  With this knowledge, if it went unchecked, I would devour those naked girls and would overnight be termed a bulldagger.  What a fallacy, which does make for great fodder.  If I had looked at any of those naked girls and attacked them or stared at their bodies in some seductive way, the term they would have used for me would have more aptly been crazy, or a crazy bulldagger, but crazy certainly would have been somewhere in the mix. 

I was afraid of the word.  I had no understanding of the word except to know that no one wanted a bulldagger around them.  None of my girlfriends did anyway.  I had fear of a word I did not understand and therefore I attacked all those associated with the word.  An old African proverb states that one should be careful of what one hates, they may become the very thing they hate.  To be careful of what one fights against, they may become that which they are fighting against.  I did not want to be a bulldagger and I was certainly fighting against it and I had a lot of help. 

It was not until I was in college, in my twenties, that I finally exchanged the word bulldagger with the word lesbian.  This journey took many years however.  At eighteen, I entered Columbia College and a whole world opened up to me.  I found a place where people were communicating with others on various planes ? though music, through words, through dance, through theater, through television, through radio, through moving and still pictures, it was like Christmas every day of the year.  This was also my first time in an integrated learning environment.  I went to school with people from various countries, backgrounds, and nationalities.  I loved it ? but, there were those gay people everywhere. 

In one of my photo classes, there was a woman who had her breasts tied down and dressed like a man.  She even talked with a masculine voice. When I first saw her, I thought she was a man, but later I realized ? A BULLDAGGER!   I had never seen anything like this woman in my life.  The women I knew to be bulldaggers, in my neighborhood, were drunks, drug addicts, generally just wild women.  She was not like those women.  She spoke intelligently, she did not slur her words or curse like a sailor in a hoarse raspy voice.  I remember talking to one of my straight friends one evening, on the phone, describing this strange BULLDAGGER.  She said, ?she ain?t approached you has she??  I said ?No girl, I don't want her near me.? 

But, I was fascinated.  The one thing I have always been fond of in a person, in spite of my own afflictions, was intelligence.  I found her to be very intelligent.  We would speak sometimes IN CLASS, where I was surrounded by others, but never alone.  I did not want to be alone with her.  I never joined her for coffee, I never talked with her outside of the classroom on break.  Only within the safe confines of the classroom.  I think she knew too that I was one of those neer do well girls on the straight and narrow and therefore wanted no parts of one the likes of her. 

To use medical terminology, the suffix osis means condition of.  I had assholeosis ? the condition of being an asshole.  I do regret that.  Youthosis, is the condition of being young, when you think you know everything, learn much, retain very little and only when you have reached the age of those parents you considered stupid in your youth, do you realize you knew nothing.  If only I had stayed away from negative thinkers, judgmental friends, and others who knew as little as I, maybe I would have become a better person sooner.  But that was not to happen for me, and I fear to never happen for the young today.  You are taught early on to bind your Will, not to your own Will, or the Will of God, but the Will of your parents, your teachers, or other adult relatives and/or friends in your life.  Your early teachings are their fears, their judgment, their insecurities and how they deal with them.  Like a monkey, or any other trained animal, we repeat what we have learned.  Does that make us bad people?  No, we?re just doing a little something with the little something we know.  And I didn?t know much.  All I knew was fear and if I saw a gay person coming my way, I would jump 15 feet into the air if it meant I would avoid them. 

But, in my real life, all my good girlfriends were women I liked.  My mother called them users.  I allowed that.  If I saw a woman, and I liked her ? what I mean by that is my heart skipped a beat at the very sight of her, I?d get sweaty palms, dry mouth, or couldn?t talk.  I?d find a way to make her my friend.  And, if that meant, on a Saturday morning, while in my warm bed, she called and asked me to come pick her up and take her to the laundrymat, I would get up, warm up my car, pick her up take her to the laundrymat, insist I take her home, buy her lunch or dinner, drop her off at home and swear I had a good day.  Why?  Because I spent it with her.  No hidden mystery in that.  But, I was not a bulldagger. 

It wasn?t until a few semesters later when I noticed two women being openly loving towards one another.  At Columbia, there was no judging a person?s lifestyle.  Everybody had a little weird in their water and everyone respected the other one?s weird.  So if you talked bad against someone, gay or straight, someone else gay or straight, would nicely give you another perspective.  I loved that even when I was the one being educated ? nicely.  One such event happened when a couple of brothers, in the darkroom, started talking about some girl who they thought was a ?dyke.?  A few people joined in with their lower level, miseducated, lack of understanding.  The men started talking about rape as the answer to the ?homosexual? problem with women.  Their theory was, these women needed a dick to set them straight.  That is when the other men in the darkroom started speaking against the violation of women to prove a man?s point.  ?And what if that doesn?t work? asked an inquisitive fellow at the enlarger in the back, acting as if he were totally unattached to the conversation.  ?What if she?s still a lesbian after that?? he asked, ?your theory will fall flat on its face? he said, still seemingly unattached to the conversation as he burned and dodged the image on his easel. 

I, a bit nauseated, noticed these ?brothers? were giggling and looking at me as if to seek approval in my Black face.  I threw my print defiantly in the stop bath, and walked away from them, back to my enlarger.  They responded ?rape her again? and they broke into a resounding laughter as they checked the other men around them for approval. That is when the brother who had just come up next to me to drop his print in the developer, said, ?what if she had too much dick when she was five years old?  What if? he continued, ?she had been raped by her brother, her father, or a family friend when she was 12?  Would you care??  he asked.  ?Man? he said, ?they ain?t hurting you, why do you want to hurt them??  The unattached man at the enlarger in the back started the applause, which was quickly followed by others.  This was not a Black issue, though the men who started the whole thing were Black, it was not a White issue, though the best question was asked by a White male, it was not a male issue or a female issue.  It was a issue among people. 

The unattached man at the enlarger in the back, after the applause, told a story about his cousin.  A cousin he loved very much who had come to stay with his family after she finally told someone about what her father, his uncle, had been doing to her.  After she told, her mother sent her to live with them.  He saw his cousin go into a depression, change her appearance from an attractive happy girl to an unattractive sad girl.  Was it the incest that changed her?  No, it was the rejection of her mother and some family members for telling the dirty little secret about her successful and prominent father who was now in jail.  She was separated from her mother and her brothers, who by the way, thought she was lying.  This sensitive young man, became her counselor, the champion of her rights, her confidante and he became the brother she lost.  When she came out to him, he supported her and said ?if any man tries to do anything like that to her, I?ll kill him.?  He appeared unattached because, as he put it, he was getting angrier and angrier and could not bear to look at these guys. 

The brother who spoke up, I admired his strength.  He and I and these other brothers, were the only Blacks in that darkroom.   I liked him for standing up.  This guy and I actually started going out, nothing serious, I told him I was not interested in a relationship so we only really saw each other at the school and would sometimes meet for coffee, sometimes pizza.  Then, he would just be around after I got out of a class and we?d walk across the street for a drink, and more pizza.  Then, he began helping me with my projects and we?d end up meeting in the lab and he helped me mount and mat my pictures.  Then, we would walk across to the park and stroll around The Art Institute where we would stop for a snack and more pizza.  I started to think, maybe, if I wait long enough and not jump in the bed with him, maybe, just maybe, I?ll fall in love, get married, or at the very least feel some desire for a man.  It did not happen.  He was like a brother whom I admired.  Nothing more.  One day, he drove me to my car and as we sat in his car he asked ?do you like me??  I answered ?yes, but not in the way I think you?re thinking.?  And then I betrayed myself and said, "I think I am the little girl you referred to a while back that had a bit too much dick when she was five.?  God, why did I say that?  It?s amazing how your mouth can move and words come out that you had not planned on saying.  He then asked, are you a LESBIAN?  The loudest words I?ve ever heard.  My ears began to burn, I broke into a sweat, I mumbled something like ?no, I don?t think so.  No!?  The final no helped me regain my composure.  I looked at him and could tell, he did not buy it.  He first looked away and then said, it?s okay if you are. That?s when the bitch tried to come out and I successfully kept her in check. 

Fear quickly gripped me.  Maybe I should just have sex with him and maybe he won?t think about this again.  I?ll prove I like men.  So, cool me, I began by stroking his arm and telling him that it?s not him and no I?m not a lesbian there is nothing another woman can do for me.  I went on to say that I have had some abusive relationships with men ? didn?t say I was abusive towards them, only that my relationships were abusive.  I continued by telling him the men I had met were never understanding or gentle with me sexually, and I began to stroke his thigh and that?s when I discovered he was a very healthy man who was truly anatomically correct.  He was definitely feeling it.  But, he also stopped me and told me he was not calling me a lesbian, and I did not have to prove I was not.  A truly strong man especially since I knew all of his parts were working.  Then he went into some long discourse about choices and how some people make choices and hate themselves for it because they do it for all the wrong reasons and others make choices that are good for them but not for others around them.

 Then he went on to talk about how he decided to join the Marines only because that was a way he could get away from his controlling father, travel a bit, and find himself.  His father, however, was not happy about the idea.  His father was perfectly willing and apparently able to send him to the college of his choice.  He felt he was too young to know what to do so he enlisted in the Marines and told his father a few short weeks before leaving and on, and on, and on, he went.  When I came to, he was finishing up this little speech with "do what makes you happy."   Somewhere between the beginning of his speech and ?do what makes you happy? I started crying. 

I became lost in a world of words, other people?s words.  Doing everything everyone wanted me to do so I could retain their love and they still rejected me.  Carrying these corpses on my back going from one to the other saying ?please love me, I?ll do whatever you want me to do, just love me, stay with me, don?t leave me.  Kick me if you feel the need, just don?t leave me.?  I did not like me.  I did not care for me.  I wanted to be where this man was.  He cared enough of himself to care for me.  He loved himself enough to love me.  

I remember seeing a bookstore advertised in a gay newspaper which I would pick up when I thought no one was looking.  The bookstore was Women and Children First.  It was in a perfect, out of the way location ? you had to go into one of the old buildings on Michigan Avenue, take an elevator up to one of the floors and then walk down a hallway to the bookstore.  A perfect location where I could go without being seen by people on the street.  You see, the whole world read this gay newspaper and the whole world knew this was a woman's bookstore. 

It took three maybe four visits to the store before I actually felt comfortable going through and browsing the books.  On my second or third visit, I vowed I would be braver.  I went in and there were a few women in the store.   A couple were behind the counter, others were walking around looking at the bookshelves.  I saw a section on women?s health, so I hung out there for awhile.  Then one of the ladies behind the counter asked if I needed help, I said no, just looking.  I made my way around the bookstore and then my eyes hit upon the Lesbian section.   Trying to maintain a certain cool, I made my way, slowly to this section and tried to maintain a posture of ?just curious.?   But, I didn?t see anything that just said Lesbian or Black Lesbian on the spine, this meant I had to do a little more than look curious.  I bit the bullet and bent down to actually read the titles.  I found, The Bridge Called Our Backs.  I picked it up saw words about women loving women.  I found a book written by Audre Lorde ? didn?t know who she was, but she was Black, picked it up.  Found the book The Joy Of Lesbian Sex, I flipped through the pages and found drawings of various positions ? nope, wasn?t ready for that yet, put it back.  In the Lesbian Fiction section, I found a book called Rubyfruit Jungle, I had heard about this book, picked it up.  On the way to the counter, I found a few free readers on gay and lesbian issues.  Picked those up, made my purchase and left the store. 

I realized I could not go back to work with these books, so, since my car was parked a block away, I went to the parking lot, put the books in the trunk of my car and headed back to work with a confidence I had not felt in a long time.  I knew these books contained an important key to my life and who I eventually would become.  I knew these were the books for a quiet revolution and liberation.  I would have, if nothing else, a better understanding of the me I did not know ? the me I was afraid to acknowledge.  I felt I would meet myself head on and could either embrace me or continue to run away from me, but at least I would know me. 

I got back to work faster than I realized and had the perkiness of a child.  I was filled with joy, I was jubilant and the day went by easily.  Everyone asked me what I did for lunch ? where did you go, I want to go there too.  I could not tell them the truth.  I only said I went visiting the shops on

When I got home that day, unfortunately, my mother was around and about so I could not retrieve the books from my car.  She would certainly ask me about them and would want to see them.   My mother loves books and to bring a book in her house without her seeing it would be a crime.  So, my day of liberation was stalled a few days longer until a time when she wasn?t home and I could bring them in. 

I gorged myself with every word in every book I purchased.  I went back to the bookstore and bought more books.  With every word, with each new book, whether fiction or non-fiction, I found myself.  Finally, I knew who I was and I cried.  I had the vocabulary now.  I cried because I finally understood me.  I cried because I knew who I was.  I cried because I was happy and relieved and I cried because I had no one to talk to.  Then, I ran away.  I ran away because I was alone.  I had no one to talk to.

I had painted a picture, a sort of caricature of women in my life, both old and young, making that sister face.  You know the face, that scrunched up nose and the curled lips ready to say ?Girl, you ain?t no lesbian.  Just get that out of your mind.   See, you go up there to school with those white folks and you start learning that crazy, messed up stuff they?re doing.?  I?ve often been amazed at the number of educated, intelligent black folks have given white folks so much power.  They really believe these folks are so powerful that they have set up 24-hour centers on the study and destruction of black folks.  When I was born, they must have sent a representative out to watch me and when my mother went to the grocery store, they were able to get her to buy just the right fruits and vegetables that would be fed to me alone.  These food items contained the gay seed.  Then, upon learning ? no they had to set this up in advance ? so when I got to Columbia College, they made sure there were many homosexuals around me to ensure I would become a homosexual, therefore effectively eliminating the possibility of fruit coming from my womb, which, in the long term, would cause the end of the black race as we know it today.  Wow, what a powerful people, those White folks. 

So, there I was faced with yet another issue of what white folks had done to me.  Now, I never outright told anyone I was a lesbian, I only brought up the subject of gays, lesbians and homosexuals in conversation with many of my straight Black friends.  What I got back from them was how this never existed in the Black community until integration.  Back to the books I went.  One, because I didn?t believe White folks were that powerful or, conversely, I didn?t believe White folks had that kind of time to think about how to make me a homosexual 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  I just could not believe that, so I went to do some research. 

What did I find?  James Baldwin and Ma Rainey ? was that before or after integration?  After them, other names hit the gay/lesbian lottery.  Some were suspected homosexuals, others were confirmed to be homosexual, and still others had hints of bisexuality.  They were in the arts and entertainment, literature, education, politics, we were everywhere and many of us were pre-integration.  No, White folks were not to blame and are not the blame for Black gay and lesbian people.  No, you see, back in the day, we didn?t care who was gay or who was straight.  Today, however, after integration, we picked up the same judgmental attitudes of our oppressors.  As Nikki Giovanni said in a poem, I too found myself not oppressed by the master, I was being oppressed by the slave. 

When I went to research that time back in the day, I found that two men or two women living together was not considered unusual in our community.  They were accepted like anyone else.  Oh, sure there were those men, who either felt threatened or rejected, who attacked both men and women for their lifestyle, and yeah, they attacked others as well.  Every community has its share of hot heads.  But, generally speaking, gays and lesbians were accepted in the community.  This still exists in the South.  Years later, after becoming comfortable with my homosexuality, I went with my lover to visit her family in Nashville.  They knew who I was to her and who she was to me and welcomed me with open arms.  They were not threatened, challenged, or angered by my presence.  Come North, my mother would not accept my lover in her home.  She could not come through the door.  Black love disintegrated when Black people were integrated. 

You see, we did not understand the majority system, so we feared anything contrary to the majority consciousness, because accepting anything contrary to the majority system could bring us rejection, which we also feared.  So, we too began to attack what the majority system attacked.  What you don?t understand, you fear and what you fear, you attack. 

So, I was armed with a little bit of information about myself, my community and the world around me.  I understood fully, what being a lesbian met, the responsibility of it, the hardship it would bear on me and all those around me who did not know me or understood who I was.  I knew I would lose friends, I even knew I might lose my family, but I also knew if I continued in this vein, I would eventually destroy myself. 

When my mother finally asked the question and when I finally answered her, I sat back and waited for my mother?s fiery tongue to take aim.  And, being true to form, she lashed out.  She told me she was glad my father was not alive to see this.  In so many words, she said she wished I were dead.  But, you see, I was already numb to her words.  Yes, her words and subsequent actions did hurt me.  Her words however, were not new to me.  I came to expect that from her.  Once, after having an abortion, she sat across the dining room table from me and said, ?you make me sick to look at you.?  She was mad at me and the young man I had been seeing, because I wanted to see him again ? not to rekindle our relationship, that was over, I needed closure and understanding.  She did not understand that. 

So, here we were again.  And though I was numb to her words, they did make their way to that growing ball of hopelessness within my soul that said I was unworthy of having anything good.  I was unworthy of love, I could never do anything right, I was stupid, I was inadequate, I was a pitiful and poor excuse for a human being, I was simply not worthy of life itself. If there is a devil, then the devil knows how to disguise himself as an angel of light in the image of God?s people.  He uses them to spew words of destruction in order to make God?s people feel that God must have made a mistake in making you.  I felt like a defective piece of equipment that needed to be discarded. 

A few months later, maybe even a year later, that period of time is a blur to me ? my brother invited me over.  I asked him where was mom?  He said she was not there.  I went by the house only to find it empty ? she had moved, out of state, to California.  As my brother cavalierly walked through the house giving me a box of what they decided would be mine ? I was missing a lot of things ? he again said rather cavalierly, ?by the way, she wants nothing further to do with you.?  I became numb.  I tried to make light of it, I tried to laugh, but my heart was broken.  What I subsequently experienced from my only parent, and my only brother was such humiliation.  No, I was not oppressed by the master, I was oppressed by the slave.  White folks had nothing to do with the pain I experienced in my life.  My pain came from the mouths and hands of black folk.  They, used me as a whipping boy not once trying to understand who I was, why I was or even that I was.  They only cared about me being what they wanted me to be. 

They saw me bent over under the yoke of decaying corpses on my back.  They chose to call my state, a state of weakness.  They saw me reaching out for love, anywhere, everywhere.  They chose to call that pathetic.  They saw me in my confusion, searching for answers, looking for understanding of who I was.  They chose to call that stupid.  No one understood why I did what I did because they saw me superficially.  I have so much going for me, how could you do this?  You?re an attractive woman, you can get any man you want, how can you be gay?  I made her sick to look at me.  Yes, it is easy to crush someone under antagonistic blows to their soul?  It is easier still to judge and condemn.  But it is harder to find understanding ? to pause, just for a second for guidance and understanding.  It should be no shock to the world or this nation when kids pick up guns to kill other kids.  They learned this from the adults in their lives. 

Parents who use words like kike, jap, nigger, faggot, bulldagger, dyke, in conjunction with words like, I?m glad they got the ________, I wish that ___________ would chew on a bone and die, etc., etc., etc., be very careful.  You might look up one day and on the 5:00 news and find out your son or daughter took your words, wrote a script and acted it out on the stage of life and you are now able to view their full length creative drama played out on the news. 

You see, no matter what you do, or how much you do to get someone to love you and keep on loving you, once they realize how much you need their love, or conversely, realize how much their love means to you, they will dangle that love like a carrot over your head always threatening you with rejection.  Until you learn to love yourself, you will never be free. 

Iyanla Vanzant told a story ? she called it her Moses story ? about when there was trouble in the land, Moses? parents put him in a basket and sent him down river.  He was subsequently found by a woman in Pharoah?s house and Pharoah?s wife took him as her own.  She said the first lesson of this story is even when mother and father forsake you, God will provide.  This is very true.  After hearing my mother wanted nothing further to do with me and after seeing how my brother treated me during this time.  I was feeling really depressed ? I was at a very low point in my life.  One day, while out for lunch, I went to a little eatery and overheard a woman talking with another woman about her son, who was gay.  I guess her son was some kind of performer or entertainer of something, because she spoke of how good he looked and how these men were just falling all over themselves for him.  I ended up getting into the conversation because she was so animated and proud of her son.  Again, my mouth betrayed me and out popped the words, ?that is nice, you accept him unconditionally.?  That began a discourse from both women when the mother stated ?baby, that?s God?s child.  I was entrusted with birthing him, raising him, and caring for him.  What God chooses for him and what he does is between him and God.?  She went on to say that she loved him before he was gay and she wasn?t going to stop loving her baby.  The other woman went on to say how we don?t know what God?s plan is for our lives. 

Not long after our conversation began, a greasy-headed, overprocessed White queen came over to the table where these women were sitting, bent over, hugged the Black woman who talked about her gay son, said God bless you, I wish there were more like you, tried to gain his composure, found he could not, clutched his napkin to his face and practically ran out of the restaurant.  I would have lost it myself had it not been for the look in that woman?s face as she watched him leave.  She, embraced this man as if he were her own child, kissed him on the cheek, said ?thank you baby, we can all use God?s blessing, I sho appreciate that and God bless you too.?   But, as he walked out of that restaurant, you could see the sorrow across her face and in her eyes and she said ?that?s a shame, that boy ain?t got no love in his life.?  I then excused myself, because I was about to cry too.  When you do this to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it unto me.  These were not educated women, these were working women.  And God brought me to that particular restaurant on that particular day to hear them speak.  Yes, when your mother and father forsake you, God will provide. 

So, I returned home that day and said a prayer.  It wasn?t until ten years later that I would realize the full impact and power of that prayer turned my life upside down.  I had to unlearn everything I was taught.  I had give up everything I thought was important.   I had to sit at the feet of Jesus from the latter part of 1987 to December of 1989.

In the Garden, on the evening Jesus was betrayed, He made a simple prayer:  "Take this cup of suffering from me, but not my will be done, your will be done."    Today, folks are binding God's will to their own will and not the other way around.  Jesus did not say, "strike those heathens down who persecute me," no, he made a humble prayer.  I don't think Jesus would survive three days, let alone three years in today's environment. 

I love me today, I love who I am because I now have power, through understanding.