It’s hard to believe it’s been almost six months since I wrote Part One of this essay. Time flies when you’re desperately procrastinating.

Right off the bat, I want to dissuade you from the notion that my sex (love?) sex life has in any way been exciting simply because I am a lesbian. To paraphrase the old joke, it’s been so long since I’ve had sex I can’t remember who storms out of the bedroom to angrily sleep on the couch first. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this essay about my evolution into the Sapphic world is as dry and dusty as Hillary Clinton’s vagina after a three-day hike in the Mojave desert with a one day’s supply of water.

(Editor’s note: There was absolutely no reason for Laurie to disparage Mrs. Clinton in that appalling manner. As her editor, I should totally excise that from the text. I mean, I’m probably going to vote for that vagina in 2016. But, to be honest, it made me chuckle a little. “That’s one dry essay!” I said to myself with a smile. I hope that unnecessary insult hasn’t completely turned you off to what will otherwise be a spectacularly written confessional essay. Although it probably will be extremely dry. Laurie is probably right about that.)

When you’re a mixed-up, confused, tragically lost figure, stumbling around full of uncertainty and doubt, as I was in my childhood, (as circumspectly outlined in Part One of this essay), you would think that finding the key to unlock my sexuality at the age of 19 would magically fix all that.

Shockingly, it didn’t.

In fact, I probably skipped over the Rainbow Bridge with the type of lover I needed least: The Player.

They say you never forget your first and oh! they were so right.

God, she was charming. She had this seductive combination of confidence and gentleness, mixed with a passion and love for life that essentially swept people up. It was impossible to resist her. She was basically a 5’8″ lesbian tsunami. Or maybe she was 5’9″. It was 25 years ago. Who cares how tall she was and why are you asking me?

Wanna see a picture of her? I don’t have many.

(For those of you who don’t know what I look like, Beth The Player is the seated one.)

Now, this picture, (along with the companion one I may publish later in this post), was taken years into our relationship. And I do mean years, even though I do look like such a baby, don’t I? By the time this picture was taken, I had already stopped being suicidal over the heartache she caused me. We had been broken up for a long time by the time we posed for this. In fact, I think this picture was taken by the mutual friend that I was actually trying to introduce to Beth. I thought they would be terrific together. They were. They lasted several years, from what I heard.

But, I have jumped too far ahead.

For those of you who have never been in the military, everything is not quite like Full Metal Jacket or Private Benjamin or Stripes. We didn’t go straight from boot camp to fighting the Reds on the Eastern European front. For one thing, we were in the Navy, and most of Eastern Europe is landlocked. For another thing, the military educates its new recruits in a gazillion training facilities in a gazillion congressional districts across this military-industrial complex we call a democracy before sending them onto their final duty stations. So, Beth and I met in Orlando, Florida, in the Electronics School. (She was there to actually learn electronics. I was there because my test scores said I was smart enough to learn electronics so I said fine, I’ll become an Electronics Technician.) She was three years older than me and had been in the Navy for 8 weeks longer. Naturally, she seemed like a veteran as experienced as Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge to me.

I can almost remember the exact moment I met her which is a miracle unto itself, considering how much alcohol I have consumed in the past 25 years.

I had never been pursued before, certainly not by a woman, but I think there is something instinctual about the process, because when she locked me in her tractor beam, I simply knew. She laughed a lot at my jokes. A lot. (In the beginning, I mean–once I was in her net, once I was tagged game, my bawdy sense of humor not only annoyed her, it used to make her angry.) She asked me a lot of questions about my life. And she had follow-up questions. And she seemed genuinely interested in me. She wanted to spend every night with me. And we did. We started hanging out. I was under-aged, so it was an awkward kind of hanging out, but we seemed to spend every night together, drinking. I say that we spent “every night” together because I have effectively blocked out all the nights she went off base to sleep with her other lovers. Because the mind does what it has to do to survive. It’s an amazing thing.

Of course, during her courtship, I had no real clue that I was a lesbian. None. In fact, during those whirlwind first few weeks, I probably made a lot of disparaging wisecracks about lesbians. I remember joking to her in a library that I thought lesbians basically looked like butch dykes with arm tattoos in black leather biker vests. God only knows why I brought it up. Or why we were in a library. I do remember her laughing, (Even to that, she laughed), albeit only politely. I didn’t have a lot of kind things to say about lesbians before I realized I was a lesbian. Which, I think, means that I’m a walking cliché.

She offered to take me down to some Air Force base in Florida for the weekend, and I accepted.

(If you think this is the moment we consummated our relationship, calm the fuck down, Sparky.)

She was from Florida, she knew her way around, and she was introducing me to experiences I would have never discovered on my own.

(I said CALM DOWN, SPARKY.)

We spent the evening in a cheap motel room, drinking Michelob and listening to music. She played U2’s The Sweetest Thing for me, and I played Yaz’s Nobody’s Diary for her.

I didn’t know what our relationship was, but I knew that, for the good, the bad, I didn’t want to be a page in her diary. On some level, that must have invigorated The Player.

As we lay on the bed together, listening to music, drinking Michelob we kept on ice in that cheap motel sink, she ran her fingers through my hair. That was the first time she touched me. Nothing has made my scalp body tingle in the same way since. It’s funny how you remember.

We drove back to Orlando the next day in her red Toyota truck, and I was in a pensive mood. I remember her in her oh! so charming way trying to draw me out in conversation. Pointing at the bland, depressing swampland that we were passing through and attempting to make it seem interesting, with that damned charming smile of hers. I finally turned to her and, remembering how it felt to feel her fingers in my hair the night before, “When you touch me like that, I don’t want you to stop.” I was puzzled and a little bit angered by this epiphany I had. This look overcame her. I thought she was going to pull the truck over, she seemed that frazzled. Maybe she did pull the truck over, I don’t know. Who can remember after 25 years? I was distracted, anyway, by my own anger & confusion. She took my hand and placed it on her chest, so that I could feel how I had physically affected her. She was red hot & her heart was beating out of her chest. It’s possible that I should had sought medical treatment for her. Instead, I think we just started making out.

I cannot remember if we started kissing right then and there in her truck on that miserable, dismal highway in the middle of Florida. But I am pretty sure that we didn’t stop making out until she left Florida several weeks later. For at least a month I couldn’t suck my Coca-Cola (that I LOVED!) out of the straw at McDonald’s (the only restaurant on base, therefore the only place other than the mess hall we seemed to eat at) because the sensation reminded me too much of sucking on her nipples and it would drive me absolutely insane.

Yes. Her breasts tasted of Coke. It’s a lesbian thing. You wouldn’t understand.

That all sounds so incredibly romantic & charming–which it was–until you remember that I was emotionally fragile & oh! so breakable. In retrospect, I wish I had been swept off my feet by a woman who was more interested in finding a soul mate than one that simply wanted to conquer a challenge. Because conquer me she did.

I am not going to go into all the hedonistic details, but she took me to Key West to take me. That’s right. I went to the tip of America’s penis to lose become a lesbian.

I was under-aged and unadventurous, though, so I didn’t explore any of the bars with her. She lived in Key West before she joined the Navy. She knew the town like the back of her hand. It would have been an incredible weekend if I had participated. But, all I wanted to do was lie naked in the motel bed and wait for her to ravish me.

No wonder she grew bored with me. I’m bored just thinking about it. As I’m sure you’re bored reading about it.

Once she had me, her passion for me definitely cooled. The problem was that I wasn’t on the same page with her. So, how do you say, psychosis ensued. I had found a woman that I connected with, who opened me up both figuratively and literally, (Wait. Is that too gross? That’s too gross, isn’t it? Where the fuck is my editor?), and I did not have the emotional strength to realize that I was just a conquest for her. Man. If I had realized that we were just a fling…well. I wouldn’t be the emotionally fucked-up person you see before you today. Not that you can see me but…you know what I mean.

 

I am not mad at Beth for being The Player. I am mad at myself for not being strong enough to accept our relationship for what it was. I was too clingy. I imagine that happens sometimes to emotionally needy, fucked up people. We’re not self-sufficient enough, so when we get seduced by casual romantics, we take their advances entirely too seriously.

It’s not her fault that I had voids within me larger than the Grand Canyon that I expected her to fill. I wanted her love to solve all the problems I had. Instead, it just made it worse. This beautiful, temporary romance that she constructed, I took all of that and turned it into some expectation of lifelong commitment. If I were an emotionally healthy person when she met me, I would have had the strength to simply let it be what it was, which was a passionate, temporary, fling.

So, naturally, I tried to kill myself when it collapsed. Because, you know.

I swallowed a bunch of Ny-Tol. (“Nite, y’all!”) Like. A bunch. Not a ton. But a bunch. 24? But I called her from a payphone (a-ha!) before I did it. I said goodbye. Laid down to die.

Honestly, I did NOT realize that she would trace my call back to the payphone from which I called her. CSI was not a television show at that point. After I had swallowed the pills and she knocked at my motel (motels played a huge role in our relationship) door, I was genuinely befuddled & surprised that she was there. But that could have just been the sleeping pills talking.

“How could you do that to me?”

When it was all over, after I had swallowed the charcoal solution, after I had puked & shat any future suicidal attempt out of my system, after I had lied to the Naval psychologist–no, it wasn’t a suicide attempt, I was just stressed by my studies & had forgotten how many sleeping pills I had taken–that is what she asked me when she knocked on my door in Chicago. “How could you do that to me?”

I don’t know how many of you are going to have to endure dealing with suicidal friends and lovers. I hope none of you will. But, if you ever have to deal with one, please do not let your first question to them be “How could you do that to me?”

You would think that would be the end of my relationship with Beth. But, as evidenced by the photographic evidence I have provided above, that is where you would be wrong. I followed her to San Diego, and from there, Norfolk. Remember, we were in the same line of work–but she was eight weeks ahead of me. And I was a good student. So, she went to San Diego & Norfolk…I made sure I had good enough grades to be able to go to…San Diego & Norfolk. Which, I am pretty sure, ranks as one of the stupidest reasons to perform well in any school at any level, civilian or military. The only thing that could make that type of devotion more ridiculous is if I were, I don’t know, following her around the country in Mime School or something.

Obviously, things between Beth & I did not work out.

At some point during the years I fought for her, I realized she was a player, that she was a stallion that couldn’t be tamed. And then she moved to Norfolk and was promptly tamed.

By the time I hit Norfolk, Virginia, I was as emotionally dead as a person could be without being labeled “sociopathic” or “dead.” I was hanging on, but I have no idea by what. And so of course that is when Dana decided to become the love of my life.

I don’t even know how I managed to make it through each day in Norfolk. The only reason I was there was because of Beth, but she was thousands of miles away in the Mediterranean Sea, because in the Navy getting shipped thousands of miles away from home is what we do. So, the only word I can use to describe my first few months in Norfolk was “numb.” I wanted Beth, and I couldn’t have Beth. She didn’t want me. Hello, Dana.

Dana had known me before in Chicago–when you’re in the same line of work, you meet up with people. It just happens. When she saw me on her ship in Norfolk–fwoop!–my God, she latched onto me. And I so didn’t care. I was indifferent. I was dead inside. Mourning Beth. We spent a lot of evenings together. Drinking. Laughing. Watching movies. I can’t really go into detail about what we did, because I was drunk most of the time. She looked like Bette Davis. She talked like Bette Davis. She laughed like Bette Davis. It is possible, in my drunken state, that I thought I was hanging out with Bette Davis. The one thing I remember when officially being introduced to Dana was I looked her in the eyes and said “I trust you as far as I can throw you.” Of course, looking back, how could I trust her, impersonating Bette Davis the way that she was?

Naturally, she was destined to become the love of my life.

She had a boyfriend. And a girlfriend. She wasn’t into the boyfriend, and her girlfriend was thousands of miles away in the Mediterranean…with Beth, my ex-girlfriend.

When Dana kissed me for the first time, it was like an out-of-body experience. “Oh. So this is happening now.” I really did not care. But, I couldn’t resist because…how does one say no to Bette Davis? Buckle your seatbelts…

But, after three or four months of drunkenly making indifferent love with her, on a particularly tender night it dawned on me, “Holy shit, Laurie! You’re in love with this woman.”

And I was.

I had literally “fallen” in love because I wasn’t paying attention at all to where I was going.

She was funny, smart, determined, kind, sharp as hell…and loving. She loved me so very much. Naturally, I couldn’t handle it. I was mixed up, pained, insecure, and dealing with the loss of Beth. Once I realized that I loved Dana more than I had loved anyone in my entire life, including Beth, the woman that I had tried to kill myself for a couple of years prior, that is when the genuine fear set in. To love her meant to lose her, and I realized almost as quickly that I could not survive losing her. I survived losing Beth, but I knew that losing Dana would successfully kill me.

And that’s been my weakness in the 20 some odd years since: I have always feared the worst instead of expected the best.

Hey. Let me show you a picture of Dana & I.

 

If I had just been brave enough to say yes.

I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I moved here because of her command. Within two weeks of my having moved here, my relationship with her was completely destroyed. We live within three miles of each other, unless she has moved since the last time we spoke. (We haven’t spoken to each other in years.) She is married to a lawyer and is raising two children and is part of the fight here in North Carolina to get the anti-gay marriage amendment overturned.

You know, our entire American mythology is centered around redemption, about second chances, about rebirth. We love to be born again in this country.

But what’s it called when you reject the one you love, then seek the one you love, then accept the fact that the one you love and who used to love you no longer loves you, then realize that you will never find a connection that intense and sincere again. What if you’re never born again. What’s that called?

I’ve grown more comfortable in my fourth decade of life. (Or is this my fifth?)

I’m not the same mixed-up, confused, sarcastic child that entered the world as an adult. None of us are. We all learn, to a certain degree, from our mistakes. And we grow. Now I’m thankfully less confused. But more sarcastic.

I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to kill myself when I’m sad or depressed. I consider that progress, although I still have a difficult time with my mental weakness.

Regardless, I will always suffer from not knowing what it feels like to have a person love me. But, then I remember Emily Dickinson and it occurs to me that I’m not even doing anything remotely significant with my pain.

I’ve felt love enough to know what it feels like, which is a good thing. Better to have loved and lost than live with a psycho the rest of your life. No…better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. That’s what I meant. I dream about it. When I sleep I have love coarse through my body sometimes. And that has to be good enough for a woman like me who lives (mostly) alone with four cats.

One of the last things Dana ever told me, she told me in an email. After years of loving her, tragically, painfully, yet deeply, she told me that I live in the darkness and I only love women I know I can’t have.

I hated her for saying it, but with every passing year, she is proven more and more right. It drives me mad. It’s like she’s that gypsy from Richard Bachman’s imagination. Except for instead of “Thinner!” she’s cursed me with “Celibacy!”

So I can’t believe that this icon, this image, this symbol, this Dana is the person that Twitter decided today that I need to follow. @DangerDraa

Well. I guess she chose the right handle.

 

*Rosanne Cash. King’s Record Shop, 1987. Sony Music Distribution. Composed by Benmont Tench.