Sinister Wisdom

Time/Space84

Sinister Wisdom
A Multicultural Lesbian
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Address
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Email Address

ZipFall 2011 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Notes for a Magazine

3

Where To Find Sinister Wisdom

5

Epis

6

Fourth Wall as Spatial Design for Lovers
Melissa Buckheit

8
8

Ariadne and Harriet at Sea
Chrystal Wing

11
11

No Ark, or J-Town Pastoral
Nickole Brown

15
15

The Preservationist
Rachel Curry

17
17

Southern Music

21

Losses22

My Grandmother Defrosts the Freezer
Elizabeth Bradfield

23
23

Daughters of Bilitis DownunderJean Taylor

24
24

Fourteen

28

Chelsea, MA

29

Puerta Vallarta Mexico

31

A New Orleans Farewell
Linda Quinlan

32
32

mid(night)

33

swim

Sketch in “D” Minor
Margarita Miniovich

34
34

That Day
Julie Cooper-Fratrik

43
43

The Girl with Violets in Her Lap

44

Tower
Jocelyn Heath

46
46

2 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Coastal

47

Dawn

48

Morning
Joanna Cattonar

49
49

Excerpt from Beggar of Love
Lee Lynch

50
50

The Blessing

54

Semipalmated Plovers at Block Island
Marie LaPre-Grabon

55
55

Soul’s Presence
Fran Winant

56
56

Black Silk

58

How To Wash A Silk Shirt
Ruth Mountaingrove

60
60

GOING DUTCH
Clare Summerskill

61
61

International Women’s Day
Jean Taylor

91
91

Gray Is Good: Pacific NW Old Lesbians Meet
Carol Anne Douglas

94
94

Butch Voices 2011 Conference Re-Cap
Carrie Kholi

98
98

Book Reviews

101

Contributors

109

Advertisements

113

Fall 2011 3

Notes for a Magazine
This year, 2011, marks the thirty-fifth anniversary ofSinister Wisdom. Since Merry and I became co-editors of Sinister
Wisdom, we have been thinking a lot about the legacy of thejournal and about what it means to be publishing a journal of
lesbian art and culture today today. In the first “Notes for a
Magazine” in 1976, Catherine Nicholson and Harriet
Desmoines, the founders of Sinister Wisdom and the first coeditors, declared themselves “lesbian separatists because noother political position satisfied.” Desmoines wrote on behalf ofherself and Catherine Nicholson,
Sinister Wisdom is our political action. We believe thatwriting of a certain consciousness has greater impact
when it’s collected, when several voices give weight,
harmony, and countermelody to the individual
message. The consciousness we want Sinister Wisdom
to express is briefly that of the lesbian or lunatic whoembraces her boundary/criminal status, with the aimof creating a new species in a new time/space.

For thirty-five years, Sinister Wisdom has been exploring theconsciousness of lesbian and the boundary/criminal status. In
this issue, with the theme of Time/Space, we revisit Desmoines’s
desire to create a new species. A variety of lesbian poets andwriters explore different moments in space and time all reaching
to articulate: what does it mean to be lesbian today? You willfind a variety of answers that we hope will delight and inspire in
the work gathered in this issue.
In addition to poetry and fiction, we include two
historical accounts about lesbianism from our comrade, Jean
Taylor, in Australia and two reports from recent conferences.
The recent end of off our backs, the feminist news journal, which
published for nearly forty years, leaves a vacuum with few
sources for quality news and information about what ishappening in lesbian and feminist worlds. This need for vibrantand exciting journals by, for, and about lesbians isn’t new; in
1987, Barbara Grier noted in the Feminist Bookstore News that “weare becoming a community with no topical voice.” Shecontinued, “We have no Lesbian Advocate, no Lesbian Ms., no
Lesbian Christopher Street. . . .and saddest of all, no punch literate4 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

information-filled combination of all three.” Sadly, nearlytwenty-five years later the same is true. Although we treasuremagazines like Curve in the United States, the LGBT journal
Chroma from the United Kingdom, and the venerable LesbianConnection, we still don’t have the magazine Grier envisioned
with “good fiction, good and very letter poetry, hard hitting andtopical non-fiction ranging from child care for Lesbians throughhandling political differences in a community plus the endlessstream of topics dealing with relationships. . . .some humor,
some reportage on our ‘culture’, some reviewing of music, books,
events, some drama you name it. . .even some high-faluting crap
and a dollop of ‘theory.’” While we don’t think Sinister Wisdom
can fulfill Grier’s vision, we do want it to be a vibrant and vital
source for lesbian art and culture.
Merry and I are conscious of the ever changing meaningof lesbian in the twenty-first century and of how important it isthat we have a place to explore those meanings. We want to edit
and curate Sinister Wisdom as a literary and arts magazine of thehighest quality for lesbian artists, writers, and activists. We hopeover the next years to meet these twin goals.
Thank you for reading and supporting Sinister Wisdom.
Together, we are expressing, celebrating, and embracing lesbian
consciousness in time/space.
In sisterhood,
Julie R. Enszer
October 2011

Fall 2011 5

Where To Find Sinister Wisdom
Antigone Books (Tucson, AZ)
Bear Pond Books (Montpelier, VT)
Bloodroot (Bridgeport, CT)
Bluestockings Bookstore (New York, NY)*
Giovanni’s Room (Philadelphia, PA)
Galaxy Books (Hardwick, VT)
In Other Words (Portland, OR)
Bear Pond Books (Montpelier, VT)
Goddard College Library (Plainfield, VT)
Left Bank Books (Hanover, NH)
Dartmouth Barnes and Noble (Hanover, NH)
True Colors Bookstore (Minneapolis, MN)
Wild Iris Books (Gainesville, FL)*
*New bookstore since our last issue.
Our list of places to find Sinister Wisdom is growing! Join the
Sinister Wisdom Community Distribution Network and help
spread the work of Sinister Wisdom. More information isavailable at www.SinisterWisdom.org and on our Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/SinisterWisdom.

6 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Epis
Melissa Buckheit
for Rebecca
the first moment I slipped inside
we were born
hand who shines and shinesreflecting
your soul a vine
herding
cosmic stringshyest delightshyest fire
obliterates
always sleepin the sleeve of my collarbone
when you speak
you speakpoetry’s rise
Sappho knew your nametwo hundred stars
all namelessevening’s

Fall 2011 7

call me with the knifeof your tongue
flowerno snakebut one tended in the temple
baby again namedin the forest the fruit of your nipples
Eve remembers

8 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Fourth Wall as Spatial Design for Lovers
Melissa Buckheit

Outside the yard
you’re mixing paints for the newvoltage of the body
How much can you charge her before sherips off into the night
green on blue
red on orange
the difference
pigment, one teaspoon of sun
jammed down the throat of a passer-by
will not save us.
The plexiglas is a shield between you & the nude
her breasts pucker as she falls asleepin the declining day
sprawled on the carpet, hermost intimate sleep in your gaze.
You have to wake her
to arrange the limbs again, frozen
and drowsy
slightly overweight
she is as your mother would have been
if she had been someone elsea model a woman
You circle the houseon a wish

not a wife.
from how many directions

Fall 2011 9

can you invent her, firestorm in the distancenuggets of rock break the sky
into its elements
blue from yellow
our bodies fromwhat it takes us to get there.
The paint feels wet through the glass
its you alone in a roomin the lessening lightsuspended in her heat,a double image no face but hairlike a talisman for the wrong gender.
I was sunbathing on the rockface
when I said I liked you
it’s easier to cross,with our other bodies, here,
performing the functional tasks, eating
sleeping, speaking in each other’s ears,
ambulation.
A nice walk is profoundly calming
6 a.m., the sun charges you
a chemical bath
2 parts your palette hums
in its beauty.
Otherwise we are caustic
we are planning ourselves

10 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Spacein shy lightthe paint covers your bodycharcoal on your forearms
as you throw yourself against the paper
wouldn’t it be funny
to mark yourself
to a plane where a woman
owns her sexual organs?
Where you fly your own body out
as the nudeblissedand in terror

I watchmy breath regulating
the air traveling in even waves

a daily swap with yoga
in a chair
who can say
in which direction we will turn.

in the yard

Fall 2011 11

Ariadne and Harriet at Sea
Chrystal Wing
Ariadne used a furled orange umbrella to paddle her
nest toward Harriet, but it was difficult to keep herself going in astraight line. In the distance, Harriet’s nest also rode the swells of
the open sea. She was paddling with her hands, a modified
breast stroke, her body sprawled forward over the rim of roughbranches. They both looked up at the same time, their eyes
meeting. Quickly they averted their gaze.
The sun was too loud. Even the cat looked hot. She
crouched on the nest’s edge, one paw dabbing at the silverygreen waves. Ariadne pulled aside the collar of her pajama top
and peered down; a triangle of sunburn marked her chest.
“Damn!” she said. She yanked her rucked up pajama legs downover her exposed shins and continued paddling, her nest
swiveling from side to side. As she came closer, she stared atHarriet. She wore a tank top with her pajama bottoms; hershoulders had the same vivid hue as Ariadne’s chest.
“What?” said Harriet, pushing herself away from thenest’s edge and sitting up.
“Nothing.”“What is it? You were looking at me.”
“I was wondering if you’d like the umbrella.”“It’s a rain umbrella, not a sun umbrella.”“It still might help.”
Harriet sighed. “Then why don’t you use it?”
“Because,” Ariadne said stiffly, “I needed it to paddle.”
The waves slip-slopped against the sides of her nest.
“Someone,” said Harriet, “should have brought sun
block.”
Ariadne rolled her eyes. “What do you mean bysomeone?”“I mean one of us, you or me, might have thought
ahead.”
Ariadne shrugged. The cat sat up and shook her
dripping paw.
“You want a hard-boiled egg?” Harriet asked.

12 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Ariadne squinted, shading her eyes with her hand. “Youhave some?”
Harriet’s hands dipped out of sight and came up withfour eggs. “Come closer,” she said.
“I’m not really hungry.”
Harriet held up one of the eggs between her thumb andforefinger. She raised her eyebrows.
Ariadne hesitated, then paddled a little closer. Harriet
lobbed the egg. It sailed in a high arc, a small oval against theblue sky. Ariadne’s hand flew up and the cat’s paw batted theair, but the egg overshot the nest and splashed into the ocean. It
bobbed, suspended just below the surface, then sank slowly outof sight.
Ariadne looked over at Harriet, suddenly uneasy. “Tryagain,” she urged. “I’m ready.”
Harriet, also shaken, selected another egg and tossed itwith care. Ariadne caught it with one hand, the shell smacking
against her palm. They looked at each other with relief.
“Thank you,” said Ariadne.
“You’re welcome.” They peeled their eggs.
“No salt,” said Harriet. “Sorry.”
Ariadne reached over the side of the nest and dunked
the egg in the water. She shot a wry half-smile over at Harriet.
“Huh,” said Harriet, and dunked her egg, too.
“Seriously,” said Ariadne, biting into the firm yolk.
“You should take the umbrella. Your shoulders look painful.”“I thought you needed it to paddle.”“I’m close enough. Take it.”Harriet looked pointedly at Ariadne’s sunburned chest.
“No,” she said.
Ariadne tightened her lips and stared off at the flat lineof the horizon. “Stubborn,” she said under her breath. She lifted
her hair and blotted the back of her neck with a wad of tissues.
She sighed loudly.
“What?”“My hair. . . it’s hot.”
Harriet considered. “I could braid it.”
“What do you mean?”“I mean it might feel cooler.”
Ariadne studied Harriet’s face. “You don’t have to.”

Fall 2011 13“I know I don’t have to.”“All right, then.” She paddled the last few yards. Theirnests bumped. The cat leapt from Ariadne’s nest to Harriet’sand began walking the perimeter.
“How can we do this?” asked Ariadne.
“Turn around and sit up on the edge.”“That won’t work. The nests will drift apart.”“No, I don’t think so. See? The lichen on the twigs aremaking them catch on each other.”
Ariadne looked dubiously at the place where the nests
met.
“Will you please just do it?” said Harriet.
“I am.”
Ariadne perched, facing inwards. She opened theumbrella with a decisive snap; it bloomed orange above them,shading both of their heads.
“Thank you,” Harriet said grudgingly.
“You’re welcome.” She felt Harriet’s hands divide herhair into three parts, then begin to weave them together. The catbrushed against Ariadne’s back. “Is she in the way?”“No. She’s good.”
Ariadne let her head fall back, lolling in response to thepull on her scalp. “That feels nice,” she whispered. Tears welled
up, startling her.
“It’s past your waist,” said Harriet.
Ariadne cleared her throat. “Foolish,” she said.
“Who, me?”“No, me. For having it.”Harriet’s hands stopped. “I love your hair,” she said.
“Why would you say something like that?”
Ariadne wiped her nose on her pajama sleeve. “I don’t
know. I’m not myself.”
Harriet’s hands hesitated a moment longer, thenresumed braiding. “It’s a little crooked,” she said. “Hope it’s allright.”“Don’t be silly. Are you done?”“I have nothing to tie it with.”
Ariadne looked about the nest. She saw a length ofstring woven into the branches. Pulling it out, she turned to show
Harriet.

14 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Harriet was kneeling, the end of the braid held in her
hands. The cat sat close beside her. They both looked at Ariadne
with big, expectant eyes.
Ariadne laughed. “You two,” she said fondly, holding
out the string.
Harriet took it and tied the braid. “Are you liking me
now?” she asked.
Ariadne turned herself all the way around and placed
her bare feet in Harriet’s nest, in between Harriet’s knees. The
nests seesawed up and down as the weight shifted. She held theumbrella high over their heads.
“I didn’t. But now I do.”“I’m liking you now, too,” said Harriet. Her fingers
encircled Ariadne’s ankle, then she slid her hand up under
Ariadne’s pajama leg to hold her calf. They smiled at each other.
“I’m starving,” said Ariadne.
“Never fear, my love,” said Harriet. “There’s anotheregg.”Fall 2011 15

No Ark, or J-Town Pastoral
Nickole Brown—for Mary Oliver
No foxes here.
Only panting strays,
alley toms, a pacing,bottled, emailed existence,even our air
conditioned,vents pointing downwith a force fierce
enough to paralyze
a bouquet of stargazers
in full, static bloom.
No, no marsh hawks
either. Maybe a petcockatiel with her dried
green sprinkle on carpet
of no consequential color,maybe a street robin
fragile on segmented legs andrustedbreast, or a sparrow, the one
who kept pecking and pecking
my window last spring, fighting
his own reflection—a wive’s taleof death, asking to come in.
And my first luna moth?
I was walking, not the woods,
but to the discountgrocery. And he was big,
big as a hamburger,
half-dead, his electric green
covering the letter P in No Park.
And because I’m no Mary,16 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Spacehe frightened me—fourdrowsy eyes eyeing fromtattered wings, feathered antenna
tasting the artifice of
my air, the limp thistle
legs that stuck to my fingers
when I carried him to a safer place,well, not safe, but at leasta place where he would be taken
by beak or tooth and not
tire.
But what I want to say is
this: I was frightened,
I carried him,
and the bag girl, mentallyhandicapped and happy
just to have her first job,
followed me with her rattling trainof carts and her bright
red smile. When I set the winged thing
behind the dumpster, the girl,she threw her mouth
wide,
giggling and giggling and giggling
into such long line ofempty carts. I tell you:
I never knew carts to be so
empty. Never knew
how much each resembles acage.

Fall 2011 17

The Preservationist
Rachel Curry
The lingering scent of formaldehyde filled Theresa withdelight. It reminded her of the fire that had ravaged Boscov’s
Department Store Warehouse when she was just a girl. Fingers
intertwined in her doting grandfather’s assiduous grasp. Theresa
and Grandfather stood in front of that crackling blaze, as if itwere an inglenook assembled entirely for their warmth. She had
felt Grandfather’s clammy palms tightening around hers while
they were engulfed by the mesmerizing fragrance of a thousandburning mannequins.
Theresa acknowledged that her recent inheritance ofGrandfather’s funeral home possessed, in addition to many otherperks, undeniable aromatic benefits. She understood, too, theceremonial importance of her position; the person directly
responsible for enhancing the features of the freshly deceased.
The simple words, “He looks so natural,” never failed to endow
her with a humble joy.
From a young age, Theresa’s admiration for artistic
expression penetrated the constraints of conventional genres.
After all, her interpretation of Munch’s The Scream received firstprize in the replication category at her eighth grade art show.
When Theresa presented Grandfather with her blue ribbon andwinning painting he traced along her cheekbone with his index
finger, which smelled of a unique combination of formaldehyde
and Aqua Velva; “A human face will be more difficult torecreate, but… it appears as though you are a natural.” Despite
this fortuitous omen, however, Theresa’s collections remained
her truest passion and the source of her greatest pleasure. Whenthe funeral home was finally passed onto her, Theresa was eager
to expand the possibilities of what she could collect beyond her
wildest imaginings. Another distinctive pleasure, bestowed upon
her by Grandfather.
Initially, when Grandfather and Theresa collectedbutterflies, together, Theresa would nervously move her thumbback and forth over her incisors with her index finger. She felt,
instinctively, that something was fundamentally improper withpinning such delicate, mosaic-patterned wings to the stubble-

18 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

covered corkboard, but Grandfather insisted. Meticulously
sweeping her lustrous locks behind a dainty un-pierced ear,
Grandfather would assure her, “Such beautiful creatures are notcapable of feeling pain.” Theresa would recoil, cupping her
elbows into her palms and pulling them across her small frame.
The waft of cherry flavored cough drops lingered on
Grandfather’s breath as he whispered; “When their very purpose
is to impart pleasure.”
After her first pet fish died, Theresa decided to surpriseGrandfather by beginning an entirely new canvas. She felt
compelled to kiss her pet tenderly before impaling his
psychedelic fins against the coarse cork. Grandfather marveledat her natural creativity and her admiration for things departed.
He continued to purchase fish for Theresa with unbridled
anticipation of their inevitable demise. With each fatality,
Grandfather guided the tips of Theresa’s dutiful fingers acrossthe scaly subjects, encouraging fastidious precision in her
pinning form. “All things eventually die,” Theresa would repeat
before she fell asleep, “eventually.”
For years Theresa and Grandfather spent time reflecting
over the dozens of spectacular canvases they had completed
together. It was their commitment to preservation that ascended
these brilliantly tinted creatures, once ephemeral, into a world of
everlasting permanence. But only after her imperious
grandfather’s death could Theresa’s own genius for collecting
truly reach its pinnacle, high- art status. She devoted herself to
uncovering the artistically infinite possibilities that lay ahead ofher, and all was made possible by the addition of eachgentleman client that arrived at the funeral home.
Grandfather, naturally, had the honor of being first.
Theresa had pondered performing this swift alteration to
Grandfather countless times, and just as she had suspected, thisfinal ritual to his unresisting corpse made Grandfather appear
more peaceful than he had ever looked when he was alive.
Theresa’s exceptional mortuary work eventually earned
her a reputation that stretched far beyond her own small town.
She had a special knack for adding a hint of rosiness to skin,sculpting features and rejuvenating aged hands. Theresa felt it
both an appropriate and a much-deserved acknowledgement for
her name to be synonymous with the beautiful dead. And so her

Fall 2011 19

funeral home was inundated with subjects from neighboring
towns, families desperate for the chance to have their loved onespreserved. Of course, Theresa was no ordinary, anachronistic
funeral artist. She received a cascade of kudos for her meticulous
restorations, and her specific airbrush technique was evenfeatured in the July issue of Mortuary Management magazine. She
always humbly thanked her adoring public at every wake—as all
respectable undertakers should. Theresa served as dutiful
diplomat to the harmless dead.
Theresa kept secret the true reason that her clients—
those who were anatomically eligible of course—looked almost
unbearably serene at their debut. It was her recondite collection!
And any time Theresa began to feel a tinge of uneasiness about
her collecting, she calmed herself by stating: “All great masters
had their secrets.” In turn, the increased exigency of her
mortuary work pleasantly served to heighten the zeal for her
latest collection. An incredible union had been generated withthe recent amalgamation of Theresa’s day job alongside her
newest canvas.
Eventually, Theresa decided to leave her small
apartment and took up the funeral home as her permanent
residence. Natural progressions. Theresa thoroughly explored
the grounds, hunting for the perfect space to relocate hercollection. After rediscovering the possibilities of a spacious
warehouse basement—a concrete treasure chest—Theresa knew
she had finally uncovered a gallery that was worthy of displaying
her past and present collections. At the end of each work day
Theresa would skip down the musky steps to her gallery andspend at least an hour or more gazing upon, if not actuallyadding to, her newest and most prized canvas. The fact that it
began with Grandfather made it even more meaningful to her.
She was confident in her subjects’ inherent complicity with hertask, certain of their approval. She could tell by the way their lips
had looked so pleasantly relaxed at their debuts. “Eachgentleman seems to be breathing a little sigh of relief only I canhear,” she thought on more than one occasion. If only thisomniscience served to enlighten Theresa as to who had died
when. Both corpse restoration and collecting were duties that
depended on providential circumstances quite beyond her
control. She supposed that her patience was a worthy

20 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Spaceoccupational hazard. She would cock her head and imagine
Grandfather uttering his favorite phrase: “No honor lies insentimentalizing little might-have-beens.” Theresa smiled.
Anticipation is a blessing.

Fall 2011 21

Southern Music
Elizabeth Bradfield—for Arctic Explorer Donald B. MacMillan
The choir on stage facing the audience,
not turned to each other. No interrupting laughter. You
in plush seat, aware of money paid and thus how muchattention is due. Voices drawn through thinpipes and shaped in the mouth’s nave,
not growl-deep in sound. How blanktheir faces, stiff their silk. How fixed to notes
arranged by some distant, unrelated hand.
You drift. Miriam nudges. But she’s impatient, too.
Your records from Greenland are rough, warped. I don’t
believeyou made them just for science. Home, I bet you stoodwith Miriam on your polar bear rug, fire cracking in thehearth,hands on each other’s elbows, eyes on each other’s eyes,
and opened your throats, sound surging like water betweenyou.
I bet you allowed yourself the comfort of breath
as well as breath’s outrush becoming song. Mac,you filled your body with the sounds of womenat least once, didn’t you?

22 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

LossesElizabeth Bradfield—for Arctic Explorer Donald B. MacMillan
Mac, when you lived in Greenlandor Nain, did anyone take themselvesfrom the changing world?
Louisa has killed herself.
Her cousin, my friend,
has flown home to Iqaluitfrom Germany, where he lives
with the girlfriend he met while studying
at Columbia. Think of his journey.
We measure the pollen shiftin ice cores. Hunting and whaling stats
were gathered early and kept well. Ships
logged each arrival and departure.
But the lives of girls
have always been hard to see.
Not many, if we’re being honest, have tried.
And now Louisa, like Lucy, likeSusie, like Hope is gone.

Fall 2011 23

My Grandmother Defrosts the Freezer
Elizabeth Bradfield
Every Thursday evening
the walls melt back, recede
again to metal. She has read about ice
and its dangers: wrecking ball in the sea,
thief of nimbleness, roadway trickster. Was it
her daughter or her son who took her to Alaska?
Drips sound in a pan, and she tries to recall
ice she has seen, glaciers easing down
mountain flanks as slow rivers,
their crack and shift, all scraped barein their wake. A terrifying absence.
She empties the melt pan, pulls a wedge of frost
from one wall and runs it under water,
her fingers confused by temperatureand the quick loss of what she holds.

24 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Daughters of Bilitis DownunderJean Taylor
It’s a matter of lesbian herstory that Del Martin andPhyllis Lyon were founding members of Daughters of Bilitis thatwas established in San Francisco in 1955. DOB provided a
supportive environment for its members and published an
informative newsletter, The Ladder, which eventually reachedmany thousands of lesbians across the US. DOB went on to
become a significant and militant lesbian organisation whose
members went on marches to publicise their cause and were
outspoken in their advocacy for lesbian rights till the groupeventually folded in the late 1970s.
In the meantime, news of DOB had reached Australia
and in 1969 two lesbians in Melbourne, Claudia Pierce (later
Contessini) and Marion Paull, wrote independently of each other
to DOB asking about setting up a similar lesbian organisation inAustralia. After DOB in the U.S. had put them in touch witheach other, Claudia and Marion met and together with several
other lesbians established Daughters of Bilitis in Melbourne as
an affiliate of DOB in the U.S. DOB held meetings at the DOB
Clubrooms, (also Marion’s home), where the members heldpolitical discussions about Stonewall and related lesbian matters.
By early 1970, the Melbourne Chapter of DOB began
producing their own Newsletter to keep members up to date andinformed. The four Purposes of DOB were reprinted from The
Ladder and ended with the words, “Join DOB today and help
make the gay world a better place to live in.” In order to attract
new members the group advertised their PO Box number andput ads in The Age and were willing to be interviewed by the
media. An article, “The Forbidden Love,” featured in The Sunday
Observer on 19 July 1970. One of the early members, Francesca
Curtis, (also the Editor of the Newsletter), was the first out
lesbian to be seen on TV when she was interviewed on The
Bailey File by Tania Haylesworth in July 1970.
However, when it became obvious that DOB in the US
was a militant organisation and its members went on street
marches wearing t-shirts bearing the words “Butch” and “Dyke”
some members were concerned about the adverse publicity andFall 2011 25

voted to disassociate itself. After a great deal of debate, theorganisation changed its name to the Australasian Lesbian
Movement in July 1970, as was mentioned in the Editorial of
ALM Newsletter no. 7 August 1970:
The big news this month is the severing of theumbilical cord with our Mother Organisation... Aftermuch discussion members have decided to drop the title
DOB and from now on we will be known as theAustralasian Lesbian Movement or simply ALM.
It was a busy month all round for us and out first
big step was the face to face television interview on The
Bailey File. This brought in many letters from people
wanting more information. As a result we now have somenew members and others who are interested in joining.

Phyllis Papps was one of those who saw Francesca’s TV
interview, and after contacting DOB she went to a function forprospective members and became a member. The first time
Phyllis met openly gay womyn was at her first DOB meeting andit wasn’t long before she and Francesca started a relationshipwhich was still going strong 41 years later in 2011.
The ALM aimed to change society’s attitudes towards
lesbians and was run by an elected committee. Marion was thefirst president of the ALM, Claudia was the secretary and thephone contact person, (fifty percent of calls were local, the restcame from all over the place, including Papua New Guinea andAotearoa/New Zealand), till the annual general meeting inNovember 1970 when Francesca became the President (andstopped doing the Newsletter), Claudia the vice president andPhyllis the Secretary. These four significant lesbians were morethan willing to be out and take a stand on behalf of lesbians but
others in the group were not prepared to ‘come out’ so openly
because of the possible repercussions this public exposure would
have on their families and their work life.
After Marion and then Claudia left to be involved in the
Women’s Liberation Movement, Francesca and Phyllis became
the mainstays of the organisation. They felt they were on a
mission to get the message out that being gay was okay and were
excited about going on the TV programs and addressing localgroups. Francesca and Phyllis and others in the ALM wereinterviewed by Peter Couchman on the TV show, This Day
Tonight, because they felt strongly that they had to stand up and26 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

say they were lesbians to help those who were unable to come toterms with the fact that they were gay. As mentioned in the ALM
Newsletter September 1970:
Channel 2 sent a team from This Day Tonight tospeak to members willing to appear on television. We
could only scrape up three. Most of the others appear tohave great feelings of ambivalence. We know there areproblems concerning work, relations and friends with allof us, but can we afford not to go on now?
Thanks to television and newspaper publicity,
letters have continued to pour in from all over
Victoria. How tragic it is to read about the number ofLesbians who have lived in loneliness and isolation for solong. We hope to be able to communicate with them insome way.

What these lesbians were doing was courageous andalthough they didn’t realise it at the time it was herstory in themaking. As a result of the publicity ALM attracted a lot moremembers who worked in a variety of jobs as business womyn,nurses, office womyn, teachers, factory workers and students.
ALM organised lots of activities for its members
including bingo, outings to the country, picnics, parties, volleyball games and Sunday functions. The social side was importantbut so too was being out and maintaining a profile in thecommunity to attract new members. Francesca and Phyllis werea small core of committed political activists who were pro-active
and gave talks to the Lions Club and other community groups
about what they were doing.
Phyllis and Francesca stepped down from being officebearers at the AGM in August 1971 because by that time theirpolitical views were in the minority as most of the members only
wanted to socialise and were not interested in being out. ALM
continued to meet and socialise with no less than five gettogethers during the month of October 1971 including abarbecue down at the beach, a Folk Night of music and wine,
cheese and sausage and a boat trip on the Bay.
By the end of 1972, after a year of social functions,parties, bingo and coffee, drama, games, raffles and meetings the
ALM had run its course. The last ALM Newsletter no 28
November 1972 advertised the emergency meeting for 13
December where the few members who were left agreed to close

Fall 2011 27

the ALM and after subscriptions of new members had been
reimbursed the balance of the bank account was distributed tovarious charities. Apologising for the format of the meagre
newsletter the president added: “We give you instead THE
DUNCAN STORY without comment and attached hereto.”
What followed was a detailed account of Dr. George Duncan’s
death and the evidence at his inquest (the Adelaide University
law lecturer, targeted because he was gay, was thrown into theRiver Torrens in South Australia in May 1972 and drowned).
The tragedy of this story is not that Duncan diedbut that he had to die before a state government took acloser look at their criminal code and changed it. It will be
a greater tragedy if the other states have to wait for theirown Duncans before they too review their criminal
codes.

A small public notice was included in The Age 23
February 1973: “Australasian Lesbian Movement closed Dec
1972.”
This is just a brief account of the first lesbianorganisation, (also the first gay group), in Australia to openly
work towards changing homophobic attitudes and to give its
members the opportunity to feel they were worthwhile membersof society. During the three years it was in operation DOB /ALM not only supported its many members and put lesbians intouch with each other but because the organisation went out of
its way to take a political stand on behalf of all lesbians, its
members were the courageous pioneers of the lesbian visibility
we enjoy today.
Sources:• DOB / ALM Newsletters: 1970 - 1972
• Taped interview with Phyllis Papps and Francesca
Curtis by members of the Australian Lesbian and Gay
Archives (ALGA), Liz Ross, Gary Jaynes and Graham
Willett, on 10 January 2008.
• Brazen Hussies: Herstory of Radical Lesbian Feminism in the
Women’s Liberation Movement in Victoria 1970 - 1979, Jean
Taylor, Dyke Books, Melbourne, 2009

28 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Fourteen
Linda Quinlan

Behind your housetrains rolled over our pennies.
Flattened onto your rooftop
we’d watch
the sun wrinkled Mystic Bridge
safe among the graveled stones
and molting pigeons.
We’d invent ancient rituals
built on ones from the week before.
Mothers haunt the poems we write.
Fathers yell for us from the street
we are late for dinner.
We leap over buildings
so quickly
the light dances on the tar
and shadows split apartwith the ache of leaving.

Fall 2011 29

Chelsea, MA
Linda Quinlan
This as her February birth
my Aunt Evy swayed with every half tone
the spontaneous steps of a childliving outside Newfoundland
the fishing village of her family's past.
This wasn't New Orleans
where she might have had a chance
where anger and creativity collide
but this was Chelsea
a city of bad daughtersand warlike sons,
where nothing grew
but immigrants and hunger.
Her father's madness
beckoned him to an ocean deathbut instead he crawled into dementia
soaked in beer
the smell of urine even when he slept.
My aunt married one summer
a man back from the war in Europe.
His pale violenceswelling out of every room
made her a ghost.
She danced at homeover the kitchen tile that curled in the corners.
She danced in circles
while her daughter slept.
Unil he took their child awaypunishing her dancecommanded a beat from the suburbs
and snapped his fingers

30 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Spaceagain and again
until even her suicide
seemed clumsy.

Fall 2011 31

Puerta Vallarta Mexico
Linda Quinlan
The bats are already flying
though the sun over the jungle
shows sunset villasin half shades of light and dark.
The river below gurgles in pools
shallow from up here
and the song of the deadclings to my clothes
and my arms smell of my mothera sweaty factory smell
and Sharon who never left New Orleansdead two years now
looks out through my eyes.
An iguana
turns the color of the terracotta roof.
This is my angry fantasy,
the feel of sand that burns your feet
until you reach the waterwith long progressive strides,
but you always have to returnboth remembering and forgetting
the burn, the actual footsteps that brought you here.
My friend greets ma at the gate
under the brick Spanish arch.
The classic bell on top that does not ring
and we move forward together
into his dream house.

32 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/SpaceA New Orleans Farewell
Linda Quinlan
You left me an African mask
left meleft meto enter the Please U Cafeon lower St. Charles
bacon grease settling on my skinwhere short round waitresses
older than weleave work swiftly
on a washed out Saturday night,
where tourists wander streets they shouldn't,
Erato, Tchoupitoulas, Clio
past Charity Hospitalwhere a half broken banana treeslaps at the heat of Julymaking not a bit of difference to anyone
and I can't remember you there
no Mardi Gras beads around your neckno music to selllying in a hallway gurney
stomach so bloatedthat tears are orphans here
and the stifling air has no arms
so I carry your ashes
to the Mississippi Riverand remember to be an outlaw
to ripple through people's lives
with a soft rebellious wave.

Fall 2011 33

mid(night) swim
Margarita Miniovich(yes)terday
yesgood asnight yes
toget(her)(ah)gain pl(ease)ohthatdance thatda da da ance
more (muse)sic
than (eve)ver(be)fore(oh)ceandeep hunger here I am(oh)rangerain(be)tween
you
are
mine
(i)s(land)(or)chid(blue)nessinme(sin)ce youto(ouch)(today)ness of now(oh)pen up
minutesto(yea)rsswim (in)side splashing(more)ning dew
rubmyscales smooth shine silver thensteer my
tail
in
all
four
directions
wefall(as)sleepsilentfin
tofin

34 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Sketch in “D” Minor
Margarita Miniovich
Lina called last night. To ask for my definition of destiny. She waswriting another paper for her philosophy class, doing a survey on
the differences in the definition of destiny between men andwomen. Too many d’s as far as I’m concerned. But I wasflattered to be included in her woman sample. Usually, shedoesn’t know what to call me.
“Uhhmm, this is Vida, my sister,” she says, her eyes
shifting left/ right.
“Sister” barely audible.
“You had such nice hair, why did you cut it off?” “You
had such nice skirts, why don’t you wear them anymore?” “Garywas nice, why did you leave him?”
Everything “nice” in past tense.
D for doors. Shut. “Destiny,” I told her, “is being bornwith small tits.”
Lee had small breasts. She said it was great, that way she
didn’t sweat under her breasts in the summer. It wasn’t true. In
the summer (on our bed, on the floor, against a kitchen counter),
I would find her breasts with my hands, my mouth, kiss her wet
salty skin, the nipples getting hard on my tongue, like Hershey’s
kisses. Her hair, long and curly, drops of sweat on her neck. Her
hands on my back, gripping, her hips dancing circles. She camewith her open mouth pressed to mine. She liked it when I kissed
the tip of her nose.
She called me “my Vida,” meaning life, and I called her“my one and onLee,” meaning a pun.
Last night, after talking with Lina, I sat at my kitchen
table and thought about all the d words that had come to mind.
Ding dong, dyke, delusion, depression, dilapidated, dull, dukhobors,
Dostoyevsky, dawn, dead.
I went to bed and couldn’t stop. Dilute, drek, Duracell,distended, dope, dat’s it folks, don’t.
Lee came to me in a dream in the early morning. Thishasn’t happened in seven months. She sat in the big green
armchair in our living room. I came in. Her hair was cropped
short and she’d gained weight. I was crying in the doorway. She

Fall 2011 35

looked right at me. I wanted to run to her, but my feet wouldn’t
move. I just stood there, frozen, with my arms stretched out toher. She kept getting bigger and bigger. I took one step forward
and she became the green armchair. I woke up thirsty, with myeyes dry.
Lee hated that green chair. She said it had hard bumps
and hurt her back. She used to rub the sore spot with her hands,
after sitting in it for a while. I never noticed the bumps myself.
Lee had beautiful hands. Long chiseled fingers, soft
palms. She didn’t bite her nails. She played my grandmother’s
old piano, her hands - birds, flying, singing above the white andblack stripes. Only when she was alone. And only sometimes, forme, when I asked her, kissing her fingers.
“I can’t sleep, just one leettle song, a leettle leelabye, pleese.”
She couldn’t read music but had perfect pitch andplayed everything by ear. Her favorites, for some strange reason,
were old Jewish songs. She was Catholic by birth. She’d pick up
a melody from me humming it once in the kitchen while I was
making pancakes. She played Tumbalalaika well enough to bringtears to my dead grandmother’s eyes. She even knew the words.
I don’t know how. I was always too busy to ask.
“Oh Vi!” she called me when she was happy. “Oye
Vey!” she called me when she was very happy.
After Lee, I sold the piano for three hundred bucks
through the Buy & Sell. Lina didn’t want it.
I had met Lee in a phone booth on a corner of Yonge
and Wellesley. I had a lunch date with Lina that afternoon andshe was twenty minutes late. Very alarming for Lina, who isnever late for anything. I called my answering machine to see if
she’d left a message. Sure enough, Lina had called: “Sorry,
sweetie, I have to cancel. I have to T.A. this afternoon, oldFriesen is sick again. I called this morning, but missed you. Hopeyou get this message in time to make other plans. Talk to you
soon.” I hung up feeling stood up. I had no other plans and thatwas my day off. I stepped out of the booth, squinting from thebright sun. I was hungry.
“Excuse me.” I heard a woman’s voice behind me. I
turned around.
“I’m sorry, but do you have an extra quarter? I have to make acall and I don’t have any change. I feel really foolish asking this.”

36 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

She was about my age, slim legs in faded blue jeans,black t-shirt, small breasts, a sea of dark curls to her shoulders,dark eyes, embarrassed smile.
“Oh, yes. Just a minute.” My voice sounded an octave
higher than normal. I coughed. I reached into my knapsack,searching for my wallet. My thick leather daybook fell out. We
both bent down to pick it up, both said sorry, laughed, both got
up too quickly, with the book still on the ground. I got a quarter
from my wallet, gave it to her.
“Don’t worry, it happens to me all the time. I just don’t
have the guts to ask anybody.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her
face. She had a few freckles on her nose.
“Thank you so much. It’s about a job. I have to call to
see if I got it. I can’t really call them collect, you know.” Shebent down and picked up my daybook.
“Here.”“Thanks.”
I wished that I had taken a shower that morning. My
palms felt sweaty.
“No, thank you. O.K. I gotta go. Bye.”“See you later.”
She walked into the phone booth and shut the glass
door. I stood not knowing what to do. I had forgotten where I
was going. Then I remembered that I wasn’t going anywhere. I
walked to the side of the phone booth and took my time stuffing
the book into my knapsack, putting the wallet back in, zippingup the bag, fixing my socks, my shoelaces. I didn’t look at her.
Couldn’t. I wanted her to get that job. Wanted to ask her tohave lunch with me. I was more hungry than ever. The door
opened and she walked out quickly, without looking in mydirection. She crossed the street and disappeared into thesubway entrance. I saw the back of her head in a crowd. A black
dot, with curls like the tail of a comet behind her.
Is destiny - connecting all the dots in the right order, inthe only possible order? What if one of the dots disappears? Gets
wiped out. Rubbed off. Lost. Irretrievably. Is that also destiny?
And what are you supposed to do then - the connection to thenext dot is impossible, it has been severed. All movement
forward aborted. You are left with one leg raised and nowhere toplant it, the leg getting heavier by the second, starting to tremble

Fall 2011 37

from strain, from fighting gravity. You are left with your mouth
open, a breath, a word, only half exhaled, the other half still inyour lungs, growing like a tumor.
You are left.
I stood on that street corner and felt dizzy. Paralyzed.
Heavy. Black behind my eyes as if I were going blind. I didn’tknow then what I know now: the way you start is the way you
finish. With very few exceptions. And I was never exceptional inanything. With maybe one exception. Making love to Lee.
A week after the phone booth, I ran into Lee again, in a
downtown bar. She was dancing alone on a semi-empty dance
floor, wearing the same black t-shirt. Her long pale arms werelike white wings, circling, embracing herself. Totallyunselfconscious. A bird in flight. The kind of bird that crashes
into glass thinking it’s the sky. I had to save her. Catch her.
Lina never liked Lee. At first I thought it was because I
joked incessantly about how she’d set us up by canceling thatlunch on me. But she always corrected me by saying that Lee
had left that afternoon, without even turning around. In an
almost celebratory tone of voice. I knew that Lina was panicking.
It was one thing to have a sister who occasionally slept withwomen and quite another to have a sister with a live-in woman
lover.
“I don’t care who you sleep with,” she used to say. “Ijust care that we don’t lose each other in the process.”
I tried to explain to her that Lee or any other woman,for that matter, could never take her place. That sisterhood,history, blood and love were different things. That she, Lina, wasin my blood, in every cell of my body, necessary as air,
inerasable, as permanent as crazy glue; and love was, well, as
rare as a black swan, as running into a peacock in a bank line.
I’d be crazy not to stare, not to want to touch, to have. Lina said
she understood, and of course, she didn’t want to stop me frombeing happy, she was thrilled for me, but still found every excuse
to avoid coming over to our house. We never had the food she
wanted to eat - we had to meet downtown; our place was too
smoky - we had to go to a park.
“Lina, I’m so in love, my skin sings!”

38 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space“That’s nice, Vid, but did she have to move in after two
weeks? And all those paint fumes are toxic. You smoke too muchas it is. And you’ve had weak lungs since you were little.”
Lee and Lina met for the first time at my thirtiethbirthday party. Almost six months after Lee and I got involved.
Lina, in a cream silk shirt, diamond studs in her ears. Lee, in an
emerald velvet jacket (with loose threads at the sleeves) she foundfor 50 cents at a garage sale that morning. I introduced them assoon as Lina walked in. Lee hugged her.
“So, you’re the famous sister.”“And you are the famous.......Lee.” Strained laughter.
Lee: “My name is the beginning of yours.”
Lina: “Your name is the beginning of a lot of things.” Up/downwith her eyelashes.
Lee afterwards to me, in bed: “ You two are definitely sisters.
She flirts as well as you.”
Me to Lee: “I taught her.”
Lina afterwards to me, on the phone: “ You two have only been
together for a month and she’s already acting like I’m family.”
Me to Lina: “But you are.”
She again, “What does she do for a living anyway? And don’ttell me she’s a painter, I mean for a living.”
Me: “She’s a painter.”
Distance. Drip dry. Decapitation. Dashboard. Down. Deserve.
Desire. Dear Abby. Detract. Doodle. Damn. Denial. Doremifasolatido.
She painted huge canvases full of faces - red, purple,
black and silver. She hung them on the walls of our small
apartment and the place always smelled like paint. We could
never make love standing up because we couldn’t lean against
the walls. There was always a pair of huge wet eyes staring out at
us, trying to dry.
Every couple of weeks she would take old paintings
down to a crammed storage room in the basement, and put newones up on our walls. I always knew something was wrong when
she left the same ones hanging for a month.
“I can’t see, you know, I just can’t see anything,” she’dsay then. And eat chocolate for breakfast. We always had at leastsix Mars Bars in the fridge.
Then, one day, I would come home and hear her
playing the piano. I would make a lot of noise with my keys

Fall 2011 39

outside the door, the music would stop, and I’d find Lee sitting
on the floor, cross-legged, casually flipping through the TV Guide.
I wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t want to embarrass her.
That night she would take down an old painting, put aclean canvas in its place, and with her dark hair splattered silver
she would come to bed smelling of acrylic and chocolate. She
painted faces on my back with her tongue, until I turned over.
She kissed my lips and her fingers played melodies on my bodythat would have made my grandmother roll over in her grave.
Dolce Vida. That’s what she called me when her lips werestill wet with me.
She despised my job. I have worked as a typesetter inthe same print shop for five years. The pay was good, I liked
most of the people there, and I didn’t mind the work.
“We only live once,” she used to say, a wet paintbrush in
her hand, sleeves rolled up. “And you’re wasting yourself in ameaningless routine.” Her eyes looking straight into mine. “Youthink the world is a better place because you can typeset someasshole’s resume faster than anyone else? So he could get a job
and become rich, and buy another house and another car andwatch TV and drink beer and beat his wife in his spare time?”“Why is he, whoever he is, necessarily an asshole?” I
would ask, knowing that’s not the point, but hating to loose anargument.
“You love taking pictures. You’re good at it. You evenlook different when you do it, alive or something, I don’t know.
Pink-cheeked. Why don’t you do it?” Lee would get back to thepoint. “You have to do what you love. We all do,” she’d say,dipping her brush into deep burgundy.
I would crawl on all fours towards her, grab her by her
ankle, kiss her leg all the way up to the warm space between her
thighs.
“I am doing what I love,” I’d say looking up at her.
She’d shake her head, not smiling, but wouldn’t move away. Just
drop the paintbrush into a bucket on the floor. And close her
eyes.
Dew drop. Darling. Drop darling. Definite drop.
I came home at 7 every night, usually too tired to stayup for a movie she’d rented. She loved thrillers. But always
covered her eyes with her hands in scary parts. I fell asleep with

40 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

my head on her lap, somewhere in the middle of the film, lulled
by her breathing, her warm belly rising and falling near my face.
A dot size is relative to the distance of your eyes, yourface, to it. The closer your skin gets to it, the larger it is.
Sometimes as large as your life.
Dream doll. Doll dream.
Lee worked part-time in a little gallery around thecorner from our place. The pay wasn’t enough for rent, let alone
her paints and canvases, but she loved it. She didn’t mind mysupporting both of us, and I didn’t either.
Destiny - what if a dot fades? To blankness. Nothing
drastic happens. It starts to disappear slowly; the change in theintensity of color and shape barely noticeable, from one day to
the next. One day to the next.
“Lee, you haven’t painted anything in two weeks.
What’s wrong?” I throw my knapsack by the door. To free myarms for a hug.
“Nothing.” Her body unyielding. Still in her pajamas.
Her curls flat. Sleep in the corner of her eye.
“You want to go for some Greek food?”“I’m not hungry.”Half an hour later eating a Mars bar, drinking blackcoffee. An empty pack of cigarettes on the kitchen table. Hereyes away from me. Looking towards the open window and thegreen branches of an elm tree in the front yard.
One day to the next.
How many times have I thought of hanging a close-up
photograph of me on those green, disinterested branches. My
face dancing to the wind. Her eyes through the window
following my rhythm. Focused only on my face. My eyes smilingat her, soothing, seducing, taking her in. Wholly mine. Even fora moment.
And then, one night you go to bed and stretch your arm
across the top of the pillow next to yours, the way you had done
for the past four years. Expecting to wind your fingers throughthe pile of warm curls. Because that’s what you do before you
fall asleep. And your fingers clutch at air, at nothingness, justabove that pillow. Your fingers suspended, rigamortized,
disembodied. The dot has disappeared. You had not noticed it
earlier, at dinner. You could have sworn it was there. Earlier atFall 2011 41

dinner. You had broccoli surprise. Big chunks of tuna and diced
tomatoes. Whole wheat bread. Not toasted. You could havesworn the dot was there, it was just a regular Tuesday night,
water running, dishes being done. You went to take your daily
vitamins and all the glasses were clean, bottoms up on the
shelves, just the way you like them. Brushed your teeth, flossed,
moisturized your face. You could have sworn you knew yournext step. Bed, pillow, warm curls, sleep.
“Talk to me, damn it!” All the windows wide open. Hot
August evening. Air still.
“I don’t know what to say, Vida.” Quietly. Her cigaretteashes falling on the carpet. She doesn’t look down.
“Are you unhappy?”
Silence.
“Is it us?”
Silence.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”“I don’t know! Just leave me alone! I don’t know. You’realways on top of me, what’s wrong, honey, what’s wrong!” Butts
out her cigarette. Leaves the room. Bathroom door slams. Water
running.
“Get your own life, stop living mine!” Her voice
distorted through running water or tears. I can’t tell.
I call Lina from a pay phone outside. “No, nothing iswrong. I just wanted to see you, that’s all. It’s been a while, you
know. Yeah, Lee is fine. She’s busy painting a new thing andwanted the place to herself tonight. Yeah, a movie sounds
great.”
I don’t fall asleep in the middle of that film. I don’t fallasleep at all. I get home, sit in the green armchair and smoke
until the room lightens with the first sun. Then I get up and walk
into our bedroom. Lee is sleeping, her breathing even, her closed
eyelids trembling slightly as from a bright light. I go back to thegreen chair and light another cigarette.
“Sorry, Vi. I’m really really sorry about last night.” Lee’s
arms around my neck. Her lips warm and dry on my cheek. The
kitchen smells of pasta. We eat. Together. For the first time in acouple of months.

42 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space“I love you, Lee.” I say. “I want you to be happy. Tellme what I can do to make you happy? To make it like it was
before?”I don’t know before what.
“Vi, sometimes I feel like I’m a bird. And one of my feet
is tied with a thick rope. To a big cement post. And I can’t fly
away. No matter how hard I try. And I need to fly. To feel mywings alive, you know? That’s how I feel - that life itself is thatrope. And I’m too chicken to chew my leg off, like a wolf.”
I notice all the mixed metaphors. I’m so cold my lungsache.
“I have to do something. Change something. I don’t
know. I just can’t live like this anymore.”
She’s crying. Looking right at me. Her eyes are like dark
wet amber.
That night we make love for the last time. It feels like thefirst.
At the end she said she was tired, couldn’t see colors
anymore, the damn piano was out of tune, has been for ages,
couldn’t I hear?, couldn’t stand my fingers in her hair at night, it
got her hair all tangled up, didn’t know if she still loved me,
didn’t know if she could love anyone right now, needed her own
space, was sorry....
She slept in the green armchair for the next elevennights, until she found a place. I didn’t ask if her back ached.
After she left, Lina came to stay with me for a week. She
cleaned out the storage room of all the old paintings and put an
ad in the Buy & Sell for the piano. She wanted to sell the green
chair as well, but I didn’t let her. We both avoided the L words,
like love or Lee. I called Lina hey, and she understood why.
Damp days dance Dante’s defiant darkness. Division. Dissent.
Disease. Dislocation. Dismal. Dislodge. Dragon.
Destiny is a wet face on the wall staring at you fromacross the room. The face that never dries. Made up of myriadof dots. Sometimes I think that one dot missing doesn’t change
the essence of the face. But sometimes I can’t see anything butthat empty space. My next step/stop unknown. The paintergone.

Fall 2011 43

That Day
Julie Cooper-Fratrik
After awhile, Virginia put down the duster and slipped away.
James King
Virginia Woolf
After the weight of stones
disturbs the river’s calm, circles
of water spread outward, as small
at first as minnows gasping for air.
In town, the tower clock strikes one:its circles of sound surroundthe water meadows, the lowingof cattle, plaintive and pure as rain.
There would the dead leaf fall,when the leaves fall,in the water.
From the hedge, a redstart calls.
Rhododendrons shiver. A man lays down
his pruning shears; his feet move imperceptibly
toward the house. Along the river bottom,
minnows feed.
*Quoted stanza from Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

44 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

The Girl with Violets in Her Lap
Jocelyn Heath
I knew the flowers
in her lap, overflowing
the basket of her fingers,
their green spade leaves
buried under purple.
I knew the violet glow
against the undersideof her breasts, the lightof so many flowers
against skin,petals thick in the vale
between her thighs.
Spring violets,
white and lilac and purple.
I knew her, Sappho,
before I found your fragments—
the unspeakable excerpted
by time or hands—and I find her,beautiful bridewith violets in her lap,in her chamber prior to dressing.
Readying herself
for one lost to time,
whose fragment wore away
and set her center on the pagefor me to find.
You, coveted in a poet’s words,

Fall 2011 45

woman bright with petals,
I have known but never seen
until flowers fluttered off the page,
and then you—naming the want of Lesbos—
two thousand years escape my breast.

46 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Tower
Jocelyn Heath
One red bloom
with petals of a child’s fingertip’s breadthsuspended by a broken trellis overa concrete square stained with rust,beside the brief slope fleckedwith dust and mica borderinga kingdom around a vine-wrapped tower.
The blue ribbed doll blanket laid out on a cornermakes a bed. In the beach bucket,
we stir a goulash of leaves and dirt.
My friend imagines that she is a prince
and we lie down,
the double yellow center of the rose
above us an eye leaning ever closer.

Fall 2011 47

CoastalJoanna Cattonar
sea lions and harbor seals
iridescent as rain
brown bellies a sea
breathing waves
sleep on each otherlike thisall shoulders
all humming skin

48 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Dawn
Joanna Cattonar
downin the cup
above
your lipshinesthe curveof your backarchesin my handdark wetpetalsswaying
on a stem

Fall 2011 49

Morning
Joanna Cattonar
I wakewith my handon your sex
and the moan begun
in my dreampours into my heart

50 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Excerpt from Beggar of Love∗

Lee Lynch
Ginger wasn’t coming back this time, Jefferson felt it.
She didn’t blame Ginger, but for the final break to come over a
mistake, a misunderstanding—the pain of it pummeled her.
She’d only gone to Shirley’s room to finish apologizing and to
get to know her without sex hanging them up. Then they walked
around the corner to the coffee shop as Jefferson had originallyplanned, as she told Ginger she would. She was bursting withherself when she got home.
“I’m home, Ginge! I really had a good time seeing
Shirley,” she’d planned to tell Ginger. “Talked and laughed withher without once feeling like I had to seduce her.” It was so good
to be free of the compulsion to get physical with a woman. She’d
finally unloaded some of her guilt. For so long she carried it
around in an imaginary old cloth sack she dragged by its
drawstring closure everywhere she went.
She’d bounded up the stairs instead of waiting for theslow elevator, unlocked the door to the apartment, and went in,panting, smiling, ready to shout, “I’m free!” First she’d stopped
drinking; now she knew she was serious about being faithful.
They’d celebrate with a bottle of sparkling cranberry juice.
“Ginger?” she’d called into the hollow-sounding
apartment, startled when the refrigerator made the clunking
sound that signaled a defrost cycle.
She could hear Ginger’s heavy Bronx accent as she readthe note Ginger had left. “I ran into Elisa from Hunter,” it said,“at the recital. She saw you at the Hotel August in the elevatorwith another woman. You promised I wouldn’t have to endure
this again. I should have known better. This time I’m reallydone.”
Since then she’d heard nothing. Ginger’s Aunt Tilly had
barred her from Ginger’s dance school. None of their friends
had heard from Ginger. Jefferson couldn’t sleep; the line
between consciousness and unconsciousness became more andmore thin. So here she was, on a personal stakeout, spending∗

Reprinted with permission of Bold Strokes Books. Copyright Lee Lynch 2010.

Fall 2011 51

winter break watching Ginger’s dance school for signs of her. In
years past, waiting to meet Ginger, she’d gotten friendly with thewaitresses in the restaurant where she now sat hunkered in her
worn brown leather bomber jacket by the window, and they kept
the coffee coming as she watched across the snow for a chance toexplain that, this time, she hadn’t strayed. If she’d lost Ginger
again, what had been the sense of getting sober and staying awayfrom other women? She ran both hands through her hair,combing it back. Oh, sure, at the program they’d tell her she’ddone it for herself, but who was she without Ginger?
She’d always loved the city in the snow. It tamped down
the noise, the traffic, the hustle. The snow was deep enough thateach infrequent vehicle drove in the tracks of the last one.
Everything wore a clean icy tarp about two inches thick. Buses
were sparse and no passengers waited at the stop down theblock. New York was as much at peace as she’d experienced it
since the last blackout.
The next blow came like a roaring avalanche. A car
pulled up outside the Dance Loft and Ginger, bundled in the
pouffy coat with the fake fur collar Jefferson had given her lastyear, hurried to it, wheeling her huge green suitcase. Their gay
friend Mitchell Para got out and opened the trunk. She’d neverthought to call him.
He hugged Ginger, long and tight, then loaded thesuitcase while Ginger went back to the doorway for—oh, no, shethought. All her luggage? What was going on? Mitchell was
following Ginger now, shadowing her, not six inches away, hisarms outlining her, as if to protect her or to shepherd her to thebuilding. Ginger’s face looked like it belonged on an injured
athlete, the pain was so obvious. Was she sick? No, you didn’t
haul four suitcases to a hospital. Had one of her brothers fallen
at a building site? No, that didn’t make sense either. Four
suitcases? Had she packed every one of her prized collection of
flip-flops?
Mitchell opened the door for Ginger and then got in thedriver’s seat. Jefferson should have been lunging out of therestaurant to catch Ginger, but she sat there and watched
Mitchell lay his arm across Ginger’s shoulders, draw her to him
and kiss her. Jefferson stood, but within seconds, all she could seeof them was the roof of the car, darting into a side street.

52 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/SpaceBreathless with shock, she stepped outside and looked
for a taxi. But Ginger could be going anywhere: Mitchell’s place,out of the city, out of state, out of the country. She imagined
herself foolishly shouting, “Follow that car!” and lowered herarm. She slumped against the bare little tree beside her, a ginkgo
she’d watched city workers plant two years ago. She clearly
wasn’t wanted on Ginger’s voyage. Ginger had every right not to
wait around for an explanation after so many of Jefferson’s lies.
She charged across the street and through the gate ofGinger’s Washington Heights Dance Loft. It was the only
building in the area with chain-link fencing around it; with its
red stone walls, it resembled a little armory. Despite the weight
she’d been putting on for the last ten years, again she sprang up
the flight of wooden steps two at a time to the second floor.
Ginger’s two instructors were holding classes. Aunt Tilly was at
the reception desk. Jefferson placed her hands flat on the desk
and waited in silence until the old woman looked up. Still
formidable, she had to be in her eighties by now. She’d retired asa school secretary and come to work part-time when Ginger’s
enrollment ballooned.
“You need to leave,” she told Jefferson. “Ginger doesn’twant to see you.”Jefferson was streaming sweat and unzipped her leather
jacket. “Where did she go?”“I’m not at liberty to say.” Aunt Tilly averted her eyes.
Aisha was a student who had started taking lessons at the
Neighborhood House, where Ginger first taught. A hefty,
clumsy, but determined adolescent back in modern-danceclasses, Aisha now emerged from the classroom where she taught
modern dance herself. Jefferson always thought of Aisha as anelongated butterfly who had emerged from her cocoon of baby
fat. Several preschoolers in ballet slippers trailed her. Jeffersonhugged her, then followed her into the girls’ changing room.
“Do you know where Ginger went?” she asked.
Aisha had an apologetic expression as she shook her
head. “Ginger called me and Ronna”—the other full-timeteacher —“into the office and introduced us to Milly Falls.”“Ginger’s old teacher from college?”“That’s her. Milly’s on sabbatical. She’s taking overGinger’s classes for a while.”

Fall 2011 53“While Ginger—”“I don’t know, Jef. She didn’t tell you neither?”“I wouldn’t be asking if she had,” regretting immediatelythat she sounded irritated at sensitive Aisha.
“Don’t get all odd about it. All’s I know is I saw yourbud Mitchell hanging around night and day, like some oldmanly husband to her. I always thought he was as gay as us. I
got to tell you, Jef, I have never seen Miss G. so stone-cold allbusiness. It’s been like her heart seized up on her and her facefroze this last week. Especially those eyes. I have seen warmer
eyes on a damn statue.”
It should have come to her the minute she saw Ginger
with Mitchell and the suitcases, but it didn’t hit her until Aisha,with her puzzled words, spoke the eulogy for their decades oflove. The giant oak of herself fell to the ground, uprooted by theice storm that had hovered over every lover since the beginningof time.
Was this what Ginger felt every night Jefferson didn’t
come home or returned reeking of the scent of calumny? Ginger
was beautiful, but what she’d taken for quietness in Ginger had
become a savage coldness in recent years. Had Ginger felt thisway while staring through their apartment windows at the ironbalcony railing, fenced into a relationship full of spikes and bars?
Was there a way to survive this devastation?
The city under its dirty crust of snow looked shredded
and ravaged. Jefferson, spent in every cell of her body, walked
the nearly sixty blocks home, every street bringing back apulverizing memory of Ginger, every side street the one into
which Ginger had disappeared. She felt as if she was crawling all
the way.

54 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

The Blessing
Marie LaPre-Grabon
Early morning…
beyond first light
I choose a chairbarely lit
by the rising sun
the only one
touchedby weak shaftsof sunrays
filtered by
red grasses
in the blue vaseon the blond table
the sunlike a halo
rays
streamingreaching
thru/around/above
the mass of stems
and seeds
and pods
blessing this spot
andthis moment.

Fall 2011 55

Semipalmated Plovers at Block Island
Marie LaPre-Grabon
Surreptitiously I joined themat the water’s edge
they didn’t noticeas I waded in…watching
long toothpick beaks
poke into dripping, glistening sandicy water licking orange stilted legs
like wind-up toys they ran ahead ofgleaming lips of tiny breaking waves
and quickly followed
the rhythm of the surf
the amorphous curve of whispering foam
gleaning, probing
as they searched for miniscule worms
invisible to me
and the sparkling ocean lay downa panoramic blanket
that shoutedof a million glittering diamonds.

56 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Soul’s Presence
for Judy O'Neil
Fran Winantalmost a victory, a smile, an imagined future,then breath without awakening,soul's presence,smile's radiance echoing eternally,seasons turning and the spin of galaxies.
for a moment we feel ourselves freer than we are.
in your room everyone presses against the windowglass
watching hawks chase pigeons across a vast sky.
in the background, your breath continues rippling
like the endless waves of the gray river below
while in the park beside the rivera woman and dog play frisbee,
their energy a wealth they hardly know they own,
the riches of life itself tossed in the winter air.
sunset turns the buildings across the way
into a kind of Stonehenge, red, orange, gold glows
slipping behind monumental forms,
symphonic rays flowing into infinity.
its a beautiful room in which to die.
caught in timelessness, friends and relatives sit talking,holding your hand, arm, ankle,
touching the warmth of your shoulder,measuring the relentless journey of your breath
through a sudden swirling stormof white crystals sweeping across the water
to the place the soul calls home.
late at night an old friend arrives
to take your hand in the darkness.
into invisible reality, wrapped in hidden dimensions,
you ascend to the place of ordinary heroes,makers of impossible decisions.
those who can see

Fall 2011 57

say that last visionary smile is a signof blending into rainbows, empowered by love,
then soaring on solar winds,
so much left undone and yet so much to make your own,eyes open now, new senses revealing
bridges and paths through transcendent landscapes.
winter left behind, you stand by a lake in Summerlandand on its surface view the universe
mirrored unto the first and last star.
within this clear lens are also replayedmarches where you called for justiceand you smile again knowing yourself
a brave member of an army for peace.
you sought out those who knew the way,
stepping forward with them when others hung back.
you created a world for people of the future,
expanding both their truth and fantasy,
remaking the possible for everyone.
you gave a gift, gave yourself.
now, wrapped in hidden dimensions,
you ascend to the place of ordinary heroes.
the dead reappear with warm smiles and curious eyes
painted over living faces half glimpsed on the street,memories with their own lives,
floating into the almost real,as I see you in someone else's glance and then look closer.
have you, like stars and planets, had a return,cycled back through those you knew
to be again focused within these shadows, this light,
falling translucent onto the world?

58 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/SpaceBlack Silk
Ruth MountaingroveYour black silk shirt
through which my fingers
caress your breast
revel in softnessof silk, discoverround and firm
circumference and radiusnavigate, explore
the rising center.
Your words add
to this journalof being lost on a continent
never touched before.
We send backplant listings
sitings of forests, rivers,
reports of fevers,
disorientations.
Your black silk shirt
and my explorer's fingers
scouting the silk of skin;in me rises a fireto match your flaming
wanting. My fingers
and my lips
tease you into ecstasy.
This continent we explore
together. Our nerve ends
send messages to minds
we have forgotten.
Wakingto touch, to longing,to worlds, unmapped
until now;

Fall 2011 59

to mind's
remembering silk.

60 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

How To Wash A Silk Shirt
Ruth MountaingroveFirst you put it onover your naked body.
Then you step into the shower.
Adjust the temperature of the water.
Take soap, rub the silkon the arms covering your arms,
on the breasts covering your breasts,on the back covering your back.
This last is tricky. For thisyou invite another into the shower.
Let her wash the back that covers
your back.
Rinse well, the shirt
still on your body. Turn off the shower.
Hang the shirt on a hanger
dripping wet over the shower headto dry.
Kiss the woman
naked next to you. Soap her
just as you did your silk shirt.
Her arms. her breasts, her back.
Turn on the shower, rinse well,turning her in your arms.

Fall 2011 61

Going Dutch
Clare Summerskill
I have noticed that as Lesbians, we don’t often smile ateach other in recognition of our similar Sapphic persuasions; infact we tend to either look down or away from a couple ofobvious dykes who probably look far more like we do than wewould perhaps care to admit. On the early morning flight toLesbos there were, it must be said quite a few of us in theterminal that looked a little alike. Thankfully though, no one I
knew or had slept with, (apart from my girlfriend of course)which always helps me relax a little at the beginning of a holiday.
When we finally boarded the plane I struggled along the aisle
with my bulky backpack banging into a few tutting passengers
who had already found their seats. It wasn’t really necessary to
double-check that you were on a flight to the island of Lesbos
because at the point when the air hostesses asked over thetannoy for anyone to put their hands up if they required avegetarian meal, more than two thirds of the passengers
responded! By the time the almost inedible food arrived I had
started to unwind just a weeny bit but I knew I was still
extremely tired and tense. The four a.m. start had completely
done me in but I told myself that once we reached ourdestination the first thing I would do was go skinny dipping in
the wonderfully warm Mediterranean water before indulging in
a supper of local fresh fish and Greek salad.
The way to reach the small village where we would bestaying was to ask two other dykes you had never met before if
they wanted to share the exorbitant fare of a taxi and then thefour of you and a Greek taxi diver would all take your lives inyour hands for a couple of hours driving through mountainous
terrain over unmade roads and round hair-pin bends. This
dangerous journey would finally bring you to the more secluded
part of the island, avoided by most of the straight tourists, thatwas the lesbian resort of Eressos. It certainly took quite an effort
to find but no one ever said it was ever going to be easy to be
blessed with a different sexuality from most of the population!
It had been my girlfriend’s idea, that I celebrate my big
Four O whilst on holiday and then I had the idea of asking some62 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Spaceof our friends along too. We wouldn’t need to all go around
together, just a few disparate dykey singles and couples who all
knew us staying in the same resort over the same period andmaybe having a bit of a knees-up on the special day. I didn’tknow ‘til we arrived at Myteline, and a warm blast of air hit me
as I came off the plane just how much I needed a holiday and I
didn’t know until the first day that Jenny and I laid our towels
down on the beach just how much we needed to spend this time
together.
It was only six months ago that we had been on thebrink of splitting up. Jenny had told me that she had been seeing
somebody and I remembered all those evenings when she hadcalled me and said that she was working late. And I’d fallen for
it, every time, because I’m like that. Or I was like that. I wascompletely gullible about everything. Jenny could have told me
Martina was on the same train home as her and I would havebelieved her and asked if Pam Shriver was anywhere to be seenin the nearby vicinity? But not any more. I’m harder now. Not
so trusting. We stayed together, but it’s not the same.
I still love Jenny. Hated her for quite a while, but neverstopped loving her too, if that makes any sense. It had all comeout one night when she said that we needed to talk. I knew then,by that very phrase “We need to talk”. Because those words
never just mean, “We need to talk” do they? Because we talk all
the time. Every day, as a couple, every evening we talk and we
don’t say that “we need to talk” before we discuss the shopping
we have to get in or our plans for the weekend. No, in myexperience, “We need to talk” only means one thing. That yourgirlfriend is thinking of dumping you.
So apparently we “needed to talk” and we did so. She
had told me all about this woman she worked with called
Annabelle. That was her name. Still is, I assume. Jenny said it
had all just been a bit of fun at first but that she had started
falling for Annabelle and Annabelle had a girlfriend as well but
wanted to keep her and go back to her and didn’t want tobecome a couple with Jenny. You might have noticed from thelittle I’ve told you that I didn’t even figure in these calculations. I
was just the one that Jenny went back to after it all went pearshaped. You might also have thought that Jenny didn’t actuallyneed to tell me anything at all and that she was only mentioning

Fall 2011 63

it out of decency and respect for me and for our relationship, but
you would have thought wrong. She told me because I had
found her out. One weekend there had been a phone call at our
flat. I’d picked up the phone in one room at exactly the sametime as Jenny and before I could say anything a voice went
“Jenny, is that you?” And Jenny said, “Yes darling, but if you
hear a click then Clare’s picked up the phone so be quick.” And
then for the first time ever I perversely enjoyed hearing another
woman use that well-worn phrase, “We need to talk.”I think the thing that probably puts a lot of couples off
splitting up is not so much the thought that they couldn’t live
without each other but is more to do with the worry of what adrag it would be to start looking for another girlfriend. At acertain point, when things are going wrong with your lover you
sometimes think, “I really haven’t got the energy to start again
with someone new. Because it would involve going out at night
to try and meet someone, and then I’d have to video Coronation
Street which is really good at the moment, and then I’d have to
go on public transport if I met someone for a drink. And I’dhave to drink, ‘cos I couldn’t do all that sort of dating thing coldstone sober. And then they’d only know me when I was drunkand loud and fun and they wouldn’t like the other side of me
when things settled down, the side that likes watching taped
videos of Coronation Street when I’ve been out for the evening.
I just couldn’t face all that. It’s so much easier to just stay withmy girlfriend. Even if she has cheated on me, even if she has lied
time after time to me, even if I can’t trust her further than I
could throw her….but dating a complete stranger? That sounds
so horrendous. No, I might as well just stay with Jenny.”
So we stayed together. We “worked it through” as best
we could. I said I would never trust her again. She said she wasso sorry she’d hurt me. I said I didn’t want to leave her because
no one else laughed at my jokes. She said that’s ‘cos they weren’tvery funny but she loved me so much she wanted me to thinkthey were. I took a while to work out whether that was a nicething of her to say or not, by which time she’d made me a lovely
cup of tea and produced a large chocolate bar and then wesnuggled up together on the sofa and she stroked my hair andtold me how stupid she’d been, would I ever forgive her and64 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

what time was Ugly Betty on? And it all felt so familiar and so
warm and safe that I couldn’t bear to give any of it up.
And on that first day on the beach there were these
women with a makeshift home-made kite, hand-knitted by thelook of it in true back-to-basic lesbian fashion! And we werewatching them throw it up into the air again and again until itfinally caught the breeze and took flight. And then the wind
picked up and kept it flying confidently and in my mind’s eye I
suddenly imagined what would happen if the woman holding it
had let go. The string would have slipped through her fingers ina split second and the kite would have just flown right away, up
into the sky, way over the hills, into the distance and they would
never have found it again. And with that picture in my mind I
was so glad that Jenny and I hadn’t let each other go. That we
had held on. And whether it Jenny or me that had done theholding, I’m still not sure, but at least we were together.
*
Karen and Stella were the first of our friends to join us
in Eressos. They had told us approximately when they would becoming and we greeted them with welcoming hugs in the village
square. We were then introduced to a couple of women who
they had not known at all before they had been forced to share ataxi with, but owing to their proximity in the car and the vicious
bends which had repeatedly forced them to lean on each otherin a very un-English manner, they now regarded these two otherdykes as close and treasured travelling companions. After a cooldrink in one of the bars and a quick discussion with someone
from the travel agency we helped our friends with their luggage
and all walked together to the designated women’s B & B where
they would be staying.
Karen was a really old friend of Jenny’s from her hockey
days and I had always got on well with her and Stella was a lot of
fun too so we made a good foursome. The day after that twoother couples arrived. Susan and Debs lived quite near us in
London so we saw them often. We had all met each other at afriends’ dinner party and got on although none of us had muchtime any more for the original friend whose party it was because
she was now dating a merchant banker and she kept telling us
about how much money her girlfriend made but that she’s still inFall 2011 65

the closet because, “Well you guys just wouldn’t understand but
it’s a completely different world in the City.”
Monica and Danielle also turned up at the resort.
Monica is my best friend of twenty years, who is of course an
ex-girlfriend but so far back in the past-of-an-ex that no
girlfriend of either of ours would ever think of feeling threatened
and in fact the very thought of us ever having been together now
makes us both cringe and simultaneously go “Ugh, no…yuk!!!”But it was nice to have her there with me for this special
celebration. Things might have been up and down with Jenny
but Monica had always been a rock to me and over the years
had taken my side on absolutely everything, even over things
where I can see now I might quite clearly have been in thewrong! I loved her to bits, and smiled to myself at the thoughtthat she had come along on this trip even though she had said
that she couldn’t think of anything more frightening than joining“a group of drunken, sun-burnt hormonally-challenged lesbians
from all over the world in very close proximity to each other.”So that was all the couples, and then there was Elena.
Elena was an amazingly beautiful and talented singer who
always declared that she was totally free and single and yet if you
scratched a little beneath the surface you would always find that
she was in truth seeing someone. Not the same someone as you
had found out about before, a different someone. But it wasalways a mysterious someone and usually a very attractive
someone of foreign descent. Elena arrived in Eressos on her own
and I was delighted to see her but I knew that she wouldn’t beable to remain alone for the entire duration of the holiday and I
looked forward to learning about her romantic developments
and the inevitable fact that she would try and hide them fromme, tell me that nothing was happening and that she and the
new someone that she was clearly shagging were just goodfriends!
Over the first few days the holiday seemed to be goingreally well. We all agreed that we didn’t always want to do
everything as a group and that we were quite happy eating or
drinking at separate bars and restaurants and meeting up if andwhen we felt like it. In spite of this agreement we found ourselves
generally joining the others every day on the beach as we all sat
facing the sea and checking out the lovely and various shapes of

66 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

all the other women around us. We were on the nudist part ofthe beach and there were all these lovely lady lesbian bodies
playing volleyball, applying sun-tan lotion, running in and out of
the sea. I know that politically speaking I should not admit tosexually objectify woman but I have to tell you that lying there
and watching them all, my last remaining credentials from the
1980s finally disappeared for good.
We also bumped into a few people we already knew
from England. Some we hid from behind sand dunes for long
periods of time to avoid being spotted but others we were thrilled
to see and asked them along to my big party which we had
decided was to be held at the weekend. There was a lovely
woman called June who was a doctor I knew and a lawyer friendof hers that we hadn’t met before called Lucy. They came up to
us as we were sitting on the beach and we chatted for quite awhile which was great except for the very slight distraction ofthem being stark naked. I remember hoping that I would neverrequire their professional services in the future because if I did I
just wouldn’t be able to get that image out of my head while I
was working with them, especially that of Doctor June who as I
recall had a little string hanging out from between her legs.
One evening there were a few of us eating at arestaurant and a couple from Holland who Karen and Stella had
made friends with the night before. They were called Nette andAngelica and they were both therapists. Angelica was dark andintense looking and clearly quite brainy and Nette was blondand large and seemed the more fun of the two but they both had
a wicked sense of humour and laughed at the “alternative
healing lesbian world of witchery and wonderment” that theyhappily inhabited. This reinforced my opinion that the only
thing I really hate about the Dutch is their ability to speak
English better than we do! But it didn’t take long before we werelooking out for them on the beach and either they came and sat
by us or we went over to join them for another hard day of doinga marvellous impression of a group of beached whales stranded
upon Sapphic sands.
Everyone seemed happy and relaxed except for Susan
and Debs who were quite clearly going through a “tricky” stage.
They could usually be found hanging out with the largest groups
of women they could find, presumably to avoid being with each

Fall 2011 67

other or else they would go off together for long walks to the very
end of the beach which took you as far as Sappho’s Rock. This
was not an island discothèque as you might have feared from its
name but instead a dramatic and beautiful cliff leading down to
the sea which at the right angle, against the horizon looked alittle bit like the outline of a woman’s body. But when Susan andDebs stormed off in that direction for yet another heateddiscussion you could see them in animated conversation witharms flailing and then one of them would inevitably walk backon her own quite clearly having had a row of some kind. But
they knew better than to “offload” to us about how difficult andunreasonable the other was being even though it was clear thatthey were both desperate to do so. So we never found out if all
the tension was all about one particular disagreement or whether
it was just a couple who had been with each other too long andwho had slowly but surely grown apart.
In the evenings they both drank far too much and theywould then not be seen on the beach ‘til way after lunchtime thenext day on account of their frightful hangovers. I cared for bothof them, well to be honest I slightly fancied Debs, but it wasliterally a fancy. I wouldn’t have wanted anything to come of it,
but sometimes it’s fun to have a little “twinkle” going on with afriend, isn’t it? Or is that just me? But honestly, hand on heart I
wanted them to settle their differences and make up and be close
again, and that way I could feel safer and happier about once
again fancying Debs! But still the friction between themcontinued and Jenny and I didn’t know what to do to help and areally selfish part of us that remained unspoken but I know still
existed didn’t want their fighting in any way to mar this very
special and badly needed holiday.
*
I can’t flirt. I wish I could, but I’ve never been able to. If
I really like someone I find myself just taking the piss out of thema lot. That can of course be slightly misleading I’m sure but it’s
my immature and misguided way of trying to amuse and impressand I can recall more than one conversation with a girlfriend
who has said to me, “I was so sure you didn’t like me when me
met. I couldn’t understand why you were being so mean!” But
I’m also no good at being able to tell if and when anyone is68 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

flirting with me, which is partly how I got into trouble on Eressos
that particular summer.
We were all down on the beach one day, a crowd of us
having a good time but when you’re on holiday with friends inthe sun you still manage to find things in life to complain about
so I was mentioning my bad back and saying that I’d had arough night with it. The two Dutch lesbians immediately offered
me a massage, yet another of their “alternative healing” skills.
They briefly discussed who might be the one to perform thedeed and decided upon Nette who said that she would comeround to our studio early evening if I wanted, post shower andpre-dinner to give me a proper seeing to (my words, not hers!).
This was one of the things I loved about this resort, because all
around you would see women giving each other a haircut on thebeach, or offering a little reiki to their mates. It was a bit likebartering but even better because I didn’t have to give anythingback to anyone in return but I thought it was great and happily
agreed to have Nette come round!
Jenny and I had rented a studio apartment in the village.
It was owned and run by a lovely Greek woman called Joanna
who somehow managed to appear calm and friendly at all times
and amazingly un-phased by the constantly changing variety ofinternational lesbians she must have seen coming in and out ofher flats night and day. Dykes who were still at that totally“loved-up” stage, when they can’t resist groping and kissing eachother every second, dykes who had just had a terrible domestic
but are totally oblivious to the icy aura that they emanate to allaround but also dykes who had been with each other for somany years that they can pack a joint bag for the beach without
so much as a single word passing their lips, a level of lesbianachievement I must say, for which I have nothing but total
admiration!
I was sitting peacefully on the balcony of our studio,
sipping a cool lemonade and sheltering from the strength of theafternoon sun when Nette called up to me from the road. Jenny
was still on the beach. She usually stayed there ‘til the sun went
down, a real sun-worshipper, lapping up every single little ray.
She’d always said that one day she felt she was destined to live
between the mountains and the sea. Neither country or watermass were ever specified, and nor was the clearly insignificant

Fall 2011 69

detail of whether or not I might be sharing that particular stageof her life with her.
I opened the door to Nette and she smiled warmly andasked where I would feel comfortable lying down, on the bed or
the sofa? I thought that the sofa would be best because it was
narrower and would enable her to get round me from all angles
if necessary. She told me to take everything off but my knickers
and then as I lay down with a towel around me she gently
lowered it down my back and began to work her fabulous finger
magic! She had even brought some smelly oils to rub over me.
A happy little thing was I during that hour of
personalised pampering and by the time she finally announced
that she was finished I was lying on my back with my eyes closed
and my mind drifting towards the realms of sleep.
“Thank you, that was so wonderful.” I grunted.
She was standing behind me and said, “My pleasure”
and then she leant over and very very gently kissed me on theforehead. Before I knew it she had gone out through the door
and I was left there, still with the towel over me, wondering ifperhaps I had made the last bit up? No, I remembered it clear
as a bell, she had leant over and kissed me. But what did it
mean? That she liked me? That she fancied me? Or was it a
special thing that Dutch women do at the end of a massage toshow that it’s finished?
“Would I tell Jenny” that was the big question? “Well,of course not!” was my instant response. But if I thought thatthen surely that meant that there was something in it? So if it
wasn’t to be made public then it was to be a secret. Just between
us Nette and me. Oh my God! Something significant had justhappened and I didn’t quite know what it meant but I knew it
felt like fun. It seemed precious and exciting but also kind of
sweet and gentle and innocent at the same time, and to behonest this is what I’d missed for so many years with Jenny.
Feeling special, feeling cared for, feeling sought out from all theothers in some small way. I realised that these were the things I
felt I was missing. Not the sex, funnily enough I could live
without that, but the attention. Was that wrong? Was thatneedy? I didn’t know.
All I knew is that I wanted to stay there lying on the sofa
with that warm feeling running around my stomach and my

70 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

brain for a very long time and not get up and not take a shower
and certainly not go and find Jenny on the beach and tell her
how much better my back was feeling and casually mention thatthe Dutch were a truly marvellous if sometimes underestimatedrace of people!
*
That evening as a crowd of us sipped cocktails at the
Sappho Hotel I found myself waiting for a certain someone’s
arrival. I looked around expectantly as anyone either walked by
the tables onto another destination or sat down near us. Monica
and Danielle were already at our table. Monica had an
extremely bad case of sunburn and had been indoors all day,cursing the Mediterranean climate and wishing that she washolidaying somewhere sensible, like Greenland. Karen and
Stella then pitched up. They told us all about the pony trek thatthey had been on that afternoon, saying that the animals were insuch a sorry state that they had every intention of reporting theowners to the Greek equivalent of the NSPCA, if in fact one
existed and that their own backsides were so sore from a twohour ride that they didn’t think they would ever be able to walk
properly again. Elena then arrived with a gorgeous looking
woman who she introduced to us as her “friend Natalia” whowas young, tall and glamorous and could easily have been amodel. Quite what she was doing hanging out with a load of
middle age English dykes bemoaning the shortfalls of a hot
climate and a beautiful landscape was totally beyond me.
Some more people joined us and I looked up again inhope that one of them might be my ‘certain someone’ butinstead it was just Debs. She caught my eager glance in her
direction and I think mistook it for an enthusiastic welcome. She
pulled a chair up close to me and told me that Susan was still
having a nap in her room and would join us all for a meal later.
Debs then started chatting away to me about how she felt so
spiritually at home in Eressos. I must admit I was a little
surprised because all I’d really seen of her so far on the holiday
was either looking sour-faced or angry or drinking to avoid hersorrows. But I was pleased that she seemed to at least be getting
something out of the holiday.

Fall 2011 71“I can’t really explain it all….” She began, but I had afeeling that she would try nonetheless. I was right and she
continued.
“There’s just something about this place, things arecoming up for me that I’ve never felt before and well, I just wantto thank you so much for bringing me here”.
It made it sound a bit too much as if I had personallywhisked her away, just the two of us for a romantic honeymoon
so I very quickly said:“Yes, Jenny had some great ideas sometimes!”
But she didn’t seem to take the hint and went on:“ It just awakens all your senses, doesn’t it? The beauty,
the peace, the hills, the sea. It makes me realise what I reallywant from life.”
And at that point she started staring meaningfully into
my eyes. I didn’t like to ask her what on earth she was talking
about just in case I might regret hearing the response. But that
was a silly thought. I’m sure she was just feeling a little lonelyand sad that things weren’t going well with Susan. She ordered adrink, gulped it down, ordered another and started gazing in an
appreciative way at Elena’s new girlfriend. That made me feelslightly safer, if a tiny bit irrationally jealous at the same time but
I quickly moved on from that and started once again looking
around, beyond the immediate company to see if a “certain
someone” was going to put in an appearance.
I’m sure Jenny didn’t notice that I was in the least
distracted. She hadn’t even asked me how the massage had gone
and as I watched her and Karen laughing their heads off aboutsomething I realised that the days of my seeing Jenny throughthe eyes of a lover were unfortunately long gone and that
although I still cared for her so deeply, it was with less of a lustfullonging and more a fondness of familiarity.
I was on my second Pina Colada before I noticed that atsome point Nette must have joined the group and sat down withAngelica. I felt my tummy flip over inside me, a sensation I
remember experiencing on a regular basis when I was fifteen
and Miss Boxhall would come into the classroom every morning
to take registration. Nette caught my glance and her beaming
smile combined with twinkling eyes convinced me that I hadn’t
been exaggerating the significance of what had happened that

72 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

afternoon. I think I went bright red, which I realise is not anincredibly mature thing to do but I just couldn’t help it andhoped that if anyone had seen they would put it down to my
drinking. I’m not teetotal by any means but from years ofholiday drinking experience I have trained myself never to havemore than two cocktails a night. At forty I had leant that Pina
Coladas might taste exactly like milkshakes but the way I behave
after having drunk a few always remind me that they are quite
definitely not one and the same!
Jenny suggested to everyone that we try a certain
seafood restaurant that was known for serving delicious sardines.
I thought that sounded a little improbable as a concept, only
ever having encountered a sardine before in a tin with brine but
I was prepared to be proved wrong. All the restaurants in thevillage looked out onto the sea and were to be found along themain stretch of the village. The one that Jenny had her eye on
was right at the other end from the bar where we were drinking
but a few of the other women with us eagerly agreed to comealong. Monica and Danielle jumped up as well as Elena and her“just good friend, Natalia” and Debs said that she would cometoo and leave Susan to find us all of her own accord if and when
she regained consciousness. I noticed that Debs had a spring in
her step as she paid her bill and then she laced her arm throughmine as we began to walk towards the restaurant. I was turning
my head back to our table to see if Nette was coming as well but
she remained there with Angelica and a couple from Paris thatthey’d introduced us to the day before and I felt a little pang of
disappointment that they weren’t going to be joining us.
I walked through the village with Debs chattering in myear about how, like Phil Collins, she too could feel something“coming in the air tonight.” I had always found Deb’s flirty
behaviour a lot of fun but for the first time it seemed to merather annoying and slightly childish. I tried to work out what onearth was happening to me. I knew that it felt exciting, this linkthat Nette and I had somehow forged and I knew that nothing
would come of it, because we were both with long-term partners
and that that was probably the best way it could be. But ofcourse a little unattainable longing suits a lesbian just perfectly,
doesn’t it? Or at least that had always been my experience. But
could you keep it at that? Well of course you could if it really wasFall 2011 73

someone unattainable like Ellen Degeneres. But if it was a friend
who you liked…..on holiday….from another country….who you
wouldn’t see again…..well, where would be the harm? I really
didn’t know the answer and anyway by that time in my thoughtprocess we were all sitting down and it was my turn to order.
“Just enjoy it,” I told myself. “Enjoy it all. This is all partof the fun, isn’t it? A load of women in the middle of theMediterranean. Of course a few sexy sparks are going to be
flying around here and there, it’s all part of the experience.
Nothing to get stressed about. And at the end of the day, albeit a
day full of fantastical imagination running a little wild, you’ve
still got a lovely girlfriend to go back to with so either way you’relaughing!”
Sometimes I so wish that I could learn to listen to thesensible part of me that gives the silly side of me such good
advice!
After that the evening passed uneventfully. Susan
managed to track down Debs by the time we were all onto ice
creams and coffees. They sat together at the end of the table
talking quietly and intensely with each other for a little while andthen Debs moved places and without asking them plonked
herself between Monica and Danielle. I walked back to thestudio with Jenny, hand in hand. Before long she was doing thatthing that far too many tourists seem to do when they become
enraptured by the local charms of their holiday resort and sureenough out popped the inevitable question. No, not the one
about whether we should get married, not that one, but the: “Iwonder how much a place here would cost to buy?” one.
“You really like it then? “ I asked.
“It’s all come together hasn’t it, with our friends andeverything. I wasn’t sure how that would work but everyone’s
getting on, aren’t they?
“Yes, it’s brilliant.” I said.
“And whose clever and wonderful idea was all this then,I forget now…?” Said Jenny. “Oh yes, it was mine, wasn’t it?”As well as being significantly more self-confident by
nature, Jenny is also a far more sociable creature than I am,
which I know was part of the appeal all those years ago when we
first met. I like people but I’m better at one-to-ones and talking
about things I find really interesting or important rather than

74 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

general chit-chat. Jenny loves a crowd, a gang, a group, she loves
to belong, whereas I think deep down I’m probably more of aloner. But she was really enjoying the “village” life of Eressos,
bumping into familiar faces left, right and centre. But “village”
life can of course be a double-edged sword (if one were evertempted to look at it in terms of a weapon of war) The up side
being of course that everyone knows everyone and the down side
being that everyone knows everyone! And that was to prove my
undoing.
*
The next day on the beach the weather was slightly
cloudy and a little chilly but we all sat there any way in true
“British at the seaside on a Bank Holiday” style. Jenny and I
were devouring the books we’d brought at a rate of knots andswapping the good ones with each other after we’d read them.
At around lunchtime we wandered off to a café hut that soldGreek salads and drinks and we saw Nette and Angelica were
there already so we went over to join them. Angelica asked me
how the massage had gone? I said it was great and that I’d slept
a lot better that night. Jenny then asked Angelica if she had seen
the little turtles in the pond by the beach, saying that they oftencame out more when it was overcast or raining and before we
knew it they’d both gone off to look at them. There was a shortsilence after which Nette said:“So you really feel the massage helped?”“Yes, yes, it was great. Thank you. Great. Thanks.
Cheers. Yeah.”
I’m not sure if completely losing the power of speech
might possibly have given away the fact that I was a teeny bit
nervous but although I mentioned previously that I have no idea
when people are flirting with me I began to pick up certain
signals from Nette that made me think that was exactly what she
was doing. She moved her chair a little closer to me and as she
spoke she lowered her voice very slightly and stared right into
my eyes.
“Do you think you might enjoy another massage atsome point?” She asked.
But I wondered whether she had used the word “Enjoy”
deliberately, making it sound like a mistake any non-English
speaker would use, and yet I happened to know that her English

Fall 2011 75

was probably better than mine, so why hadn’t she just said, “Do
you think you might “like” another massage”? OK, I wasprobably reading far too much into it all, and after my feeble
attempt at sentence deconstruction I heard myself clumsily
muttering something along the lines of, “Erm, yes, please, if
you’re not too busy, if you want to, that is, if Angelica doesn’t
mind at all….”
There now, I’d said it, if not actually spelt it out. I had
admitted to her that I knew it was all looking a little bit
suspicious, if anyone with a suspicious mind might be doing any
looking. Nette however, ignored the direction of my inquiry andwith a beaming and, it must be mentioned rather cute smile, said
that she would be happy to pop over to my studio again laterthat afternoon.
Intense excitement immediately clashed in my mind
with several worrying thoughts. “Would Jenny think it was
dodgy if I told her I was having another massage? Would
Angelica mind at all? Would either Jenny or Angelica have theslightest suspicion that anything other than a massage was goingon? And far more importantly what in fact was it that was
actually going on anyway?” In my imagination I was alreadyway past the massage. We had now kissed passionately and had
wild and totally fulfilling sex and I had moved to Rotterdam tostart a new life with Nette and was pondering the question ofwhether a Dutch lesbian audience would speak English wellenough to understand my stand-up material.
But in reality, at this point Nette had only asked if I
wanted another massage, albeit with a poignant glare that had
pinned me into my chair and left me short of breath and unable
to move. And then, as if in response to all my unspoken
confusion Nette said, “I am very attracted to you. You do knowthat don’t you?” To which I replied with complete confidence
and impressive eloquence:“Um, yes, well, you know, me you too. I mean not
attracted to myself, that would be weird, but yes, to what you
were saying.”
And she was still doing that eye-contact thing where
they don’t blink or twitch or sneeze or anything but just stare
deep deep into your soul and then I looked away from her gazeto see Angelica and Jenny bounding up to the table to join us.

76 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

They started burbling on about the turtles being the sweetest
little things you’d ever seen and Jenny was saying how theywould do so much better in this sort of weather with a few
umbrellas between them and then she was asking if it was in factpossible for a turtle to hold an umbrella with one foot or leg, or
arm or whatever they had and not sink while they were doing so,in which case the umbrella selling idea might not be such acommercial opportunity in the turtle world after all!
And as the two of them were chatting away I felt thatthey could have been in a different time zone from me. I noticed
that Nette was now joining in their jokes and it suddenly
occurred to me that perhaps she had some previous experienceof this sort of thing. The laughter, the instant change of moodseemed to come so easily to her. Was she just playing some sortof game? Because it wasn’t a game to me and if it was I certainly
had no idea of any of the rules or even the language in which it
was played.
Yes, I’d maybe sort of fancied a couple of women in the
many years that I’d been with Jenny, Debs being one of them as
I mentioned, but it had all seemed like a little bit of fun,something every dyke in a long term relationship should beallowed to do once in a while, just to check that everything wasstill in working order! A bit like a MOT, I suppose! But I had
never felt this way before, the way I felt when I was around
Nette. And to be honest it felt far more dangerous than fun,because if it ever got out of hand it could seriously threaten myown relationship. But before I jumped ahead to that fear, theimmediate million dollar question was, “Did Nette feel the sameway?”
As I watched her still chuckling away with the other two
I really feared that I might have blown the whole thing out of
proportion. But then again she was the one who had said all that
stuff about being attracted to me and I hadn’t made that up, hadI?
Someone settled the bill and in a daze I followed theothers to our beach spots. Nette fleetingly turned her headround, without the others noticing and she winked at me. And
with that one little crafty, sexy wink I realised that I was hookedon her line and pathetic as it may sound I knew I could do
nothing else but wait until she decided to reel me in.

Fall 2011 77

As it turned out the second massage session never
happened because Jenny told me that she had made an
appointment to see the women who ran the Sappho Hotel todiscuss details about my birthday meal there. Fortunately Jenny
took all the strain when it came to discussing the menu, drinks,
music and seating arrangements and I just agreed and said thatit all sounded wonderful, which was true. But my mind waselsewhere and I realised that I was quickly learning to dosomething that I don’t think I had ever done before with Jenny, I
was learning to hide and cover up my innermost thoughts fromher and hoping that a smile and a nod in the right place would
suffice for communication and arouse no suspicion. I have ofcourse over the years been told that most people have lots ofthings going around their heads that they don’t always let
everyone else know about, but not me, and it was only at thiscrucial point in my life that for the first time I realised that there
is another option, that of not speaking aloud every single thoughtthat you’re thinking! Over the course of our relationship Jenny
had got used to my babbling on about what I thought of this orthat, him or her, what I was going to do today and tomorrowand how my childhood injuries affected my current behaviour,
outlook and personality. And in her wittier moments, as I
chatted away, she would do a little mime pretending to wipesome blood from her ear, which meant that my incessantramblings were making her ears bleed. Oh, how we laughed! But
now I was thinking about something, all right, someone, almost
non-stop for most of the day (and part of the night) and notsaying one single thing out loud about my thoughts and feelingson the matter. And what was even more surprising than melearning to do this was the fact that Jenny hadn’t seemed to
notice anything. For someone who had known me for so long it
was sort of strange that she appeared to have no awareness of
this whatsoever.
That evening we joined Monica and Danielle for a meal.
I couldn’t see Nette or Angelica anywhere, not at the restaurant
nor at any of the bars and my over-active imagination started
picturing them having had an argument about me and possibly
splitting up and flying back to Holland. But the next morningthey were there on the beach again, in their usual spot, all smiles,
waving us over to join them. As cocktail hour approached we

78 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

packed up our things, showered and changed and all met up
again at a bar to watch the sun setting magnificently on thehorizon, like an aged actress making a glorious final curtain call.
Again the Dutch contingency were not to be seen but Debs hadperched herself next to me and as the final edge of the orangeball sunk away to obscurity behind the horizon she put her handon my arm and quietly said, “I need to talk to you.”“Oh, OK.” I said, trying to replicate her serious tone.
“Go on then.”“Not here.” She said and looked quickly around her as if
she was in a scene from a film about the French Resistance.”
Come for a walk with me.”“Erm, all right.” I mumbled “But won’t that look a bit
odd?”“I really need to speak to you.”“OK, OK, I’m coming.”
And with that I got up and told Jenny that Debs wanted
to show me something in a shop that she’d had her eye on. Jennybarely registered my leaving but as we walked away I swear
could feel Susan’s eyes boring into the back of me. We set off inthe direction of the shops but then Debs suddenly whisked me
down a back street which came out onto a little track that led outof the village. When the sun sets in the Mediterranean it very
quickly becomes dark and I could tell that without the village
lights we would very soon be walking along in total black. I
pointed this fact out to Debs but she just replied, “It doesn’t
matter. I just need to be alone with you.” So I decided to stop all
this rambling, literal and metaphorical and I said:“Right then, here we are Debs, all alone. Now what isit?”
Debs then took my hand and pulled me down anothersmaller path, then she drew a somewhat dramatic breath,paused meaningfully, sighed tragically and said, “You see themoon?” We both looked up, yes it was still there in the sky,hadn’t gone anywhere. “Yes.” I replied, assuming this to be thecorrect response.
“And the stars…” Debs continued. “You see all thestars?”

Fall 2011 79“Yes.” I said again, wondering if these were trickquestions in any way because so far they seemed rather on theeasy side.
Debs went on, “I’m just finding that on this island I’mconnecting to a sort of spirituality which is making me turn intoa different person, and I know that I have you to thank forbecoming that person and for bringing me here.”“Well it was just a birthday party with knobs on really,
nothing too mystical about that!” I was trying to lighten the tone
but still had certain fears about where this conversation might begoing.
“But it means that I’ve come here….”“Yes,” I said, “You and Susan …”“And now I’m here with you.”“Yes,” I battled on, “You and Susan and me…and
Jenny “ I added for good measure. But still she persisted. “I’mtrying to tell you something, but I don’t know if you’re hearingme?”
At this point what I really wanted to do was make a kindof radio noise sound effect and go “Cccch, I’m hearing you loudand clear, cccch!” but somehow I managed to restrain myself
and actually said, “I am. You’re saying that you like being here,with the moon and the stars and the spiritual feelings and…”“And you.” She added. “I think I’m in love with you.”
Now, I am rarely accused of being a woman lost forwords, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what to say or even doafter this revelation. Debs solved the problem for me by kissing
me on the lips. In an embarrassingly fumbling way she then tried
to prise my mouth open with her tongue. I, also imagining
myself in a French Resistance film, firmly refused to let her doso, my jaws clenched together and my lips as tight as a
metaphorical baboon’s backside!
The love scene, which I’m sure Debs had imagined wasclearly not going at all to plan. Yes, it’s true that over the time
we had known each other I had found her attractive, but I
realised in that instant that it was only as a fantasy. I didn’t want
this in real life and I just couldn’t go ahead with it, even though
she obviously desired it quite stongly and even though thenormal rules of behaviour seemed to have been somehow
thrown to the wind. But I just couldn’t do this.

80 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

I wish I could say that it was courageous willpower and asterling strength of character that held me back, but it wasn’t. It
was in large part a sudden lack of any physical interest in Debs
and to a lesser, but still significant degree, a worrying fear ofwhat Susan might do to me physically if she were to ever findout. Susan, although clearly in a troubled relationship andsomewhat vulnerable in that respect was still, it must be said,quite a large girl who, it must be remembered, used to be in thepolice force, albeit working on the domestic violence side ofthings, preventing rather than performing I hasten to add, but
still, no sensible woman would knowingly set about to incur her
wrath.
And yet I knew even then that it was not just the fear, oreven the fact that we might all lose each other’s friendships. No
more going out to the pictures in a jolly foursome followed by apizza with anchovies, mozzarella and a heated debate about thefilm we’d all just seen. So was it Jenny that was preventing mefrom taking this any further? My loyalty to her and to ourrelationship? Not wanting to deceive her any more than I
already had? Yes, that must surely be the reason I tried toconvince myself. But deep down I knew the truth. It was actually
because I just didn’t want to be here in a field in the dark withthis woman coming onto me….I wanted to be in a field in thedark ….with Nette.
Oh dear, this was getting complicated! I heard myself
running off a load of excuses to doe-eyed Debs, as many excusesas I could possibly think of. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship,
which I really treasured. I didn’t want to hurt or deceive Jenny. I
wanted Debs and Susan to work their problems out and remaina couple because I thought they were so good together and I
knew that if I got involved at this point it would be almost
impossible for them to do that. But still she pleaded with me:“Just one kiss, that’s all I’m asking. Please, please. I’ve
been wanting you for so long. I thought you felt the same way. I
understand you Clare and I know that this was meant tohappen, I just feel it, it was fate that brought us here.”“Olympic Airlines to be precise.” I was thinking tomyself but let’s not get too literal!
“Debs, it’s not going to happen.” I was trying so hard tosound firm but caring. I didn’t want to hurt her, I really didn’t.

Fall 2011 81“I appreciate it so much, that you care for me and of course I’mflattered, but it would ruin everything and I just don’t want tolose Jenny.”“Just one kiss, that’s all I ask?” She pleaded.
“No, honestly …I really can’t. ”
She turned away but I could see that her face was full ofhurt and anger and a part of me wanted to relent. To kiss her
better, to make her happy again, happy and sexy and confident,
like she’d been ten minutes ago. But I knew that it would be evenmore cruel to lead her on, give her a little hope when there was
none.
“Come on, let’s go back now.” I said, as gently as I
possibly could.
“You go.” She replied. “I’m just going to stay here for awhile.”“I’ll wait then.”“No” She said sharply, “Just let me be alone. I need toget myself together.”“OK, if you’re sure. Debs, I’m so sorry, I really am.”
And as I walked back to the village I felt dreadful. It
might sound corny but I really felt her pain and yet I knew it
would have been wrong to have done anything with her.
But another reason I was feeling so bad was because I
knew it was yet another thing that I was not going to be telling
Jenny about, recalling the event over and over in my mind,
wondering if I should have done or said anything different, but
keeping it all a secret. By nature wanting to share my thoughts
and feelings about it all with my girlfriend, but feeling that I
shouldn’t, that it would be unfair and slightly cruel to Debs totell Jenny all about it. Perhaps I could at least tell Monica about
the whole thing, she would definitely understand and I could
count on her to be totally discreet. But on the other hand I
didn’t want her to laugh too much at Debs making a bit of a foolof herself, because, well let’s be honest here, there but for thegrace of God….!!! And I knew if I told Monica what had
happened I wouldn’t be able to keep the element of humour outof the telling, so keeping it to myself I guess was the only option.
But thinking about Monica made me examine the idea of letting
her know instead about what was going on with Nette. I couldn’t
predict how she might she take that one? It’s true that she’s

82 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

always been on my side in the past but would she think that
there was too much at stake to have a good old giggle about thewhole thing? Or would her morals maybe stand in the way andfor the first time come between our friendship? The very thought
was unbearable. But right in the process of mulling through allthese possibilities another image started forming itself in my
imagination, a scene of what might have happened had it been
me and Nette together in that field in the dark, girlfriends safely
away back in the village with nothing but a weak and all tooquickly dismissible conscience to stand in the way of our desires.
*
The following day was Saturday, my actual birthday,
and the party meal was going to be held that night. Anotherscorcher on the beach, Elena said it was so hot and close that she
was sure that it must be about to break any day now. I felt justthe same way in my head. I spent the entire day doing what I
enjoy most, sunbathing until I couldn’t bear the heat any longer
and then running into the water to cool down and doing that allover and over again. Each time I was in the sea I would be either
swimming around or treading water but my gaze was always
towards the part of the beach where Nette was sunbathing in the
nude. She was fair-skinned by nature but managed to tan
effortlessly to a beautiful golden brown and from the comfort ofthe sea I could look at her for long periods of time withoutanyone noticing and feast my eyes on that particular vision ofdelight! After each dip I would go back to my towel next toJenny and book in hand and eyes well hidden by sunglasses I
would then lie on my left side and pretend to read whereas infact that position was just serving to give me a good view ofNette and yet in no way betray the fact that I was perving on
her.
Debs and Susan came down to the beach after lunch
and sat the other side of us, on our right as we faced the sea.
They put up a couple of parasols and a few minutes later when
they were settled down I caught Debs doing exactly what I had
been doing to Nette, peering over her book to look at me whilst
pretending not to. I realised that the whole situation was
beginning to turn into something of an Ealing Comedy! And
there was Jenny plopped down in the middle of all this,seemingly oblivious to everything and then Nette and Angelica

Fall 2011 83

stopped by to chat to us and again I was aware that three out of
six of us were all to some degree all deceiving our girlfriends.
I felt myself torn between feeling guilty over Jenny, slightirritation at Deb’s attentions and palpable excitement at theproximity of Nette’s physical presence, and so the day continued
until it was time to pack up our things and go back to our studioto get ready for the birthday meal.
Just before we went out to the restaurant Jenny said that
she wanted to give me a present and she handed me a box which
I unwrapped and then found a jagged rock cluster that I didn’tknow the name of but the inside of it was a beautiful purple
colour. She knows that I love that sort of thing and that in spiteof my occasional cynical comments about alternative lesbian
lifestyles I have been known to reveal tendencies to what shecalls a “dippy hippy” side to my nature.
“Thank you so much,” I said, “It’s absolutely beautiful”.
“There’s a bigger present waiting for you at home, but itwouldn’t have fitted on the plane!”“What is it? Tell me!!!”“Can’t tell you, it’s a surprise.”“Well then, surprise me by telling me!”“Well, you know you said you needed a new car…
“You’re kidding me?”“Yes, I am!”
“Oh, ha ha! Have you really got me something else?
“Well when we get home I think you’ll find that youroffice has been decorated by some friendly lesbian elves who I
employed.”“Oh that’s fantastic! I’ve been meaning to do that roomfor years…”“I know.”“And would these elves by any chance go by the namesof Angela and Annie?” (Two lesbian decorator friends of ours.)“ When they finish their Christmas duties in the North
Pole and appear in human form, that is indeed the names they
go by!”“ Oh thank you so much darling!” I kissed her on thecheek “And for organising the party and the trip andeverything.”

84 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space“It’s been fun! I wanted to…you know…try and makeup a bit for, well….wanted you to know how important you areto me and….and it’s made me realise just how much I ….I…need you.”
And I was thinking “Please don’t say ‘need’, please say‘love’, not ‘need’. Please let me know that I’m more to you thanjust a very close friend that over the years you’ve grown to need.
Please say that ‘love’ word so that I don’t find myself looking
elsewhere for attention to compensate. Please say it so I don’t
have to wait until a foreigner comes on to me on holiday andmakes me feel like a woman once more, makes me feel desired
and makes me feel desires that I never thought I’d feel again”.
Being good friends with someone is fantastic and important,
don’t get me wrong, but there’s no physicality involved is there?
A good friend doesn’t notice if you’ve put on weight, or if you’ve
dyed your hair or if you’re wearing a new top but a lover will see
these things, delight in them even, because she wants you to lookgood for her to enjoy. A lover will make you feel alive again inyour body, not just in your mind. A lover will make your heartbeat faster and the blood rush to head in that moment when you
receive a text with their name on it and just before you read it. A
good friend is such a precious thing and to be valued andcherished dearly but a good friend is not a lover.
I suddenly realised that Jenny was still talking. “And that
I want you to know that I will always always….care for you sovery deeply.”
She paused…and I waited for more, but none came.
She said nothing else about her feelings but simply led me out ofthe door, into the street and along to the restaurant.
It was a fantastic birthday meal, it really was! I counted
that altogether there were eighteen women in our party. All ourmates from England. Elena and her “good friend”, Nette andAngelica of course, and a couple of their French pals, the doctor
and the lawyer and an Italian couple we’d met the day before
who seemed really nice and who we had asked along. Wine
flowed, various courses arrived and were cleared away. Several
times during the evening I looked down the table at Nette. Not
too often and never for too long, wishing that I was sitting next
to her, or at least opposite so we could play footsie under thetable! At one point, after desert and coffee I glanced over at her

Fall 2011 85

again and that time she held my gaze and just nodded. Two very
subtle but nevertheless very discernable nods. God, this was
horrible! How could anyone say that falling in love or lust, or
whatever the hell it was, was any fun? It was excruciatingly
painful but like a runaway train totally impossible to halt once
the wheels were in motion and the brakes disengaged.
Back on planet earth, I realised that a sound like a mosquito
buzzing in my left ear was in fact Jenny saying something to me
about how it was time to get up and make a speech. I didn’t
really appreciate being wrenched so rudely out of my delicious
daydream zone but since I could in no way explain that to her I
consented and stood up to thank everyone for being there. I
thanked them all for the lovely meal, the beautiful cards and all
the presents I had received and of course I thanked Jenny fororganising the whole Lesbos Birthday Extravaganza. Everyone
clapped and cheered and then Monica made a touching, if aslightly alcohol-fuelled speech about how deeply she had loved
me for so many years but how she just couldn’t fancy me
because I was now too old and she needed to be practical andthink about how she really needed someone younger like
Danielle who had agreed to look after her in her dotage. Aftershe had finally finished, Jenny then proposed a toast to me which
everyone joined in and at that moment I felt slightly overcome
with a feeling of something other that lust for possibly the firsttime that holiday. It was a sense of deep gratitude for all I had
around me, this wonderful evening, my girlfriend and all myfriends, my health and theirs, but the minute I realised what I
did have in my life I immediately started thinking again of what I
didn’t have. What I still wanted. What, at that particular
moment I felt I needed more than anything else in the world. To
go over to Nette and snog her so forcefully that she was left
gasping for breath! But of course there was no way I could dothat. I had to behave and I must not do the one thing I achedfor, the one thing that would have totally ruined this evening andpossibly my whole life as I knew it. But once the thought andmore importantly the image of such an act had entered my mind
I just couldn’t shift it and it remained implanted there for the
rest of the evening.
After the last coffees had been sipped, most of the guests
dispersed and the bill settled Jenny asked me if I would mind her

86 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

going off to bed. She had never been one for late nights and I
said that was fine and as casually as I could mentioned that I’dmaybe have another drink at one of the bars and then come up
and join her. She kissed me on the cheek and I thanked her
again.
“You deserve it.” She said.” You’re my little bear, aren’tyou?”
And we kissed again and then she went her way and I
went mine. My way went directly to the bar where I knew Nette
would be. As I approached it, the swarm of other women
drinking there literally became a blur until I spotted Nette at thebar who by contrast, appeared in clear and sharp focus. I
assumed that Angelica had gone to bed too since Nette wasalone and I knew instinctively that she had been waiting for me.
“Hello Birthday girl.” She said.
“Hello you.”“Did you have a fun evening?”“I couldn’t bare not being close to you”.
There, I’d said it! And then of course I started
panicking. Was that too forward? Not nearly casual enough?
Too heavy and inappropriate perhaps for the actual situation?
But I heaved a sigh of relief as she said, “We can be close now.
Come.”She took my hand and led me out of the bar, across thevillage square and toward the beach. For a fleeting moment I
worried if anyone might have seen us but just at that point Nette
gave me one of her “Gaze into my eyes and you will never worry
about anything again” looks, and after that I could think ofnothing else and before I knew it there was just the two of us on
the sand. Away from the lights of the village we both sunk down
onto our knees and then came the moment for which I’d belonging and aching for so many days. But it seemed like morethan days that I’d been waiting for this, it seemed like a lifetime
and when we finally kissed it was as if a need deep from thedepths of my very being was at long last being met.
Again all the clichés, I know! But I can think of nothingoriginal to describe that kiss, that instant, that sense of inherent
pain being met by a long-awaited soothing touch of beauty.
Everything about that moment was beautiful, Nette, the beach,Fall 2011 87

the reflection of the moon shattering the water like glass, herhold, her touch, her mouth.
I couldn’t pull myself away from her if my life depended
on it and she knew the power that she held over me, andsomehow that knowledge made it even stronger. Because I felt
like I was being totally possessed, controlled, I had no choice ormind of my own and that was how I wanted it. I couldn’t thinkstraight, I couldn’t think at all. I just wanted to stay like this forever… being held, feeling safe, feeling loved and wanted andneeded and with no choices to make ever again in my whole life.
The kiss finally ended and we stared into each other’seyes once more. We were holding hands and we concentrated onthat for a while, changing our grip, turning each other’s fingers
over in ours again and again as if that would somehow bring theanswer to the question that was in both our minds. “Should we
now go further?” Of course we wanted to and we could do itright there, on the beach if necessary or we might go between
the huts and then no-one could see us there. All these
possibilities were frantically rushing around both our minds but
no words needed to be spoken.
Nette led me gently by the hand and I followed her
quietly, like a lamb to slaughter. Desire clouding my thoughts,
my judgement, my ability to think this through, to look at the
implications let alone the risks of what we were about to do. I
paused for a moment, still holding her hand but looking back tothe sea and then once more into her eyes again. Her hold overme was like a dangerous underwater current, close enough to theshore that no-one would suspect its power and yet strong enoughto pull a grown woman into the depths of the ocean, fighting forher life. As if she could sense my fear and hesitation, she pulled
me close to her and kissed me again. In that split second I had
an image of Jenny, and began to wonder what she would do if
she found out, if this would break her heart the way she had tornmine apart a few months earlier. But I didn’t want to hurt Jenny,
I certainly wasn’t doing it for that. And yet, if I was to carry on
with this then she would inevitably find out and I would cause
her a great deal of pain. So was it worth it? I tried to weigh up
what I might gain and what I would lose if I followed Nette up
the beach, but I was in no fit state to weigh anything up at all. I
couldn’t think straight. I really felt that I could not and should

88 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

not go with Nette but at the same time it felt as if I didn’t havethe slightest ounce of strength in me to refuse her.
I felt her hand round the back of my neck as she drew
my mouth once more to her’s. I felt the waves crashing over meagain but just at that point I suddenly pushed her away. She
looked startled and took a step back from me.
“I thought you wanted to…” she said.
“I did, I do….but I can’t. I just can’t.”
I slept very little that night. After running back to thestudio I had climbed into bed next to Jenny and snuggled up
against her warm body. I wasn’t sure if she was awake or not andso was slightly surprised when after a few minutes she said,“I’m so glad you came back”
If she felt my heart beating at a dangerously high rate
she said nothing about it and after a few minutes appeared to go
off to sleep. I lay staring up at the white ceiling.
The lights from the road outside were enough to makeme be able to spot some black smudges on the paintwork wheresome unsuspecting mosquitoes had had their lives brutally cut
short by a previous occupant wielding a newspaper. Daylight
was appearing by the time I eventually managed to drop off andthen I slept right through ‘til the early afternoon. Jenny had
obviously gone down to the beach but had left me a little notesaying she hoped that I’d slept well and that she still loved meeven though I was now officially an “older lesbian”.
*
There were two more days to go before our flight home.
I could think of nothing else but Nette and what had happened,or rather what had not happened between us. I longed to see her
again but at the same time I was terrified of doing so fearing that
it was not in my power to be able to refuse her advances morethan once. But she was not at the beach nor around our usual
bar that evening and a tiny part of me was very slightly relievedsince if she had been near me I knew that I wouldn’t have beenable to keep anything together at all. Jenny asked me a couple oftimes why I was being so quiet. I lamely said something about
how the party and the whole experience had done me in a bit.
The next day I finally caught sight of Nette. She was walking
with Angelica by the shops and Jenny said “Hi” and Angelica
said that they’d both hired a car that day to travel up to a resort

Fall 2011 89

on the north coast. Nette and I hung quietly beside ourrespective girlfriends like two children being picked up fromschool whose mothers are chatting away between themselves. I
tried to catch her eye but she was either looking down, or at
Jenny. We all said goodbye and wandered off in separate
directions.
The day came for us to return to London. Jenny and I
had a final swim in the sea and then a shower and afterwards wethrew our beach towels in the bin since they wouldn’t be dry intime to pack. The taxi arrived and the cases were loaded into theboot. Mandy and Stella came to see us off along with Monica
and Danielle. Elena had already left the island and Debs andSusan were still at the resort but nowhere to be seen even though
we’d made sure to tell them what time we were going. We all
kissed and hugged goodbye and then I sat in the back seat whensuddenly Jenny said she had to nip out to go to the cash point.
Nette wouldn’t have known what time I was leaving but I was
still hoping against hope that somehow she might miraculously
turn up. The others were all chatting away by the roadside and I
was alone in the car feeling sick to my stomach. All that I wanted
to do with every part of my being was to go and find Nette andto hold her and never let her go. So what was stopping me? Why
was I going along with this whole charade? I knew that I muststay in the taxi, that this was the life I had chosen, this was what
I wanted, wasn’t it? But still I could feel my stomach clenching
into a tight painful knot and my head spinning with confusion.
“Come on Jenny”, I was thinking, “Let’s just get thehell out of here…” But she still didn’t appear and then suddenly
out of nowhere I saw Nette. She was making her way towards
the taxi with Angelica following and shouting something at her.
Angelica tried to grab Nette’s arm to hold her back from coming
over but Nette pulled away and ran up to the car. I was still
sitting in the back seat with the window open and before I knew
it she leant over and kissed me. Angelica came up right behind
her, pulled her away from the car and shouted something in
Dutch. All the other women around were dumbstruck except
Monica who came straight over and with a fiery look in her eyes
said, “What the hell’s going on?”90 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Nette started calling out to me, “We can be together,you know we can make it work. You don’t have to go away, staywith me.”At this point Jenny returned and very quickly took in thewhole situation. She said to Angelica “Take her away, NOW!”
And Angelica literally frog-marched Nette from the scene. I
could see that Nette’s rage had now turned to sorrow and she
was clearly sobbing as she was being dragged away. It was morethan I could bear to watch and I jumped out of the taxi andstarted to run over to her but Jenny held me back and gently
said: “Come on darling, we have to go home.”
Then she helped me back into the taxi and I sat there, inthe back seat, feeling like someone who had just been arrested
who was being forced into a police car.
But this was not against my will, I was doing it
voluntarily. I was choosing to leave the only woman I wanted in
the world right now for Jenny, who at this point felt like acomplete stranger to me. I realised that I hadn’t even got aphone number for Nette so I knew that if I left her now I could
never change my mind again after this day. It seemed like thehardest decision I’d ever had to make in my life. My head wasaching with confusion and lust in equal measure and it felt likesome sort of drug had been released into my brain that I was
totally powerless to resist with only the inferior weapons of logic
and will-power. Nette and Angelica were almost out of sight now
and as they turned a street that took them out of my view I knewthat it was now or never, I had to make my choice.
My eyes filled up with tears and my stomach turned overonce again as the taxi pulled away from the square. I felt
physically sick with pain and longing and yet I stayed put in thatcar as it began the long windy mountainous journey across theisland to the airport which would then take me on a flight backto England and my home with my girlfriend and all theremaining years of my life that I would spend without seeing
Nette ever again.

Fall 2011 91

International Women’s Day
Jean Taylor
On 8 March 1908, womyn textile workers in New York
took to the streets to protest about their unsafe work places andtheir meagre pay. It wasn’t the first time womyn had gone on
strike to protest about low wages and untenable conditions in theworkplace. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last. To honour andcommorate the courage of these striking womyn workers as wellas make a demand for womyn’s right to vote, Clara Zetkin put a
proposal to the second International Conference of Socialist
Women in Copenhagen in 1910 that 8 March be designated as
International Women’s Day. This lead to an annual IWD
celebration in many countries round the world as womyn united
to continue the struggle for survival and recognition of theirrights and to acknowledge the considerable contribution womyn
had always made and continued to make to society generally.
It wasn’t till 5 March 1928 that the first IWD rally inAustralia was held in the Domain Park in Sydney. The first IWD
marches were held in Sydney and Melbourne in March 1931.
The early IWD marches were predominantly organised by thewomyn of the Communist Party of Australia and other womyn’sgroups and later in conjunction with the Union of Australian
Women. Anna Morgan, an Aboriginal activist, spoke about theneed for legislative changes to enable Aboriginal people fullaccess to their rights, at the IWD rally in Melbourne in March
1934.
After the WLM had been organising political activities
in Melbourne for a couple of years, the biggest IWD rally andmarch ever seen in Melbourne was organised by the Women’sMarch Action Campaign, made up of womyn from the
Women’s Action Committee, the UAW and other womyn’sorganisations and held on 11 March 1972. Approximately 3000
womyn attended the rally in the City Square to hear womyn
speak and then marched to the Treasury Gardens afterwards forstreet theatre and stalls.
Every year since then, the IWD rally and march in
Melbourne continued to be a rallying point for lesbians,
feminists and womyn generally and in solidarity with womyn

92 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

round the world. As womyn in a patriarchal society we not only
wanted to celebrate the gains we’d made but at the same time
we were only too well aware that there’d be a long hard fightbefore we could free ourselves and all womyn from oppression.
By the new millennium that early excitement andpolitical impetus had died down somewhat. Even so, there wereseveral events organised in Melbourne in 2011 to celebrate the100th anniversary of IWD on 8 March. These included an IWD
Rally at the State Library and a march to parliament houseorganised by the Freedom Socialist Party; a Cocktail Party
organised by the Australian Council of Trade Unions andVictorian Trades Hall Council at the Bella Union Bar at Trades
Hall with speakers Ged Kearney and Melba Marginson; and the2011 Public Oration with speaker Mary Wooldridge, theMinister for Women’s Affairs, was held at the Queen Victoria
Women’s Centre.
Join Women on the Bridge, a rally for peace andwomyn’s rights was held on the Sandringham Bridge inSouthbank; a concert, Half the Sky, organised by theInternational Women’s Development Agency with Claire
Bowditch, Deborah Conway & Willy Zygier, Stiff Gins, Sally
Dastey, Lucie Thorne, The Red Brigade and The Town Bikes,
was held at the Thornbury Theatre; and a womyn writers
session was held at Readings Bookshop in Carlton in
conjunction with Kill Your Darlings with writers Louise Swinn,
Sophie Cunningham and Monica Dux.
On 15 March, the Victorian Women’s Trust, YWCA,
League of Women Voters and the National Council of Women
Victoria organised a Public Lecture with Frances Bedford talking
about the feminist activist Muriel Matters plus a performance by
the Brunswick Women’s Choir in the Welsh Church in La
Trobe Street; and on 18 March, the Union of Australian
Women IWD celebration included the Guest Speaker, Mary
Crooks, Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust, at Ross
House in Flinders Lane.
The IWD event I went to was the Jan Gladys Testro
Memorial Lesbian Art Exhibition at the Narelle Byrne Gallery
in High Street Kew, 5 - 13 March. This exhibition not only
celebrated the 100th anniversary of IWD but was organised tocommemorated the first anniversary of Jan’s death. Over twenty

Fall 2011 93

lesbian artists, including myself, exhibited their work, whichranged in style from oil, acrylic, water and silk paintings tophotos, felt, ceramics, fabric, carvings and other installations.
The public opening was held on 5 March with several
artists giving a brief talk about their work and why the exhibition
was important to them. The lesbian opening was held on 8
March with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners, theWurundjeri people, and the opening speech was made by Judith
Brookes who had been the curater of the first Women’s Gallery
in Brunswick Street, 1989 - 1995. This was followed by a concert
to pay tribute to Jan’s achievement as a lesbian feminst activist
over many years and in particular for helping to organise thefirst Lesbian Art Exhibitions in Melbourne, 1996 - 1999. We
also mentioned other lesbian artists and their supporters who
had died and ended the evening with more food and drink andconversation.
The 100th anniversary of this significant womyn’s event
was not only an opportunity to reflect on the achievements we
had made as lesbians and feminists over this past century but it
also enabled us to get together and celebrate our own small
accomplishments in the face of the racism, lesbophobia andsexism that Indigenous womyn, lesbians and womyn still have tocontend with on a daily basis. In fact, given the capitalistinduced economic downturn, the threat of global warming andthe myriad of personal insults to our intelligence and humanity
on a regular basis, for lesbians and womyn to be celebrating at
all, let alone an 100 year anniversary, is no small achievement.

94 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Gray Is Good:
Pacific Northwest Old Lesbians Meet
Carol Anne Douglas
More than 200 lesbians over 60 met at the PacificNorthwest Regional meeting of Old Lesbians Organizing for
Change (OLOC) held in Tacoma, Washington, on July 28-31. (I
don't live in the Pacific Northwest, but all OLOC members arewelcome to come regional meetings. I'm an OLOC member, nota “neutral” observer.)But telling the who, when, what, and where doesn't
convey the excitement of seeing large conference rooms full of
mostly white-haired lesbians. More than 30 women age 75 orolder attended. At least 10 were over 80. A similar number wereon scooters. Unlike anywhere else in our culture, OLOC
meetings make you glad to be old. OLOC sells T-shirts saying“This is what an old lesbian looks like.”
Led by four women who called themselves the Gang ofFour, Puget Sound OLOC put together an amazing three daysof events. Like all OLOC conferences, this was held in a hotel.
OLOC works with the hotel staff on accessibility.
The keynote speaker was lesbian historian Lillian
Faderman, author of Surpassing the Love of Men, Odd Girls andTwilight Lovers, and Chloe Plus Olivia. She told of famous womenwhose passion for other women has been covered up—and how
archives are still covering it up. She read us steaming (not justromantic) letters from Emily Dickinson, Margaret Sanger, andearly twentieth-century Communist leader Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn. Would you believe that archives still consult the relativesof long-dead women about whether to let anyone read their
letters? Who would imagine that Sanger's great nephews worry
about preserving her respectability? (“Respectability?” Sure,that's what Margaret Sanger cared about.)
Faderman told us there was a lesbian first lady. Besides
Eleanor Roosevelt. Rose Cleveland, sister of Grover. When
Grover was first elected, he was unmarried, and the acting firstlady was Rose, who was carrying on an affair with a woman who
unfortunately married a bishop.

Fall 2011 95

Thrilling as Faderman was, the highlight of theconference was several panels of old lesbians telling about theirlives and their work building community.
I can describe only a few speakers, but there were many.
Shan Elaine Ottey of Radical Rabbit Media, aproducer-director of lesbian feminist films, told her experience as
a butch who rebelled at Stonewall. The police arrested her andthe court sentenced her to 90 days at Rikers Island. She served
the whole term, and guards beat her often, deriding her because
she was a butch. When she spoke, many of us were in tears. I
didn't know that happened at Stonewall. We certainly need toknow our history better.
Morgan Ahern, a Romani/Gypsy woman, founder ofLolo Diklo: Romani Against Racism, told about the oppressionof Romani. She grew up in a town in New York State where
many people are the descendants of Romani who Europeansbrought to this country as slaves—yes, slaves. Romani who fled
the Holocaust also live in that community. Like Native
American children, some Romani children, including Ahern,were taken from their homes by state officials and forced to go to
Roman Catholic boarding schools. She escaped, but there wasnowhere to go and nothing to do but cadging a living selling(and taking) drugs on the streets of New York City.
But someone took her in and helped her try to sober up:
lesbian writer Jill Johnston (who died this summer). Ahern gave
Johnston her heartfelt thanks. But Ahern's life didn't change
completely overnight. She wound up in the New York Women's
House of Detention. There she heard crowds calling out thename of another woman: Angela Davis, whose name Ahern had
never heard before. Davis, in an isolation cell, called out asking
the other women in the jail to speak their names. Then she asked
the crowd to chant them. It was a life-changing experience for
Ahern when the crowd called out "Hurray Morgan!"
OLOC didn't just talk about prison. It is committed toactivism as well as celebration of old lesbians' lives. A group ofconference participants joined the local chapter of the National
Organization for Women in a demonstration at Tacoma's
federal detention center in support of immigrant women thegovernment is holding for deportation. The protestors said they
couldn't see or hear any of the prisoners inside, but they hoped

96 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

the prisoners heard them calling out "Shame! Shame!" Theprotestors saw only guards, one of whom photographed them.
Not many days later the government temporarily
released a woman whose detention they had protested, Tara
Ammons Cohen. Cohen had been in detention for two years.
The government plans to deport her to Mexico though she has
lived in the United States almost all her life and doesn't speak
Spanish.
But the conference was more focused on the politics ofcommunity building than on protest. One plenary session was
devoted to women discussing forms of community ranging fromland communities to senior housing. Membership in some landcollectives has dwindled, and new members don't necessarily
have the same vision as earlier members. However, lesbian RV
communities in Arizona and Washington State are flourishing,as are some communities in which women each own their own
house.
Tita Caldwell of San Francisco, a member of Bay Area
OLOC, lives in affordable senior housing in San Francisco, andsix other old lesbians live in the same project. She urged lesbians,
especially in areas with nondiscrimination laws, to work to create
space in senior housing where lesbians feel free to be out. She
has learned that managers of senior housing respond when she
invokes the law to demand conditions under which residents canbe out comfortably, such as providing space for lesbian events.
There were many wonderful speakers, but I hadn't
planned to report on the conference and didn't take notes. There
were many more tales of joy, pain, and struggling. There were
panels on visibility, sparking action, and intersecting oppressions.
Workshop subjects included aging into disabilities andorganizing for change, networking via computer, and writingfrom the right side of your brain.
Conference participants ranged from a woman who had
traveled around the world on a yacht alone with her partner (tothe astonishment of men in all the countries they visited) to thoseliving subsidized housing, and speakers showed awareness thatmost old lesbians are poor. However, some discussions seemed
to be based on the assumption that all of us would be able toretire. But when someone in the audience said that wasn't
necessarily true, and that OLOC presentations needed toFall 2011 97

include discussion of how old lesbians who can't retire willsurvive, the organizers immediately responded positively to thatsuggestion.
Even the "name" speakers and entertainers at OLOC
meetings participate in the whole conference and are ready totalk with everyone. French Canadian singer/songwriter Lucie
Blue Tremblay, who sang on Saturday evening, was eagerlyorganizing for lesbian space and reviving women's music.
Tremblay is so committed to lesbians that she has gone to an
assisted living facility to sing for a lesbian who lived there.
I've been to many women's conferences, but I've neverseen any where the participants were as welcoming as those
OLOC organizes. (I also attended the national conference in
Cleveland last year.) I've found them a joy to attend. This year's
conference even had sessions on "laughing yoga" to encourage
lesbians to laugh more. And the Friday night dance started earlyin the evening, a feature some of us appreciated.
One panel was composed of lesbians over 80 telling theirlife stories. It shouldn't be unusual to have a panel of womenover 80, but it is. OLOC is working to make that less unusual.
Life stories were the heart of the meeting. For years,
OLOC's oral herstory project has recorded the lives of lesbians
over 70. The opening night entertainment featured a local
theater group reading parts of other old lesbians' stories ofisolation, struggling to come out, and life after coming out.
Most attendees were white. Last year, after holding
workshops on racism at its Cleveland conference, OLOC
formed a task force on race and class and will focus on racism at
its next annual meeting in Boston next summer.
OLOC registration forms always include a space urging
those who can to contribute extra to help lower-income lesbians
come to the conference. I've met women who said they came
only because OLOC covered their costs.
Younger partners of old lesbians who attend theconference can also attend.
OLOC holds national conferences every other year. The
next national conference will be held in Boston, July 19-22,
2012. You can find out more about OLOC at www.oloc.org.

98 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Butch Voices 2011 Conference Re-Cap
Carrie Kholi
The 2011 BUTCH Voices conference, entitled,“Sustaining our Movement: Building for the Future,” featured aperformance night, film night, and highly-anticipated criticalbreakout sessions. Keynote speakers included Lambda LiteraryAward-winning authors, sharon bridgforth and Alice Y. Hom.
Over 450 people attended the event held at the Oakland City
Marriott.
Last year, at one of the regional conferences, Hom said,“I organized and presented a panel called, ‘Bromance, Kinship,
and Mandates: Unveiling Taboo Topics. [This year,] I'mlooking forward to [engaging] with butches of all stripes andpeople of various gender identifications. I want to have
conversations, learn from others … and experience the thrill ofseeing all of us basking in the beauty of love & community withall of our differences & contradictions.”
The 2011 BUTCH Voices conference boasted fourdays’ worth of education and entertainment. However, in aspace filled with self-identified butches and allies ranging fromages 16 to 67. The Brown Boi Project’s youth initiative
organized many of the young participants to attend. There wasmuch serious work to be done.
Workshops ranged from topics such as “Two-Spirits:
Bridging Gender and Generations,” to “Homophobia: Bullying
and Suicide Prevention,” and even “Mayuca, from the bottom of
my heart: A Mexicana Story of Butch-Boi Culture & Identity,and “Butch and Pregnant: What do I wear and What should you
call me?”“There were overwhelming responses of how amazing
the space was,” reports BUTCH Voices founder, Joe Leblanc.
“[I kept hearing] how welcome people felt, and the diversity ofattendees. People [were] talking about how much they gained byhaving youth there, elders there, two spirits there....you nameit.”
Amidst these powerful workshops, BUTCH Voices alsoorganized a community town hall meeting to engage with andFall 2011 99

address many of the concerns raised immediately prior to theconference.
While some members of the community previously
viewed adding “Masculine of Center” to the BUTCH Voices
mission statement as anti-feminist, anti-womanist, and antilesbian heritage, BUTCH Voices president, Krys Freeman, andthe rest of the BUTCH Voices board members remindedconference attendees that MoC was a term created and engaged
from a place of inclusion and love.
“I understand that, to many, from the outside, I am
what I am: butch,” states Freeman. “However, when growing
up as a somewhat androgynous African-American teen in NY,
and then later engaging in LGBTQ and Trans activism and allywork in LA and Oakland, I found that “butch” has not always
been the most welcoming term to a lot of women—womenacross a huge span of cultures and age groups. The more
BUTCH Voices speaks with multi-cultural members of ourcommunity, the more we find this to be true. I, and the rest of
the BUTCH Voices board members, find it necessary to beproactive about engaging new language. It will change whether
we move with it or stand against it.”During the town hall meeting, participants discussed
how MoC as a term and identity location was created out of afeminist framework, in order to address the breadth and depth ofthe various identities unable to find a home under the term
“butch.”“Butch has always had the head seat at the table,” said
Leblanc. “This is because so many White butch women haveused this language to set the table, set the stage, set the history
books. Everyone else was just expected to fall in line. But, for somany butches, the term just does not fit. We try to instill that, at
a conference called BUTCH Voices, there are experiences andvalues, in addition to a host of other commonalities that they can
use to connect—it doesn’t always have to be around language.
We do this because we recognize that butch is not the ‘end all,be all’ descriptor, neither is stud, neither is masculine of center.
Each identity has its own heritage/her/his- tory involving
culture, race, region, class. Each deserves an equitable seat at thetable.”

100 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

After a conference filled with pressing discussions, inaddition to emotional highs and lows, community connecting,and pushes towards real and positive personal and social change,
BUTCH Voices still highlights its work as a pro-feminist andpro-womanist social justice organization working to achieve
gender equity.
“Inclusion and acceptance without favoritism,” says
BUTCH Voices. “No one identity over another—each with avalued seat at the table and voice that should be respected andheard.”
Presently, BUTCH Voices is throwing its support
behind Chaz Bono, a newly-transitioned transman, and his
appearance on television’s, “Dancing With the Stars.” In the
coming year, BUTCH Voices is looking to add more board
members, steering committee co-chairs, coordinators, andsubcommittee members in all areas.
“We must grow internally to be any good externally,”comments Freeman in regards to the BUTCH Voices newmember search. Interested community members are advised tosend resumes to Joe@butchvoices.com. In addition to theirresume, they should include a cover letter expressing area(s) inwhich they might be interested in working.
For more information on BUTCH Voices, visit
http://butchvoices.com or
http://www.facebook.com/butchvoices. You can also follow
BUTCH VOICES (@BUTCHVoices) on Twitter.

Fall 2011 101

Book Reviews
Cow (North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Spinifex Press,2011) by Susan Hawthorne
Reviewed by Merry Gangemi
Several nights running, after reading another string ofHawthorne’s magical new book of poems, Cow, I settled down
and let my imagination out to pasture, hanging out with
Queenie, and Electra, and Sita, and Fatima, each fascinating
character eliciting more and more curiosity about their minds
and personalities.
Through her mystical and elegant language, her
Sprachgitter,1 Susan Hawthorne proffers readers expansive
possibilities to reinterpret the lost reference points andmetaphors of feminist and lesbian-feminist existence, “the songhalf forgotten half remembered (119). Cow is herstory “swathedin a cloth of sound.” illuminations of the old phallocentric myths
in lyrical language, a Weltsicht that offers an “eternalcounterpoint/ whose coda is a single/ jubilant/ voice” (119).
Cow is also a wonderful exhilarating manifestation of lesbianfeminist scholarship and arts, connecting to what Bonnie
Zimmerman identifies as “the most important myth for any
community… its myth of origins.”2
Language is Hawthorne’s métier; she conjures cinematic
emersion into a verbal, carnal, spiritual world withoutparameters and expectations, the phallocentric, Greco-Roman
myths reconfigured; the violence and miasma of patriarchy
wrested away from the silences of “unspoken histories/
genocides/eliminations of the unwanted/ every rewriting of
history continues that erasure” (4).
Cow is an experience of myth exploded into alliteration
and rhythm:
tales are long and short
1 G erm an: “lan gu age m esh ” (1 0 3 ).
2 B on n ie Z im m erson . T he Safe Sea of W om en: Lesbian Fiction
1969–1989. B oston : B eacon , 1990, p. 	
  	  102 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

they tangle like a chinese noodle in a spirila spaghetti in a stretcha snarl of timea skein of story
the strings are struck
in exquisite proportion
consonance of lambda
stories told by Chloe and Olivia
by Gertrude and Alice (11)

Woolf, Stein, and Toklas aside, the cross-references
Hawthorne embroiders—both obvious and subtle—are exciting
and layered. The text is fluid yet linear, its rhymes and lyricalverses moving inexorably toward what French-Algerian
philosopher Hélène Cixous calls “forward in the axe’s light.”3“[W]e were oracles” Hawthorne’s Queenie explains,“our pronouncements not to be messed with” (57). Of course
those pronouncements were messed with, repeatedly andviolently sundering female power from male power, redacting
the role of women to reflect the hierarchies within the pantheonof male deities:
in another timea later time
when gods and demons
had forgotten how to be immortal
they joined forces to create a nectar of immortality
these boys took their timethey carried in Mount Mandara
turned it upside downplaced it upon the back of the tortoisedemons on one side
gods the othereach held the world snake
twirled the mountain top for a thousand years
back forwards
back forwards
again and again and again
the best they could manage was deadly poison (50)3 H élèn e C ixous. T hree Steps on the Ladder of W riting . N ew
Y ork: C olum bia U P, 1993, p. 57.

Fall 2011 103

The mythologies of the ancient world have many
elements in common: Gilgamesh and Noah; Adam and
Eve/Izanagi and Izanami; the Great Flood, the ancient cedars of
Mesopotamia and the Hebrew tabernacle, Ishtar andPersephone, Perseus and Moses; Prometheus and Isaac; Jesus
and Isaac; the Golden Calf and the Moon Bull—to name just afew. Each myth is intricately bound to male primacy and nomatter how powerful the female deity she is always and foreversubject to the control of gods. Goddesses continually occupy a
subordinated and prurient position in hagiologies. Sex, as theorigin of all sin, squarely pinpoints women as perpetrators.
Pandora and Eve are still used as rationalizations for misogyny,
oppression, and femicide. As Thomas Aquinas decreed in his
Woman as Derived Being, “woman is defective and misbegotten.”4
Australian poet Susan Hawthorne has struck gold with
Cow—creating a vigorous, playful, philosophical neo-perspective,“ein Blick5 into another world” (3). “[T]he cow” Hawthorne tells
us in the very first poem, “is at the limits of my thinking” (3), but
one quickly discerns that the word “limits” is a countermetaphor for the expansiveness of imagination, a response theultimately futile attempt to control the female imagination:
I’m the flood at every birth
the drought at every deathbeyond each gateway is a paththat leads directly to me
if you can’t find me
look among the reeds by the river (41)The cows of Cow have claimed “the lambda letter/ fromthe snake’s mouth” (62), and understand, by standing their
ground, the clarity of “the moment when I hear/ unspoken
histories/ genocides/ eliminations of the unwanted/ every
rewriting of history continues that erasure” (4).

4 T h om as A quin as.” W om an as D erived B ein g,” in H istoryof Ideas on W om en. R osem ary A gon ito, ed. N Y : P erigree,
1977, p.85
5 G erm an: “a view , a lo o k” (3 ).

104 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Cow is about our lives of women, our legacies, our still
extant nightmares of not being valued. It is also about our
integral connection with the natural world, and it is about thetransformative power of language, the raw force of words
redefined, retranslated, and restored:
I dig for language uprooting words
from the trail of historicalsyntax across continents
down through the tap roots
the shapes of letters and words
frizzing on the edge of a root (78)

Cow is structured into strings, which function as
chapters. These strings also function as a grounding reference tostring theory, which seeks to analyze vibrations as the source of
all energy, i.e., the source of all life. That “the string must be
stretched under tension in order to become excited”6
underscores the universal and constant stresses of being awoman, different, lesbian. Within each string, Queenie—thephilosophy cow—and her “horned goddesses” tell their stories:“facts and imagination tangle/ a weave of uncertain
strings/strings pulled and plucked/ edgeless origami in an
unfolding universe” (7).
There are wonderful moments of rhyme and rhythm in
Cow; “what she sings to her maiden aunt” is a delicious reference
to Emily Dickinson, the patriarchal spin on a so-called emotional
recluse spinster, who, juxtaposed under Hawthorne’s pen
becomes a foremother, a subversive feminist, the poet “ofrebellion and wild love… who never felt disgrace”:
you who sing and dance
your flamboyant style is profoundI read your hands slant my maiden aunt
you who heard my wish
6 T h e official Strin g T h eory W ebsite.

h ttp :/ / su p erstrin gth eory.com / b asics/ in d ex.h tm l,accessed 09/03/2011.

	  Fall 2011 105

smiled said yes and more
I read your fingers slant my maiden aunt (130)and here, in “what we sing in one voice”:
sing sing into night for we are eine Frauwe sit together on the bough
we women who walk at night
go out to the world of cow
exiled in Moscow Kracow and Macau (132)

Cow is about our shared herstory and the unearthing oftruth. Fatima, and Meena, Sita, and Electra are our mythicalembodiments and together with Queenie ruminate on thephysicality of being a cow, the amazing diversity of cows, thebrilliance of the rediscovered “lexicon a spin of thread” (77):
Io is a white cow a moon cow
the golden calf is a sun cow
the blue cow is a sea cow
the red cow is a menstruating girlthe black cow is the new moon
the starless sky before the cow spills her milky stars (7)Queenie knows “cows who do impossible things,” whodefy gravity and jumped the moon way before there wererockets. Queenie says poems about creation and migration,
enslavement and escape, deep love and comfort, creativity, andhistory. “Queenie twirls grass in her mouth/ making a strand of
wicker/ she bends a curl/ a centerpiece/ combines it withothers/ builds on it/ going round in circles/ like stories thatintertwine/ going on forever” (29).
There is a marvelous sensuality to the poems, tenderness
unimaginable in the old narratives of Persephone, Pandora,
Hathor, or Kalypso. Yet, men are not reviled in Cow, they areobserved and assessed. They are not judged, per se; their cruelty
and dominance is accepted as part of their nature, rooted inphysical violence and devouring rage at a woman’s presumptionof what is reasonable behavior, as in “what Cow and Tiger say”:
a cow and a tiger how should they meet in a poem?

106 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

logic demands that carnivore
unsurprisingly
let’s have a conversation
says Cow
you sit there and I’ll sit here
but says Tiger
no waysays Cow
every civilized being knows
Tiger takes action
no eat no talk says Tiger

eat herbivore
Cow has a better idea
and we will talkbefore talk I must eat
talking and eating go together
leaps for the throat
mouth full of flesh (54)The excitement in Cow is unmistakable; the idea ofanthropomorphic relevance churns into another realm of
consciousness, and in pulling this off so authentically,
Hawthorne convinces us that such a story is not “any lessbelievable/ than tales of dragons/ or wars/ or magic/ or love”(154). It’s a book of poems for poets—and for non-poets; a bookthat reads like a novel and the poet’s imagination and language
are an unbeatable combination in women’s writing:your poems are like temples
elaborate and multi-hued
run your tongue over their surfaces
feel the sculptured complexity
hear the ornamental words
thrill to their sounds
their peaks and troughssoaring pitch and indigo roar (95)

Susan Hawthorne has written “poems/ thrilling to a music that
lifts you daily celebrating/ unbelievable truths halleluiah alleluia
they cry.” Indeed. Cow is a triumph.
The Virgin (Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing, 2008) byHannah Blue Herron.
Reviewed by Ruth Mountaingrove
The novel The Virgin takes us back to the time when
women were revered. Hannah Blue Herron has chosen to write
about the time when the invaders from the North, the Nomads,

Fall 2011 107

brought their god, Enlil, and changed many women’s lives.
The women have a temple to Inanna, their own customs,
celebrations and festivals. We get a taste of what they have andhad. For generations it has always been like this. They arevegetarians and raise their own food.
This was a time when lesbians were women who were
honored and raised their own children together. They solved the
problem of fertility by creating a ritual in the temple where mencame to worship Inanna and be brought to ecstasy by rituals
performed by the virgin of the night.
Only occasionally a woman would become pregnant
with no male intervention. This was in the way of a miracle but
it happened to Kasha and she became the high priestess when
the former high priestess died.
Mostly, women knew who the fathered their child, but
the men were never told who she was if she was a girl. Boys wereraised until they were 7 and then returned to their father or
adopted out to another man.
Hannah Blue Heron brings this time to mind when
women lived in their own villages under their own governance.
Men were traders or built things like looms, wheels for pottery,invented what sounds very much like a wheelbarrow–an uprightwheel with handles for carrying things. This was the Bronze Ageand there were knives useful for cutting branches off trees. There
were hatchets. The women traded herbs and weaving for thesetools.
Then Enlil’s followers began to harass the Inanna
worshipers, the men as well as the women whom they called
whores. The god Nilil demanded that each man have a wife
subservient to him and Nilil worshipers began to burn thevillages down including the temple.
They are warned by one of the male Inanna worshipers
that they have twelve hours to pack and leave. They pack what
they can using the wheel carts. They are told they have to climb
a mountain and that on the other side they will find fertile land
to live on.
However because of the time of year, it is fall moving
into winter, they will have to learn to shoot rabbits and deer withbows and arrows. This horrifies them but in order survive being
vegetarians will not be enough, they have to learn how to make108 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Spaceboots out of deerskin and rabbit boots for the children.
They find shelter in caves and, when the cave is
occupied, they smoke her or him out. A bear does not takekindly to this and claws one woman.
Hannah Blue Heron has a Master’s Degree in theology
from Notre Dame she is familiar with Catholic ritual, so I
couldn’t help seeing Moses bringing his people to the Promised
Land. Unlike Moses, Ashannah is able to enjoy the new land she
has brought her women to.
Hannah Blue Herron has taken us on a journey into thepast and leaves us with an understanding of how the male
patriarchy came to be.
There were good men and good women back then andpeace. The goddess Inanna brought peace to her children. The
god brought death and destruction and has continued to bringus that to this day.
We are confronted again and again by the genie they
have unleashed and can no longer control. Where do we bury
this uranium and plutonium? How do we tell the generations
that follow us where the danger lies ten thousand years fromnow?
The Virgin is a wonderful reconstruction of a time when
women and children loved each other and the goddess was
worshiped. A good read for the summer.

Fall 2011 109

Contributors
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of two poetry collections:
Approaching Ice and Interpretive Work. Her poems have appeared in The
Atlantic, The Believer, Poetry and she has received the Audre Lorde Prizeand a Stegner Fellowship, among other honors. Founder and editor-inchief of Broadsided Press, she lives on Cape Cod and works as anaturalist and teacher.
Nickole Brown’s Sister, a novel-in-poems, was published by Red Hen.
The title poem from her forthcoming collection, A Book of Birds, won
AROHO’s 2010 Orlando Prize. In 2009, she received an NEA
fellowship. She worked at Sarabande for ten years, and for the past
four at Arktoi Books and the Marie Alexander Series. Currently, sheteaches at Murray State and University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Melissa Buckheit’s poetry, interviews, translations, reviews andphotography have appeared or are forthcoming in Shearsman Journal,
Bombay Gin, nth position, The Drunken Boat, Blue Fifth Review, U of A Poetry
Center Newsletter, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, Spiral Orb, Pirene’s Fountain,
A Trunk of Delirium, Eyewear, and Sonora Review. Noctilucent, a full-length
poetry collection, is forthcoming from Shearsman Books in the UK, in2012, and a chapbook, Arc, was published in 2007. Melissa studied
Literature, Poetry, Dance, Theatre and French at Brandeis University
and has an MFA in Poetry from Naropa University. She teaches
Writing and Literature at the University of Arizona and Pima College,is an Orthopedic Massage Therapist, a Choreographer/Dance
Teacher, and curates the Edge Series for Emerging and Younger
Writers. She lives in Tucson, AZ with her partner and son.
Joanna Cattonar is a QLFHD [queerlesbianfemalehomosexualdyke]of Neapolitan/Istrian, working class descent, born in 1941, raised in
the Bronx. She received degrees from Vassar College and Cornell
University. She was a founding member of the New Mexico Lesbian
Gay Political Alliance and organized the one and only 24-hourmarathon of lesbian writers at the old Full Circle Books. Her art andpoetry have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, and The San
Marcos Review, as well as in lesbian feminist journals like Sisterlode and
The Burning Bush in New Mexico where she lives with her transgenderhousemates, Clark, an eleven-year-old brown tabby, and Frankie, afive-month-old mini-German-Shepherd-looking pup.

110 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

Julie Cooper-Fratik lives with her partner, a conceptual
artist/sculptor, in a rural area of Pennsylvania where they tend organic
gardens, make and discuss art, enjoy cooking, reading, and taking
walks—when they aren’t working for money! Julie has been a Fellow at
the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, and she is the winner of an
Achievement Award in Poetry from The Leeway Foundation in
Philadelphia. “Bodies in Intercourse,” a chapter of her book Beyond the
Objects of Desire: The Space of the Poet in the Space of the World, has been
published in Under the Sun. She has published poems in, among others,
So To Speak, Quarter After Eight, the Mississippi Review, Slant, The Louisville
Review, Ekphrasis, RUNES, and Rhino.
Rachel Curry is completing her MFA in Fiction at Northwestern
University. She teaches reading and writing at the Cook County
Juvenile Temporary Detention Center’s Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy
Program. Her interview with Susie Bright can be found online in
TriQuarterly. Rachel was born into an Italian immigrant family in
Hazleton, Pennsylvania. She received her undergraduate degree from
Ithaca College in 2006. She currently resides in Chicago, Illinois andcan be reached at RachelCurry2012@u.northwestern.edu
Carol Anne Douglas worked on the feminist publication off our backs
from 1973 to 2008.
Jocelyn Heath received her MFA in poetry in Spring 2011 from the
University of Maryland–College Park. Her poems have appeared in
Poet Lore and Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems. She reviews poetry books
for Lambda Literary, and is currently Assistant Editor with Smartish
Pace.
Carrie Y.T. Kholi is the Creative Director and Founder of Ardor
Brand, LLC. and A-List Entertainment & Event Services. She is also
the PR & Marketing chair for Philadelphia's, Elements Organization.
A PR, marketing, and social media strategist with experience in web
marketing, management, instruction and creative development, Kholi
is passionate about incorporating new media into everyday branding
strategies. With a background in creative writing, event planning, andbrand development and management, Kholi’s focus brings together
new demographics in order to create new narratives. Willfully mixing
style, trends, and literary analysis of the latest Nicki Minaj lyrics,
KholiOli.Com (Kholi's personal blog containing business, fashion, andcreative tips and trends) occupies a niche for the intellectual consumer,
the trendsetting marketing maven, and the entrepreneurially-minded
young woman with a passion for both prose and primping. Carrie Kholi

Fall 2011 111

is also a PhD student in Literatures in English at Rutgers University
and currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Marie LaPré Grabon is a poet and visual artist. She and her partner,
Linda Markin, live in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont where theyraise chickens, tend gardens and enjoy all four seasons. Marie is also a
mother and grandmother and is currently teaching at Johnson State
College.
Lee Lynch was first published in “The Ladder” in the 1960s. Herbooks include Toothpick House, Old Dyke Tales and The Swashbuckler, Sweet
Creek and Beggar of Love, all available from Bold Strokes Books at
http://goo.gl/6neqS . Her recent short stories can be found in Romantic
Interludes (Bold Strokes Books), Women In Uniform (Regal Crest),
and www.readtheselips.com. Lynch’s syndicated column, “TheAmazon Trail,” runs in venues such as “On Top Magazine.” She is arecipient of the Alice B. Reader Award for Lesbian Fiction, the James
Duggins Mid-Career Author Award and was inducted into the Saints
and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame. Beggar of Love received the Golden
Crown Literary Society Ann Bannon Readers’ Choice Award and a
ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award.
Margarita Miniovich is a Jewish lesbian writer and poet. She
immigrated to Canada from Russia at the age of thirteen. Her work
has been published in two issues of Fireweed, the anthology Friday the
Rabbi Wore Lace, and Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry.
She is the 2010 first prize-winner of the First Person Narrative National
Essay Contest run by the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives and her
essay will be published in the Keeping Our Stories Alive anthology. She
lives in Toronto with her nine-year-old daughter.
Ruth Mountaingrove has published two chapbooks: Rhythms of Springat 22, and For Those Who Cannot Sleep at fifty-four the latter being
influenced by Carl Young and Gurdjieff before discovering the
Women’s Movement. Co-editor with Jean Mountaingrove of
WomanSpirit and The Blatant Image. Reach her at mountaingrove@suddenlink.net
Clare Summerskill is a writer, a singer-songwriter and a lesbian
comedienne. She regularly writes and performs her own one-woman
comedy shows and tours them to theatres internationally. She brings"Dyke" humour to the forefront of alternative comedy. Her publishedworks include,We’re the Girls! from which the story, “Going Dutch” istaken (Diana Publishing 2008) and “Hearing Voices” is a play by Clare,112 Sinister Wisdom 84 – Time/Space

based entirely on service users’ experiences of the mental health system.
(Tollington Press 2010). She is currently working on a book of older
lesbian and gay men’s memories, which is due to be published in 2012.
Visit www.claresummerskill.co.uk
Jean Taylor is a radical lesbian feminist writer and activist based in
Melbourne Australia. Her next book, Stroppy Dykes: Radical Lesbian
Feminist Activism in Victoria During the 1980s, will be published by Dyke
Books Inc in 2012.
Linda Quinlan grew up in a factory town a few miles fromdowntown Boston. After being exposed to poetry in junior high school
she began to read and then write her own work. Her poetry has
been widely published in literary journals including Sinister Wisdom,
Pudding, and Conditions International. In college, she worked with Martha
Collins and later with Kathleen Spivak at the Harvard Institute of
Writing. She was Poet Of The Year in Wisconsin, and, in New
Orleans, she was a feature writer for a gay and lesbian newspaper. In
Vermont, she started the first and only Lesbian Grandmothers Groupand has remained politically active. She's been a welfare mother, ahouse painter, a bartender, a grants writer, administrator and a factory
worker.
Fran Winant is a poet, painter, and activist based in New York City.
Her work was also published in Sinister Wisdom 82.
Chrystal Wing's first novel, Ariadne's Egg, was published in 2001 by
Mwynhad Press. An excerpt from her second novel, Ariadne andHarriet (currently looking for a publisher), won The 2004 Claire of theMoon Award given by The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.
Calyx Journal will be publishing a different excerpt from the same novelin their summer issue. Chrystal Wing is a writing teacher at Portland
Adult Education and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard
College.

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Sinister Wisdom
A Multicultural Lesbian
Literary & Art Journal

Sinister Wisdom 84
Fall 2011

Editors: Julie R. Enszer & Merry Gangemi
Layout and Design: Julie R. Enszer
Book Review Editor: Robin ní Catáin
Board of Directors: Shaba Barnes, Susan Levinkind, Joan Nestle, Rose
Provenzano, Judith K. Witherow
7NÅKM5IVIOMZ" Susan Levinkind
Proofreaders: Merry Gangemi
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The oldest surviving lesbian
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Create, read, write, draw, explore,
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3TMXÅ[b ;PIZWV 4QU0QVO 8PaTTQ[Lyon, Victoria Lena Manyarrows, Del
Martin, Cherri Moraga, Adrienne
Rich, Sapphire, Barbara Smith, Jean
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Special thanks to: All of the womyn who contributed work in its many
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Front Cover Art: “La Casa Azul” by Julie R. Enszer;161;<-:?1;,75 founded 1976. Former editors and publishers:
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and Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
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Fran Day (2004-2010)
Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural, multi-class, lesbian space. We seek to open,
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ability to develop critical judgment, as lesbians evaluating our communityand our world. Statements made and opinions expressed in this publication
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Featuring Work by:

Sinister Wisdom-TQbIJM\P*ZILÅMTL
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