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The Line Of Dissent: Gay Outsiders and the Shaping of History

Michele Karlsberg — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 14:59:15 +0000

The Line Of Dissent:Gay Outsiders and the Shaping of History

Special to Lesbian.com

Most people know Andrea Dworkin simply as a radical feminist prominent in the anti-pornography campaigns of the 1980s and ’90s. Yet this is only one aspect of a complex, intriguing woman who authored a dozen books, and was a passionate, tenacious activist for social justice. Having unimpeded access to the archive allowed for a comprehensive account of her life. Still, as I was putting this book together, I realized that I had something more I wanted to say—this time, about our personal relationship.

Andrea and I became friendly in the early 1970s as a result of working together in the anti-Vietnam War organization redress. Since our friendship was centrally linked as well to the early years of the Gay Academic Union, it also throws some light on gay male-lesbian attempts to work together politically.*

Early in 1973, a group of mostly young academics began to meet informally to discuss what we might do to make the university world a more accepting environment for gay people, and also to foster the study of gay and lesbian lives. After months of discussion and debate, we decided to focus on several goals: to pressure the American Association of University Professors and other academic organizations to protect the rights of openly gay faculty; to serve as a support network for the many isolated gay people on campus; to pinpoint needed areas of scholarly research; and to originate pilot programs for course work in lesbian and gay studies.

We decided to call ourselves the Gay Academic Union (GAU), and, as a way of announcing ourselves and beginning the work of reducing homophobia on the nation’s campuses, we set about planning for a conference that fall on “The Universities and the Gay Experience.” From the beginning of the planning sessions, one problem loomed large: in the early 1970s, women were still scarce on academic faculties, and “out” lesbians were scarcer still. We were also aware that the early post-Stonewall organizations—the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance—had been rent with bitter struggles over what the women justifiably protested as “male chauvinism.” Determined from the start to deal openly with these real and difficult issues, some of the gay men connected with planning the GAU conference formed a consciousness-raising group to discuss our own acknowledged sexism. As a result, most of the attendees took a firm stance about the need to ensure that women would have equal representation on GAU’s steering committee. But the vote wasn’t unanimous. Some of the men took vocal exception to the introduction of what they called the “irrelevant” issue of feminism, and, in response, some of the women expressed doubt as to whether they would continue to attend meetings.

Enter Andrea Dworkin. As an eighteen-year-old undergraduate at Bennington (where she’d had affairs with both men and women, including the wife of a dean), Andrea had already become politically active around antiwar and feminist issues. As early as 1964, she’d been arrested during a street protest in Manhattan protesting the war in Vietnam and had spent four days in the Women’s House of Detention, where two male medical examiners treated her so brutally that she’d bled for days afterwards. Soon after, Andrea went to Europe to live and write. For a time, she found “true love” on the island of Crete, but then moved to Amsterdam, where she met and married a Dutch anarchist who turned sadist and badly beat her. Finally escaping, she worked briefly as a prostitute and then returned to the States.

Living at the poverty level in an East Village tenement, she was befriended by the short story writer Grace Paley and the well-known poet Muriel Rukeyser. Both women believed in Andrea’s talent and took her on as a part-time assistant. She also went to work for redress, the anti-Vietnam war group, and it was at one of its meetings that she and I first met and were soon drawn to each other. At the time, Andrea was putting the finishing touches on what would become her celebrated (and also widely criticized) first book, Woman-Hating, and she asked both me and Muriel (also involved with redress) to read a final draft. Muriel found it stunningly good and called Andrea to say (as she reported to her parents) that “she thinks it’s one of the most important books of our time—wow!” I was somewhat less enthusiastic, but believing as I did in Andrea’s talent, sent her to Hal Scharlatt, my own editor at E. P. Dutton.

Hal did encourage her, though Andrea complained to me about his “heavy vibes” and wrote her parents—adamantly, as was her way—that she “won’t agree to certain changes they want to make.” I told her that she was way off the mark in regard to Hal, that not only was he a brilliant editor but an entirely reasonable one, and as well one of the gentlest, kindest of men. Andrea grumbled but took my word for it. She did have an implacable side when it came to protecting her writing, but contrary to what became a standard charge against her, that was hardly the sum of her personality. Over the years, her army of critics would denounce her as an inflexible virago, yet interviewers who met her personally would comment again and again on how surprised they were at her soft-spoken, gentle manner—and her uncommon ability to listen. Andrea on a public platform was often fierce and truculent; in person, she was usually empathic and generous. I vividly remember the time I opened the door to my apartment after she and I had had a heated political disagreement at a GAU meeting the night before—and found her standing there shyly holding a placating bouquet of flowers.

When I first suggested to Andrea that she join me at a GAU meeting, she was reluctant. First of all, she pointed out, she wasn’t an academic and besides, her sympathies were focused not on the plight of gay people but on the mistreatment of women. Still, as an act of friendship, she did finally agree to give GAU a try. She’d already decided from her early experience of gay male politicos that many of them were blatant sexists, and, to make matters worse, were unwilling to acknowledge it. Almost all of the original organizers of GAU self-described as political radicals (i.e. not “mere” liberals), and were, in my view, far more aware than most men that, as creatures of the culture, they’d internalized a belittling, patronizing view of the inherent abilities of women. As it would subsequently turn out, within two years of its establishment, GAU would come under the control of a small group of decidedly conservative gay men—at which point I, and most of the other pro-feminist men, resigned. The organization itself collapsed a year later.

All that lay in the future. Back in 1973, by way of thanks for having put her in touch with Hal Scharlatt at Dutton, Andrea took me out to dinner at Max’s Kansas City, then all the rage. We ended up talking nonstop for five hours that night—talking “with a kind of electricity” (as I wrote in my diary) that I’d rarely known before. I also discovered that—despite all of those redress meetings—I knew next to nothing of Andrea’s personal history, nor she of mine, and after filling in the blanks we settled into a searching political exchange that was formative in shaping my activism in the years ahead. Throughout the evening (as I somewhat feverishly put it in my journal), “rockets kept going off in my head, butterflies in my stomach. We kept completing each other’s sentences, shaken at the similarity of experience and perception, overjoyed at the confirmation that we were not singular freaks but parts of an emerging community (nervously) willing at last to talk about what we had all long wanted to hear, to demystify the desperate secrets, [and] to end the separation in ourselves, and the society, between the private and public voices.” We wanted to embrace the manifold, fearful sexual fantasies that peopled our dreams and to view the deviations from traditional gender norms “as enrichments to be openly encouraged, not shameful deviations to be carefully concealed.” At the time of our dinner, Andrea described herself as bisexual, leaning more toward the heterosexual side, at least experientially. Within a few years, she came out as lesbian; though after what she called a “wild” youth, she thereafter settled into a more subdued sexuality. She would soon meet John Stoltenberg, who became her life partner.

Andrea helped me to clarify my own understanding of bisexuality. It was not, she insisted, the equivalent of—and could even serve as a fortification against—androgyny. That is, to have sex with both genders (as the binary then had it) in the same way—for example, to be always dominant or always passive—could keep us from the realization that each of us has a wide, if fettered, spectrum of sexual impulses and gender fantasies. As I told Andrea that night at Max’s, I’d often berated myself in the past for what I labeled my “inconsistent” desires in bed, and saw my varying moods and acts as a function of an “incomplete” or “muddled” sexual identity. Andrea assured me that what (back then) was often called “role confusion” was what we should now regard as the rejection of rigid definitions of permissible needs.

She also reinforced my already strong conviction that women, gay men, and people of color were involved in a common political struggle against a shared oppressor: the dominance of the heterosexual White male and our own deep-seated wish to become like him, to play his macho role, to incorporate his macho body, to offer ourselves—even gratefully—to his macho mistreatment. I’d already come to believe (as I wrote in my diary) that “the primary obstacle that had been preventing a gay male/feminist alliance from maturing was the gay male denial of his own marginality and gender non-conformity”—which was especially true of the white, middle-class gay men who dominated the current political movement.

At the time, I’d somewhat smugly assumed that I was already more conscious of sexism as a prime enemy than were most gay men. What I now began to see more clearly was that the “enemy” wasn’t solely “out there” but also within ourselves. In that regard, I was hardly exempt from scrutiny. As I put it in my diary: “my enjoyment of the company of women is sometimes based on the stereotypic qualities I invest them with—‘understanding,’ ‘sensitivity,’ ‘intuition’—the same gender expectations deep-seated in the culture and whose consequences make women afraid of success, and men disdainful of emotion.”

Discussion of the advantages and pitfalls of a feminist-gay alliance became frequent in GAU, and in the course of the argument, one remark stayed with me. It came from “Marilyn,” a warm and wise historian of science who I’d immediately been taken with when she first appeared at the meetings. She broke through one of our more heated discussions to say, with just a trace of irritation, “You need to get it through your heads that in the eyes of the straight world, you gay men are all considered feminine.”

Andrea underlined another incisive point: she strongly urged us to distinguish between the willingness of some of the gay men to become better informed about feminist concerns and the views of a group called the “Revolutionary Effeminists,” which in those years enjoyed considerable notoriety and whose ideology was exemplified in the writings of Kenneth Pitchford (married to the prominent feminist Robin Morgan). In Andrea’s view, which complemented and strengthened my own, Pitchford tended to see “female” traits as inherent and fixed, and she deplored his call for homosexual men to “copy” those traits and to subordinate their own needs in the name of bringing Womanhood to power.

Andrea encouraged me to see the Pitchford model as static and tyrannical, a confinement of women to a limited set of biologically induced traits, and of homosexual males to a no less traditional “effeminacy” historically linked to some sort of genetic deficiency. At that stage in my own rapidly evolving views on sexuality and gender, Andrea’s words were heady stuff. Here was a radical perspective that not only rejected traditional straight male dominance but also some of the strategies—like the essentialism of the Pitchford model—then being deployed to undermine it.

Andrea lasted only a few months in GAU. She told me that she felt worn down by the resistance of most of the gay men at the meetings to acknowledging their own entrenched sexism. It was a point that in general I didn’t contest, but I did take issue with Andrea’s blanket assumption—and told her so—that this particular group of gay men was no more open to a “salvage operation” than men in general. Although our consciousness about sexism may well not be at the optimal level needed, we weren’t as uneducable as she insisted. If true, that meant there was some hope that gay men and women could manage to work together, and our combined force would increase our clout and our potential ability to produce social change.

Andrea didn’t buy it. She believed that the “primary emergency” for women was feminism, not homosexuality. My counterargument was that we were capable of more than one commitment at a time; few of us—and certainly not Andrea—lived in so single-minded a cocoon, or had such a limited supply of energy that we had to confine ourselves to single-issue politics. I did agree with Andrea when she broadened her indictment to include “leftwing” gay men in general for their “abysmal ignorance of feminist writings” and for failing to incorporate “the social analysis that radical feminists have done in these last years.” Which is true, I wrote in my diary: Some of the radical gay men “are reading [Stanley] Aronowitz, [Murray] Bookchin, etc. with serious regard, but [Kate] Millett, [Robin] Morgan, [Ti-Grace] Atkinson, and [Angela] Davis not at all, or with the most obvious condescension.” On the whole, I was more optimistic than Andrea in believing in the plasticity of some gay men, but the conversation between us would ebb and flow, with neither us giving much ground. Our relationship, in fact, wouldn’t last beyond the mid-’70s. No personal anger was involved; our political paths simply diverged.

When Andrea resigned from GAU, she did so with a bang. Late in 1974, in a blistering open letter, she denounced the organization for its “insufferable arrogance and male supremacy.” By then, at least as regarded GAU, I didn’t disagree. Over time, the organization had become unexpectedly inundated (it seemed that dramatic at the time) with a growing number of openly anti-feminist gay men, most of them tenured academics, whose ranks and influence would continue to grow and who, pushing aside those of us with at least an incipient feminist consciousness, ended up controlling the organization. How they did it remains, even today, a considerable enigma.

Part of the lasting legacy of my friendship with Andrea was an audacious insight of hers that has stayed with me, and deepened. What she saw in her clear-eyed way—and would greatly suffer for—was, as she put it, the need “to break down the dichotomy between how we talk to ourselves and (perhaps) our closest friends, and how we present ourselves in our formal, social roles.” What was needed was an effort to present ourselves publicly with the same complexities and contradictions which we privately entertain in our fantastical heads. To bring those utopian impulses to the forefront of consciousness would surely be belittled as besotted exhibitionism, but that risk had to be run. To talk frankly and in detail about our private fantasies and “shameful” behavior represents (when not powered by mere exhibitionism) an honest impulse to understand the potential range of our desires—and to share that self-scrutiny openly.

It would mean, too, making an effort to use words as genuine instruments of communication rather than, as currently, a means of deception and disguise, or as a tool for control—that is, a device for preventing communications that might threaten to upend accepted definitions of humanness and relationships of power. Andrea pointed out that the attempt at full-out honesty, especially at first, would often fail; the words might come out as an indulgent grab bag of unfelt laments and arch postures—in other words, what we had long since been trained to show. But the impulse behind those attempts, if it remained authentic, would at least represent the buried wish to break away from the exchange of falsely meager messages, to bridge the gulf of separation.

It didn’t matter, Andrea argued, that our initial attempts might fall lamentably short. That would only mean that the effort was deficient, the communication incomplete. How could it initially be otherwise, coming from people schooled to conceal “improper” needs—and thereby maintain the traditional taboos. We needed to at least make a start toward what many of us were beginning urgently to feel: that people have to talk to each other in different ways about different things. A start is a start, not a completion. The need is there: to universalize—but not homogenize—freakiness, to allow people to see that what they’ve been taught to hide as individual shame could be converted into bonds of commonality.

For more information: https://glreview.org/the-line-of-dissent/

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‘Slow Reveal’ by Melanie Mitzner

Michele Karlsberg — Sat, 07 May 2022 17:39:59 +0000

By Melanie Mitzner
Special to Lesbian.com

Set in 1990s New York, Slow Reveal paints a portrait of artists who defy the arbiters of culture and challenge social norms. Art, addiction and family dynamics capsize the Kanes when they discover the parallel life of Katharine, film editor, mother, lover and wife.
“A poem is never finished, only abandoned,” wrote Paul Valéry, an outcome echoed in her decade-long affair with Naomi, a lesbian poet. Katharine’s marriage to Jonathan collapses in his struggle with sobriety when he’s ostracized for politicizing art and abandons his career for advertising. Faced with confrontations from her two grown daughters, an installation artist and an aspiring writer, Katharine hangs onto her former life. When unforeseen tragedy strikes, devotion and commitment are not the guardrails that keep their work or relationships on track but rather a form of entrapment.

A captivating story about relevance at the end of the 20th century, the novel questions the voracious demands of contemporary society through a riveting portrayal of turbulent family life, impacted by art shaped by the media and influenced by social and political injustice. Success is redefined by the courage to embark on the artistic process, as risky, messy and unpredictable as building intimacy and trust in love.

Please enjoy the following excerpt.

Naomi tried on every jacket and pair of pants hanging in her cramped closet. She couldn’t decide which one looked best, berating herself for wanting to look that good in the first place. Her indecision had nothing to do with vanity but more perversely, how she would replace Jonathan at his own memorial service. Attending wasn’t her idea. Katharine insisted on it. She needed her there but never explained why.

From the valet box on her dresser, she found the studs for the cuffs of her starched black shirt. The macabre image of funerals as weekly tributes came back full force. She’d been to too many over the years for friends and artists who died of cancer and AIDS. They were her peers, just like Jonathan, not her elders as was commonly the case except for the demise of her mother, given her rapid deterioration from Alzheimer’s. The only saving grace was her father, who buffered her mother’s degenerative decline by finding Devon Donovan, a doctor who treated the terminally ill without the notoriety of Kevorkian. Death, unlike life, had become a close friend. Intimate, dependable, remarkable in ways, someone she could trust, someone who reliably showed up only after a brief absence and never lacked enthusiasm for her own personal struggle.

“This,” she said, dangling the leather harness she used to seduce Katharine, “is completely inappropriate, therefore I will wear it fully accessorized.” Her somber mood was broken by this crazy gesture. The inanity of it all… She imagined cutting through the crowd of mourners yelling, “Thou art art!” pointing to the urn of Jonathan’s ashes. Cruel and unbecoming, yes, but honest. Why weren’t people honest anymore? Have lies been told so often they now appeared absolute and irrefutable?

She dropped the briefs she planned to wear, walked out into the living room sporting her harness and over to the window where she pulled up the shades and yelled, “Cocks and crows be damned. I stand before thee naked. A man, a woman, a monster.” And she cackled and crowed maddeningly before whisking a bottle off the cabinet, lifting the cork and guzzling it down then spraying her woolen rug with a shower of ruby wine, rubbing it in for good measure with the heel of her bare foot. Sick and tired of the tidy lies, she fixated on the stain. There will be no more deception between us.

In Katharine’s absence she could not dispute her claim.
The act revitalized her and her dynamism returned. She recalled the last time they spent together. Bathed in the pale moonlight, Katharine’s face showed subtle signs of confusion, that slight slant of the lips and the faint trace of the dimple on her left cheek. Their fingertips touched and the lightning struck with a force that traveled the length of their bodies. No longer imprisoned by thoughts, they ventured out feeling the curve of the earth, their orbit a slow spiral down where gravity was not essential.

With the pulsating rhythm of her sex locked up in a harness, she felt the energy bound up and turned inward. She wasn’t fixed on a singular mind set about what makes a man, what makes a woman. To her, it was not the body or the genitals but the orientation of energy. An orientation that was not absolute. She always loved women but knew that to love them truly she had to love herself. It hadn’t been easy, not because of her identity but her disorientation around gender, like those little icons stuck on the walls of public toilets indicating which door to use. She rarely interpreted the symbols correctly. They made no sense to her, which accounted for the way she often walked blindly into the wrong bathroom. As if there were no subtleties in the evolution of the human race…

One glance at the clock over the kitchen stove and she dashed into the bedroom to dress. If she didn’t pull herself together, she’d be late for the memorial service. She knew her presence would make things worse and she hated herself, their relationship, for that.
Darting
in and out
of time
in lame attempts
of swift escapes
from savage ways
that ravage
every
last
bit
of
flesh and bone and wit.

Edward Albee Fellow and fiction grant recipient, Melanie Mitzner is the author of Slow Reveal, published by Inanna Publications in May, 2022 and selected for Best Women’s Fiction Writers 2022 Debuts. An excerpt was published in Bloom. She’s a finalist in four fiction and screenwriting competitions. Her work appears in Gay & Lesbian Review, Wine Spectator, Vol1Brooklyn, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Hamptons, The Groovy Mind blog, Society for Curious Thought and Submerging Artists. As a former journalist for tech, she covered television production/visual effects. https://www.melaniemitzner.com

Melanie Mitzner Photo Credit: Robert Laliberté

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Enjoy chapter one of Kiki Archer’s ‘The Way You Smile’

shannon — Sat, 15 Dec 2018 18:55:21 +0000

Real life doesn’t play out like a movie. Electric connections mostly mean you’ve got static in your jumper. Camila Moore knows that; she’s not daft. She has two teenage boys and bills to pay, plus the only man she’s ever been with has traded her in for a gym bunny. Returning to work’s the answer, but when she finds herself in the wrong room, wrong place at the wrong time, the last thing she expects is to be promoted out of obscurity into the arms of Harriet Imogen Pearson, media darling, hotshot entrepreneur and notorious lesbian playgirl.

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Lesbian author Kiki Archer tests boundaries in new novel

shannon — Sat, 15 Dec 2018 18:49:50 +0000

“She said she wanted to test my boundaries!” squealed Camila towards her car’s passenger seat where her mobile phone was lying on loud speaker.

Julie’s voice was gasping from the other end of the connection.

“Where is she?”

“Behind me! In her Lamborghini!”

Looking in the rear-view mirror, Camila debated how they’d got to this point.

She looked away.

She knew how they’d got to this point. Harriet had been right: she’d said yes.

She’d gone to the office at the end of the corridor at five and said yes.

Why had she said yes?

Camila can’t believe it; she’s an ordinary woman, nothing special – in her view – so what’s Harriet’s motivation? What’s her end game?

Are Camila’s feelings just infatuation or is it real life love?

Kiki Archer is the mistress of chick-lit romance for girls of all ages and inclinations.

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Fast 5 with Ji Strangeway

shannon — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 22:21:04 +0000

Ji Strangeway is driven by the persistent, frenetic pull of the universe.

A film director, author, and poet, Strangeway creates from the margins of gender, orientation, and circumstance. Her stories ride the shoulders of the misunderstood anti-hero, exploring the crash zones between society and self, the physical and the existential.

Ji Strangeway: Film Director, Author, Poet

Strangeway embraces the female-centric coming-of-age genre. Her LGBTQ short film Nune draws on the sacred bond of first love. Her unique cinematic style also emerges in her written work, Red as Blue. This hybrid-graphic novel introduces YA readers to a unique cross-genre aesthetic. As noted by AfterEllen, it’s “an addictive, eclectic fusion of styles and identity that blazes a brand-new path for storytelling.”

Learn more about Ji on her website JiStrangeway.com.

What song can you not get enough of right now?
“I Dare You” by The xx

If they started offering free trips to the moon tomorrow, would you go?
No. But I’ll accept Venus.

Early bird or night owl?
Night.

If you could have one superpower, what would you want it to be and why?
To do things on the computer by just using my mind. Keyboards and computers are not fast enough for me.

Finish this sentence. “I think the key to being happy is…”
Contentment and acceptance.

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‘The Dinner Party’

Michele Karlsberg — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 19:03:43 +0000

By Erin O. White
Excerpted from “Given Up for You: A Memoir of Love, Belonging, and Belief”

It was eight o’clock and everyone at the party wanted to know where she was. “She’s running,” Jen said when one person and then another came into the kitchen to ask for Chris, who was, I quickly gathered, the guest of honor. Chris was always running in those days, although I didn’t know that then; I didn’t yet know anything about her. Later I would learn she often ran for two or three hours, and on hot nights like the one of the party she set out in the cooling dusk and ran until long after dark.

She finally arrived just before nine, wearing cutoff jeans and a white T-shirt, her short blonde hair still wet from the shower. From the kitchen I heard a loud welcome and then a chorus of teasing for her lateness, and even from where I stood at the counter, slicing baguettes and trying to appear as though I belonged, I could see the teasing was a beloved ritual; they had been waiting on her for years and—running or no running—they would wait again.

“She’s been in New York,” Jen said, motioning to the porch with her paring knife, “but she joined a Philly firm last month, and she’s back in the neighborhood.” She reached for a beer bottle and took off the cap. “Let’s bring her a beer,” she said, “and I’ll introduce you.” I followed Jen out to the porch. She held open her arms, then stepped back. “Is that shower or sweat?” Jen asked. Chris didn’t answer, only took the beer bottle and walked into the embrace.

“I’m Chris,” she said as she pulled away from Jen and turned toward me. She put out her hand and smiled at me in a way that seemed to turn her eyes into small suns, the skin around them folding into thin rays. She was taller than me and her hand was strong; I could see the muscles in her tan arms, in her shoulders. She wore a red string around her wrist, and when I looked down I saw that she wasn’t wearing any shoes. I didn’t understand how it was possible for someone who looked like her to be a lawyer.
I had been invited to the party to meet a man. The man was a poet, and he was quick-witted and wiry in the way of many poets I would later meet. The introduction was a kind gesture on Jen’s part, the sort of thing a married woman did for a friend who had, at the tender age of twenty-three, broken up with her live-in boyfriend and moved to a downtown studio apartment. I was lonely in those days, although I didn’t recognize what I felt as loneliness. I thought I was just becoming an adult.

Eventually we all made our way to the table. I sat next to the poet and across from Chris. There was a toast to her return and she inadvertently drank from my wineglass. I toasted her with water, and when she turned away I took back my wineglass and emptied it in one long swallow.
Later Jen would tell me if she had known about me she wouldn’t have bothered with the poet. I told her not to worry. What I didn’t say was how could you have known when I barely knew myself? I only dated men, only sought men. But I noticed women. Occasionally I would meet a woman and her hand would linger against my palm when we were introduced, her gaze would seek mine at the table. I came to understand the wordless, daring question she was asking me: Am I right? I learned to answer with my own lingering hand, my own glance away and back again: Yes, yes, you are. And although I learned to not be afraid of my wanting, I also did not act on it. I turned away, I took back my hand; I waved my good-byes from the door. I was’t interested in what came next. My desire was simply too quick to cool. It was moody and adolescent, but because I was not an adolescent I didn’t let myself begin something I couldn’t keep aloft.

Which is why I did not expect what happened at the dinner party. I did not expect that the flicker of wanting I felt at the sight of Chris on the porch would not fade, and that I would, again and again over the hours of the party, meet her gaze and seek her attention, pass her bowls of food and keep my hand on them too long, waiting for her hand to press against mine. That night I felt my desire bloom heavier than it ever had before, which had the mysterious and miraculous effect of allowing me to see her desire, to see her watch me and speak to me in a way she was not watching or speaking to anyone else.

When it was late and I had clearly missed the last train back to the city, someone at the table said something to Chris about a girl and Chris smiled and took a long drink from her beer bottle. And I knew then what I could do—what I could make happen—and I knew it with a novel and heady certainty.

I stood from the table and went upstairs to the bathroom, went upstairs to look at myself in the mirror. I wanted to see my face; I wanted for a moment to be alone with the truth of what I knew was coming. And when I came down the stairs again and stopped on the landing to see Chris’s laughing face, to see the light around the table in a house that was otherwise entirely dark, I couldn’t catch my breath. Not because I was afraid, but because I was—finally, fully, hopelessly—lit.

Excerpted from Given Up for You: A Memoir of Love, Belonging, and Belief by Erin O. White. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2018 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved. Order from local or online booksellers.

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Top 10 lessons I learned backpacking alone

Michele Karlsberg — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 15:58:53 +0000

Lucy J. Madison journaling on the Appalachian Trail.

By Lucy J. Madison
special to Lesbian.com

The first time I departed for a solo hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail, I over packed. By a lot. Any seasoned hiker will tell you this happens all the time. You start out all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed thinking you need every little gizmo and gadget, and you end up realizing the absolute hell of carrying all that weight for a few extra items you barely use. So, you ditch everything that isn’t critical to your survival.

The backpack weight for my first hike was around thirty-eight pounds for a seven-day trip. That included everything from socks and underwear to food, water, tent, sleeping bag, maps, and more. I recognized pretty quickly that carrying thirty-eight extra pounds up and down mountains on shale, rock, wet moss and muddy trails was both painful and stupid. After that first trip, I spread everything out on the floor and took a long, hard look at each item and even went so far to cut down my toothbrush handle to save a few precious ounces. The next time I went out for a similar hike, my pack weight was down to a very manageable twenty-eight pounds. And each day I consumed food, the pack weight decreased more and more. You might not think ten pounds is a lot, but when you’re lugging that extra ten pounds up and down for ten miles over ten-hours, trust me, you’ll feel differently.

Hiking over 800 miles on the Appalachian Trail taught me a lot about life that I find myself applying to my days both on and off the Trail. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:

Few possessions matter. I don’t need all the stuff I thought I needed to be content. If you really take a look at what you use and wear on a daily basis, you’ll probably find what I did: you don’t need as much as you think you do, and you can be happy with less. I find that I apply this often to my life and tend to buy fewer items. The items I do buy are well thought out and the highest quality I can afford.
Soap is important. Soap is an essential that I am not willing to part with. I’ll deal with cold water rinsing. I’ll deal with re-using a bandana and wearing stinky clothes. But I become incredibly cranky and unhappy if I climb into my sleeping bag dirty and sticky. I don’t sleep well, and I fixate on the dirt. Just because I’m in the woods doesn’t mean I need to smell like a bear.
Live in the moment. Hiking requires concentration. Most people think the Appalachian Trail is like a broad, level, and a graveled rail trail that’s a piece of cake to walk on. The truth is almost the exact opposite. Because of the unstable ground, steep inclines and declines, it’s imperative to be aware of every single footfall. I find this incredibly comforting, and it forces me to listen to my breathing, the birds, and the breeze through the trees. It’s like a walking meditation, and it allows me to live in the moment. It’s also taught me that time is an incredible gift.
Technology is a tool, not a crutch. The first time I went hiking alone, I experienced severe technology withdrawals. I couldn’t Google every little question that popped into my mind. I couldn’t check the weather radar. I wasn’t able to send or receive text messages, see my CNN news alerts. How was I going to survive? After two literally painful days in solitude, I began to use my senses again, and it felt amazing. I’d been guilty of using technology as a crutch to fill the quiet moments and keep myself stimulated. Without it, I re-learned how to use nature and my own mind to encourage myself plenty. That said, having the safety of a satellite communicator in case of emergency is a technology item I always carry, which proves my point: technology is a tool, not a crutch.
The grass is green wherever you are. I’ve often said that hiking the Appalachian Trail is similar to scrambling through a rocky, jade tunnel. You usually can’t see more than a few yards ahead, and it sometimes feels a little confining to be inside the tree canopy. So often we fixate on what other people have, and we think that their lives are somehow better than our own. Hiking has taught me that wherever I am is precisely enough. It’s just up to me to look around and find joy. My attitude is directly linked to my outlook.
Effort equals outcome. Every single step is up to me and is a direct result of my own initiative. There are no shortcuts. The trail is the trail. No one is going to carry my pack for me. No one will magically appear to give me a lift. No one is going to listen to me whine and bitch. If I choose to stand in one place all day, I will be in the same place come nightfall. I love this about hiking. It’s brutally honest in that way. The more effort I put in, the more miles I cover that day. And the further I walk, the farther I get.
Sleep is significant. We all know what it feels like to operate on a few hours of sleep. We’re often crabby and can’t concentrate when we don’t get adequate sleep. People are often fascinated with the idea of sleeping in a tent or a lean-to in the woods, and they automatically assume that it’s more uncomfortable than sleeping in a cushy bed in a dry, temperature controlled house. But I can tell you the best sleep I’ve ever had in my life has been in the woods. Hiking all day is exhausting in an entirely different way than battling rush hour traffic, and a nine-to-five job is. I love my air mattress and sound of rain as it hits the tent. When I wake, I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the day.
Be comfortable with discomfort. I won’t lie: backpacking is hard. And it hurts. I’m not actually sure which is worse – going up or going down. Bones creak, ankles roll, muscles ache. I’ve been stung by bees, fallen down rock faces, skinned my elbows, banged my head. I’ve had blisters that looked like extra toes and walked in wet clothes for days on end. Pain is temporary. It’s so easy to get wrapped up and consumed by discomfort to the point that we are incapable of doing, or thinking about, anything else. Usually, we quit things because our minds let us down, not because our bodies have. I learned that pushing through discomfort means I will be stronger for it. To feel exhaustion is to be humbled by it. Life isn’t always comfortable. The key is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Snickers bars. That is all. Frank Mars invented the Snickers bar in 1930 and named it for his favorite horse. The man was a genius. Eating a Snickers bar after hiking for five hours in the rain is, well, life-altering. I’ll leave it at that.
I am enough. Backpacking is an experience. Backpacking alone is entirely different. I’m forced to rely on myself for everything. Navigation, meals, safety, purified water, strength, persistence. I can’t look to anyone else for support. I can only gaze within. Being alone in challenging circumstances in the woods has taught me about self-reliance more than anything else ever has. I am capable. I am stronger than I think. I’m smart. I’m also good for nothing if I’m too hungry. These experiences have shifted my approach to relationships. I no longer seek things out from other people that I may need. Instead, I find what I need within myself, and that has helped improve every relationship in my life because I can enjoy others without requiring or expecting, anything in return.

About Lucy J. Madison: Lucy J. Madison is a novelist, poet, and screenwriter from Connecticut. She’s the author of two contemporary lesbian romance novels In the Direction of the Sun and Personal Foul as well as a collection of poetry entitled I.V. Poems (Sapphire Books). In the Direction of the Sun features a main character who hikes the Appalachian Trail to heal her broken heart. www.lucyjmadison.com Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @lucyjmadison.

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A love that lasts forever

Michele Karlsberg — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 15:54:02 +0000

Lucy Madison playing basketball as a young girl.

By Lucy J. Madison
special to Lesbian.com

My mother always referred to falling in love as “the thunderbolt.” The first time I fell in love, it was magical, sudden, and entirely unexpected, as if I had been hit by a beautifully energetic bolt of lightning. The feelings were so intense I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t want to eat. I couldn’t think of anything except my newfound love and how we could be together forever.

I was eight years old, and the object of my attention was a leather basketball, twenty-nine inches in circumference, twenty ounces in weight with seams about one-quarter inch apart. I’ll never forget the first time I held that brown leather Spalding ball in my small hands, felt the dimples of the leather, saw how my hand naturally curved to cup it. I stood in rapt fascination in the game aisle of a local store lost in my own thoughts. I barely noticed the snot-nosed boy and his father sniggering at me, a girl with blonde pigtails, cut off shorts, a Joan Jett tee shirt and scabby knees in the sports aisle of the local department store in the summer of 1980.

Over the next thirteen years of my life, I focused most of my energy on learning the game played between the lines of the ninety-six-foot rectangular shining hardwood court. My life revolved around practice, repetitions, studying the greats like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordon on television. I ate, drank, slept, and existed entirely for the sport I loved. The sound of a ball hitting the hardwood immediately calmed my nerves. The court was my home, and I was my most authentic self on the court. Shot after shot, drill after drill, year after year, my focus was laser sharp, and my goal was elusive but straightforward: to be the best player on the court every single night.

Lucy Madison playing high school basketball.

While I wasn’t always the best player on the court, I was good enough to become a standout high school player in a Connecticut private school program and ultimately go on to play college basketball. Through four years of college at a small liberal arts Division III school in New York, my eyes were opened to life outside of basketball. I fell in love with writing, ultimate Frisbee, late nights out with best friends, the college newspaper, classes in philosophy and literature, and all the experiences that life in college brings.

During my junior and senior seasons, basketball started to feel like a chore, a time commitment I began to resent. It became a job, a responsibility and something I no longer did for the joy of it. Although I had the opportunity to play professionally in Israel upon graduation, I couldn’t see a career in the game, although I tried to. I tried to imagine how many good years I had left in my body. I tried to imagine myself as a coach or a commentator, or to envision how I could make a good living inside the sport. But try as I might, I could not see the way forward. So, the day I graduated from college was the same day I walked away from the game I loved.

To say I wasn’t prepared for the first year after graduation, away from basketball, is a severe understatement. For the first time in my life since that day when I was eight years old, I did not have basketball to come home to. No practices, no teammates, no National Anthem, no butterflies before the game began, no pre-game rituals or studying film, no competition, no outlet for all my physical energy. All of it was gone in the blink of an eye, disappeared by own doing. I had no one to blame for this but myself.

Looking back, I realize now that I spent the first year after college in an intense mourning period. We often only think of loss regarding the death of a loved one, but other types of losses are equally challenging. My entire identity had been centered on basketball. Without it, I had to learn who I was all over again and proved harder than I could ever imagine.

Over the years, I dipped my toe back into the game. I played in some leagues, coached high school and pee wee girls, at one point had season tickets to the New York Liberty. To an extent, all of it felt false to me. Because I had only known how to give 110 percent to the game, anything less felt inauthentic and, to a certain degree, a colossal waste of time.

Now, as I sit and watch the WNBA playoffs in their twenty-first season and my forty-fourth year of life, I realize that I’ve moved into a different phase – appreciation. I’ve lived, and watched, the women’s game change and improve by leaps and bounds over the years. I often attend WNBA games at the Connecticut Sun Arena or UCONN games at Gampel Pavilion and still get a little misty-eyed when I watch an exceptional performance or play. The National Anthem always gives me goosebumps, and sometimes, I close my eyes to recall the days when I stood courtside too, sneakers double knotted, a wad of bubble gum in my left cheek, ready to do battle. I’ve learned to appreciate the Diana Taurasi’s and Sue Birds of the league much more entirely because of their commitment to the game, to be the best every single night.

Some people are born with a natural talent and physical attributes for the sport, but there are very few who also possess the inner desire to be the best. While I’ll never be an Olympic basketball player, basketball has taught me so many lessons that I now apply to my life as a professional writer such as:
• Practice your skills.
• Never stop trying.
• Hate losing (or rejection) so much that you’ll do whatever it takes to avoid it.
• Writing, like basketball, is a discipline that can be learned and improved.

It’s taken me years to fully understand how much my life changed that day way back in 1980 when I first held a basketball. I wouldn’t be the person, the woman, I am today without the game of basketball. Love changes over time, but when it’s true, it lasts forever.

About Lucy J. Madison: Lucy J. Madison is a novelist, poet, and screenwriter from Connecticut. She’s the author of two contemporary lesbian romance novels In the Direction of the Sun and Personal Foul as well as a collection of poetry entitled I.V. Poems (Sapphire Books). Personal Foul features a love story between a WNBA player and an official. It was recently named one of the top 10 Lesbian Sports Romance Books by the Lesbian Review. www.lucyjmadison.com Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @lucyjmadison.

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Oregon author Karelia Stetz-Waters nominated for Lambda Literary Award

shannon — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 12:29:10 +0000

Portland, OREGON — Ooligan Press is pleased to announce that Oregon native Karelia Stetz-Waters has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for her young adult novel “Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before,” published October 2014.

“Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before” has been nominated in the LGBT Children’s/Young Adult category. The book tells the story of small-town high school student Triinu Hoffman, who must navigate through bullies, first loves, and the upheaval of LGBT rights in 1990s Oregon.

Now, in its twenty-seventh year, The Lambda Literary Awards, aka The Lammys, is the nation’s preeminent award for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender books. Stetz-Waters has been nominated alongside writers published by the likes of Simon & Schuster, Candlewick Press, and Harlequin Enterprises. Winners will be announced at a ceremony on June 1 in New York City.

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A to Zoe: Book dominates my thoughts

shannon — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 13:29:47 +0000

BY ZOE AMOS
Lesbian.com

Aphrodite, fuel my desire so I may burn with the pleasures of love! How I long to caress voluptuous women, their firm, round breasts exposed above draped tunics, enticing me to avail myself of their hidden treasures. Ah, how poetic, the gentle seduction of women ripe for the picking.

The goddess of love and beauty could easily be a muse for an erotic story set within a sun-splashed Greek garden filled with vases, greenery and naked statuary. Alas! I live in the United States where bedroom adventures tend to include painted walls, last week’s sheets and the sound of the neighbor’s barking dog; all excellent reasons to turn toward, as Monty Python announced, “And now for something completely different!” What is this? “The Big Book of Domination,” a collection of erotic fantasies edited by D.L.King.

I’m all for Greek gardens, but some days (or nights) nothing but the indelicate will do. The whips, ties, leathers, lubes, commands, and cries for mercy are far removed from some people’s norm. Whether it’s a lifestyle or a few hours pleasure, there is something wickedly erotic about BDSM that its proponents don’t share in polite company and precisely why this book, which you can read in the privacy of your own chamber, is just the thing to get your juices flowing.

Need I mention my own story “Madame Tuesday” is included in this wonderful collection? While some take their BDSM very seriously, I’ve presented it with dark humor. A contradiction? Not at all. There’s plenty of delicious forceful action between the domme and her female client, and there’s nothing like a little “levity” (read the story to understand the double entendre) to break up the gravity of BDSM.

I’m not sure why the lesbian domme is commonly found in the world of BDSM, but why bother with the why? Whether you relate more to the domme or to the woman (or man) receiving an afternoon of pleasure is beside the point. There will not be a quiz afterward. You may keep your fantasies to yourself. And if these stories whet your appetite, imagine what else might get wet!

Read on and you will discover other scenarios sure to entice. Everyone’s tastes vary and part of the fun is to find which stories will tap into an undiscovered corner of your libido. Be open to something completely different. To be fair, Monty Python’s skits included innuendo and teasing, nothing like the bold action represented in this compilation published by Cleis. D.L. King’s selections are top notch. Men and women, doms and dommes, two-somes, three-somes, there’s a little bit of everything within the theme, and with almost 300 pages of quality writing and over two dozen short stories, you are sure to see some of your favorite authors.

You may choose to harbor your desires in secret, but why not share the love? Get the book. Read a story to your lover and discover what happens next. You are bound to be bound with excitement!

Here’s the entire blog tour line-up:
1/17 D. L. King
1/19 Valerie Alexander
1/21 David Wraith
1/23 Giselle Renarde
1/25 Amanda Earl
1/27 Evan Mora
1/28 Angela Sargenti
1/30 Athena Marie
2/1 Anna Mitcham
2/3 Rachel Kramer Bussel
2/5 Zoe Amos
2/7 Olivia Summersweet
2/9 Katya Harris
2/11 Alison Winchester
2/12 Malin James
2/14 Laura Antoniou

Zoe Amos brings her lesbian point of view to articles and stories on diverse topics. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter. Read her stories on Kindle and Nook. Check out her other life at www.janetfwilliams.com

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