From my earliest schooldays I was the popular one with the
boys. I had steady 'boyfriends' from kindergarten right through to the end of
primary school, and loved all the hand-holding and dancing together that went
with the sweet innocence of childhood 'romance'. I had the closest of
friendships with girls too, and did all the things that little girls do- played
with dolls, knitted and sewed, loved pretty dresses. I was a child model,
always being paraded in front of the camera and praised for being pretty and
well-behaved.
High school was the beginning of a nightmare. Suddenly
adrift at a religious all-girls' school, spurned for not being part of the
'right' socio-economic group and hated for being precociously good at everything
academic, I relied on my one friend from primary school who had come to the same
school. We walked around arm-in-arm and were constantly asked if we were
sisters.
The other saving grace was a teacher, a wonderful, inspired
female teacher who recognised me as an individual amongst the forty four faces
in the classroom and appreciated my abilities. I worshipped her. She became my
first experience of 'falling in love'- completely inaccessible, but the stuff
that dreams and fantasies are made of. I started to have sexual thoughts about
her that I didn't understand myself, being completely innocent in every way. My
adolescent 'crush' was evident to all looking on. Questions were soon asked
about my tendencies. My mother's fear was palpable. Questions were asked about
my relationship with my close girlfriend, which was completely innocent;
barriers were put between us by the school staff until she retreated from me
too. The experience was cripplingly painful.
The teacher left the school, but we stayed in touch and she
became friends with my mother too, acting as a lightning rod between us through
my adolescence. My sexual feelings for her faded quite rapidly as the
relationship became a friendship in the real world instead of in my head.
Segue to late adolescence; I discovered boys again and took
to them with sexual relish, to my mother's horror (this wasn't what she had in
mind either). I was fortunate to have my initial sexual experience with a boy
who, though barking mad in many respects, was an imaginative and uninhibited
lover. I never gave another thought to women; the teacher I had worshipped was
now one of my closest friends, and remains so to this day, a precious mentor and
intellectual equal. I met my future husband and married him with many
misgivings, but none related to my sexual preferences.
The marriage was a disaster of emotional neglect and abuse
(though it did produce my wonderful son, so I forgive myself). It started to
fall apart at the seams. Simultaneously my mother became terminally ill;
despite our hard times as I was growing up, we had become as close as a mother
and daughter could be since the birth of my son and I was completely devastated
by her illness. I became anorexic. I sought emotional refuge with my
sympathetic Head of Department, a woman of great talent in her job who was under
immense pressure from the religious hierarchy of the school where we worked
because she was a practising lesbian. I fell madly and wholeheartedly in love
with this woman and she with me. I left my husband, she left her lover and we
embarked on a relationship in which I felt like I'd been run over by a train-
dazzled and helpless.
But never comfortable with the label. 'Lesbian'? It did
NOT feel right. I LIKED men. I'd LOVED men. Now I loved a woman. I felt
doubly pained by the prejudice I encountered. There was no place for me. My
few encounters with lesbian groups felt forced, completely unnatural.
We were harassed by the school administration until she was
forced to leave the job. I suffered a further year of harassment before leaving
by choice. She retreated into depression and alcoholism; I retreated into my
career at a new school. She became emotionally unavailable to me, scuppered by
the loss of her career.
My attraction to men resurfaced. I fantasised about
various male acquaintances; if they showed the faintest interest in me in real
life, I retreated. I am, essentially, monogamous. I closed my eyes on the rare
occasions when lovemaking happened with my partner, and pretended she was a
man.
My career bloomed. Again, with the power of a runaway
locomotive, I realised that I was attracted to a female student at my school, a
girl who shared my creativity and was as close to a soul mate as any person
could be for me. I censored any sexual feelings quite easily, having no desire
to end up in jail or indeed to give any sexual messages whatever to a
14-year-old child who wouldn't know what to do with them, and we became firm
friends just as I had been friends with my teacher.
But of course people talked because we spent so much time
working on school projects together and obviously thrived in each other's
company. They knew I was 'a lesbian'. Trouble was, I'd never identified with
that label; I did feel just like someone who fell in love with the person, not
with what was between their legs. I did my best to become effectively asexual.
In the end I took a promotions position and left the school, but not before the
false rumours had damaged my friendship with the student.
I tried to repair my relationship with my partner, but she
was having a relationship with a whiskey bottle and wasn't interested in making
any effort to be sexually inventive or emotionally available. I gave up. I
left her briefly and had a fling with an attractive male friend, which did my
ego the world of good on a very temporary basis and left me feeling destroyed on
a longer term basis.
I went back to my partner to try one more time to repair
things. We were in business together, we were financially intertwined. I
needed to give it one last chance. A male tenant moved in to the other house on
our property; my attraction to him was palpable, and vice-versa, but neither of
us rocked the boat. The time was wrong for us both.
In the end the scales fell from my eyes. My partner had a
life-threatening allergy attack; I saved her by not panicking, using my brains
and giving her an appropriate drug that I'd been prescribed years earlier. Her
reaction on recovery was to say she wished she'd died. I left for good.
Happy ending? I hope so. I've been living with 'the
tenant' for the last 18 months. We adore each other. I can't imagine ever
being sexually attracted to another woman. (Or man, for that matter.)
But then, I never could imagine being attracted to a woman,
when I was happy with a man. And when I was happy with a woman, I could never
imagine being sexually attracted to a man. I am living on a very slippery
slope.
I am fortunate to have a few very close female friends who
fulfil my emotional need for female company. I am fortunate to have a man in my
life who isn't threatened by this. I have learnt to be happy with what's
possible, instead of howling to the moon for the best of both worlds. I don't
expect my male partner to be a constant emotional sounding board; he's a man, he
has limited tolerance for the deep-and-meaningfuls, though he is (thank god)
happy to talk about emotional issues when we need to address something. I find
that sounding board with my female friends. I feel intensely lucky to have
found peace.
I pray for this stability to continue. But I don't count
on it.
