Divorce + Homosexuality = Best Friends

It all started out so normal; I was a shy girl who met an outgoing boy. Eventually, we married. Over the next ten years, our roles as husband and wife morphed into brother and sister. Inevitably, we divorced.
Then my ex-husband met another outgoing boy. They moved in together. Soon they became neighbors with me and my mom (who was battling stage IV lung cancer).
Eventually, I also met a boy, who thankfully prefers girls.
A few months ago, me, mom, and my new boy celebrated along … Read more »

I Waited for This?

If I’m honest with myself, things weren’t great. If I lie to myself, things were on an upswing. I’d successfully convinced myself that we’d had THE discussion that would keep us moving forward, into the direction that we both wanted to go. The direction I wanted to go?

He was a pilot in the Air Force and he was called to duty more times than I can remember in the span of our four years together. This particular year he spent only 60 … Read more »

Broken

We arrived at the house upstate, just as her friend and his three house guests were about to sit down to dinner, just as the night took over and the surrounding woods came alive with sound.

My head ached the dull constant ache that to me was the pounding incessant emptiness of New York City as we all sat around the table on the back porch at the bottom of a wide stretch of grass, a lone candle flickering in the midst of the food and a bottle … Read more »

Baobabs, Leatherbacks, and You

I am in St Croix for the baobabs.
I know so much about them I sometimes forget that I’ve never seen one in real life. I am dying to see one, to glimpse in person something I’ve been researching for so long. I’ve spent so many hours combing through articles about the tree. Articles about the medicinal uses of its leaves, about the nutritional powder made from crushing the seeds, and of course the insects. That is why I study it, for the insects. The cotton-stainer that breeds on the … Read more »

Not in Custody

Call my ex-housemate Dawson. I’m short but he was shorter. And tinier, bonier, thinner, with an oversized head and eyes. He told me once that he had been born with a tumor pressing on some gland that allows you to grow. That made him small.

He played the theremin like a weirdo and used to hang upside down on a contraption screwed into his door frame. He liked me more than I liked him. I think he would be surprised to know I didn’t really like him. I can … Read more »

Getting Clean

Two days after we broke up I received a package in the mail. It contained the following items:

1. A toothbrush I used a few times at her place.
2. A small sketch I had quickly done to explain stained-glass windows.
3. A ten-dollar coin bank in the shape of a robot.
4. A pen.

I added the contents of this package to the shopping bag of stuff she dropped off for me that held more gifts I had given her like lingerie and a dress. In short, … Read more »

25 Years of Secret Love, Why?

After a 25 year affair with a married man ever on the verge of righting the wrongs and too many nights of his coming to see me with teary apologies, begging me to just hang in there – to give him time to think, to clear his head, to come to a decision - it’s over. It’s Over, capital O over and I can’t care anymore. I can’t care that I was never the Wife, capital W. That I never was the chosen mother of the … Read more »

The Day I Left

The day that I walked into my new apartment, I clutched the keys in my hand, creating small red ridges on my fingers, as if releasing them might make my new home disappear. My Volvo station wagon was still packed to the gills in the driveway, but I had no desire to start hauling my meager possessions up to the second floor - yet. First, I had to go inside and look around. It had only been a few days earlier that I had found it, briefly spending minutes inside … Read more »

Four Years of Crazy

The only reason I can come up with to explain this bizarre relationship is that it was my first opportunity to really let the less-than-nurturing part of my childhood manifest in all its hidden glory.

I can’t even remember how it started. I do remember him running through the halls of high school (as a senior), yelling out my name but purposely mispronouncing it. (At that age, does teasing still mean a he likes you?)

I also remember that two weeks into our quickly and intensely codependent relationship, … Read more »

When Sally Met Harry

I first met Mike freshman year of college and he hated me. Our mutual friend Lisa tried to hook us up but it wasn't happening...

Me: a tall, chain smoking, crazy Israeli girl

Mike: all-American, Norman Rockwell, guitar, small town, shy, with an Oasis ring tone

Sophomore year I apparently saw him and his friend at a party and we played beer pong together. Me and my friend Julie together with Mike and his friend against another team. And I also apparently drunkenly told them to rub … Read more »

Stopping the Cycle

The car comes screeching to a halt. My mom screams at my Dad to get out of the car. An 18-wheeler speeds by to our left, his loud horn makes me jump, hitting my head on the cold metal ceiling of the Toyota. My Dad, in his drunken belligerence, screams incoherently back. I am four years old and sitting in my favorite seat in the car, in between Mom and Dad. He reaches through me as if I’m not there and grabs my mom’s throat. She leans back and hits … Read more »

The Gift

It was August 2001, and she held this 3.5lb, brindle painted, ball of fur, on her lap. We had just picked up our new puppy. My wife and I, of all of 16 months new ourselves, decided that in place of children, we had time to love of a dog. And her new name was Bailey.

We found Bailey, on our first visit to California Pets in Orange County, CA, not too far from home. We made the initial calls and inquiries, in search of … Read more »

Monster

I met him, and he was perfect. Little did I know, he thought so, too. Like the clouds, he changed shape constantly. What started out looking like my knight in shining armor ended up being a monster that overtook my life. Through him, I learned how to hate with all my soul, I learned how it felt to be abused, I learned the pain of being cheated on, over and over again. I made him the center of my universe, and that is exactly what he expected out of me, … Read more »

And So The Story Goes...

I had just ended one relationship and another popped up in its place. Maybe she just happened to be my year long rebound. I met Christina at work and confided to her how bad my relationship with my then girlfriend was becoming. Christina told me I deserved better and I should stand up for myself. Christina; along with my other friends were right. I did deserve better. A few weeks later I broke up with my girlfriend and the next night I met up with Christina. That was the night … Read more »

My Summer of Being 28 Again

I gave him my heart; he gave me agita. Could he have been conceived on my 11th birthday? According to Chinese astrology, we were both born under sign of the snake. A healer once said “that man” I was crying over was a relative in a past life, someone with whom I’d shared a heritage, perhaps a brother. Considering that in this life he’s an only child and I have a sister, maybe that’s why we couldn’t get it together. I used to be rational. Except possibly in matters of … Read more »

Tropical Storm Samantha

When I broke up with her, it was over the phone, pathetically, two thousand miles away from her, my brain two hundred feet down a well. I explained, as sincerely as I could manage: It wasn't her; it was me; not her fault I was breaking up with her because of somebody else's dream.

Let me explain. We dated for the latter half of our sophomore year of college: The whirling, wild-haired beauty, half sorority girl and half hippie and me (experimental, uncertain, struggling to reconcile … Read more »

My Ex Dumped Me for the Buddha

I left Tucson because I was broke, and because the man I loved didn’t want to live with me. He wasn’t ready, he said. It didn’t feel right. We should be happier. He was right, of course, but that didn’t solve anything. I was still unemployed, recovering from an ear infection and a car accident. The relentless sun still seeped through the walls of my cottage, a mile from the road and surrounded by overgrown creosote. My idea of happiness was not to wake up everyday, hair grown out and … Read more »

Swedish Fished

My ex became my ex when he went on a short trip to Stockholm and met the love of his life in a coat check line at a club. Within 24 hours they swore life-long allegiance, and my ex returned home to tell me the news. My response: whaaa???

Amazingly enough they maintained a long-distance intercontinental relationship for five years until my ex could get the appropriate papers to leave America behind and become a Swedish citizen….and they lived happily ever after.

Lesson: there really is such a … Read more »

The Dump of My Life

I was in dire straits. I was working construction and had to lug my tools up the hilly streets of San Francisco as fast as possible, which was rough given my condition (I had to take the biggest crap known to man). I was cruising past my van near my apartment when I noticed not only the street cleaning ticket, but a small package tucked under my windshield wiper. My heart just about hit the floor as I noticed the cutesy hand stamped writing that could only be from one … Read more »

Two Degrees

Lesbians really like each other. They must because there are never more than two degrees between them. I would love to pay my Italian cousin to "take care" of my ex---just a little re-location situation. A girl can dream.

So what's a modern lesbian to do who lives in the Bay Area, or any area where packs of lesbians live, have L Word dinner parties, and go to the same two bars on every other Friday or second Thursday? Or who yearns for the yearly dyke march so we … Read more »