Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women (9 page)

’Til Death Do Us Part

I caught Eric’s eye the summer following high school graduation while on vacation in Myrtle Beach. He was a Marine to his core. He loved being a Marine, was raised in a Southern family, and came from a long line of soldiers. He was driven by his need to protect those he loved, was proud of his chosen field, and was as loyal as anyone I’ve ever known.

We spent our first night together just talking, asking one another question after question about our hometowns, what our parents were like, pivotal life moments, and anything else we could uncover while exploring the possibility of a connection. I could see that there was so much pain underneath his bright and upbeat exterior. He spoke slowly and softly, proceeding as cautiously as a gravel truck during an ice storm, when he told me he had joined the Marines soon after his brother had taken his own life. Even though we shared so much of ourselves so quickly, I could tell that revealing this truth was not easy.

“I’m really never this open with anyone,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief as though he was as much talking to himself as he was to me. “Ask any of my friends . . . family even. I’m usually the most guarded guy around, but something about you just makes me want to tell you everything, and I rarely tell anyone anything.” This was the moment I chose to stay with him—this damaged person who was genuinely good, and deserved an amazing life full of happiness. He trusted me, and that felt like a gift. It felt like a changing of the guard. He was handing me his heart and now it was up to me to protect it. To keep it safe. Happy. Loved. I accepted his gift and committed myself to becoming everything that he needed me to be.

I was eighteen and Eric was barely twenty-one. Friends, family, and countless others said, “You two are way too young to be getting married. You need to slow down and do some growing up together.” Naive and optimistic, we stood firm in our commitment to proving everyone wrong. The belief that we wouldn’t make it was the catalyst that pushed us down the aisle. We were resolute in our commitment to proving to everyone that young, lasting love was possible.

Euphoria and elation carried both of us through the first six months, and by year’s end, we were rolling through the drive-thru wedding chapel in Las Vegas, exchanging “I do’s” with the same irreverence you might have ordering a #2 Value Meal at McDonald’s. This seemed like a good idea at the time—romantic and exciting, even. A cynic might suggest, though, if you can’t bring yourselves to get out of the car to declare your undying eternal love, you probably have no business saying “I do” in the first place.

So This Is Marriage . . .

I was completely content with Eric, and happy with our relationship. I was his everything. He was my comfort. Laughter was plentiful for him, as I never failed to deliver the perfectly timed punch line. I planned every trip we took with the precision and clarity that could only be matched by the most seasoned of cruise directors. I orchestrated the joyous moments of our life so he need only sit back and enjoy the ride.

He was a warm blanket in my life. He could talk me down off of my neurotic ledge when I was convinced our three golden retrievers would find a way to leap out of the back of our 4Runner and into oncoming traffic. He had the longest eyelashes of anyone I had ever seen—and was so secure in his own masculinity that he even let me apply my Clinique lash-lengthening mascara to them on one occasion. He indulged my gluttonous nature, too. Every Saturday morning, I knew I’d be awakened by the smell of cinnamon rolls, fresh out of the air-compressed Pillsbury canister.

Over the course of eleven years we experienced many things. We got our first dog together. We said tearful, gut-wrenching airport goodbyes each time he left for yet another seven-month deployment; sealing our bond and pacifying the loneliness with countless letters, emails, and care packages. We bought and designed our first real home together—one that didn’t have a plastic outdoor patio set standing in as a formal dining room table.

We became best friends over those years. We both knew that intimacy was an important piece of the equation—essential, actually—but we shoved it under the rug for a good while and tried not to dwell on it. We were so good everywhere else. Everywhere but the bedroom. I truly felt in my heart that a great friendship was enough to carry us to the very end. Perhaps I clung to this false conviction more than Eric did.

In the first years of our marriage, he was always the initiator of sex. The idea of it never excited me. I would have preferred to skip it altogether and fast-forward to cuddling. When he realized this, he pushed me on the issue. “Why is it that I’m always the one nudging us into the bedroom?” he asked flatly one afternoon. It was a Sunday afternoon—one without any obligations and perfect for a lazy afternoon of lovemaking. I could feel my face growing red with embarrassment, and my defenses rose. It was a fair question that deserved a thoughtful, truthful answer. But I couldn’t give one.

“That’s not true,” I said. “I initiate.”

“Name one time,” he demanded. My mind was empty, and hurt by his accusation.

“I’m just not . . . ”

He cut me off. “Not that sexual, I know! That’s bullshit,” he said.

From that point forward, I did my best to show my gratitude for his love—even invited him to the bedroom once each week—but he saw this as more of a chore for me, like sweeping the kitchen. And it was. He loved me so effortlessly and genuinely. I loved him the best I could, but loving someone and being in love are two different things.

The Search for Answers

Why didn’t I want to make love to my husband? The answer was there, trying to peek out, but I still wasn’t ready to discover it. I wanted so badly for things to fall into place, for the answers to come. But the courage wasn’t there. Not yet.

During Eric’s third deployment, I was confronted with an uncomfortable amount of alone time. I found myself spending countless hours researching message boards, online articles, and shopping the unlimited Internet marketplace for books on sexuality, thinking I’d find the answer once and for all and put this nagging lesbian suspicion away for good. The Internet became my most trusted confidant. It was there that I met a nameless, faceless lesbian, and engaged in a one-night stand of sorts, letting our keyboards take us in any direction we wanted. I came to life in a way I hadn’t ever before with Eric. I felt parts of my body awaken for the first time. And what blew me away was that I could feel this way without even physically touching this woman. The sheer thought of being with her was stronger than anything I’d ever felt before in the presence of my own husband. It exhilarated me, and broke my heart all at once.

The day he returned from that deployment, I told him I had something to confess. He sat on the bed and looked up at me with his big, brown, kind eyes. “Tell me,” he said as he gently grabbed my hands. There was a softness to his face that wrapped around me like a warm winter sweater and told me that somehow it would be okay. “I had cyber-sex one time while you were gone . . . with a woman.” He stared at me as I stared back. I had spoken of Karen before, so this wasn’t the first time he’d heard news of this nature. He decided not to push for details. Neither of us had the courage to address what we both knew was there. My secret was out on the table. Together, we reattached the lid to the box neither of us wanted to open.

Confronting Reality . . . Finally

Thirteen years into a military career, four reenlistments, and four deployments later, we found ourselves parked on the couch of a warm and friendly marriage counselor who coddled us in our admissions and cajoled us into reaching a compromise. Six sessions in I said, “I can’t deal with the military and the endless separations anymore.”

His reply? “I can’t get out. I just can’t do it.”

I think in therapy this is what’s called the “a-ha” moment. A heavy sadness blanketed us in that small room. We walked to the car together in silence. We sat down and clicked our seatbelts, and I stared at my lap while he turned the ignition. “Where do we go from here?” I asked, searching his face for an assurance that was no longer there.

His eyes slowly rose to meet mine as he said softly, “I don’t know, Lib. I honestly don’t know.” We both knew in that moment that our shared vacation planning, days spent in the park with dogs, mornings opening Christmas presents together . . . everything that involved “us,” was dangerously close to becoming a distant memory.

When Eric packed to leave that night for his fourth deployment, neither of us knew what to say or how to act. The relationship—or more accurately, the friendship—had dulled to a point unrecognizable to both of us. We were different people. We hadn’t been living in the same house for almost a year due to the fact that he’d been relocated to California and I opted to stay in Phoenix. We no longer shared the end-of-day moments like most couples. I had friends he’d never met or even heard of. As I walked him into the airport, like I had so many times before, tears were not in my eyes, nor were they in his. We no longer felt like Eric and Libbie—the kids who met in Myrtle Beach more than a decade before. We were just two people who happened to share a stack of bills and a hefty mortgage. There was a suffocating heaviness in both of our hearts, but not because he was leaving. It was because “we” were already gone.

“Be safe and call me when you get there,” I said.

Five years earlier, in the same scenario, I would have demanded, between giant sobs, that he call me at every possible chance
.

He nodded in assurance.

“Don’t forget to feed the dogs when you get home,” he said. It was my turn to nod.

Five years earlier he would have smiled at me and said he’d be thinking of me every second.

“I guess that’s everything?” I said as he pulled down his last large sea bag.

Before, he would have held me in his arms and told me repeatedly that he loved me with all of his heart while he stroked my hair and I soaked his shirt with my tears
.

“Yep,” he said. For the first time we didn’t know what to do. Do we kiss? Not wanting to force something that just wasn’t there, he pulled me in and we hugged. It was the last hug we would ever share as husband and wife. We both knew it.

Soon after, there were scheduled phone calls and emails as there had been all those times before, but they were far less frequent and included the bare minimum of details. I shared with him that I had decided to take up playing guitar. He let me know that he was doing really well in his Fantasy Football League. We were skimming the surface of one another’s lives.

With nothing but time, it’s hard to continue to suppress everything you’ve refuted since you were young. I found myself thinking often of my high school days and the afternoons spent in Karen’s bedroom. I retraced my virtual one-night stand repeatedly—reflecting on the words we used, the imagery we created as our bodies intertwined. I allowed myself some much-awaited latitude. I let my mind dwell on the feelings that created a barrier to a successful marriage with a good man. I entertained the thoughts I knew would be challenging for my friends and family to accept, especially my mother. I considered the emotions that seemed foreign to me but were stronger than anything I’d ever felt. My daydreams were daring—pressing on soft lips, meandering down the inviting curves of a faceless woman with a beautiful body.

“I get the feeling that something is up with you,” Eric says over the phone with an undeniable tinge of concern in his voice, like he’s bracing for something we both know but are afraid to confront.

I breathe in heavily, gathering every last bit of my courage.
So this is it. This is the moment that changes everything,
I think to myself before opening my mouth to say, “There’s something that’s been weighing heavily on me, for a very long time, longer than I can even remember.”
Choose your words carefully, Libbie. Be delicate with his heart,
I remind myself. “I know saying this will affect the both of us in a way that is irreversible, which is why I’ve been hesitant to even think it, let alone say it,” I say, buying time with awkward utterances as my voice quivers. I feel myself teetering over the edge of a cliff. My subconscious is screaming at me to
just say it already, woman!
as my conscious mind begins to pace around the sharp edges of the steep drop.

Silence ensues until he chimes in, “Are you there?” I run to the edge and take my leap of faith that’s been patiently waiting in the wings for as long as I can remember.

“I . . . I think I’m attracted to women,” I whisper. “I think I’m gay, Eric. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.” I feel my face grow hot instantly as tears begin to well up in the corners of my eyes. Silence. “Are you there?” I ask desperately. “Eric?”

“I’m here,” he says. “There’s no reason to be sorry,” he says, choosing his next words with meticulous sensitivity. I sit down on the couch to steady my shaky legs. “Here’s the deal . . . I just want you to be happy. Life is way too short to not live truthfully,” he says.

His immediate acceptance is shocking.

“Are you surprised? Are you okay?!”

“I’m not surprised,” he says. I reflect back to each and every Sunday night he went to bed while I slithered secretly into my
L Word
world; the confession I’d made to him one year prior; the story of Karen and me that I shared with him one night after two bottles of wine; the look on Karen’s face when she first met Eric.

“We’re going to be fine,” he assures me.

“I love you,” I say, and mean it.

“I love you, too,” he says from the other end, thousands of miles away in the Iraqi desert. We hang up and I fall to the ground. It’s done. Relief. I say it out loud for the very first time. “I’m a lesbian.”

Awakenings: Navigating the Spaces between In and Out

Jeanette LeBlanc

Dear Abby,

Sometimes I fantasize about the girl down the hall in my dorm. Does that mean I’m gay?

Signed,

Confused in California

Dear Confused in California,

Fantasies are normal, a safe way of releasing and exploring our feelings. Having a same-sex fantasy does not mean you are a lesbian.

Signed,

Dear Abby

Whew. Relief. As long as “Dear Abby,” or
Seventeen
magazine, or
Cosmo
said it was normal, then it was normal and I was okay.

In a college full of boys, he is a man. We leave the smoky bar, with its blaring dance music and beat-up pool tables, and go back to my room. We lie on opposite ends of my creaky little twin bed and talk all night long. By the light of a votive candle we explore hopes and dreams and wishes and fears. As the hours pass, we inch closer and closer together until I can feel his breath on my cheek.

Sometime near dawn the thick glass of the candleholder finally gets too hot, and it explodes with a loud snap that slices through the silence in the dark room. Somewhere around the same time, we kiss.

It is that kiss that makes me fall in love.

The year after college, I met Susan one night in a bar with my fiancé and his school friends. We connected over our shared history in dance. I was immediately entranced, but when I was with her, I might as well have been invisible. Boys stared, girls stared, and I became the loyal sidekick. She was beautiful back then, incredibly so. She had long hair, light brown with flecks of gold, and it spiraled around her face in corkscrew curls-—a Pre-Raphaelite goddess.

I hadn’t thought about her in years.

Walking through a parking lot I heard someone call my name and looked up to see an unfamiliar woman walking toward me.

“It’s Susan . . . Susan Cookson.”

I felt a rush of relief as time melted away and I recognized the girl I once knew in the face of the woman she has become. We filled a few moments with the awkward chitchat of once casual friends who were now all but strangers. Then, as she walked away, it all came rushing back.

I wanted to be close to her. I didn’t fully understand it and was frightened by it, but I was drawn to her. I would have never dared give voice to these feelings outside of the darkest and safest corners of my soul, but I thought about her, dreamed about her, fantasized about her—illicit daydreams that stirred me in ways I was far too scared to fully contemplate.

She wasn’t the first. She wouldn’t be the last. In bed that night I remembered woman after woman. Different ages, different places, different feelings; all memories I had tucked away and never dared revisit. They filled me up and spilled over one another until I wanted to run, fast and hard and far, until my mind was quiet again.

I knew with utter certainty that no matter what happened, everything was going to change, and I was afraid.

Rebecca always had a power over me. I am aware of it, am wary of it. We are both masters of words, enjoy the power inherent in interactions that tantalize but never cross the line. I’m playing with fire, but pretend that I am safe.

One night we go out with a few friends. The food is sensual: crusty bread with savory brie, sweet fig and crisp green apples, organic greens with a tart vinaigrette, earthy red wine. We drink more at a nearby bar, fizzy peach drinks that dance in my mouth. We all go back to her place to swim. It’s almost dawn, and the water is cool.

We swim, splash, float under the desert moon. After a hot day and a long night, it is bliss to slip through the water. Later we sit on the edge of the pool, she says something sarcastic, and I laugh, reach up, and briefly twine my fingers through the back of her long curtain of hair. I pull my hand away quickly. Something about this touch is too intimate and I know it.

A few days later at dinner she asks, bluntly. Is there an attraction?

I cling to my heterosexuality, use it as a shield. I want desperately for it to be the truth that will save me from all of this. I’ve never had much of a poker face, and as she holds my gaze from across the table, I see my truth and my panic mirrored in equal measure in her eyes.

We leave the restaurant and return to her office. We sit close to one another on the edge of the futon where her clients sit, and we talk in hushed voices. My head pounds with the magnitude of this night. I cannot focus on the words passing between us, but I know that our hands will eventually connect. This is dangerous, but I cannot seem to make myself walk away. Nothing more transpires between us, but the feeling of her thumb grazing my palm feels more erotic and more forbidden than any sexual encounter I have ever had.

The next day there is a harshly written email; she is withdrawing from my life. In my backyard, I lean back against the weathered wooden fence and sobs roll through my body.

Later that night in our bed, he holds me for hours as I cry. Without question or expectation, he cradles me in his arms and lets my grief and fear pour out of me until the pillow is soaked with my tears. And at the end of all that, so filled with love and gratitude for the man who is my husband, what choice do I have but to trust?

And so I tell him. Everything.

Sean was leaving a local bar when the car pulled up. A young man got out of the car, the slur “faggot” flying from his mouth, an echo of the punch thrown by his hands. The fury behind that blow broke bones, and Sean flew back, fast and hard, against the pavement. The force of the impact caused his brain to ricochet inside his skull, separating from the brainstem. As Sean lay still on the pavement, the young man got back in his car and drove away.

Later, the assailant left a message for Sean’s friend: “You tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand.”

Sean never got the message. He died.

My body is shaking. Bile rises in my throat and I feel dizzy, flushed, like I’m going to be sick. My eyes are stinging with trapped tears. I can’t breathe, can’t even see straight. The room blurs in a reaction so visceral and intense that it takes over my body and mind. I’m not prepared for it, don’t know how to recover, so I sit there reeling as a new and heavy sort of knowledge settles over me.

I sat on my sofa, laptop in my lap, and read Sean’s story, found by happenstance while browsing the Internet. Up until now, I had existed safely within the protective bubble of heterosexual privilege. It’s wasn’t the first time, of course, that I’d read a story like this. In the past I felt sadness, confusion, even outrage. But I felt it all from a distance, with a tacit understanding that that particular sort of hate was not reserved for people like me.

There was no distance now. I felt the hatred brand me, heard the words ringing in my ears, absorbed that sense of undesirable otherness into the deepest reaches of my soul.

And in that moment, Sean’s story became a part of my own.

“Are you straight?”

I’m standing in line at the bathroom of a random bar. I don’t know her, wasn’t expecting anyone to talk to me here.

I pause for a second, raise my head, and look her in the eyes.

I reply, quietly and firmly, “No. No I’m not.”

I can close my eyes and see her kneeling over me, looking down with intensity. Dark spiked hair, guarded blue eyes hiding years of hurt under a tough facade, freckled shoulders, multiple tattoos, pierced lip and tongue. Her hard edges and soft curves beckon me; make me want to know more. She is different from everything I have ever known.

I hear my heart pounding in my ears. Her small flat palm traces a slow, gentle path across my stomach, making me suck my breath deep into my core. My body is responding in ways I could not have imagined.

I don’t think I breathed again until morning.

That night, under her hands, I meet my body for the first time. I know, in that first instant, that I will never be the same. For hours upon hours I become fiercely alive, exist in my skin in a way I have never before experienced. Every sensation is heightened to a level of such intensity that I react on a level beyond physical, beyond mental, beyond emotional. I am beyond.