Becoming Her
by Le e L y n ch
I cam e out twenty-six years ago. Such a
solid chunk of tim e is nothing to be sneezed
a t If it were not for the dangers involved in
marking our milestones by, for example,
wearing five, ten, fifty year pins —
“W hat a lovely pin! A pink triangle with a
seventy-five? Have you been married
seventy-five years?”
“ I, uh, well, not exactly. That is — I’ve been
g ay f o r . . No one wants to celebrate by
watching horrified inquirers run screaming in
the other direction.
T H E
AMAZON
TRAIL
Still, I 've felt the urge to celebrate. With
som ething like that in m ind I m entiond this
anniversary to m y first lover, Suzy. We ended
up in a friendly squabble about what year it
actually had been. / said 1960, S u z y said
1959.1 wanted her to be rig h t Com ing out
post-1970 makes one a w om an’s movement
dyke in some circles; pre-1970 makes you
“ old gay." Discovering “the good life” before
1960 would have made Suzy and I part of a
whole other, som ehow more prestigious, era.
But 1960 it was. We were newly high
school students, or had Suzy, too rebellious
to fit in, too outspoken to hide, dropped out
by then? I’ve forgotten a lot, but I remember a
lot, too.
Like back streets. It seems we were always
seeking the less populous back streets of
New York where we could hold hands or
dress up. One day Suzy came by the high
school for me. W ho knows how I got out
early. How I dared to go into the girls’ room
and dress like I did. The clothes were boys’, I
remember th a t and m y hair was slicked back.
I may have worn a tie, carefully covered by a
fully zipped ja cke t Thus I was transformed
from a skinny, painfully introverted intellectual
kid, into a swaggering, proud fifteen year old
butch, to m between wanting to be seen by
my teachers, and needing to fade into the
shaded back streets lined with curtained
older homes. Suzy was likely to have been
heavily made up, high-heeled (she was al
ready three inches taller than me, dam n her),
in some sultry black outfit beneath which her
stockinged legs flashed. I would have lit her
Marlboro, then m y own Kool as we, fright
ened but defiant, self-conscious but proud,
made our way under the sheltering trees to
the bus which would carry us where we
w ouldn’t be known.
Were those the good old days? Sometimes
they feel that way. I rem em ber our loneliness,
though. The only gay we knew at first was an
older woman all of eighteen w ho’d threatened
to wait outside m y school and beat me up for
taking Suzy away" from her. I have no idea if
she ever showed — I hit the back streets and
would go hom e the very long way.
In m y senior year we finally made lesbian
friends — Pete and Little Suzy. I’d fallen in
love with Big Suzy, as she came to be called,
while ice skating at an indoor rink. Som e
thing about the circum scribed circling, the
grace of gliding on ice, the rom antic organ
music, even the hot dogs heaped with m us
tard, set m y adolescent heart pounding. Suzy
Just Out. M arch. 1986
was warm and laughing in her soft furry
jacket. I fancied myself graceful and dashing
on the ice. Skating became part of our land
scape of love.
It was on an outdoor pond that we met
these first friends. We’d seen Pete back in
ju n io r high. Called Pat then, she’d been aloof
and alone in the long cold corridors. We
could not have named her attraction for us.
Now, like a miracle, she reappeared. She was
sixteen, handsome, tough, and had a girl of
her own.
Awkwardly, shyly, we’d all meet, skate,
share what we’d learned of the gay life. The
ice on the pond eventually melted, but I recall
a painful longing to love those two kids, and
an equally painful reticence between us. We
each tried so hard to be cool in our fledgling
gay ways, that we couldn’t say how glad we
were to have peers. I felt practically normal as
we double-dated, flirted, wove fantasies
around one another, conjectured about the
big gay world in which we yearned to find our
places.
How Suzy and I strove to learn the ways of
that world! Every chance we got, we’d be in
Greenwich Village, watching the crowds for
lesbians. This one's diddy-bop, that one’s DA,
another’s jean jacket We copied the right
ways to smoke, to smile, to give other women
The Look. I wonder if there's a course in
Signaling at the first official gay high school
now located in the Village.
It was the unexpected, though, that always
hit me hardest I was a yearbook editor, along
with m y more exciting extra-curricular activi
ties, and the whole editorial staff went into
Manhattan one day to consult with the pub
lisher. 1 was already writing, and the word
“ publisher" was to me what 'Broadway''
w ould be to an actress. Glam our colored the
crowded office. I didn’t care that the walls
were lined with yearbooks instead of novels,
technical journals instead of pretty volumes
of poetry.
So when S h e walked in, I saw my future.
She m ight have been an editor or a secretary,
an artist or switchboard operator. This slight,
dapper woman with short salt-and-pepper
hair and the plain stamp of lesbian in every
line o f her face, every move of her body, was
In Publishing. Oh my, she was perfect While
the yearbook staff poured over types and
papers, I stole impassioned glimpses of Her.
Hoped for a chance to give her The Look.
Dressed her, in my mind, in street clothes,
furnished her apartment, fixed her up with a
bevy of fem m es— no, with a long-term lover
just like Suzy — no, with a cute young pro
tege still in high school. She never noticed
me.
Suzy watched as I graduated from high
school that June. The next September, after
two weeks at a faraway college, and an en
couraging grade on m y first English paper, I
packed a small suitcase with underwear,
clean shirts and innumerable books, tucked
m y portable typewriter under my arm, and
ran away. I could wait no longer to become
Her.
But as always, the main avenues were off
limits. I got sidetracked onto the circuitious
back streets and learned patience. I never saw
Her again, never moved back to New York. I
broke up with Suzy in pursuit of fresh and
varied pastures, lost touch with Pete, finished
college like I was told to and stopped writing.
I didn’t stop being gay, though. I became
m ore and more a part of the subculture I'd
studied with such devotion in those early
years. I became, too, a part of the world of
publishing. And — I'm reminded each time I
pass a m irror and note the slight, dapper
wom an with short salt and pepper hair and
the plain stamp of lesbian in every line of her
face, every move of her body — I ve become
Her at last, the future I chose twenty-six
years ago.
r
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