Collective members, dedicated to the revolu
tion, and the kind of hustler who could fund
raise a meager living. Bea, a firebrand or
ganizer who shepherded us into collective
formation and kept us like that She was an
early mistress of grant writing. Carson, a Yale
pre-med student with a musician's dreams.
by Lee Lynch.
Sara, a straight radical high school teacher
who founded one of the country’s first al
PA RT 2 — The Collective Phase
ternative high schools. Monica, a mother with
her head in the clouds who was dipping
Frequent moving had become a genera
down into all the worlds she could find after
tional phenomenon by 1971, at least for the
years
of marriage. Lillian, her sixteen-year-
middle class kids I knew. When I left the mod
old daughter, in a constant state of excite
em balconied apartment I’d shared with my
ment and a pupil of Sara. Goldie, another
lover and moved into my own narrow third
straight woman, a local who believed in
floor flat I was expressing the restlessness of
feminism and in living her ideals. And then
the highly-mobile baby-boomers, as well as
me. The token old gay. 1 quit my secure job
seeking my own way in life. But this poet-in-a-
and
went on alcohol, drugs and unemploy
garrett trip was the stuff of my ancestors; I
m en t testing the waters of this new freedom,
was destined to live the communal experi
not at all certain I wouldn't drown in my new
ence of our age to its fullest
way of life.
W hen I hit New Haven that year women
Five women had rooms of their own; I
drunk on sisterly love whirled in crazed circles
shared mine with my stowaway lover who
at the women-only dances held in church
was finally voted into the collective; two other
basements. Radical white women did much
women shared the basement This last was a
of the legwork needed for the Black Panther
terrible
idea as both were members of the
trials. And the first lesbian-feminist living col
New Haven Women s Liberation Rock Band
lective was being formed. I and my peers
and
had to work together in two collectives. I
were moving into the Women's Movement
My first women’s dance, after seven years ■ w o n't of course, go into who was sleeping or
had slept with or would soon sleep with or
of isolation from gays in and after college,
com e out with — who. It would take all day.
exhilarated me. How did one meet these wo
Suffice it to say that one’s room assignment
men? How did a New York butch unlearn the
was sometimes fluid.
necessarily one-on-one bump and grind and
Except for the diehards in the attic. I can
see in retrospect that the sociological pat
terns of the household were harbingers of
our futures, but back then I was simply proud
(and guilty at the same tim e) of the maneuver
that allowed Toni and I the luxury of a flight of
stairs and an elitist bathroom of our own
between us and the others. The others either
remained straight or went partly or wholly
back to heterosexuality within three years.
Toni kept the faith. I met her years later at a
___________________________________________________________
Gay Pride March in San Francisco with her
girlfriend And me? Well, there never was any
danger that I’d decamp.
For that halcyon radical year, though, we
all shared responsibilities of the household
and were, maybe, collectively cleaner than
the sloppiest of us might have been alone. We
Spent Time Together, either on individual
"Dates” or in group outings (I was always
trying to drag the others to gay bars). And we
ask two, a dozen, a roomful of women to
had a weekly housemeeting on Wednesday
dance?
nights. The words Wednesday N ight soon
As a feminist "old gay’’ I was a unique
took on an ominous tone for me. I was terri
addition to the community and didn’t have to
ble at “Dealing and struggling," much better
wait long to learn. Soon after the Gay Wo
at withdrawing or forcing humor into deadly
m en’s Group crowded into my living room —
serious discussions.
which was stuffed with bookcases and other
All in all, we worked hard to make a go of
wise furnished only with a foam pad on the
our brave new world. Though I felt betrayed
floor and a small rocking chair — I was in
by some of the women who laid heavy im
vited to join that first living collective. There
peratives on the house only to return to safer
were already at least two daring heterosexual
waters later, that first collective was a rich and
female and male collectives inhabiting ram
exciting eperience where, though I never felt I
shackle old homes around town, beginning
could be the dyke I was, 1 could try on other
to found food co-ops, but this would be the
ways of being. And I’ve always thought, if we
only all woman group. Those brave straight
did nothng else for the world, at least we
women! Risking their reputations and their
helped to desegregate the neighborhood. An
very sexuality, as it turned out, to live with
Asian family moved in next door while we
dykes!
lived there, and a mixed-race couple bought
Dykes? That’s what they called themselves,
the house we lived in.
but they were strange creatures to me. Highly
The second collective, an outgrowth of the
politicized, adamantly opposed to, for starters:
first to accommodate new blood, was some
couples, monogamy, exclusive affectional
what more relaxed. There were more women
behavior (others might feel left out), and
in it who had been lesbians longer and who
washing dishes; I tried to fit in. But I never got
remain lesbians today. Or perhaps it wasn’t
much further than feeling guilty that I wans’t
the gay presence, but a practical need (my
revolutionary enough to relinquish my bour
primary one at the time) to find a living situa
geois propensity to love one woman at a
tion that was cheap and palatable.
tim e, and to show that love not only by help
The problems in this House were as diffe
ing her do the dishes, but fondling her in very
rent as the old house and the new. (A second
exclusive ways as we worked . . .
collective
now lived across town.) Possibly
All eight of us lived for about $40.00 a
because of our longer lesbian history we
month each in a five bedroom house on an
seemed
to have more emotional instability.
exclusive street in the “better” section of New
These women had been fighting for their
Haven. The neighbors didn’t know what, to
sexual selves a good long time and did not
make of our Volkswagen brigade on moving-
feel all that comfortable in the world. We had
in day, I’m certain, but were liberal enough
more problems of self-image, economics,
not to hassle us.
family estrangement To us the liberation and
We began as: Toni, one of the Panther
Moving on
T H E
AMAZON
TRAIL
Just O ut,
August, 1986
pride movements were lifelines as well as
optimistic solutions.
In any case, there were seven of us on two
bedraggled floors of a house whose elderly
male owner and part-time girlfriend lived and
fought on the first floor. We were a motley
emotional crew ourselves. The shepherd was
with us again, but she was beginning her
conversion to a psycho-theory which advo
cated bisexuality. A sometimes surly local
dyke who later found contentment as a fore
person in a coastal fishery had joined us.
There was a woman who'd been out as long
as me and was as dependent as me on
chemical substances. We caused some up
set when we announced an attraction to each
other and an intention to act on it The whole
House dealt and struggled with that one until
the excitement was gone and we retreated. A
working class schoolteacher turned band
m em ber was possibly the most level-headed
of us all. A nineteen-year-old house painter
was also in a work collective and struggled on
two fronts. Mandy, the sprightly and energetic
wanderer, later learned to do light shows at
popular discotheques in New York. And I was
there again, still, a frustrated writer whose
audience had disappeared with The Ladder
and not yet regrouped. I earned a living as a
professional Girl Scout and you can imagine
how paranoid that made me.
All four of us in couples had our own
rooms. No one lived in an attic or in the
basem ent All of us were on a pretty equal
financial footing. (Income sharing had been
big in the first collective, but here there was
no longer anything to share.) Our three band
members lived in separate rooms. All these
things helped the collective be more livable,
but probably most helpful was the fact that by
this tim e the thrill had gone. Living as we were
was an emotional and economic solution,
not a battle in the big war of revolution. I
associate the first collective with a New Eng
land autumn, leaves brilliantly colored, Yale
football crowds cheering at the nearby Yale
Bowl, neighborhood children in spanking-
new school clothes. At the second house it is
always summ er in my memory: pushing
aside stored dusty furniture to find space for
supper on the porch outside the sweltering
house, flea-ridden cats and dogs, a jungly
backyard.
Then it was over, our enthusiastic young
experim ent There was nothing to keep the
rest of us together when the other couple
moved to Boston. I with my lover the house-
painter, found a third floor flat barely wider
than my garret and began the next series of
moves in the opposite direction: financial and
emotional stability. Moving was feeling less
like an adventure and more like a chore. I’d
be moving on, but now, as I neared thirty, it
was with an eye toward staying pu t putting
down roots, rooting, resting, anything but
re-moving. And as I slowly but thoroughly
severed my ties with the Women’s Movement
I entered into a new world, with quite different
mating and nesting habits: bar women in a
medium-sized city. Here was a whole new
lesbian geography to learn.
CELEBRATES
LESBIAN &
GAY P R ID E
EVERY M O N T H
THE
PRIMARY
DOMAIN
DID YOU MISS
<£?•
,
/
TRANSISTER LAST JUNE?
IF YOU DID you missed a great Party and
truly excellent talent.
This 6 Womyn Dance Band is backlil
SPECIAL EVENT)!!!
The P.0. Is Proud to Present:
TRANSISTERS
JUNE MILLINGTON
August 22 Friday Nile *5
Commedienne Candy Carr opensl
The Band plays all nite; there will be
special decor and Long Islands plus
Italian Sodas on Special.
These Womyn are HOT. Don t miss eml
Recording Artist ♦ Pioneer in
Womyn s Music!
THURSOAY, SEPTEMBER 4
V
COWGIRLS’ COUNTRY MUSIC NITE
August 10 Sunday
(You »sk*d lor i t . . ,|
Last County Music Nito was great!)'
So bring Your iivorltes end check mil our Timeless Selection)!!
The Hosetown Hammers will he on hand
to show you what <o do with itttl
Sundays are Free Pool Champagne and Dessert Specials
Thursdays are 40C beer, plus 50c off on
all bottled been O.j Tunes!
21