Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma (26 page)

Jake’s possible gay history isn’t as clear. In college I occasionally thought Jake might be gay. He often pretended to be a gay man, enacting all the “stereotype” behaviors with his jazz musician buddies. After we divorced, he apparently had a male friend for whom he bought a car, according to mutual acquaintances, and even his children were asked by classmates in school if their father, the school band director, were gay. 

I do believe that the self-hatred that runs in that family translated into homo-hating rhetoric that has never released its hold on those people. Thank God my children escaped.

32. I’m White

__________________________________________________________________

2000

U.S. President
: William J. Clinton

Best film
: Gladiator, Chocolat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Erin Brokovich, Traffic

Best actors
: Russell Crowe, Julia Roberts

Best TV shows
: Malcolm in the Middle; Survivor; Big Brother; Yes, Dear; Gilmore Girls; Ed

Best songs
: Bye Bye Bye, American Pie, Everything You Want, I Knew I Loved You, It’s Gonna Be Me, It’s My Life, Otherside

Civics
: Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez at center of dispute, returns to Cuba; U.S. sailors killed on attack of Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen: America Online buys Time Warner, biggest merger in U.S. history; abortion pill RU-486 wins U.S. approval

Popular Culture
: Kathy Lee Gifford quits Regis; Oprah Winfrey debuts O magazine; Ellen Degeneres and Anne Heche break up; Richard Hatch wins Survivor; Vermont is first state to offer civil unions to same sex couples; Sheila James Kuehl is first openly lesbian or gay person elected as a California senator.

Deaths
: Steve Allen, Victor Borge, Alec Guinness, Hedy Lamarr, Walter Matthau, Tito Puentes, Jason Robards, Charles Schultz, Pierre Trudeau

_________________________________________________________________

I’m white. I figured that out when I was 53. You’d think after looking in a mirror for 53 years I’d have known I was white, but it took that long for me to really get it. I grew up in white North Miami Beach, before Cubans and Haitians and Viet Namese and others sought freedom there, when African Americans still lived primarily in the Liberty City area of downtown Miami. North Miami Beach was white and Jewish and no one thought twice—or much—about it.

My first actual encounter with African American people beyond Mary, my family’s housekeeper, occurred in my residence hall at the University of Florida in the fall of 1965. There were a number of Jewish women from Miami who lived on the third floor of Rawlings Hall. Most of us were eighteen years old and away from home for the first time. One day three African American women who also lived in Rawlings saw two of us Jewish women in the study lounge. Without word or permission, they walked up to us and began sifting their fingers through our hair! I didn’t know if I was more stunned from the boundary violation or that one of the women was really hurting my head.

“Where’s your horns?!!?” she demanded to know.

“What??? What are you talking about? Let go of my head!! You’re pulling my hair! Ouch!” I was furious! “Do you want me to do that to you???” I hollered at my hair-sifter.

She stopped, looking at me even more strangely than before she dove into my hair. “Where's your horns?” She asked again, though without fingers to head.

We had no idea what they meant, so we started to talk. We learned that the Black women had always been told that Jews had horns. They wanted to see our horns and were truly shocked that we had none. Once we talked it out, we were able to have discussions about our various cultures. What began as a serious violation of personal space became an ongoing fascination and friendship about differences and similarities. And so began my education on race and on being an ally, which helped tremendously when the National Guard planted itself and its curfews squarely in Gainesville in 1968 during what was called “the miniature Black Power invasion.” Like many gay and lesbian people in the 1960s, it was easy for me to stand with my African American friends in the civil rights movement. But stand for myself as a lesbian? Never!

Almost forty years later I attended the Social Justice Training Institute (
www.SJTI.org
), founded and facilitated by my friends, Vernon Wall, Kathy O‘Bear, and Jamie Washington, all openly gay or lesbian. Because of my work in higher education, I’m rarely a participant at seminars and trainings; I’m usually the facilitator. So I took a break, both for my mental health and for my need to reflect, and signed up for the weekend session with SJTI. I sent my check, bought my plane ticket from Los Angeles to the dead-of-winter Massachusetts, and just went, without reading the brochure.

I arrived in Rockwellian-appearing Springfield on a snowy day in January and met my dear friend Judy Albin from Penn State. As the weekend began, I noticed that most of the participants were people of color, as are Vernon Wall and Jamie Washington. Of the 40 or so participants, Judy and I were two of just a handful of white people. For some reason, perhaps because of the facilitators, I thought I was attending a sexual orientation workshop. Turns out it was more of a racial immersion seminar. Nothing happens by accident, although it seemed like one initially, and I felt guilty for even thinking that. I should have been thrilled that the workshop was so diverse, but this was before I found out I as white.

I was supposed to be there that weekend. No doubt about it. I needed to learn about my whiteness. More importantly, I needed to learn about my privilege of being white. I always believed I was an ally for people of color, from that day in the study lounge in Rawlings Hall at the University of Florida those years ago when I had my first real and meaningful conversation with the three Black women, and when I stood with the African American community in Gainesville, Florida during the 1960s civil rights marches. But I never really thought about what it meant to be white and to have privilege because of my race until that workshop. I discovered—much to my surprise—that one of the privileges of being white was that I never had to think about it! That knocked the wind out of me!

And what about the privilege of heterosexuality? I’m aware that there has not been a day in my life since I was eleven and in love with Annette Funicello that I haven’t thought about being a lesbian. Not one day. Yet heterosexual people never, or at least rarely, think about their sexual orientation. They just don’t have to—that’s the privilege of being heterosexual, of being male, of being wealthy, or able bodied or Christian. You just don’t have to think about it until—if ever—you get whomped upside the head with a lack of privilege. I learned that weekend to be aware of my subordinate identities—lesbian, woman, Jewish, aging—and my dominant identities—white, educated, (mostly) able-bodied. Awareness. My head was spinning.

As I returned home from that weekend from SJTI, I was stunned at what I saw while traveling back to Los Angeles, what I allowed myself to see: passengers frisked at the airport because of their skin color; an African American man questioned about his first-class ticket; a white man in a business suit who received excellent service from the white female flight attendant; the white female sitting next to him who received little service; the man across from her who wore a turban and appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent who received no service. All around me, everywhere, examples of social INjustices that touched peoples’ lives in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Awareness—once you have it, it becomes imbedded in your psyche and your heart. My awareness of my whiteness sure did.

Awareness is the first step, then action. My awareness and my consciousness now guide me to right action. I have no choice. I’m aware, and I’m white. I must speak out for and with my sisters and brothers who are different from myself, just as I want them to do for me.

33. Emotional Transformation, or Whomped Upside the Head

__________________________________________________________________

2001

U.S. President
: : George W. Bush

Best film
: A Beautiful Mind, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Shrek, Monsters, Inc., Moulin Rouge

Best actors
: Denzel Washington, Halle Barry

Best TV shows
: My Wife and Kids; The Fairly Odd Parents; Six Feet Under; The Amazing Race; Law & Order: Criminal Intent; Reba; Scrubs; The Bernie Mac Show

Best songs
: Hanging By a Moment, All For You, Lady Marmalade, Fallin’, I’m Real, Don’t Tell Me

Civics
: September 11
^th
attack on the World Trade Center in New York; anthrax scare; global warming on the rise; artificial heart implanted in a man

Popular Culture
: The Producers take a record 12 Tony awards; John Adams by David McCullough published; Federal judge upholds Florida law banning gays from adopting children; Netherlands is first country to grant full marriage rights to same sex couples; same sex marriage becomes legal in Canada

Deaths
: Chet Atkins, George Harrison, Jack Lemmon, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Carroll O’Connor, Anthony Quinn, Isaac Stern, Marc Bingham, Lance Loud

__________________________________________________________________

Rebecca and I met at UCLA shortly after I arrived in the fall of 1997. The University of California Board of Regents was about to vote on the recognition of domestic partnerships. The concept had been under discussion for a while, and testimony had been heard at the Regents’ meeting the previous July. Rebecca was one of the esteemed faculty who spoke. Her story was extraordinarily compelling: her long-time partner had to keep working after a serious cancer diagnosis to maintain her health insurance, creating tremendous stress that contributed to an early death. Rebecca was not allowed to add her partner to her UCLA insurance plan. Rebecca had testified in July and was invited to return to testify again before the Regents that October. We began dating the following January, and I moved into her house near campus eight months later.

Because Rebecca owned the house in which we lived and because her salary was easily twice mine, I deferred to her in all things—friends, restaurants, vacations, therapist—lest she reject me. My family was thrilled and impressed that my partner was a scientist. Once again, I felt I had made it into the stability of middle-class, but, as before, it was due to someone else’s accomplishments, not mine.

As an experienced co-dependent, I was hypervigilent about Rebecca’s thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, and made sure I had the same. Her friends were mine; I had none of my own away from UCLA. In fact the only place I felt strong and grounded and successful was at work. After two years, I was losing my personal self again. I knew if I didn’t leave her, I would either fade into the woodwork forever, or explode. I left. Sadly, this was the usual script for most of my past relationships. Nothing changed. Same relationship, different face.

After Rebecca and I broke up, I needed to find friends in Los Angeles. I joined a lesbian social organization called Women On A Roll (WOAR) that was directed by an extremely creative woman named Andrea Meyerson. Andrea invited me to be on the board of WOAR which provided the connections and activities I needed to finally feel like a member of a vibrant social community.

Rebecca and I had been separated for just over a year when she called me. Though we both worked at UCLA we somehow managed to avoid each other for 13 months. We had parted after three years of struggling to maintain a relationship, struggling to pretend that everything was fine. Rebecca was extremely busy with her research and I was extremely busy directing the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center, so we had little time together. Somehow, though, away from the realities and busyness of life, we managed to vacation well, whether snorkeling at Black Rock Beach in Maui or driving on the sheep-infested roads of New Zealand. But at home we were toxic for each other. When we broke up, I moved out of Rebecca’s house to an apartment on campus at UCLA as a Faculty-in-Residence. I retired from UCLA to my house in Palm Desert in October  of 2010.

~~~~~~

“Hi, Ronni. It’s Rebecca. Just called to say hello. I’ve been thinking about you.” Surprised and caught completely off guard I said, “Well hey there. How are you?” I was genuinely happy to hear from her.

“I’m actually very well. I was wondering if you’d like to get together for coffee sometime.” We chatted a while longer and decided to meet for dinner that very evening.

Rebecca, who was always so tied up in her shorts about damned near everything, sounded calm for a change and, well, fun. I knew she had a great sense of humor, but it was always so tightly controlled, as was much of everything in her life. That evening, though, she was downright pleasant. I was happily surprised, and enjoyed our casual, familiar bantering. After dinner I walked her to her car. She was going to a meeting of some sort, something about codependency.

“Want to go with me?” she asked.

”Sure, why not?” I hopped into her car. If something she attended could help her get a grip, then perhaps I needed to be there, too, though I didn’t really know why. Just something inside of me said I should go.             

~~~~~~

We entered the room in the church where the 12-step meeting for co-dependents had just begun. I observed perfectly normal-looking people saying some of the stupidest stuff I’d ever heard—about bad relationships, taking people hostage, controlling others by being silent or loud or selfish or a thousand other things. Control, unhealthy relationships, silence, pain—and then something about one day at a time, recovery, self love. I had no idea what was going on, the words swirling in my brain, but I knew without a doubt that I belonged there, no, needed to be there. That was ten years ago. I’ve hardly seen Rebecca since, but I continue to go to those meetings, and I always find truths about myself which I’ve learned to honor.