Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma (28 page)

After we separated, I moved into a garage apartment in the San Marco area of Jacksonville, then a garage apartment in Avondale, then a small house in Riverside. Several months later I moved in with a middle-aged middle-class respectable executive director of a large social services agency who owned her own home. She loved to cook and was a celebrated hostess. But when the young man who lived with us died of AIDS, neither of us knew how to talk about it. All we could do was go to work. She had an affair. We split up.

I stayed with some friends until I got over the shock then moved in with a gorgeous-but-nuts mental health counselor who was too, too hot in bed. If we’d kept having sex without attempting conversation, we might have lasted a little longer than the eighteen months we were together. She tried to run me over with her car. I moved to yet another small, cheap studio apartment.

My next lover was waiting in the wings, Ms. Perfect Trophy Wife, who never left the bedroom in the morning without full makeup regalia and perfectly coiffed hair. We rented a house in the San Marco area of Jacksonville. A year later I was hired by the University of Michigan, moved to Ann Arbor, and lived in a shared apartment until I could buy a house and send for her and her sons. We separated after two years. I moved into a tiny apartment near the house. We got back together for about six months then separated again, which meant another move to yet another apartment.

I moved to Los Angeles to work at UCLA. I lived in a faculty apartment adjacent to campus for a year, then in my-girlfriend-the-scientist’s house for two years, then back to campus as a Faculty-in-Residence. Thirty years and far too many moves, not counting the places where I lived or stayed for only a few days or weeks, places I’ve thankfully forgotten.

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I share this experience of extreme transiency to emphasize and honor my resilience and my ability to survive. Ironically, though it doesn’t appear to be so, I dislike moving and envy my family and friends who are so stable. As I reflect on all these moves, though, I realize that they served a very important purpose: each move kept me so busy, so emotionally occupied, that I had no time to feel my feelings nor mourn the repeated and ongoing losses in my life. I was too busy packing, unpacking, painting, and decorating, anything to not feel the pain.

Today I own my own little writing-and-golf retreat home in Palm Desert. I retired to this place, but who knows what’s in store for me in the future. I’m always ready for that next adventure.

36. The Day My Uterus Fell Out

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2006

U.S. President
: George W. Bush

Best film
: The Departed, Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine

Best actors
: Forest Whitaker, Helen Mirren

Best TV shows
: ESPN Saturday Night Football; Monday Night Football; Men in Trees; Smith; Six Degrees; Heroes; Brothers and Sisters; Ugly Betty; 30 Rock

Best songs
: Walk Away, Sorry, Talk, SexyBack, Unfaithful, Stupid Girls, Buttons, My Love

Civics
: Hezbollah fires rockets in Israel; Bush renews Patriot Act: FDA approves Gardasil, a vaccine that prevents cervical cancer; Pluto loses status as a planet

Popular Culture
: New Jersey legalized civil unions; Same sex marriage legalized in South Africa

Deaths
: James brown, Gerald R. Ford, Betty Friedan, Ann Richards, Maureen Stapleton, Coretta Scott King

__________________________________________________________________

My golf game usually sucks. In fact my golf score and my bowling score are astonishingly similar. Neither is good. That October day was no exception. My scratch-golfer-very-patient brother and I were playing at the Knollwood Golf Course in Los Angeles. As I approached the 17th hole, I felt my tampax slip. What??? I asked myself in my head while trying to look as if nothing was happening. What was THAT!!? I took inventory. No big deal, just a slipped tampax. I just need to push it back up, I thought, as I wiggled unnoticed, I hoped.

WAIT! NO! WAIT! If my tampax slipped, I’m REALLY in trouble! I’ve been post-menopausal for 10 years! A tampax hasn’t been inserted into my love-cavity since March of 1997! It was 2007! What’s going on down there??? Still trying to look bland.

The 18th tee, the green, the hole. Finally! I drove the golf cart like a crazy person up to the clubhouse and directly to the women’s room. My brother almost fell out of the golf cart, but, bless his oblivious little heart, he asked no questions.

Feel. Giant squishy ball. Coming out of my vagina. Big tumor! Cancer! I’m dead meat! I’m a lesbian and I’m being punished for having sex with so many women. Now it’s gonna kill me! I frantically called my doctor.

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Later that afternoon, after a thorough examination, my doc explained that I’m neither dying nor being punished. My uterus was prolapsing—that’s medical talk for falling out, or at least trying to escape! It usually happens to women who have had large babies in the past and are now post-menopausal. I qualified. (Though both of my children are small adults, they were big babies at birth—Berit was 8 pounds 11 ounces, Erik was 9 pounds 11 ounces.) I probably needed surgery. A hysterectomy. My doc referred me to a gynecologist who specialized in robotic gynecological surgeries. I elected to undergo a full hysterectomy because The gynecologist also found a tumor (it turned out to be benign) in one of my ovaries.

“You’ll be the third person to undergo a hysterectomy with DaVinci, our surgical robot. No big incisions through muscle, no scars, and no six-to-eight weeks of recovery—probably. And if something goes wrong in the surgical suite, we can still do it the old-fashion slice-you-up-on-the-spot way.” Well, maybe those weren’t The doc's exact words but that’s what I heard her say. Regardless, I was intrigued, and since I believe in donating my body to science while I’m still in it, I agreed to a date with DaVinci.

The UCLA surgical suite was prepared. DaVinci was cranked and I was ready to go. The doctor was at the dash board of the computer while I was in an anesthesia-induced sleep. The surgery took place on a Wednesday. I went home the next day. Two days later, on Saturday, I went to a party though, admittedly, I was moving rather slowly. The following Tuesday, less than a week after the surgery, I bought myself a sports car. Not one pain pill was needed, and I felt terrific! Truly amazing!

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Two years later I had vaginal reconstruction—just SO Los Angeles though the reason was not Los Angeles-typical, meaning it wasn’t cosmetic. My rectum and bladder, and then my small intestines, were prolapsing in and down and out, just as my uterus had done two years earlier. My guts were falling out again! We older women lose elasticity in the vaginal wall, so things cave in, or prolapse. Another gynecologist who specializes in vaginal reconstruction (some specialty!) did the repair. He put my organs back where they belong and then rebuilt the vaginal lining with a mesh bio-material—pig, to be exact. Oy! Such a deal for a Jewish girl. Regardless, at my advanced age, Kosher or not, at least one part of me looks like a twenty year old, even if you can’t see it!

37. Visiting Jacksonville

It was April 2008. Jacksonville. My adopted home town. So many ups and downs of my life happened there, so many dear friends taken by AIDS. Much of Jacksonville and Northeast Florida still seemed beautifully uninhabited, with visible coast line, scrub forests, wild palms, and the spectacular St. Johns River. It felt good to be “home.”

This trip, because of Lavender Graduation, was especially sweet for me. When I was at the University of North Florida (UNF) as a graduate student, from 1987 to 1996, nearly all of the lesbian and gay people there—students, faculty, and staff alike—were squished in a giant over-crowded closet. All except Tom Serwatka. As a student I was seriously out of the closet, so most gay folks I knew at UNF avoided me like the plague, fearing guilt by association. But not Tom. Brave Tom courageously came out as a gay man and as a person living with AIDS many years ago, and made it to the top as a vice president at UNF.

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I gave the keynote speech at the University of North Florida’s inaugural Lavender Graduation, the celebration that honors the lives and achievements of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students. I founded Lavender Graduation at the University of Michigan in 1995 because I wanted LGBT students’ last interaction with the university to be a positive one. (Today many schools including UCLA host similar events.) The University of North Florida, my graduate school alma mater where I earned my masters and doctoral degrees, was initiating this wonderful celebration.

I waived my usual speaking fee that weekend because UNF is my alma mater and because I strongly supported the work of the talented young woman, Emily Rokosch, who founded and managed the UNF LGBT Center. Emily worked incredibly hard and at tremendous odds to grow that office, in the Deep South—the golden buckle of the Bible belt—in Florida where there are still no legal protections for LGBT people. (I was so impressed with Emily that I hired her and brought her to work with me at UCLA. Sorry, UNF.)

Many old friends attended the Lavender Graduation that evening. Among them, Condom Commando partner Donna Zimmerman; my beloved friend Frieda Saraga, her husband Len, and their son Scott; Dr. Minor Chamblin, the UNF sex education professor; UNF Vice President Tom Serwatka; and lesbian-elder Vickie Wengrow. Many others from the LGBT community were there as well and it was wonderful to re-connect with so many beloved sweet faces.

The true highlight, of course, was witnessing the seven graduating students who participated in this first Lavender Graduation. What brave young people they were, to have the courage in redneck Northeast Florida to stand and be recognized for being out and proud at UNF. One student was accompanied by a parent, his mother. The other students said their parents would never attend such an event. And one young woman—Leni Akapanitis—who had been a tremendous help to Emily and the UNF LGBT Center, was the recipient of the inaugural Ronni Sanlo Student Leadership Award. I cannot begin to describe how deeply touched and honored I was that such an award was created in my name.

A few days after I returned to Los Angeles, I received this email from Vicki Wengrow:             

Ronni,

Your presentation, your presence, getting to benefit from your good work in support of our next generation, and being drawn to gather with others with whom we both share family ties, and more…Well, all I can tell you is that Saturday night was a HUGE gift of warm fuzzies to me. Thank you, thank you. You have been acknowledged as among the top 20 lesbian academics (in Curve Magazine) who are paid to work in academia on behalf of queers. Your energy is obviously powerful, and I’m sure, as you put it, you ‘drive everyone crazy.’ I’ve always admired you—and continue to—for putting your all into doing ‘the work,’ and in doing it your own way, with or without other people’s approval or company, even at times when we had very different priorities. And I’m happy that you are led (driven?) to use the great energy and the great ‘sechel’ (Yiddish for common sense) you came in with, to do much more than one person’s share of ‘tikkun ha olam’ (Yiddish for the Jewish mandate to repair the world.).

Many warm fuzzies back to you,

Vicki

Thank you, Vicki. I’ve done this work over the years because I had no choice: I was called to do it, as were (and are) so many of us. I now understand the reason for all the challenges I’ve experienced throughout these years. Without the challenges, there simply would not have been the impetus for change. Our young people deserve our hard work and our attention. I am blessed to have been able to give them both.              

38. This Unintended Path

I wanted to be a Rabbi when I grew up, but I was told that girls cannot be Rabbis. The best I could hope to be was a Rabbi’s wife.

I was a music major at the University of Florida and intended to become a high school band director. I became a band director’s wife instead.

When I came out as a lesbian in 1979 and lost custody of my children, I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I was too enraged to make that decision! Nothing worked out as I had dreamed. I became a wild and risk-taking activist until I fell from exhaustion, from the anger that fueled my life.

My career path moved in a variety of directions. I was fired from many jobs in Florida because of my sexual orientation. Eventually I was hired by the State of Florida to work with people with AIDS. The pay was low but the benefits included continued education. I was able to earn a masters and a doctorate from the University of North Florida free of charge. In 1994, I was hired by the University of Michigan to direct their Lesbian and Gay Programs Office and became a new professional in higher education at the ripe old age of forty-seven.

May 1994

During my first month at the University of Michigan I was asked by a nurse to come to the UM hospital because a student had been admitted as a patient. He wanted to talk with me. As I entered the room, I saw a pale young man lying in the bed, covers up to his mouth. He looked as if he were ten years old. I walked over to his side and took his hand.

“Hi,” I said softly. “I’m Dr. Ronni.”