Then Comes Marriage (2 page)

When I walked into her apartment for our first session, just a few weeks after the incident with my mother, I was immediately struck by Thea's commanding presence. She had a Hepburnesque high-cheekboned beauty and a regal bearing. She was also a quadriplegic. Thea had been diagnosed with a particularly virulent form of multiple sclerosis back in 1977, and by 1991 she was using a wheelchair and had only limited use of her hands. Yet even though her body was weak, she exuded strength, calm, and self-assurance, three qualities I had in very short supply at that time.

In that first session, I told Thea about my deepest fears: that I would never have a normal life, a successful relationship, close ties with my family, or a family of my own. For years, my mother and I had talked almost every day, but since the episode in my apartment, we had not spoken at all. I missed her terribly, but there did not seem to be any way to bridge the enormous rift my coming out had created between us. And even though I had finally allowed myself to become involved with a woman, I had no expectation that my current relationship would last. It seemed self-evident that by admitting I was gay, I had scuttled any chance of ever being at peace with myself. I had never felt so alone, and I saw no way to make it better.

And then Thea told me about her own long-term relationship with a brilliant mathematician named Edie. She and Edie had been together for twenty-five years by then, living together as a committed couple through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. Their relationship had started in the 1960s, pre-Stonewall, at a time when it was even more difficult to be gay. But they had persevered and continued to love each other through the decades, building a stable and joyful life together. It is unusual for a psychologist to talk so much about herself or her spouse during a therapy session, but Thea's message to me was clear: it was possible to have a fulfilling relationship and a happy life, even if you happened to be a lesbian. She and Edie were the proof.

Thea's words gave me the comfort I desperately needed. I only saw her for one more session before moving to Boston, but I never forgot the sense of relief I felt after talking with her. At last I had heard from someone who knew and could prove that it was possible to create the kind of life I wanted, one that included a lifelong partner, strong family ties, and maybe even children of my own one day.

Eighteen years later, when I walked into Edie and Thea's apartment, I had created that life for myself. I had a fascinating job, a close relationship once again with my parents, a loving wife named Rachel, and our amazing son, Jacob—my life was full of fulfillment and purpose. I had everything that I had ever wanted, and Thea Spyer was the one who had first given me the strength to think it was possible.

So that morning in 2009, as Edie Windsor described her situation to me—her forty-four-year relationship with Thea, the marriage they had celebrated when they were in their seventies, and the federal government's refusal to acknowledge that relationship—all I could think was,
I will do this for Thea
. In Yiddish (which I had grown up with since my maternal grandmother, Belle, was fluent), the word
bashert
means, in its most basic sense, “it was meant to be.” In other words, it was as if God had dropped this case in my lap as a way to pay Thea back for helping me so much through some of my darkest days.

GROWING UP IN
Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1970s, I never thought that I would turn out to be gay. In fact, for a long time I did not even know what gay meant. But I did always know that I would become a lawyer.

For one thing, from the moment I started talking, I apparently never stopped. When I was very young, my mother wrote letters to her brother, Benjie, who was then serving in the Peace Corps in India. Her descriptions of me tended to focus, with love and pride, on my loquaciousness and assertiveness. From July 1969, when I was three, she
kvelled
: “Robbie can recite the alphabet as well as give a rousing rendition of ‘Ducky Duddle.' . . . She plays with five-year-old kids and all I ever hear her say is, ‘Now it's my turn.' ”

August 1969
: “Robbie, especially, enjoys being in the limelight. . . . She thinks she's a real big shot and her mouth supports her.”

July 1970
: “Robbie is a real doll. You have to converse with her to appreciate [it]. . . . If she lets you get a word in, that is.”

Grandma Belle noticed this too: “Robbie is a doll and bright as a whip. I asked her to please stop talking for fifteen minutes, and she answered, ‘I can't, Grandma. I'm a big talker.' And she surely is. On & on & on.”

So I liked to talk. And I had heard that lawyers got to talk a lot as part of their jobs. With that in mind, at the mature age of twelve, I plotted out the rest of my life. We then lived in a suburb of Cleveland, but my mom had a subscription to
New York
magazine, and after flipping through the latest issue one day, I became a girl on a mission—I decided that I would move to New York City one day and become a lawyer.

Actually, I was pretty logical about it. First, I decided that I would have to go to an Ivy League college, and then I would move on to law school in New York. Twelve-year-old kids—especially those who talk as much as I did—come up with a lot of silly ideas. But what is more than a little frightening is that this is exactly what I ended up doing. (The fact that Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed by President Reagan to be the first woman Supreme Court justice three years later when I was in high school only strengthened my resolve.)

I am sure my parents did not expect me to follow through on my grand pronouncement, but they did encourage my brother, Peter, and me to think independently. My mother especially was very curious about the social issues of the day. Mom was involved in the women's movement of the 1970s and belonged to a consciousness-raising group. She also wanted to expose us to as much art, music, and culture as she could. One day in 1981, she exposed me to something I'm sure neither of us expected.

I was fourteen that spring, and Mom brought me along to a former synagogue in Cleveland Heights, where a group of women were installing the feminist artist Judy Chicago's famous piece
The Dinner Party
. The installation is huge—a triangular banquet table measuring forty-eight feet long on each side, with dozens of place settings and hundreds of engraved floor tiles all representing different women throughout history. Whenever it was exhibited in a new venue, Chicago enlisted numerous local feminist volunteers to help set it up. My mom is not exactly a do-it-yourself type, but she was eager for us to participate in what was a great artistic happening.

The only thing I remember from that day is all the butch women wearing tool belts (literally). Everywhere I looked, there were women carrying hammers, pulling wrenches out of leather pouches, whipping out tape measures. I had never seen anything like these women. I was definitely exposed to something new that day, and it made me self-conscious, uncomfortably so.

From that point on, I was aware that there was something different about me, something that needed to be hidden. By the time I was in high school, a lurking fear had taken root:
What if I turn out to be gay?
I could not bear that thought, so I just kept pushing it down as deep as it would go. Even though my parents never made negative comments about gay people, I knew that they would not be happy if I turned out to be a lesbian. So I tried to change and I tried to hide. I dated guys throughout high school. Ironically enough, my high school prom date, a guy named Aaron Belkin, would also turn out to be gay. Later, he became an activist for LGBT rights, one of the key players behind the 2010 repeal of the U.S. military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. There must have been something in that prom punch. Or maybe it is not surprising that two of the few gay kids in a graduating class of ninety students would be drawn to each other. Unconsciously, perhaps, we sensed each other's secrets.

Despite my fear of exposure, or maybe because of it, I was even more driven to succeed academically, to be part of the exciting world I had dreamed of since I was young. And just as I had planned so carefully at the age of twelve, I set off for Harvard in the fall of 1984. Upon arriving in Cambridge from the hinterlands of Cleveland, however, I initially found myself intimidated by the hordes of East Coast private-school girls—one of whom, a young woman from New York City, asked me in all innocence whether Woody Allen films ever made it to Cleveland movie theaters. My new classmates all seemed able to read Kant in the original German, planned someday to be president or secretary of state, and seemed not to have an iota of self-doubt. Navigating my new social life was difficult enough, even without the additional layers of confusion and anxiety about the possibility that I was gay.

Every time that I had a crush on a girl, my fear about my mother's reaction to my lesbianism intensified, even though I still did not have the nerve to actually go out on a date with a woman. If only I could have worried less about what others, even my mother, thought of me and more about learning who I was. If I had expended half the energy on dating women that I did on fearing what my mother might say about it, I would have had a much better time in college. But I was paralyzed not only by my own shame but also by a realistic assessment of the consequences that could result when a gay person was honest about who she was.

There was one story going around campus that epitomized my fears. I knew a sophomore who had lived a seemingly charmed life, attending Manhattan's best private schools while growing up in a wealthy, sophisticated New York family. Yet during her freshman year at Harvard, when she told her mother she was a lesbian, her mother (with whom she had been very close) responded by disowning her, cutting her off both emotionally and financially. Several people told me this story, and each time it intensified the sick feeling that I had in my stomach whenever I thought about telling my own mother. I also heard of other students who had been forced into so-called reparative therapy by their parents to “cure” them of their homosexuality. Most of those people had not chosen to come out, had not shoved their “lifestyle choice” into other people's faces. They had hidden, like me, and still they had been found out. In other words, there were very real reasons to be afraid.

In fact, my anxiety during college became so acute that I was not sure I would ever tell anyone I was gay. I wondered whether it might be possible just to marry a nice man and make do. But in my heart of hearts, I knew such a false marriage would not only be terribly unfair to my theoretical husband but also doomed to failure.

I could not think my way into a solution, my first and favorite way of dealing with problems. And following my feelings to solve the issue was completely unacceptable. The trade-off of certain social jeopardy versus possible emotional fulfillment and love was simply not worth it for me. Instead, I chose my familiar habits of caution and repression. I just boxed up my feelings and hoped they would somehow disappear. They did not, of course. Instead, I fell in love with a classmate I'll call “Kate.”

Kate and I met freshman year, and there was an instant connection between us. We spent hours together—talking, studying, arguing politics, and figuring out the world's woes. By the end of freshman year, we knew that we wanted to room together as sophomores. I was falling hard for Kate but could not admit it, even to myself. Instead, I would lie awake at night thinking,
If only Kate were a guy, everything would be so much easier
. That is as close to self-awareness as my mind could manage.

Throughout my sophomore year, my feelings for Kate deepened as we lived and studied together, becoming almost inseparable. In the spring of my junior year, having declared Russian history and literature as my major, I spent a semester studying in Moscow. Being in the Soviet Union at that time was an incredible experience. Perestroika was just beginning and I had a front-row seat to history in the making. I was lucky enough to become friends with extraordinary members of the Russian intelligentsia—dissidents, artists, and Jewish refuseniks. It was heady stuff for a young woman who had grown up in the Cleveland suburbs.

When I came back to the States, I could not wait to see Kate. I was so excited to reconnect with her, but when we met again she broke my heart. That first evening as we sat on the roof of her building, Kate told me she was dating someone. And that someone was a woman.

I listened to Kate's news and felt my heart shatter. And the worst part was I could not even let myself, much less Kate, understand that my heart was breaking. Yet even if I did not understand what I was feeling, I nonetheless felt it: wave after wave of grief, rage, disappointment, and frustration. It is hard to explain to people who have never had to hide a key element of themselves how corrosive it is. It is not simply that you do not allow others—your family, your friends, your neighbors—to truly know you. It is also that you give up on knowing yourself. And you give up on that which makes you most human: your capacity to give and accept love. From that hurt and corroded place in my soul, I only knew that I had come back from the Soviet Union to find Kate and that she had rejected me. Or at least that is how it felt to me at the time—not that she had found love, but rather that I had lost it.

And, in that vein, I retaliated. The Cold War might have been thawing internationally but, on a personal level, I chose the nuclear option. On some level I must have believed that Kate and I had a tacit agreement. We would be each other's primary person but we would pretend otherwise, dating boys neither of us took seriously. Kate had unilaterally violated that agreement. She had chosen someone else—someone female who was not me.

Rather than acknowledge that truth, I attacked. All my years of anger and frustration became focused on one target: Kate. My feelings were not wrong, hers were. Sobbing and screaming, I told her that what she was doing was wrong, hurtful, and incredibly damaging. What I did not do was explain
why
I was so upset. I could not name or face the sickening jealousy that surged through me, because there was no reason for me to be jealous. So instead of honesty, I went for moral disapproval.