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Subject: Second Generation Dyke (true, ff, no sex)
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I did not write this story. As far as I know--this is true.

(true, ff, no sex)




Revi’s Story: Second Generation

by Revolutionary Hope Airborne

(The following was performed as part of The Lavender Family Circus, a play
put on by COLAGE last September).

My mother didn’t come out until I was nine, and by then I was already a
confirmed little femme. She, being the good Seventies feminist mother,
always tried to liberate me from the trapping of feminine beauty in
patriarchal society. All I wanted was to have long golden curls, red velvet
dresses, and shiny black patent leather shoes with little silver buckles.
In every picture of me as a little girl where I’m posed in a pretty dress,
I’m smiling: well, if they’re going to take photographs of me, I may as
well be looking my best, right?

I can imagine now how this must have discombobulated my mother: her
feminist daughter, growing up free and encouraged to do and be whatever she
wanted, choosing lip gloss and crying herself sick over not being allowed
Barbie dolls. After all, my mother at fifteen was forbidden by her mother
to leave the house unless she was wearing a bra and lipstick, and she was
always butch. Oops! That just slipped out -- my mother thinks butch/femme
is heterosexual role playing, so I guess you’ll have to ask her why every
single one of her girlfriends has been the kind of women who wears dresses
at least once in a while, when my mother hasn’t owned one in ten years.

Anyway, despite my unfathomable desires to be beautiful and have pretty
things I did manage to grow up "liberated" -- and I’ve always called myself
a feminist. But realizing my queerness was another story entirely. In high
school in Ashland, Oregon I hung out with the arty liberals, of whom there
were many, Ashland being a theatre town. As a group we were self-named "the
drama fags", and while dating only boys I called myself bisexual. When I
was asked why I would reply, "Because I don’t believe in falling in love
with genitalia, I believe in falling in love with another human being." A
good arty liberal answer.

The first conscious crush I ever had on another woman was when I was
sixteen. She as about twenty-eight, a cute little sport dyke actor friend
of my mother’s. I probably had a crush on her because she was kinda butch
and kinda young, whereas the rest of my mother’s friends were hippie
country lesbians around forty. You know how most queer parents want their
kids to grow up straight as if having heterosexual children proves they did
a good job? My mother, always a separatist even when she couldn’t live it,
encouraged me mightily. I’m not sure how great she would have thought if
something had actually come out of this crush, but unrequited love for
another woman was a jump in the right direction: lesbianism. My mother
always pushed me so hard to be a dyke that if she hadn’t also taught me to
think for myself, I’d probably be straight and married by now. Whenever I
had trouble with boys in high school, she’d mutter about how much better
I’d be treated if I were with a woman. That mentality is just as pushy and
judgmental as the narrow mindedness of homophobic straight parents.

At college in Boston I was more of a deadhead than a dyke. Getting
disillusioned with hippie culture was some of what sent me looking for
something closer to home, so to speak. Mostly, though, becoming more and
more an aware and vocal feminist made me think hard about the nature of
relationships between men and women and women and women as I was
experiencing them. It occurred to me that the only reason I sought men out
was for sex; for everything else I turned to women. And men, at least the
ones I was sleeping with, weren’t even very good lovers, so --why not women
for sex, too?

Meanwhile, my best friend was roaring out of the closet. We were still
hippie chicks, so we would go dancing at the girl bars in our long dresses
with flowing hair and sandals. In 1990 Boston, dykes did not wear dresses
or have long hair. (I hear not much has changed.) I never met even one
woman the entire time we went clubbing there. The attitude seemed to be,
"What are these two straight girls doing dancing together in our bar?"
Weird.

It took moving to San Francisco for us to realize we could actually be
sexual with each other. People are far more comfortable here with
variations in sexuality than Boston, Ashland or anywhere else. So I finally
felt I could be myself, which was a dyke. I am not comfortable with the
word lesbian because for me it had connotations of separatism, which I am
philosophically opposed to. Besides, I like the in-your-face-ness of dyke.
Or better yet, "femme dyke" spoken by a voluptuous babe with bright red
lipstick, a short flirty skirt, and heels. That’s me: an in-your-face-femme
dyke.--====================987654321_0==_
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