Sapphic Softball

In the last episode published – Wee Marie Massage – you met Carmen, my fearless mentor during my early days as a television reporter.  The episode wrapped up at the time I began reporting on the political doings at the Dallas County Courthouse and dropped a hint that I would soon lose my voice, literally.  But before I tell that story I have another tale to tell, this one about softball, which became a different kind of mentor for me in those days.

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Softball as sapphic never occurred to me.  Little did I know that softball diamonds and dugouts were the primary place to meet lesbians if you lived in most any part of the USA.  In fact, softball was and still is intrinsically linked to lesbianism, so much so that some women who played the game for sport in the 1970s actually lost custody or almost lost custody of their children in contentious divorces – the patriarchy at work, corralling and punishing women every which way.  

That particular patriarchal stab to label softball-throwing women as unfit mothers did not come my way because I did not have any kids and was never pregnant, a stroke of endometrial luck if you ask me.  For now, I’ll keep on with this story about finding my voice via the Isle of Lesbos. 

When the snapshot above was taken, I was a high profile TV news reporter in Dallas, whose psyche was feeling the flicker of my sapphic awakening.  In my mind, there is no doubt it was the sapphic environment of softball that filled my soul back in the day and transported me to the front door of Sappho’s psyche.  Sappho, the woman – lauded as a poetic genius – lived long, long ago on the Isle of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Greece.  Her poetry makes it unambiguous how deeply and intimately she loved women, and indeed was a lesbian, even though that moniker did not exist.  The word later morphed out of the island’s name and has long been the identifier of women who love women. Nicknames for lesbians include lez, lezzie, lezbo, and can only be used as identifiers if a lesbian is using them.  Just sayin’.       

My journey to Sappho’s scene on the softball field was a cornucopia of happenings – my stint as a tomboy, my marriage to a man, my propensity to meet lesbians during my time as a TV reporter, which I suspect was made possible by the lesbian spirit guide ridin’ by my side.  

One day, maybe a month or so before the softball team photo was taken, I was homeward bound in my brown Honda hatchback late in the afternoon from downtown – where the TV station was located – when I made a quick stop at a nearby Walgreens to pick up something or other.  

Turning down an aisle, I stopped short in front of a display of softball gloves, bats, balls, and other seasonal recreational gear.  Suddenly, I was flush with memories of spring and summer days in high school playing softball – crouching at shortstop, snatching a ground ball, locking my eyes on one girl in particular who would slide into first base with a cloud of dust, get up and brush off her butt with a few quick pats of her hands.  Made my heart flutter.

I tried on several gloves until coming upon the perfect fit for my left hand to wear and my right hand fist to punch into. I decided then and there I was going to get back in the saddle and play ball, no doubt about it! 

It didn’t take long for me to start recruiting team members.  One of my first picks was a reporter for a Dallas radio station.  She and I both covered Dallas County politics and had struck up a friendship that included sharing cocktails and conversation at a table for two.  She was single and straight. I was married and had a crush on her.  (Here's that story.)

When I asked my crush if she was interested in joining the team, she said yes without hesitation and agreed to help me round up other players, which she did, including a co-worker of hers, who, unbeknownst to me or my crush, was a lesbian. That co-worker would tell me decades later that — thanks to her “gaydar” — she had both my crush and me pegged as lesbians, but for a bit of initial uncertainty in both cases, due to my crush dating men and me having a husband.  There was lots of confusion back in those days of transformation about what it meant to come out of the closet or know who was still in and/or bursting to get out.

We pulled a team together quickly, which got us a spot in the city’s women’s softball league.  Over the ensuing days and weeks, as we practiced and played the game – throwing to second base, getting dirty attempting a slide, or shouting out, “Hey, batter, batter, batter,” just to rattle her.  Our team would go on to win a few, lose a few.

I became aware of a feel-good vibe – could be it was Sappho sitting on my shoulder.  Drenched in the pleasure of the vibe, surrounded by women playing and having fun together, I knew deep inside I wholly preferred the company of gals over guys.

Following our weekend afternoon practices, many of us would head to a nearby bar, drink a few beers, and talk – get to know each other.  The sapphic vibe was there too.  I started to feel an affinity with some of the women, and began to want as much time playing the game and drinking afterwards as I could possibly get.  Reflecting back, I’m not sure there were enough women on the team identifying as lesbians to help me understand my desire to mingle among the team in order to find the way out of my own closet.  I suspect I felt an energy from some of the women on the team but did not – maybe could not – grasp anything explicit.    

During this exploratory phase, my husband Mase lent his support to what was most likely my incremental sapphic emergence. He came to a few of our games and tagged along for a beer afterwards.  A gaze in the rearview mirror tells me he knew on some level what I was searching for. But I think he let it be, and we never really talked about “it,” but found our way peaceably to divorce before too long. (Here's that story.)

At my suggestion, the softball team was named Prurient Interest, a phrase introduced into the social vernacular after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on an obscenity case in 1973 that defined pornography as appealing to one’s “prurient interest,” which the court defined in a footnote as “having a tendency to excite lustful thoughts” – as if lustful thoughts are bad, which is what they become when defined as pornography, interpreted back in that day as smut and filth and such.  All that aside, playing softball with women who had “a tendency to excite lustful thoughts” was the perfect concoction for me.

That day, back in the late 70s, when we had our team photo taken — our red T-shirts with Prurient Interest spelled out in black block letters — my crush accommodated when I motioned her to come sit next to me for the picture. She did, and I was very excited about that “get.” The look on my face in the photo says it all – fearless and in charge, wearing a slightly soft and smug smile. 

But softball season soon came to an end. And my courtship with the crush came to a screeching halt soon after — on a Sunday afternoon when I arrived at her apartment and proclaimed my love.  At that point she freaked, quickly switched on her southern manners, then kindly escorted me to her front door, where she stood watching me and my perceived lesbian toxicity drive off into the sunset, leaving our sexless (not even a kiss) relationship in the dust.

I moved on quickly, having assured myself I was indeed overcome with tingles and/or twinges, continuing to feel vibes for and/or from various women. It’s a fair guess that my libido was finally waking up.  Perhaps I was just plain horny.

You can bet I was totally pumped for next spring, when softball season kicked on.  My daydreaming in those days was of women on the diamond – whether at bat, pitching one straight over home plate, catching a grounder one-handed, or running with sheer force to make it around third base.

I yearned to get back on the field and follow up on these newly found feelings that were washing over me. I realize now I was owning my sexuality, and it wasn’t hetero-centric.   

Simultaneously, I met several successful and high-achieving lesbians when I was out and about reporting and gathering stories – a personal injury lawyer, a medical examiner for the county and the head nurse in the emergency room of the busy Dallas County hospital, Parkland.  The lawyer and the medical examiner – whom I eventually learned were “together” and identified as lesbian, albeit on the QT, which meant “only” in safe spaces – are the ones who identified me as one of their own, took me under their wings, and in due course set me up with the emergency room head nurse.

This trio of lesbians were role models and, like me, professionals out and about in the world.  The closet door – still mandatory if one wanted to keep their job – opened just wide enough at night and on weekends. We all socialized and I began to see another lovely side of the “lesbian (and gay) community.”  In one instance, I experienced a lesbian kiss.

Kisses and daydreams aside, it was imperative that I focus on my career – immerse myself in TV news reporting while the reverie driving my lesbian inquiries and tickling my libido was pushed to the back burner.  Well, kind of.  Every so often, I’d feel sapphic fires of lust, fueled by flashes of luscious kisses from one of the power lesbians I’d met. But while I had finally drunk in scrumptious lesbian kisses, I had not yet had sex. 

But before the sex, came the literal loss of my voice – a necessity for a television news reporter – and I soon found myself in a world fraught with anxiety. 

Stand by for that story.  Coming up next.