Snapshots cont'd
From a lavender lens
By the time 1979 rolled around, many of us women who lived through the decade as young twenty-something adults found ourselves transformed under the spell of profound revelations. The second wave of feminism that swept through the decade reshaped us. Women gained access to the workplace like never before and lesbians, well, we got a bonus — encounters with kindred spirits like many of us rarely imagined. The beginnings of a sapphic love fest that would eventually go public.
But in the interim, meeting other women who loved women was a bit tricky. A brazen kiss on a bustling sidewalk risked rebuke. Holding hands, hold tight hugging. Both anathema. The solution? The humble potluck, which became the meet and greet of choice, and eventually an enormously successful way to build community. Click the link below for more good info. Scroll for a black and white of a potluck in a park (1959) and a sweet snapshot of four lesbians in what I call a grounding hug, taking a break from a pride parade in 1974.
Lesbian Potlucks Nourished the Movement
Potlucks and bars. The recipe for lesbian safe harbors then and even now.
As lesbians began to meet women like themselves — igniting a sense of connection, an energy link — they discovered nourishment for the soul and embraced it in a keenly inherent way. It was all about finding the tribe connection, the family unit, in a very homophobic world that was America.
Humans have an inherent need to be among kindred spirits. Those of us who came up in that wild and wooly decade of the 70s and found we had a certain predisposition to women when it came to kindredness found there was some learnin’ to do, and clarity to be had. It sounds crazy but a fair number of us assumed we didn’t know lesbian protocol — social or sexual. But we quickly learned we had the keys to that closet when we were introduced to a genre of music that massaged the lesbian heart and soul.
In 1975, Chris Williamson’s now iconic album, The Changer and the Changed, came out, and so did many women who were in the closet, but not yet comfortable uttering words that defined us. We were simply women loving women under the cover of darkness. Nonetheless, The Changer and the Changed became an anthem of validation, a sweet taste of liberation. But, in a sign of the times, the lyrics were nuanced. A hidden meaning, but it only took a few times for us to crack the LezCode and feel exactly what it meant.
Take a listen. Take a listen. Take a listen.
History tells us that “women’s music” came to be when feminists and/or lesbians, a collective not happy with the patriarchy running the country, resolved to make “women’s music” happen. And they did it in a variety of ways, including women-only venues and women-owned recording studios. Think Olivia Records. “Sisters are doing it for themselves,” was a mantra we were all learning.
The music many of us were hearing in the late 1970s and into the 80s set the scene and helped connect us and introduce us to kindred spirits.
Then in early 1988 along came kd lang with her Shadowland album. OMG.
Texas’ lesbian gals in particular were in l-o-v-e with her. And when customers walked in to my Dallas lesbian bookstore, Curious Times, chances were good that lyrics from one of the songs on Shadowland were floating through the bookstore.
Life’s all about connection, community. When I came out of the closet in the very early 80s I was in my early 30s getting to know lesbian life all ‘round. Curious Times was yet to come, my social group had morphed from straight to queer, and I was dabbling in local politics, vis a vis lesbian and gay organizations and groups.
The politics meant reaching out to like-minded folk in order to build our community, our base, making sure we stayed in touch. But it wasn’t easy back then. There was no internet, no online realm filled with links and apps leading to lesbians. The job before us was to get the community going, which meant collecting names and addresses of known lesbians.
First step, we relied on contact information available to us from friends willing to share their address book, then we licked a postage stamp, stuck it in the upper right corner of an envelope, and stuffed it with a flier notifying lesbians and/or gay women of various events of interest and that sort of thing. And that’s how it went for a while.
Even though the concept of email had been around for a decade, there was no way to turn that into reality because the internet was still under construction.
In the interim we built our Lesbo List through visits I made to the lesbian bars scattered around Dallas. Bars have always been a safe haven for queer folk. Dark and dank, some of them, they all felt like home. There weren’t any straight folks ogling us and you could kiss your sweetheart in front of a bunch of strangers without repercussion.
The bartenders at these spots were sometimes the only ones you felt comfortable talking to about the gal who just left you in the dust. You certainly couldn’t tell your friend at work who was straight and unaware of your lesbian bent. Maybe you would cry a bit when telling your story to the bartender, get a tear rolling down your cheek, and she’d say softly in her Texas twang, “Aw, honey, it’s okay. You’ll be all right. There’s plenty more gals out there for you to find and two-step your way to heaven with.”
She’d wink at ya, take her bar rag, and wipe that section between the two of you. Hands on her hips, she’d lean in across the bar. “Can I get you another beer, darlin’?”
You’d nod your head yes and she’d be right back with a cold one.
In Dallas, there were a decent number of lesbian bars – Desert Moon (my fave), High Country, Jugs, Buddies, and Sue Ellen’s. There may have been a few more scattered around at the time. Anyone remember that dyke bar on Henderson? There was a handwritten sign posted on the mirrored wall behind the bar – No Fighting in the Parking Lot.
The sign was disconcerting because I knew lesbians as lovers, never fighters who used their fists. Lesbians will fight with words and perseverance when they’re getting push-back about how they choose to walk in the world, as the lesbian they were born to be, but otherwise they were chill.
Our master list of lesbians kept getting longer, what with our friends’ address books and my bar duck-ins.
I’d visit with a gal friend or go by my lone self, sidle up to the bar, most often with a legal pad in tow, a pen in hand, and introduce myself and the organization I was with, Among Friends, which came out of a brainstorming session with two friends, also activists in the gay community.
The push to recognize the word — lesbian — was national and apparent. The title of the poster announcing the 1987 “March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights” made that clear by not only using the word lesbian, but putting it in front of the word gay. That issue of which gender got top billing, whether with this poster or the name of organizations, had many gay men throwing fits about being second.
Those of us with Among Friends and other groups, including Lesbian Visionaries, and Women Together wanted lesbians to be visible, not only in the gay (male) community but the larger community. The mission of our groups was to organize gatherings for lesbians, the point being to first demonstrate that there were a lot of us out there — and that translated to leverage, whether in the “gay community” or the community at large.
Our efforts to get a master list together created its own energy. After introducing myself at the bar, I’d go with my pitch. “We’re putting together a list of lesbians so we can stay in touch, announce events, meetings, fundraisers, that kind of thing.”
I rarely got turned away. Almost every gal I met along the trail gathering names was quick to put pen to paper. Soon after, they would receive mail announcing an event. For example, a Saturday morning gathering with JoAnn Loulan to discuss her book The Joy of Lesbian Sex. I know from personal experience that event was very well attended, as one might imagine. We sat in small groups, scattered across the thick green grass that was the front lawn of the Metropolitan Community Church, which specialized in filling the pews with gays and lesbians. MCC is still at it these days.
The personal contact information collected helped us build community. By the late 80s, when the internet was up and running, some of us computer people used the amazing software, Eudora, which gave folks, including lesbians, email inboxes, critical connection points.
And here I am in today’s world reaching out to all you folk reading this, some of you whose contact info is in my personal address book. Now, instead of having to make the rounds through lesbian bars – which I’ve read are making a comeback these days – I’m reaching out through email with a similar request for support and the further building of community among lesbians, especially that group of us who are on the other side of 50 now, many of us having moved to one place or another. I f you know someone you think might enjoy my lavender lens focused stories………
We all have stories of love and luck and rebounds. We still live with homophobia. We are afraid sometimes. Some of us have married our gals, some would rather stay single. We all have our stories.
My guess is we all have some kind of bar story. Tell me yours in the comment section. Or, if you’d rather, some other topic will do just fine.
Stay tuned for more lavender flavored anecdotes nestled in the pages of my memoir