My name is Joani.

I am a Lesbian. .

I have known this since second grade when I fell in love with my best friend Jo. We got all excited and ran to her Mom to tell her that we were in love and when we grew up we were going to get married and I would be Jo’s wife and have her babies. Her Mom quietly said, “Don’t be silly, girls can’t have wives”.

Within two weeks Johanna was gone from our school and her Mom wouldn’t allow us to talk on the phone any more.

My little heart was broken. I got it.

Who I am is not ok.

Not OK with her family, not OK with my family, not OK with the Church, Just not OK.
Never articulated; Never explained. (In my family if it wasn’t spoken, it didn’t exist)

The next 10 years saw one unspoken crush after another, I grew inward and became more bookish and solitary.

I never quite understood what my girlfriends saw in boys. I had four younger brothers who were bratty and noisy and boys my age were too rough and crude for the most part. Oh, I had a couple of close male friends at different times in those years but one of them tried to get me to give him a BJ at 12 yrs. old and the other got serious about a girl who didn’t like me.

I did have a boyfriend for nearly a year around 16/17 yrs. old but he moved and I heard that he had died of AIDS in the 80’s.

Turns out that the girl who was the object of my most intense high school crush (after our gym teacher) is the only other lesbian in our small class and she is still deeply closeted.

I read “Well of Loneliness” when I was 14 and again I got it.

I am not OK but… I am not the only freak in the universe.

At 17 I found a Lesbian Bar. I got caught in a raid, beaten up, along with about eight other dykes and raped along with the other underage sister caught in the scoop.

I did have one lesbian relationship with two other girls in the mid-sixties in Greenwich Village. For nearly a year we shared our lives, our love our bodies and our souls. We danced in the Sheepsmeadowdawn and raged against the War Machine. We burned our bras and smoked dope and raised our consciousness. We were lovers, we were sisters, we were !!!womyn!!!

And then it was time for them to leave the city but I wasn’t ready to go. I wished them well, kissed them Goodbye, got drunk (for a week) and crawled weeping and terrified back into my closet.

My little heart broke.

I got it.

I tried the heterosexual thing, Goddess did I try. Four times I tried. I’m persistent and I love weddings. In fact, if I could do marriage as well as I do weddings, I would only have needed one. I never was a good housekeeper either. Four weddings; four divorces and I never got to keep the house

In the mid seventies I read Rubyfruit Jungle

I got it

I did have son. He is a grown man now who is kind and idealistic and nurturing and responsible and strong and tough (he is a bicycle racer) and he loves me very much.

His other parent loves me a lot too but that is a whole other story.

Life went on in my little closet. In every other area of life I continued to strive for self -knowledge and authenticity. I struggled towards Spirit and the Goddess and spoke of this to no one. I prided myself on being truly me which was 97% truth - the 3% well we didn’t talk about that. And remember, “If it isn’t spoken it doesn’t exist.”

Just like the realization that hit me in my mid-30’s about my Godmother/Aunt and her roommate, Vron who were the social center of the extended family and who shared a life a home, a bed, and their love for many years until Vron died.

‘Omigod” they were a COUPLE! Duh.

And then there was Judy, a straight girl who had always wanted a wife. Hallelujah! We shared life and love and children and grandchildren for twelve wonderful years. We had nice homes in the suburbs a house full of love and children and adolescents and she told me again and again that I was the absolute best wife a woman could wish for.

We both had great and successful careers: she in business; me in Mental Health.

Our boys grew tall and strong and loving and very bright and had many young womyn friends, true friends.

Life was incredible. “Zipdedee do dah thank you God
For bringing her to me
Thank You for making life turn out the way
That I always hoped it could be.”

Right up to the day when she sat me down and explained that after months of soul searching, she had decided that she could either have her new career as a painter or she could have her wife but she said that she couldn’t handle both so we had to split.

My little heart broke.

I got it.

Who I am is not OK.

This time my heart literally broke. I was in the hospital with a heart that didn’t work and the Doctors had no idea why (idiopathic, they said - my ass).

In the hospital that first of many times, I had for myself what May Sarton calls “A Reckoning”. I dug out that 3% b.s. and became me. An attractive, mature, femme Lesbian.

I spent 3 years as a cardiac invalid, lost my wife, my career and my home. My lovely young son drove me and my sailboat to Ft Lauderdale. There I lived on my boat and became a part of the woman’s community, the Lesbian community, and, Oh yes, the Lesbian recovery community for like so many of my sisters I too had become a drunk.

I met a lovely and loving butch woman and we had four good years before we split up for the right reasons.

My heart did not break. We were friends. Until the day she died

I think I finally got it

I am.

It has been a long and interesting, terrifying and wondrous journey. My road has run from Philadelphia to Colorado to New York to California to Colorado and to Florida. I have met the Goddess in many guises and the Goddess has met me in many guises.

My face is lined from years and tears and the sun, my breasts, such as they are sag a bit and my butt has succumbed just a tad to gravity. Actually, I think I’m still a bit of a hottie, for a crone but I don’t worry about it.

I am Joani.

I am Lesbian

I am more

I am authentically me