It's spring and lovely and gorgeous and the hormones are rising. Mine, too, only they don't tend to circulate in a pack the way they used to. Here's what I mean:
I was walking to the local cafe yesterday, feeling all hip and groovy in my black boots, black pants and velour black top. Yeah, all black. I was childless, which always makes me feel far more butter hips as opposed to boobs. I passed a pack of hip young lesbians hanging out on someone's front lawn. You know, cute studlets in a pack just like I used to be. Even without a daughter in tow AND a groovy black velour top, I have longish hair these days, lots of wrinkles and, more importantly, I'm not out at the watering holes. I walked by. They didn't even look up. So depressing.
I was remembering when I first moved to Minneapolis, something like 15 years ago. Newly out, wanting to sniff every dyke in town, with the feeling that "I have discovered every single new feeling, political idea, community moment that exists in my life" as though they were happening on the planet for the very first time. And me and my friends, we were somehow in the center, somehow the creators of this moment.
I worked in the local women's bookstore - appropriately enough, called Amazon Books. The older collective members were all at least 15 years older than me, had come out in the heydays of the 1970s. At one point, while I was talking with a friend of mine in highly arched tones about how sad it was that 70s lesbians weren't allowed to use dildos because they believed that penetration equaled rape, how misguided, how dry and uninteresting their tribadism must have been. This conversation took place after some well-intentioned anti-violence lesbians had come in and thrown red paint over the lesbian porn mags I had started to order for the bookstore. I felt smarter, more primal, feeling like I had discovered sex, that me and mine were doing things that all those old farts were afraid to dream about.
Into this reverie, broke in one of the older women. "You think you invented sex? We were doing things you can only dream about, we were fiercely against monogamy, believed that sex should be something you shared and didn't try and own, we had parties which I can now see were orgies but we saw them as opportunities to break social bullshit about sexual boundaries. You think using a dildo makes you radical? It just makes you reliant on plastic."
Yeah, Barb. I'm sorry. Cuz I had an edge of that feeling when I walked by the group of young women on the lawn. It was embarrassingly completely ego-based and completely projected. Who knew if they noticed me. Who knew if they cared, let alone had any thought at all about me and my sexuality. But watching them, I suddenly wanted that hormone abundance feeling, of being in my 20s with a bunch of other 20 year olds where the air is rich with how much we all want to touch each other. It changes when you get older. That feeling comes in starbursts as opposed to perpetual rain.
And none of us invented sex. And none of us have ever done all that you can do. But it has been - and it is - fun trying.
1 comment:
Here are my comments:
1) initially i didn't have anything to say because i have never had a conversation with anyone about the pros and cons of dildos - so that part didn't exactly resonate with me.
2) in my hetero world (although i am still proud to be the queerest straight person Raquel knows) i did not sit around with other people talking about the older generation and their coming out, sexual experiences etc. what i mean to say is that again, it did not resonate with me in the same way that i know it might have with other lesbians. i remember this older woman in my office (a lesbian) who was talking about Pride and how she was a bit offended at the tactless t-shirts on the baby dykes that said, "power breakfast" and had a drawing of a hairy vagina. And your comments made me think of Barbara - and how she was a bit squeamish at the out louded-ness of these young women and their risque t-shirts. (as a total aside the women that run/ran Amazon scared the hell out of me = I certainly did not feel "safe" in there!)
3) now, when i go to a bar or look at the young women (hets) that are out on the town - i mostly feel relieved that I am not in that place anymore. I don't have any longing for those days - From Atop of Mount Kristin they seem like they are working too hard intstead of having fun. and i get to go to better restaurants now.
Post a Comment