For My Mother

Reading my friend Elae’s most recent musings on belonging and family led me back to these pages and to my reflections on how long it took me to realize that a) there was a closet and b) I was in it. I stayed in it so that I could belong in my family, or more specifically, so that I could remain my mother’s daughter.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day. I am beyond grateful to be a mother to two of the most beautiful, kind, creative, funny, generous, loving humans I have ever met. They are spectacular.

My mother only knew them as children—I think she would have been delighted by their adult selves. The question is, how would she feel about meeting my girlfriend ( who is also kind, creative, funny, generous and loving)? I’d like to believe that by now in her early 100s if she were still here, she would be happy for me. But I have a hard time getting those words out of my head. The ones she spoke after reading my diary during a visit home from college and discovering I had a crush on a girl. Words like “You are sick.” Those kind of words stick with a daughter for…..decades.

Then again, she had also been hurt by words—and, I suspect, by much more than words. I will never know the details, but now as an adult, I can see that a lot of her life was pretty grim. She was locked in a different kind of closet—one created by poverty and misogny. So I am going to spend this Mother’s Day being profoundly grateful for my relationship with my children, and hoping my mom can feel all of the love that is swirling around in her lineage these days. You have a big gay family, mom. How lucky are you?

The Distinguished Thing

The Indigo Girls, Summer Stage, Central Park, September 2021

Apparently when Henry James was dying a slow, painful  death, he said, toward the very end,  “so here it is, at last, the Distinguished Thing.”

Last night I went to an Indigo Girls concert in Central Park. It was outside, run by the NYC parks department, and proof of vaccination was required.  It was all of the things that the CDC says are relatively safe. And the data suggests that if I do get breakthrough COVID I will just have the equivalent of a bad flu. I do not come into contact with immunocompromised people so I don’t have to worry about making someone really ill through transmission.

And yet. There I was, freaking out at the concert. Standing in a big crowd of mostly unmasking people, singing their hearts, filled me with as much dread as joy.  I tried to focus on the joy. I looked around at the mostly queer crowd, reveling in just being together again. I looked up at the backlit birches, majestic against a moody, Sendak sky.  I hugged my girlfriend, reminding myself of how lucky I was to be here, in this moment, with her.

The past 18 months of the pandemic have forced us to face the Distinguished Thing head on. Death has taken close to 700,000 people in the U.S. That  number is so big, it’s hard to contextualize. I found out this summer that Vermont only has 840,000 residents. If contained to one state, the virus would have wiped out most of the entire population.

Then there is the personal--depending on who you are and how much privilege you live in, you have seen some version of this death. Once, twice, or hundreds of times.

I  live in a privilege bubble. My closest circle of love has been spared, though watching  someone I love grapple with the horrendous side-effects of long-term CO-VID is a different kind of heartbreak.

And yet, in spite of all of the privilege,  I have lived in terror for most  of those 18 months.  In the early days,  it was relentless. Hearing the sirens blaring non-stop, 24 hours a day in Brooklyn,  scared to even go outside and walk around the block for fear of ending up in an overflowing hospital waiting for a ventilator to free up. Then, with more information, the idea that wearing a mask offered some semblance of protection, so that while still fraught with anxiety, a walk was possible. Then a bike ride. Then tentative, masked walks with friends, which drove home how much we humans need the presence of other humans to feed our souls. 

Now, here I am, a fully vaccinated person living in a rarefied bubble.  And yet,  my body still signals fear every time I step a tiny bit out of isolation. Riding the subway in a car with unmasked people feels treacherous. Standing in a small crowded bodega waiting to pay while unmasked people order coffee and a buttered roll feels dangerous.

Last night at the concert,  the Distinguished Thing was part of our collective dance. It injected  the concert with high voltage, human electricity.  The performers and audience were so viscerally connected we might as well have been  holding hands. Death was the darkness falling around us; and it was what made each note so much sweeter.

Stacey Abrams, Goddess of Democracy

Thank you, Stacey Abrams. This week while white supremacists ripped up the capitol causing white elites to put down their wine glasses in shock, you showed us the way. Your years and years of hard, thankless work have saved us in too many ways to count. I bow down to you, our Goddess, our Queen.

Tiptoeing into 2021 with Lateblooming Gratitude

We should probably tiptoe in, right? No loud talking, no sudden noises. This is a delicate operation. Three days in, and I already fell into the trap of looking for “the other side.”

I am hopeful—for humanity to re-enter the White House, for the vaccine to eventually change the way we can be with each other, for the racial uprisings to have started something…

But for the moment, the only side I can see right now is the one we’re still in. So I’m going to do my best to enjoy the view. To be grateful for health, safety, the privilege that makes those two things possible, and most of all, for love. (see above—me and my daughter: pandemic visiting in Vermont)

And for discoveries. Today, I discovered the Secret Sisters, and their song, Late Bloomer:
I'm a late bloomer
This is surely true
It doesn't matter when you bloom
It matters that you do

Here’s to Lateblooming. This new year might be a late bloomer, but then, so am I:)

Missing People in a Pandemic

I love people. I knew that before, but there is nothing like a pandemic to illuminate what feeds your soul.  I love the kinetic zap of energy  that comes from a good conversation, a loving goodbye hug, a high-five after a great goal. I love sitting in the back row in my super queer church, feeling both blissfully alone in my own spiritual communion and completely connected to everyone else in the room. Even if I’ve never met them. I love that we are both there, alone and together. I love people watching. The kind where you can just soak in someone’s style, their vibe, brief snippets of their conversation, and then try to spin a life story for them from their choice of footwear and the way they hold their head when they listen to their friend. As opposed to the kind of people watching where you immediately freak out if they aren’t wearing a mask.

I am trying to balance the grief with gratitude. While we all grieve the incomprehensible numbers of people who are dying everyday, and the weight of our collective pain, I am acutely aware of, and deeply grateful for, my good fortune: the health of my family and friends,  my circle of love, and the incongruous beauty of these spectacular summer days. 

But today, I am just going to admit how much I miss people. I miss standing next to a bunch of kick-ass women, sweat dripping from our unforgiving neon pinnies, high from the game we just created together. 

I miss you, my people. I can’t wait to see your faces, to touch your skin, and to hug you all again.

Reclaiming My Status as a Late Bloomer

 Current state of affairs: the psychopath is still in the White House. We are three months into a global pandemic. The brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and so many others whose lives were taken have ignited an uprising against police brutality and systemic racial injustice. I’m writing this from my privileged perch in Brooklyn, grateful for the health of my loved ones, relieved that the ambulance sirens are no longer wailing non-stop, and thinking a lot about one of the many wise things Maya Angelou said: 

DO THE BEST THAT YOU CAN UNTIL YOU KNOW BETTER. THEN WHEN YOU  KNOW BETTER, DO BETTER. 

Two years ago I abandoned this blog in part because I thought I was done with being a Late Bloomer. I’ve been out for 18 years--a year longer than my marriage to a man. That marriage produced two beautiful children. The past 18 years have been filled with the joy of finding my true self, as well as a hell of a lot of heartbreak. Achieving a healthy intimate relationship is not for the faint-hearted.

Recently I came to terms with the fact that if and when I make it to 88 ( hopefully still going strong like the divine Edie W), I will still be a Late Bloomer. How many years I’ve been out will never change that. I can, however, change the way I carry it.  I’ve decided to stop treating it like a fatal flaw that needs to be covered up (for god sakes woman, let’s get everything out the closet! ).  After all, it takes a lot of guts to look yourself in the mirror and  admit that you’ve suppressed the essence of who you are for most of your life.  It takes courage to risk upending your whole life to finally live your truth. It requires making yourself and other  people uncomfortable; it demands that you examine your own complicity in upholding the norms of white patriarchy.  What if being a Late Bloomer actually gives you superpowers, and what if they are exactly the kind of superpowers that white queers need to be effective in the fight to dismantle white supremacy? Today, I am reclaiming my status as a Lateblooming Lesbian, so that I can know better, and do better.   Because….better late than never.

Queer Families

What makes a family Queer? Choice. Queer families choose each other. They blow up Norman Rockwell’s tacit agreement with Archie Bunker that blood is thicker than water. They prove Tolstoy dead wrong by demonstrating that happy families are as individual as snowflakes. They are united in one simple principle: they all choose love. Some queer families are born of shared struggle. Some start with blood ties and consciously build a new construct. They redefine motherhood, brotherhood, sisterhood, childhood. Mothers are fathers and fathers are mothers. Brothers are sisters. Sisters are shelter in a storm, fellow warriors in the endless battle, joyful celebrants of daily triumph. More often than not, queer families are engaged in healing the wounds of origin family trauma, replacing it with a message of unconditional support: We got you. No matter what. You are ours; we are yours.  We choose you.

A Letter to Wildfang

Dear WF,

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the  NYC store on my way to the subway today! As you can see from my history, I'm a loyal WFer, so I walked out of the store with a bag of great summer essentials.

I also had an interesting conversation with the staff (who were awesome) about the fact that other than the much older lady on the wall behind them, no one in the photos or on the site looks like me.

You have done a great deal for me. I am a lateblooming lesbian. I came out at 40. So to be able to rock ties, vests, dapper button downs and shorts is way more than a fashion win for me. You are helping me celebrate the person I've spent a lot of my life looking for. 

But I don't feel a part of your community when I shop on the site. And I suspect there are lots more folks like me--who either wear your clothes or would love to if they saw other people like them.  We might be over 50 but we are still fabulous.

Last year I was asked to be in  Good Housekeeping's Fab over 50 series.  When I walked into the photo shoot wearing my WF tie, they asked me stay in my own clothes.  While the women next to me were donning stilettos and slipping into couture dresses, I was trading shopping tips with the adorable man doing my make-up about where to buy tailored mens' dress shirts in small sizes. And feeling so incredibly, ecstatically, authentically me.

Congrats on the new store--I look forward to spending time in it, and eventually, to seeing folks who look like me up on those walls!

Best,

Lisa

First Girl Crush

 

O.K., Late bloomers, let’s hear it: when was your first girl crush? 

Mine was 7th grade.  Sarah R.  Tall and lanky, with a big a splash of freckles across perfectly angled cheekbones. Dirty blond hair just grazing her collar.  Emerald green eyes. Smile to die for. Every time I saw her, my heart did a back flip.  Which was really confusing. Was this how all best friends felt about each other? Did she feel this way about me?

Best moment ever:  she invited me over the Saturday before my birthday. She opened the door with a huge grin. My heart did a triple axle.  It was a beautiful fall day—normally we’d be headed downtown to wander aimlessly in and out of stores before parking ourselves at Burger King for hours, nursing giant Diet Cokes and sharing an order of large greasy fries. Instead, she made me wait in their family room while she ran up to her bedroom.  Fine by me. I was in love with her whole family— a crew of five athletic, freckle-faced girls with warm, welcoming, seemlingly happily married parents at the helm. In other words, the polar opposite of the sad little state of affairs I went home to every night.

She ran downstairs, holding something behind her back. With a flourish, she pulled out a rectangular piece of wood: "Happy Birthday!"   I admit, I had a moment. Really?  This is your gift?  But then I looked down at what was in my hands. It was a solid maple plaque, carefully stained and sanded by hand. A piece of parchment, burned at the edges, had been lacquered on top.  And on the parchment, in Sarah's loopy script, was a poem about friendship—ending with the one the word I had been longing to hear: love.

I don’t remember the poem.  I don’t remember the rest of the afternoon. I don't remember what else I did to celebrate my birthday that year.  But I will always remember the hug we gave each other after our eyes met.

It took me many years to experience that kind of hug again. But it was well worth the wait.

So, LBLs, how about you?

DIY 2018 HOROSCOPE

I love horoscopes that are more like story starters...they give you a few prompts and then you  just write your own.

Thanks W Magazine's Astro Poets 2018 "Twitter's Favorite Astrologer Predictions"  for a reading just one step up from a MadLib. My Scorpio spirit is poised to

a) Resist.

b) Be a little less cranky with everyone including myself.

c) Turn heartbreak into a new beginning (with a nod to Lizzo and Katie Perry).

d)  Get out into the world and invite the world in.  

e)   Resist.

What's your sign doing this year?

Melting ICE

I attended a vigil for Jean Montrevil  (#FreeJeanNow) in front of the Immigration Court Building at 201 Varick Street yesterday morning.

On Tuesday, January 2nd, ICE officers waited outside of Jean’s house in Long Island and arrested him on his way to work.  He repeatedly told them he had been checking in regularly for 10 years and had his next scheduled check in two weeks. They said there was nothing recorded in the system. Yesterday he was transferred to Miami for a final deportation hearing.

Jean is 50. He has four children— ages 27, 19, 14, and 10.  He runs his own car service business. He is putting his 19 year old daughter through college.  Jean is a member of my church, Judson Memorial.  He is a lovely, gentle, inspiring and responsible leader of many communities.  His story could be representative of the American dream. Instead, it is representative of the America we live in today. 

What if stories about Jean and the thousands of other loving, courageous, law-abiding immigrants whose lives are being destroyed got more air time than Bannon, Kuschner, McConnell and He Who Shall Not Be Named?

There has been some great reporting chronicling how families are being irreparably destroyed. But I’m sure the percentage of total coverage tilts overwhelmingly toward the swirling sound and fury that is now our daily bread. Jean's story, his children's story--and so many other stories--need amplification.

If everyone had to feel this irreparable trauma—if it touched their daily lives-- would we be able to soften hearts and melt some of the coldest effects of ICE?

I don’t know. But today my heart is with Jean and his family as I bear witness to the cruelty they are enduring.

Happy New Year to Me

I rang in the new year at home last night. By myself.  It was awesome.

1.  Feeling triumphant from  taking care of a year’s worth of random paperwork and putting away the Christmas decorations, I settled down on the couch with hot tea, chocolate and a fuzzy blanket to spend some quality time with Gillian Anderson in the Fall.  Man, is she hot. When she kissed Archie Panjabi (was this pre or post  Archie's smokin’  role in The Good Wife?) there might as well have been steam coming off the screen.

At midnight, the crowd roared in Prospect Park, and the fireworks began in front of our living room window. I sat at my desk chair, watching the display and thinking about thirty years of watching those fireworks. There were the early years of walking up to the park with a group people, freezing but festive; the years of waking up to the sound of fireworks after passing out from another day with two children under the age of four. The grief-ridden night we said goodbye to 2001 with Elizabeth and the kids after Dave had died on September 11th.  The years Mark and I kissed with love and affection but no passion.  The year I exchanged passionate kisses with a lover who turned out to be bat-shit crazy.

Last night I was alone but not lonely. There were plenty of  new years eves when I was with others, but felt terribly alone.  Maybe one day I will be with someone and not feel lonely. But for now, I am happy to take my friend Will’s advice: declare victory and move on.  2018, here we come: me, myself and I.

My Son, aka Lovely

P-town, August 2017: the theme was Gods and Goddesses at Carnival this year. Medusa, Athena, and a hell of a lot of topless gladiators were out in full force.

There were many six-packs to be admired, and some kick-ass dykes on bikes valiantly rocking leather under the steamy summer sun. The Provincetown police department appears to be  almost entirely queer and as fashion-forward as my Aunt Edith.

I brought my 21-year-old son James to Provincetown this year—it was his maiden voyage. As the week wore on, I saw his shoulders gradually loosen as he experienced what we all have the very first time we arrive: you are welcome here. Even a white privileged teenager coming out in Brooklyn in 2016 can have a bumpy journey. There is nothing quite  like letting your true colors fly completely unfettered.

We spent the week with my best friend. He’s big on coordinated outfits  and doesn’t trust my fashion sense so he’d ordered  matching togas for all of us.  We tried them on the day before carnival. Mine was too tight  for my middle-aged middle and  way too femmy for me. It  cried out for kitten heels and a clutch—I'm more of a high-top converse and army backpack kind of gal. Then we  switched togas and found our personas.  I  became the soft butch goddess of the resistance, wearing a long rainbow cape and holding  a homemade "Love Conquers Hate"  sign, acknowledging what had just happened in Charlottesville. James let his  inner drag queen fly. After a quick trip into town to the House of LaRue (because of course Provincetown has a store selling heels in mens size 12) we were ready for the parade.

At 6’ 3”, wearing a new auburn wig aptly named “Lovely,”  4-inch glossy lipstick red stilettos, and a toga mini skirt, James looked ravishing. And more importantly, he was radiating joy as he strutted his stuff down Commercial Street. Walking beside him, watching him soaking in the winks, waves, and catcalls was divine.  

We were mother and son, side by side, celebrating ourselves, each other, and the community around us. Our rainbow genes have never fit so well.  Here’s to P-town, and family pride.

Badass Middle Age Women, Part Two: Jane Jacobs

Why isn’t Jane Jacobs a household name?  How many people think of Robert Moses as a towering figure in our city’s history, but have no clue that Jane Jacobs was our savior?  I had no idea either, until I saw the documentary Citizen, which is not a very good film, but managed in spite of itself to tell the story we should all already know.

Washington Square Park would have been a sprawling expressway and most of Manhattan would be a thruway from Westchester to Long Island if it hadn’t been for Jane Jacobs.

And if she had been a big fat man who smoked cigars and intimidated other not so big, just as fat men, we might have had far fewer large, desolate housing projects and many more mixed income communities throughout the city.

She was never accorded the true avenger status she deserved—in fact, the press treated her like a novelty: a cute little middle-aged housewife making noise and wielding protest signs. But she taught herself to be a first-class organizer and masterfully manipulated the media to shed light on Moses’ systematic destruction of New York.

Jane Jacobs wrote The Life and Death of American Cities at the same time that Rachel Carson published The Silent Spring and Betty Friedan unleashed The Feminine Mystique.

We have been doing this work— this shifting of entrenched paradigms, dismantling of male power structures, organizing of badass women to save our cities, our planet, and ourselves—for centuries.  Sometimes it seems like there is no progress at all; sometimes it seems like two steps forward, one step back.  So when I think about what Jane, Rachel and Betty accomplished through their words and actions, and what our world might look like without them, I get re-inspired.  I’m taking my middle aged, grey-haired, tire- around-the-tummy self and jumping into the fray. I’m all in. Thanks, Jane.

Badass Middle Age Women, Part One: Grace Paley

Grace Paley

 1922-2007

I’m reading the newly released A Grace Paley Reader, which was just released by FSG. Wow.

You know how you think you know a lot about an author you admire, and then you find out you didn’t really know jack?   Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and Little Disturbances of Man hit me hard in my 20s.  I can’t remember a single plot line, but I still carry those books in my heart. Through her characters’ every day lives, she reached out to say, yes—I know how you are feeling. You are not alone.  This is just a part of what it means to be human. You will be scarred, but not broken.

  I knew she was a fierce West Village activist in her day. I pictured a little old grey haired lady handing out flyers on the corner of 6th Avenue and Waverly.

But now that I have read (maybe re-read? Signs of my own grey haired lady-ness creeping in) her essays, I realize how profound and powerful her voice was at the time. She was a brilliant, badass woman who saw the world through a clear, fierce, feminist lens, and forever changed the world for the rest of us.

In Illegal Days, she shares her own experience of getting an illegal abortion. It’s one of the best essays I have ever read about abortion. She puts the fight to control our lives, our bodies, and our sexual choices into historical context and makes an eloquent, irrefutable case for abortion rights.

If you want to read about some of the women whose shoulders we stand on, read Six Days: Some Remembering, The Seneca Stories: Tales from the Women’s Peace Encampment, and Of Poetry and Women in the World.  

 Grace Paley’s work reminds us that while the Women’s March was a great day, the real work happens every day—in poetry, in essays, in jail cells, on courthouse steps, and on corners like 6th Avenue and Waverly Place. 

Beware the Cat Food

Thanks to Myfirstgirlfriend. com for publishing my coming out story to my kids:

https://myfirstunacknowledgedgirlfriend.wordpress.com/2016/10/12/a-late-bloomer-comes-out/

The first person I came out to was myself.  It was a surprise, even though it had been a 35-year process, if you start the clock at age 15 when I was wearing men’s military pants and pining for my camp counselors.  The next person I came out to was my best friend.  He didn’t seem surprised.  “Great. Glad you know. Now let’s not tell anyone else until your divorce is final.” Yes, somehow, I’d gotten through 17 years of marriage and two-thirds of a divorce without knowing.  But that’s a whole other story.

After the divorce was final, I started dating women—a terrifying prospect at 40, after almost 20 years of being in a relationship and identifying as straight.  It took me a while to read clues that would have set off alarm bells for LTLs (long-time lesbians). Like, for example, when a woman you are dating organizes her whole life around feeding her cat three hot meals a day.  Then there’s the U-Haul that overstays its welcome. That’s when your girlfriend still co-owns her house with her ex-partner—and the ex lives on the top floor while your girlfriend lives on the bottom. Think Downton Abbey without the starched pinafores.   Granted, it makes shuttling the golden retriever between households a lot easier. But it also starts to feel like you are in a relationship with your girlfriend and a mysterious woman who lives in the attic…. Mrs. Rochester, anyone?

After learning the kind of relationship lessons most dykes had learned decades earlier, I started dating a woman who I met through one of my closest friends.  It began as one of those exciting, charged friendships laced with the possibilities that dance just below the surface. Then one day she drove down to Brooklyn from her New England farmhouse and swooped me off my feet.

This one was the real deal. It also meant that the real coming out moment had finally arrived.  It was time to tell the kids. My daughter was fourteen; my son was eleven. Since they were still reeling from the aftermath of the divorce—an unnatural disaster they would be recovering from the rest of their lives—I had kept my previous ill-fated experiments under wraps. But now, it had become a secret too big to keep—and I wanted to introduce them to my new love.

Talk about terror.  It wasn’t the fact that I was gay, but the questions behind it. When did you know? Is this why you got divorced? Why did you marry Dad? How can you have been married for 17 years and not know? Is our whole family a sham?  I was terrified that they would blame me for the wreckage, and that the bonds we had—the love that defined my world—would be forever broken.

From the moment each of them was born, I loved them with a fierceness that will forever be my anchor on this earth. The joy of small moments, like holding those little hands on the walk to school, was greater than anything else that had come before. And, conversely, the first time they experienced heartbreak, mine broke a thousand times harder.  I’m sure that the fear of damaging that love is what kept my own heart– and self-awareness– cloaked in darkness for many years.

The first conversation was a strange, awkward affair. “I loved your father for years, and then we got divorced, and now I’m dating a woman.” They stared at me and seemed to take it in stride. Years later I found out that I had not avoided setting off those parental landmines that leave lasting scars. Like when my son asked why our marriage had ended, and apparently I had answered, “Sometimes love just runs out.” Wow.  What a great way to comfort an eleven year-old searching for security.

I never quite managed to feel comfortable around my kids with my new partner. She’s now my ex-partner and definitely doesn’t live upstairs. It’s taken a good ten years to feel comfortable around myself with the new me.  But my children and I have forged a new family dynamic—one that is stronger, closer, and more honest than ever before. It turns out that risking the loss of love by sharing the truth can have the opposite effect.

My son, now twenty, came out last summer. I am watching him wrestle with all that entails—no matter how supportive the environment, it is still a road filled with treacherous turns. I hope that he feels both of his parents’ unconditional love, and that maybe my own journey to find and live the truth can make his a little easier.  At the very least, I can warn him about the cat food situation.

Virgin Dyke March

At the tender age of 54, I went to my first dyke march this year. As my BFF would say, it was heaven on a biscuit.  For starters, you'll note this pic is from Eileen Myles's Instagram. In real life, I was standing right next to the lovely lady wearing this t-shirt, looking at Eileen Myles as she took this pic  and thinking, damn--she looks even better in person than she did when she was hanging out with Cherry Jones on Transparent. That was right after Cherry Jones hung out with the 20 year olds in the hot tub...but I digress.

I went to the march with my friends Nancy and Kate (of the purple protest shirt). This was old hat for them—a yearly protest/celebration with dear old friends, mini-reunions, and war stories. For me, it was an initiation ceremony—another rite of passage along the late blooming path.   There I was, smack in the middle of a big, messy dyke bazaar--grey-haired hippies, young studs (with studs), dapper dons, lipstick wonders, babes in Toyland. In between chatting with folks, I walked silently, taking it in. I thought about what the protest meant when it started and what it still means today for the many women brutalized by hatred and discrimination because they've been brave enough to live out loud.

Once again I find myself grateful to all of the dykes who made it possible to walk in a joyous, peaceful protest.  Thank you, women warriors.  

Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles

One of the side benefits of having a kick-ass 22-year-old poet for a daughter is that she introduces me to badass writers like Eileen Myles. I just finished Chelsea Girls, Myles’ first novel which was republished recently alongside a collection of her poems. It felt a little like reading Patti Smith’s Just Us Kids—both books chronicle their early days as broke, starving artists in NYC in the 70s. And they are both fabulous reads, but for different reasons. Among her virtues—or vices, depending on who’s doing the telling—are Myles’ descriptions of her many sexual exploits. Steamy, tender, drunken, passionate and light-hearted, she describes each one with an irresistible honesty and fierce energy. And, if well-written hot-as-hell sex scenes aren’t enough, Myles also gifted me with a revelation about three-ways.   I’ve never been in one—um, or been invited, let me just admit—but the idea always made me queasy. First of all, it’s taken till my 50s to shed a lot of the prudish, self-hating, sex-fearing crap I absorbed from my upbringing. But even with most of that gone (o.k. some of it gone), whenever I thought about it, I wondered whether it would immediately lead to jealousy—what if your partner was more into the other person than you, etc. But it never occurred to me to think about being the third!! There’s Myles, jumping into bed as the new play thing for an adventurous, open-hearted, sexy couple, and on top of that, hanging out with the kids making breakfast and watching cartoons (well, I could skip that part). And getting free dinners—which might have been her primary motivation; hard to tell. Anyway, if you haven’t already gotten the message, run, do not walk, to get a copy, and then get ready to steam up your windows….

DOMA & KARMA

Wow.  These three women were already rock stars:  a SCOTUS Girl Group who could kick Destiny's Child to the curb with their bad-ass legal arguments, white silk pants suits and kitten heels (yes, Edie, that would be you) and love story that conquered all. Now it turns out they were destined to change the world together--and it all started at the same place: women reaching out to help other women get to the other side.

Before Doma...

Eagle Scout Mom Knocks it out of the Park

Read this blog post from a mom who put her son first, by staying quiet about his two moms while he worked on becoming an Eagle Scout, and then wrote a brilliant letter to the troop revealing all. And by all, I mean how lucky they were to have that family as a part of their community. Go Carol, Karol, and Zachary!!  what-i-did-about-openly-gay-leaders-in-my-boy-scout-troop