Memoir Chapters

Pride

Should you go? You’ve barely just met Kaye and she is inviting you to go to Pride with her. It’s always been something you’ve wanted to attend but for some reason you just couldn’t seem to get yourself there. There has always been a barrier or excuse hindering your attendance. Like, at your last salon it was considered a holiday, and you were only allowed one of those off a year, and as a straight girl you never felt right taking those days off away from your gay coworkers. Or when you lived at home with your Mormon parents, attending Pride, even as just an ally, because you are straight, would have been too salacious.  

Okay, let’s think this through.  It’s just under two weeks out. There’s no way you aren’t booked. Sundays are your busiest days… Well, would you look at that? Only two clients and both can be moved. Some might call this kismet, fate or even destiny but you could never have known that at the time. You think it's just a small stroke of luck with no greater significance. You call the clients, and they move to different days without a complaint. You tell your husband about this stroke of luck and he’s so supportive, happy for you to have a day off to go celebrate your friend’s community. You get your outfit ready, decked out in as much color as your all-black wardrobe has and you take off.

You meet up with your coworker and Kaye, the one who invited you and started all of this. She brings all of you French fries and we all bask in the glory that is a gorgeously sunny Seattle day. The French fries are salty and hot. It’s exactly what your nervous stomach needs to calm down. Why are you so nervous? You’re just a great ally and want to show your acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. There’s nothing to be nervous about. The music is loud, and the elation is contagious. We are all here to celebrate and support each other. Calm those nerves babe. You are okay. Bask in the joy.

You hear the rumble far before you can see it. It gets louder and louder the closer they come. When they get here, the Dykes on Bikes, something erupts from so deep inside of you that you couldn’t even remember how it got there. The tears burst out and seem to be coming from an endless well. “Stop crying, you are going to ruin your makeup. Why are you even crying in the first place?” Seeing all those dykes old and young moves you. They have fought so hard to be here and to be able to be free. To be openly celebrating their existence with pride. The joy radiates off them and lands in your body. The joy is helping to quell the torrent of tears. You quietly wipe away and hide your tears so no one else can see them. You tell yourself that you are just so proud of these people and the battles they fought so of course you are crying. You are a Cancer Sun and a Pisces moon for heaven’s sake. Your tears are always at the ready so why read into these ones? These tears feel different though and you know it in your bones. You try to ignore this fact for the rest of the day.

 The parade continues on for hours and you enjoy yourself immensely, the tears from earlier fading to the wayside. As you part ways, you want to find a way to thank Kaye for the invite. A simple “Hey, thanks for inviting me” for some reason just doesn’t feel right? You try to shake that feeling off and not be weird and overly grateful for what could’ve just been a nice gesture and nothing more. In this moment you have no idea that it was this invite, meeting Kaye and all those powerful and sacred tears that have set you on a path you never thought was possible. You have no idea that in the next year everything that you knew your life to be, will be gone and you will be embarking on the greatest undoing of your existence. When that chapter closes it will be hard and messy and filled with even more tears. But it will be the best choice you ever make. The day you U-Haul with Kaye reaffirms that choice. The day you marry Kaye reaffirms that choice. The day you walk away from heteronormativity reaffirms that choice. The day you start calling yourself unabashedly a dyke reaffirms that choice. So, should you go? Yes, babe go, and walk into the rest of your life.

I Knew You Had to Know

As you come back to the house you struggle to hold the euphoria of the night with Kaye and the heaviness of facing him. He has always been sweet and kind and loving. He was always patient and cherished you no matter how petulant you acted. In spite of all this you knew you needed to have this night with Kaye. You knew you had to scratch this itch. That if you didn’t, the not knowing would eat you alive. You knew what you were about to do as you were packing your overnight bag and sneaking it out of the house. You knew what you were doing as you told him the lie about going out to a gay bar and seeing a drag show. You knew what you were doing when you told him you were too tired to come home, and that you were going to crash on Kaye’s couch. A lie you fabricated days prior. She rented the Air BnB and made the restaurant reservations. You got dressed up and ready for a night on the town. You kissed him and hugged him extra tight before you left. It shouldn’t have been so easy to step out the door, but it was. The excitement like wings on your feet. Carrying you toward something you never let yourself dream of.

This was a new kind of intoxication. It wasn’t like anything you had ever experienced. It wasn’t just the illicitness of her affections and attentions toward you, a married ex-Mormon out on the town with the hottest woman you’ve ever seen. It wasn’t just the excitement of her finding you attractive, and you having to quiet the deafening voice of self-doubt. It was the stirring of something ancient within you. It was buried so deep under mountains of shame and the lies the church fed you your whole life. The lies festered, creating a chasm of shame that felt like the Marinas Trench.  A depth so impenetrable you convinced yourself it could never be undone. And then just like that it all came crumbling down. One pride parade and someone who could see you for who you are, sank the unsinkable façade you had built around you.

Whether or not he actually needed something out of your trunk, you can’t quite remember but it was too late. He opened the trunk and found the bag. Maybe he knew you wouldn’t be able to put your actions into words and so this way it was easier. Maybe it was his way of confirming his mounting suspicions while gathering himself for the coming storm. After his discovery you both decide to go to breakfast at your favorite New Mexican restaurant. You share this breakfast together grasping for the last threads of your friendship. The last semblance of your life together. After breakfast we both knew the only place, we could go was the beach. The beach was the background of so many memories together. The time you spent hours laying together listening to stand-up comedy on your iPod, eating gummy worms and ranch wheat thins. Your favorite place to take the girls. The place he took you when you needed to grieve. Who else could hold the gravity of the conversation hurtling towards you other than the ocean?

You get to the beach and park the car. Before any words can leave your lips, you burst into tears. The weight of trying to carry all of this by yourself becomes too much and you are getting crushed under its weight. You can’t get any words out between sobs. He takes your hands and holds them in his and says “I knew you needed to know. I knew you needed to explore this. I don’t want to hold you back and keep you from something I know I can never give you.” These words ease the weight and show you that you are not carrying this alone. Even in this moment, the moment when you both knew your marriage was coming to an end, he was so tender and so sweet. Just like he has always been. He gave you the out you didn’t know how to ask for but knew you needed. He offered it up, even though you knew how much it was destroying him to form the words. You sat together crying at Mukilteo beach. Each lap of the waves at your feet reclaiming the salt of your tears.

Neither of you wanted to acknowledge that you were growing apart even before you meet Kaye. It wasn’t just the mundanity of his annoying habits or a misalignment of our dreams and goals that were making you grow apart. It was this chasm of shame hiding the real you that seeded this distance into every moment. Meeting Kaye dramatically sped up a process that was already unfolding. Looking back, through this lens, maybe this was a better ending because no one was at fault.  

You both knew you needed to know and it’s the love and tenderness that you shared together that helps ease the shame around this period when it gets too heavy. It is that love that is carrying you through the tears as you write this. You both knew none of this experience was rooted in malice, despite the way it looked to everyone else. It was this knowing that allowed for the marriage to come to end with compassion and sweetness, with no hard feelings. It was this love that lets you look back on those 11 years without the waves of guilt washing you back into its clutches.