In the course of my work I shared some of my own writings and erotic poetry with Russians I met. In a sense I was coming out over and over with people there. I wanted them to experience this openness.
In Moscow, my friend Lena said to me one day in 1992, “It is puzzling to me that you feel the need to describe some of the most intimate details of sexual desire in your poetry. It doesn’t seem like you are the one writing the poetry, it is as if the poetry comes from a different person.” That person was indeed me, intimate details notwithstanding.
While Lena had been living with her woman partner for over twenty years, it was difficult for her (and others) to identify in any way with the label lesbian. I got the feeling that they had never even uttered the word before I met them. Over time, as Lena became an activist, that changed.
Who is to judge whether reluctance to talk about one’s sexuality is a genuine need for privacy or a form of internalized homophobia? In my explorations I am becoming aware of how slow and varied the process is. It is worth representing this aspect of human life in the history and customs of a people. Do I personally have a right to write about all this? Should I be publishing a book of interviews with people telling me about their most intimate stories and hidden lives? I felt it was they who took the step and gave me permission to make their stories public.
I have come to understand this question better during my incredible journey with my Russian friends. When I listen to them, I comprehend parts of my own sexual history and family and social dynamics. I too become more public. What is generally considered very private even in U.S. society is made public so that sexual minorities can be liberated. Gays and lesbians have been forced to be secretive about our sexuality to survive. To counteract homophobia, we reveal our same-sex orientation in our art and activism, in the way we dress, and finally in coming out. This is the beginning of our freedom. In the U.S., it reached full force in the 1970s and 1980s as a movement of pride and celebration.
In 1992, I was struck by Lena’s observation, yet I didn’t know if it was just another case of homophobia or simply that she had not read these kinds of details in poetry before. There was no gay movement in Russia. They had never been exposed to the wealth of literature and music that had been produced and unearthed by the queer movement in the U.S. It was all new to her, and it took time for her to take it in.
I remembered how fiercely I had to repress my sexuality as I grew up—my shame about the feelings, the glimmers of attraction to several girlfriends. They were much more intense than my feelings for boys. To my friend, Mary, I wrote impassioned letters in my preteen and early teen years, expressing “my care and concern for you, my confusion about what I feel, even my undying love.” To my friend Celia, a little later, as a sixteen-year-old, I wrote a poem about a rose who wanted so much to be picked, the thorns were dangerous, the beauty precious.
At the time, I firmly pushed away any thought of physical closeness no matter how strong the urges. I didn’t want to risk being rejected or sneered at. I had heard the word lesbian, and it was trampled on. I relegated the word to the bad pile, but what was so right about relating to boys? They didn’t relate to me, and they seemed to be a lot of trouble. Boys were aggressive, strange because of their odd sexual needs, and they didn’t seem to be interested in me.
One of the first times I felt a real physical attraction for another girl was for Celia. She sometimes spent the night at my home in the Bronx. My mother would set up a separate cot alongside my own bed for her. Celia had just put on her nightgown and I felt very conscious of her body, her large frame, the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed several feet away from me. She was staring at me and I at her. She looked beautiful to me, because I loved her and our friendship felt good. Something very powerful—a sudden beam of light, the reverberation of a cello, the wash of an unexpected wave—passed between us. Our gazes became one gaze, as Shakespeare or another poet had noted centuries ago. Yet we were girls, the same sex, nothing good could come of these intense feelings.
I wanted to be close to her—physically. She asked me to hug her. I went to her, pushing the feeling of queerness away. I felt her chest move against mine. I wanted to hold her much longer, but I quashed my desire and we separated. I wonder what she thought as we went to our separate beds. I remember looking at her and finding yearning in her eyes, even in the half-light of my small room. In my bed I turned away from her gaze after saying goodnight. I turned away from her, fighting my desires, feeling exhausted.
It was not until the mid-seventies while on a trip to Soviet Russia, away from my husband, my family of origin, and U.S. society, that I felt drawn to a particular woman again. We were walking by the river in Narva, and questions of life and identity came up.
“Did you ever think about relating to a woman?” my new friend Gina asked, knowing I was married. I was so shocked I could barely answer her. Tears came to my eyes. I had already felt an attraction to her, but it was still unspeakable for me.
I began to free myself from the repression, this denial of my self. As we spoke from the heart about our lives and our observations, I felt a growing kinship with her and a trust in what I was feeling, an irresistible attraction I could no longer ignore or deny. That night, alone in a room we shared in Estonia, my feelings rose to the surface. As we continued to talk from our beds even after saying goodnight, I could no longer keep myself in check. There was no reason to, here in Estonia, far away from everything. I told myself that if Gina said one more word I would go to her. I did.
“I just want to hug you,” I pleaded. She blinked at me and after a moment took me in, encircling me with her arms. I embraced her, feeling a release I had never felt before. My breath was deep, as if I were blowing on a wind instrument. I felt her skin against mine, the smoothness of it, her smell, the softness of her breasts and my own—unforgettable. I unlocked years of pent-up feelings. Dreams became possible.
I celebrated. The rest is poetry. Coming out is poetry.
The Real Poem