My Goddesses: A Memoir of the 70s

I have no reply handy. She is right. I know it.

Intermittently, though, Saliyeh and I have sex privately. I think she is trying to understand what is happening to her Kayla. She is very strong, the body of a marathoner, and with me, a male, attends to her own pleasure assertively. She is quite direct about teaching me. She likes to kneel over my face; or have me between her legs at the edge of a bed or sofa. She loves my lips and tongue best, although she clearly is pleased to indulge - moaning and gasping in Arabic and Tshenti - my volunteering to have straight intercourse with her. That's me: I'm a VOLUNTEER. In fact, Saliyeh refuses nothing, and seems to enjoy it all, but especially my licking her. It's not the same as with Kayla.

Full disclosure: Rani visits me at times, too. My interest there is almost pederastic. I have never succeeded in fully entering her; she's just too small, too constricted, even for me. But that doesn't deter me trying, and being even partly in her tiny pussy excites and shames me. No more about that. You know too much already.

I tell neither Cherie nor Kayla about these encounters, nor do Saliyeh or Rani. May as well be hung for stealing a corral full of horses as just one. I am beyond rationality, reason, or even a token self-preservation effort. The posse is on my trail. I can sense them overtaking me. They're shaking out the rope with which they will hang me. Increasingly, sleep evades me. I am losing weight. Irritable. Drinking more bourbon, and obtaining and taking pain pills "for my back", which Cherie watches with concern. I tell her that I am nerved about my thesis defense; entering the real, non-academic world. Not untrue, but not very true, either.

Shit, I am dissolving; huge chunks of me are flapping; falling away into the dust.

I think I'm done here. Who's next?

April 12, 1979. My birthday.

First, my name isn't Kayla. I don't know why Davi renamed me; this cat was out of the bag long ago. Maureen Olafssen. Since I was a little girl, the only people who called me anything but Molly or Mo were my parents, and my schoolteachers in Long Beach. Davi, Cheronne, our friends at the Hole-in-the-Wall, and Sayyanieh call me Molly.

I admire his courage and his honesty, but frankly I don't believe Davi - or any of us - is a victim, except of his own and our hubris, maybe. Since I'm not male or heterosexual, it's hard for me to know what he feels, but I do know that he's hurting - badly - and that he may be the most injured of us all. His wife has left him for another man, and since I know how much he loves her, I know about how much he hurts. It has been painful watching him suffer. I'm not angry at you, Davi. At the worst of my sorrow in our fall, I was never angry at you. I know you did what you could to prevent a painful and confusing living situation becoming a catastrophe. It did anyway, but not because Davi didn't give his all, which turned out to be everything he had or was, and more. We all did. I don't know if Cheronne ever recognized that. I wouldn't have had the honesty or courage to flay myself in public this way, Davi. You're being far too hard on yourself - my opinion. Your GODDESS "editorials", or whatever you want to call them, are pretty graphic. I'm embarrassed reading them. Proud, too; for all of us. We tried. I worry a little bit: you don't know the Goddess readership the way I do; they are VERY offended by your male trespass into intimate territory; and some are probably white-hot that sisters (me, Sayyanieh, Sara, others) would abandon the true faith to fool around with a penis. To a lot of those women, it's the primary tool of oppression. By the way, Davi, you were a shit for having Rani again. Cheating. No fair. If I'd known, I'd have cut you off entirely (like I could have. My power over that was long gone). I knew about Sayyanieh; she told me, in more detail than I needed or wanted. That's so like her, though. Investigate everything personal with rigor and commitment.

"Cherie" is actually Cheronne. DeWeste. Blondie. I'm still angry enough at her to out her. I'll regret it later, so I may as well apologize now. Sorry.

I saw him hollowed out, sleepless, dying over losing you, Cheronne. I was afraid he would kill himself. That creep who took you away for "counseling", seduced you with cocaine, and turned you into his toy; I'll never forgive him. A state-licensed mental-health therapist; highly regarded in his profession. Chairman of the Northern California Council for Mental Health. Prick. I'm going to out him, too.

Let's see: if I can count, I've had exactly three male sex partners in my entire life: Davi, Jim, and Gary. Jim was one of those things a lesbian does in high school to try to train herself to like boys, or to show that she was a normal chick. A red herring. It was unthinkable to want pussy if you were a girl in those days. The expression "red herring" is perfectly appropriate for Jim: when he ruptured my hymen, I gushed blood like a stuck pig, and he used my white blouse to wipe himself off. He was always in a hurry to stick his penis in me, even if I was unready, dry and tight. I don't remember him ever taking time to please me in any way. He just stuck it in me, humped once or twice, and came. Sometimes he came before he stuck it in, and I had to pretend to be disappointed. I had daydream fantasies about rescuing other girls from Jim, who was a kidnapper and rapist in my overheated adolescent girl mind. I fantasized about them shyly showing me their gratitude by letting me undress, kiss, and touch them. I didn't know that I was a lesbian, though. To me, lesbians were tough dykes of the diesel type, with missing teeth and tattoos. They rode huge motorcycles, and masturbated each other with beer bottles.

The other man, Gary, I met at yoga class. I honestly don't know how that happened. I wasn't attracted to him, except in a kind of abstract way, like a sculpture. The women in the class, some beautiful women I would have given a year of my life just to touch, thought Gary was interesting because he was big. I mean, he had a large penis. He hurt me. I bled sometimes, and I think he was proud of that. He didn't know anything about touch, either, or didn't care. He just liked to wet me, stick it in, hump like a rhinoceros, then come on my stomach. He liked to watch himself spurting onto me, like I was just a platter for his semen.

I hated it when he tried to get me to suck him: he would moan, and push down on my head to force me down to his crotch. I was a freak because I never had an orgasm with him, either. The last time I saw him, he was so unspeakable. He thought it would be funny to tell his friends that he had to fuck me in the ass because it was the only way I could have an orgasm. He actually told other men that, behind my back.

That was the end of the men. Never again, and I meant it forever. Now I know what real narcissism acts like.

God damn it. I hate you for making me do this, Davi. I love you, too. Despite everything - grief, my rage, the humiliation, loneliness, I still want you. I can't imagine wanting or loving someone the way I want and love you. All I have to do to become wistful and aroused is to imagine you as I loved seeing you: naked and asleep in bed, with your hand between your thighs, covering or holding yourself. I love just looking at you asleep; you look so young and soft. You have dreams like wild animals must have; sometimes you whimper in your sleep. The softened look on your features when you play the guitar, and your intense introspection, almost sadness, when no one is looking at you. What do you think about; feel? I still don't really know.

Your long thick eyelashes. I love your androgyny: your lean, smooth, stong body; muscles, like a large boy. Tan, warm, smelling of sun, maleness, Mu oil and musk. I love your sweetness and tenderness. Your kindness and sensitivity. Your screwy unpredictable humor. In the morning, when you're in your shorts outside with your first cup of coffee; still sleepy, soft, vulnerable and quiet, I think I love you most then. I fantasize about how we will come together, kissing you and your touching me in the afternoon. I think you and Cheronne have turned me into a nymphomaniac. I've never thought about - or HAD - so much loving, and I don't just mean the physical kind of loving, either. And the actual number of orgasms I had before I moved in with you I could count on one hand; now I have that many in three or four days. Wow. Had. That will probably never happen again. Once in a lifetime; gone now, I'm afraid.

I'm in love with you.

There. I said it. My self-image as someone else's postergirl dyke goes only so far. Truth is all that matters now, and the truth is that to age twenty-five, one person, a man, is the one I can say I've been "in love" with: body, brain, and soul. Wanted that way, that much. Lost myself in.

From childhood, I thought I was in love with you, Cheronne. I suppose I still love you, still am IN LOVE with you. I so wanted to look and be like you. Slender and long legged, a thick mane of golden hair in real curls. The soulful blue-eyed look. The perfect body of a southern California girl, and your sensitivity and loving kindness to everyone else, especially those who are not so fortunate. When you were a girl, you used to bring home little baby birds that had fallen from their nests, and you always cried when they died. You and he are a lot alike, you know? You could be brother and sister; in looks, your quietness, your introspection.

I'm thinking of you quietly looking out the window in your and Davi's room in the forest, with your hand over your pubes, the other absently teasing your own nipple. I'm behind you, hugging you with an arm around your waist; my hand beneath yours, my face in your halo of hair, my fingers in you. How soft and wet you become. The fullness and depth of your kisses. So ready and eager when touched. God, I'm wet.

I cry every night; for you, for Davi, for me. I'm in love with both of you; not separately, but us together. We're a family. We LOOK like a family; maybe that's why people stare at us. Please give us that back.

One of the things I am most grateful to Davi for is that he was not insecure about you and I making love sometimes. He knew we had our private times; he never pried into, or tried to push himself into those times. Maybe that's why he and I felt O.K. to try it that first time, too. It didn't work, at least not in the "without remorse" sense. It nearly destroyed me.

Sayyanieh, my dark warrior princess; in your veins the undiluted blood of ancestors who slew lions with just their nerve and a spear. I would not have survived this without your strength and your humor; your unflinching honesty. The endurance distilled by thousands of years in the pitiless Horn of Africa; your gift to me. Please forgive me for seeming to abandon you; I was lost and helpless. Thank you for being there with me; your support and understanding.

Davi, when I got to know you again after coming to live in California, I was surprised at the ways in which you'd changed. You'd learned to quiet yourself; to listen. You became a genuinely caring, generous, giving man. Sweet and sensitive. Even your guitar playing had changed; matured. When I listened to you my first night in Magalia with you and Cheronne, I was stunned. Embryonic Journey; Anjie; In Christ There Is No East Or West; Sunflower River Blues; Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. You were always fun and nice to me, but I believed you didn't recognize anything much more important than having a good time, theoretically debating the great questions of our times, exercising your quick mind, being right each and every time. Knowing more than everyone else; never not knowing or being wrong. One thing had not changed: You were always such an eager learner. Whatever life had to give, you were going to have all of it. Did it ever occur to you that your appetite for living might be bigger than your heart or soul?

Me, I had learned at the Center for Women's Studies that I really didn't write very well. So I worked on that. The politics never rubbed off on me. I was not able to hate men, and I didn't want to, because I already knew some who were kindhearted and gentle. Some may say that they're just dykes in men's bodies, and I can hear Davi, Barry, and Doug howling at that. They'd crow like roosters to hear that they're just dykes with dicks and facial hair. That's unfair to them. They might actually accept it as a compliment, after they laughed their stupid heads off. I could ask Martha: Is your husband a lesbian; one of us?

You made love to me, Davi. NOTHING had prepared me for that; no one had EVER touched me that way. Other women's bodies, and the wonders we experienced together, were sex. The first time you touched me, in your bedroom with Cheronne, I nearly jumped out of my skin. You exposed something in me that I didn't know was there. Or was it all just your mastery of technique; women's bodies? Yes, I knew what time you were coming home that day. After being around you two, hearing you making love, seeing you a time or two, I was HORNY - constantly. Your home was saturated with sex; love, really. I didn't know how to get to fuck Cheronne without letting you fuck me, too, and it was plain that you wanted to, although you didn't push it. Fair trade. But even then I wanted to have you in me. I saw what it did to Cheronne, and it was nothing like anything I'd ever experienced with a man. Then I felt your patience and tenderness, softness, kindness and generosity; your intuition, your silky, sexy body, not just your skill. You aroused me to madness, and then when you were ready to, you made me come, like it should happen every time. The last thing in my life that I thought could happen, that a man could touch me that way.

I did have some fear about letting you inside me, and I had no reason to believe that my body would like it any better with you than with either Jim or Gary. But you seemed to know how to overcome that. You're always telling us how soft we are: has anyone ever told you how silky your skin is? I felt the tenderness, simple sweetness and love in your mouth, hands, and the rest of you. My body had never felt like that; full and overflowing, not even with a woman. That first time, you and Cheryl and I; when I stopped coming, I was still throbbing almost painfully when I fell asleep. I felt drugged, too relaxed to move.

And then, with Sayyanieh; god, I think I actually DID die. You overwhelmed me; you were so powerful. It felt a little like rape, and at first I WAS terrified. Thrilled, too. I guess that Sayyanieh being there made it all right. My chaperone. I had excruciating orgasms; the last one felt like I was being dissolved in lava. Immediately I was horrified at us; mostly at me. I was going to have to face Cheronne somehow; she and I have never lied to each other. All I could say to her was I'm sorry; I'm sorry, over and over. I felt so awful that I swore to Sayyanieh that I'd never even look at you again.

Cheronne, I am so sorry. None of this was supposed to happen. It should have been just what it was: three people who loved and cared about each other; one part of their expressing their love for one another being physical.

It was plain that you were horrified, too, Davi; at what we had just done to Cheronne and Sayyanieh; to ourselves and our little happy household. How could I tell you that I could not face the difficulty of my wanting you, or the impossibility of not having you again? I swore: Never Again. And three days later, we did it again. And you were so sweet and patient with me, and my body was so thrilled, that I knew it wasn't just some technique you'd developed with Cheronne. It was love. After that, I was lost.

Right from the beginning, I didn't expect to get anything more than "pussy" interest out of you, Davi; the love from Cheronne. (I'm not going to call it my "cunt" anymore. I love it more than that.) Then I felt something else developing, and it scared me. Now I don't know how to live without you; either of you. We're all alone. What stopped me asking SOMETHING of you, or just running away? Cheronne's innocence and decency? My loyalty to her. I feel terrible. Cheronne, I actually SAW the collapse of the Davi who controls everything and everyone around him with his charm, his education, his dramatis personae and graces, the force of his personality. I saw and felt him completely naked and so sad; completely alone and exhausted, at the end of his rope. You should have comforted and forgiven him - us. I couldn't; each time I made up my mind to tell him NO MORE, we ended up making love again. I was lost; turned into a jelly; powerless to do differently.

I think I know what your heroin habit must be like, Davi. A frightened moth to the flame of a candle. No way out; no escape, except to self-incinerate.

Finally she knew, and she took it out of our hands. She could have asked me to move out, or commit ritual suicide in the road. I would have. I would have moved to Africa with Sayyanieh, if I'd had a way to get there. Going away to a place where you have to just survive would have been the only way to make the end not hurt so much. As it was, the agony was partly in watching Davi go down in flames like a meteor, and Cheronne used by some guy on a power trip with a lot of cocaine, a twisted, predatory therapy, and fake sentiments. I understood you evening the score with us by fucking Herr Doktor Steven J. Rousch, PhD. Your grudge fuck. If Davi hadn't become obsessed about that, and started following you around like a person who'd lost his mind, there might have been a real chance for us to rebuild a family. I've never seen a basically healthy person just fall apart that way. I didn't know that he was using heroin again until Martha told me, but I should have known, because he looked and behaved like one of my roommates at the Writer's Center who was addicted to heroin. She self-destructed, more or less as he did.

So, our fair-haired boy lost his way. Stepped from the golden light and fell from grace. All of us lost our way and fell. Ten generations from now, ours could be an epic cautionary tale; a frightful lesson that parents tell their children in hushed tones. Icarus and his wings of beeswax; flying closer and closer to the sun until the wings melt, and he falls to earth in ruins. The story of the two women who were in love with one man.

A tragedy of the real Greek kind. Maybe there's a story there. That's a pretty funny thought: who would publish it? I'll look at my collection of Playboy to see if they print stuff like this.

When I talk to Sara, all I can do is cry. It isn't fair that so much love and UNcommon decency should have ended in so much pain. If I'm really going to see her in Vermont this fall, I'll stop in Wyoming to see Davi. Will he will let me? I feel faint; my heart races anticipating his kiss and touch; his smooth soft body; his heat and sweetness. No guilt and no hurry. What is Wyoming like? Huge and empty, is what I remember. Antelope and endless awesome mountains; clean, wild and free, like the beginning of the world, before humans. A clarity of light that no longer exists, or at least that I've never seen anywhere else. So transparent that mountains fifty miles away seem to loom in suspension.

When I look at all the circumstances, die Welt un Schaung; the Hole in the Wall gang, the consciousness going around at the time, all our self-important sexuality and sensuality, the drugs, me, Rani, Sara, Sayyanieh and the others - the entire situation was a setup for tragedy. It's a wonder that our sweet old neighbors on Sugar Pine Court in Magalia didn't form a pitchfork posse and roust us all out of bed some night to burn us at the stake, then scatter our ashes in some nameless place on a dark, moonless night.