[Venus007]

I was raised by a supreme high femme, my grandma, Nicky. Nicky’s femme was full on pin curling her hair every night, always wearing a skirt, house work in heels, “my you look big and strong”, blink blink blink kinda hetro femme. I had some serious issues with it.

Also I wanted to be a boy since I was about, oh as old as you are when you notice there are boys and girls. Boys didn’t have to get pregnant, they could wear pants, and they could be loud, bold, rough and strong and get dirty. They could climb on stuff, drive stuff, go to college, have a job and money. If I were a man, I would go to work in a suit and carry an attaché case, and at the end of the day a beautiful woman in a crinoline with Marcelled hair would meet me at the door to “my castle” with a glass of chocolate milk and a kiss. Or so I dreamt as a 10 year old poor, Holiness Pentecostal kid growing up in Indiana.

I despised the idea of femme because femme meant female and female meant subjugated. When I was in 6th grade , Mr. Jasinski, caught my first girl crush Rachael arguing with Tony, the bully, about feminism and equal rights for women. As I recall Tony’s enlightened 12 year old argument was because men are stronger, richer and therefore smarter they are the obvious leaders of the world. Mr. Jasinski decided that we would hold a formal debate on the issue. Rachael picked me to be her assistant fact finder (oh swoon). We won.

I read Orbach’s “Fat is a Feminist Issue” and “Our Bodies Ourselves”, Rachael’s mom (may Emma Goldberg forever guard her) loaned them to me, among other books and magazines. In my research it was the first time that I saw women who were not subjugated, women who drove big fast cars, women who didn’t have children unless they wanted them, women who went to college and had careers and money, all on their OWN, women loud, bold, rough, strong and dirty. It created a light in me that would continue to shine deep inside even in and through the darkness that was my adolescence.

When I first came out as a lesbian, I think I was 20 or 21, I dressed in the de rigueur androgynous clothing. It didn’t make me feel sexy although it was comfortable and quite capable for whatever I could dish at it.

A year or two later I was, thank Judy Garland’s ghost, taken in by drag queens. Who helped smooth my edges and showed me femininity as displayed in power through old movies. Ballsy dames, femmes’ fatale, cheeky reporters, witty lawyers and news paper columnists - I was smitten. It was like they gave me a secret weapon that was my birthright as a female creature.

I started wearing clothes that made me feel a little too good to be a good girl and I still wanted the girl meeting me in the crinoline at the door.