We're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy

I frequently get emails from readers asking me for advice.  While I don't consider myself qualified to tell anyone to model their choices after my two year train-wreck, I thought I'd post some of the questions and answers here, just in case it may help someone else.



Dear Sassy: I left my husband for a woman and now she's driving me fucking crazy! She wants to know where I am all the time and feels threatened when I go out with my friends without her.  She wants to move in with me *rightthissecond* but hell, I just got out of a 15-year marriage to an abusive, controlling man. The last thing I want is that kind of commitment.

She also feels very insecure by my efforts to reach out to other lesbians. Is this normal? HELP ME!

- NotaUhauler

Dear NotaUhauler:

I think it's really typical for the "out" lesbian to be somewhat suspicious of the baby dyke's efforts in reaching out to the queer community.   Not healthy, in my opinion, but typical. I've found women to be so much more jealous and possessive than any man I've ever been with.

When we first come out, we're in a different place than the woman who's been out for a while.  Untangling from a marriage, shifting from straight to gay, raging hormones...it's a friggin' vortex that is sometimes unbearable.  I don't envy the single lesbian who's standing by watching this and sometimes the object of our wrath and indecision.

But, I think what can actually help is explaining to her that you would feel this way no matter who you are in a relationship with. NOT ready for a U-haul situation, NOT ready for a GPS tracking device, NOT ready to share a home with someone else.

My friend Dani told me, "Men are easy. You feed 'em, you fuck 'em...they're happy." 

Women? Way more complicated.  They require reassurance and phone calls and goddamn processing. Get used to it, girl.

Email me your questions too!

 

 

The Gay Ways I Have Changed

I haven't been here in a while, folks. And I could whine and tell you everything that has been going on in my life, but there's only one reason why I haven't been writing lately:

Graduate school is kicking my ass.

BUT, in the meantime, I have created a little list of ways I have changed since I came out (almost two years ago, can you believe it? I shall throw a party for my fabulous gay self.)

1. I no longer carry a purse. Driver's license and credit cards go in my back pocket.  There's something really sexy about reaching into your back pocket to pay for a lady's drink.


2. Short hair, short nails. Enough said.

3. When I walk into a gay bar, I no longer feel like an imposter viewing that world from the outside.  I walk in with my dyke swagger and own the place.


4.  I am not afraid to get naked in a room full of women.  This is not what you're thinking, sluts, I mean at the spa. 

5.  I have learned that I have to watch what I say to women.  Chicks can take one LITTLE FUCKING thing out of context and go off for hours about it.  Sometimes I'd just rather have dental work done.

6.  I think like a gay person now.  My life before was about laundry and making dinner and how I could make my husband's life easier.  Now I realize that I was a reluctant participant in a heterosexist world.  Fuck that.

7.  I have this profound sense of happiness now, even on my worst days I feel confident, peaceful...and just a little naughty.

No, not because I'm gay...

When I was five months pregnant with my youngest daughter, the doctors thought I had breast cancer.  They called a bunch of doctors into the room while my boobs were exposed for all to see (thank god they still pointed to the ceiling) and they started talking about terminating...the pregnancy.  If I had cancer.

As I walked into the hospital to get the results of a very painful biopsy, my husband called from Asia. 

"Good luck," he said simply.

I'm not saying he wasn't worried; I'm sure he was.  But he wasn't there.

He spent a total of about five years deployed while we were married. I sometimes waited four or five weeks between phone calls, and I had no idea when I would hear from him or where he was.  Submarines don't have telephones, and email was unreliable at best.

There was no 'just-wait-until-your-dad-gets-home' going on in my house...were we going to wait six months? No. That water bill wasn't going to wait six months either. So I did everything alone.  I had to.

In the beginning, I waited at the pier in my new outfit with the other wives, waving with excitement as I watched the sub pull in.  Towards the end, managing his life was just another household chore for me and I would ask, pen poised over my desk calendar, "When do I need to pick you up?"

When he finally came home, he would give me a coffee mug from another country and then retreat into his computer room (as small and dark as possible, a replica submarine really) to play computer games.  Totally checked out.

So, you see, I didn't really have a partner. I had no emotional connection to him; how could I?  He left all the time.  Out to dinner, sitting across the table from each other with nothing to say.  No romance.  No intimacy.  As soon as I made friends in our new duty station, the Navy would order us to move.  The overwhelming theme of ten years of marriage was loneliness. 

The Navy was his wife.

Now, every Friday we exchange children.  And when he asks me how and when to pay the water bill, I realize how much I was betraying myself by staying married to him for so long.

Where does the love go?

After 18 months of the drama merry-go-round, I just jumped off. 

Told her I need no contact in order to heal and move on.
I'm exhausted, bruised, confused, spinning. 

Need to stand still for a while.

I've never felt so much fire for another person, never loved so deeply, never tried so hard.  In the end, I couldn't do it.  Couldn't make it work no matter what I did.  There was nothing more I could do.

I'm not a punching bag.  Can't be the sponge for her to vent her toxic anger.  No need for me to repent for all the past sins of those who came before me.  Can't make her feel worthy if she doesn't believe it.  Shouldn't have to heal my partner.

Is it possible that the fireworks I felt for her were me finding myself, the puzzle piece finally clicking in place that I am gay, and that it may not have been her specifically? 

Could it be that I projected all these super intense feelings onto my “catalyst” but it was really a reflection of what I was feeling internally, finally finding myself? 

It doesn’t diminish her importance in my life or in this process, but it also doesn’t mean that she’s “the one.” 

I've unchained myself.  I'm walking away.  I deserve better.

I really deserve better.

The gay things I've done lately

I now live in a very progressive, gay-friendly town.  It soothes my sweet little soul to see gay people whenever I leave my house. 




The other day while driving to work, I saw a man with a full beard wearing a pleated skirt, combat boots and a tiny white sailor hat on his head. 






Yesterday, I saw a butch in a bathing suit riding her daughter's bike in front of my house.


I'm happier than a pig in...well, you know.

So what else have I done?

I joined the office softball team (isn't this SO gay?!)

I met the cast of The Real L Word.

Whitney told me my hair looked great!



I resisted the urge to grab Rose's ass and instead got as close to her as I could for this picture. She smelled AMAZING!

I went out to a straight club and got my boobs grabbed by a hot little blonde straight girl in the bathroom. (I'm pretty sure I could have taken her home but honestly, I didn't have the energy.)

It's been a pretty fun summer.  And feeling more like me every single day...