Summer Is Here & So Are We

We're back!!! After taking a one month reprieve, the AW Magazine is back on schedule. Hope you will enjoy the new reading from our new and seasoned authors alike.

About the only new news here is that we are growing, growing, growing! Lots of new members to get to know both in chat and on the message boards. So please, come and join us, don't be shy! Getting to be part of a new community can be a little scarey. We were all new at one time and we aren't so old on the net, AW is still a baby herself. So come help her grow up and make a space for yourself with us. Until then, enjoy our member made magazine!

Next Issue: July 9, 2001

Wacipi

Mutual of California

Welcome to this edition of Mutual of California's Wild Queendom! As you know, we here at Mutual of California feel that your sense of safety is fleeting. In order to reinforce the feeling of impending doom, we would like to bring you closer than you ever thought possible to danger so personal and gut-wrenching that it will trigger your own fight or flight response.

Our motto is - if you feel safe, you're not watching Mutual of California's Wild Queendom!

This week, our intrepid guide on this journey into the womb of darkness is the brave, and some say certifiable, Leslie. With her is her enthusiastic assistant, Basil, the schnauzer. As usual, we here at Mutual of California have changed the names of those involved in order to avoid costly and embarrassing lawsuits.

Leslie and Basil have been through a lot in the past years, including some wild and reckless episodes that it has been our pleasure to bring to you. Who can forget, "Insanity in the Garden," "Where is my Underwear?" and our highest-rated show to date, "Broken Bones and Bruised Egos - Laura Builds a Deck?"

This week we draw back the curtain of decorum and bring you, "Estrogen!"

Much has been written about the subject, but few have been unfortunate enough to see it up close and in person. With Leslie's help, we have been able to camouflage our cameraman, Murray. He has an excellent vantage point from within a pile of dirty laundry that has been building up over the last few weeks. It is our hope that the beast will simply ignore the pile as she has done in the recent past, muttering, "I know I'm not doing any more damn laundry. I'll tell you that much!"

Everything seems ready. Leslie has positioned herself at the far end of the bedroom, Basil in laying near the top of the stairs in a typically relaxed pose. Don't let her cool posture fool you. She is ready for anything, including lawn gnomes, phantom cats, as well as Laura on her period.

Leslie attempts to draw the beast out of her lair. Remember folks, Leslie has over fourteen years of experience, do not try this at home!

"Hey, Laura?" The call carries well in the bright conditions and low humidity of the day. She hesitates, for a moment. Luckily, her assistant Basil thinks quickly and comes to Leslie's assistance, "Bark! Bark! Bark!"

Laura, predictably, responds to the lure. "What? What could you possibly want right now? What?!?" She begins her slow assent up the stairs, mumbling curses under her breath, typically not directed at anyone. There is a general air of heat that is emanating off her body, a slight sheen of sweat on her upper lip - even on this cool, pleasant day.

After barking at air molecules for a full minute, Basil decides the best course of action is to stand her ground by laying in the sun patch just past the last stair. Laura, while trying to miss her, practically falls into the bedroom door jam and begins to scream, "F%^K! What the hell is that dog trying to do to me? And what is this door doing here anyway?! My God! What is happening around here?" Her confusion is evident on her red face as she swings her estrogen-engorged head back and forth.

Luckily, Leslie is experienced at handling Laura. Any show of weakness on her part at this point could be fatal. Laura has been known to knock people on the floor with sarcasm from as far away as fifty feet. At this close range, Leslie's ego, if not protected by a lifetime of mental health, could be in grave danger.

She reaches for a dart gun kept under a pillow. She carefully draws back the chamber, ready for anything hurled her way. "Babe? How're your cramps?"

"I don't know. Is it hot in here?" Laura begins to visibly burn at the edges. It is an amazing sight, to see a woman actually burst into flames. The heat in the room is stifling. "My back hurts."

"Do you want to take a bath?"

"Arrrgghhh! No! I'd die if I had to sit in a tub full of hot water! The idea makes me want to puke!" Laura turns to go. "I'm going to go and bake a bunt cake. Do we have a pound of chocolate in the house?"

That's it for this months Mutual of California's Wild Queendom, brought to you by our regular sponsors Tampax Tampons and Haagen Dazs. Now available in a convenient twin pack in your grocer's freezer.

Based on the most conservative estimates, at least 2,000,000 gay men, lesbian, and bisexual men/women in the Untied States alone, are or were once married (Buxton, 1994). Few people realize how much lesbianism does exist in society, mostly due to the closeted way these women live. There are found in history a few notorious women who have lived this way. These women have only become known or acknowledged in recent years. Some of these women are Eleanor Roosevelt, Vita Sackvile-West and Virginia Woolf to name a few of them. With the increased availability of information on the Internet, there has been an obvious increase in the numbers of bisexual/lesbian spouses coming out to their partners in traditional marriages. No longer do they have to feel that they are alone. It is like finally coming home. Look around; it could be someone you already know possibly your mother, your sister, your friend, or even yourself. Just who are these women?

A MarBLe is a married woman who has discovered her previously hidden or unrealized sexual orientation. She may be trying to come to terms with the long denied feelings of being different. She usually spends a long time trying to make sense of her life, in order to preserve her marriage and family and, in many cases, her own sanity. In The Hite Report, statistics showed that 87 percent of all married women have their deepest emotional attachments with other women. These women are usually their best friends. However, sometimes these friendships unexpectedly burst into passionate romantic and physical love. There are unique issues faced when the bisexual or lesbian partner comes to terms with her own sexuality.

When people first hear about a person being gay, they automatically assume that a divorce is coming. However, many women feel that the role that society puts on them as caregivers and nurturers, means that they have no other choice but to remain in their marriages keeping their feelings and needs repressed. Many stay due to fear of repercussions. Some of these repercussions are having their children taken from them, being shunned by family and friends, and becoming destitute.

Usually, the lesbian partner did not recognize, acknowledge, or disclose her same-sex attraction or behavior before the marriage. The knowledge that the gay partner now has about herself opens many avenues of response. The bisexual or lesbian partner's struggle to recognize, acknowledge, and accept her orientation is the first wave. This process itself may last just a few months or it may take years before she passes the knowledge to the spouse and usually the process continues thereafter. This disclosure leads to many ways of resolving the issues, as there are issues. The couple usually feels totally isolated, as it is not a commonly known phenomenon. It is a little acknowledged fact that mixed marriages are found in every level of society. Most couples generally do work out their own solutions, whether it is divorce, separation or continued marriage. It is estimated that one third of all couples soon divorce after the shared knowledge. Another third stays together to sort out the issues that have arisen, and to decide where this knowledge will take them. The third remaining marriages work towards the goal of keeping the marriage intact.

A marriage that divorces after the disclosure will have many reasons attached to it. The partner that is gay may feel that they are drawn to be totally gay, may fall in love, or may find that the work of leading two separate lives is too much for her to handle. The husband, on the other hand, may feel that the ideas of sharing his partner, of non-monogamy, of giving up sex, or of wanting his own sexual partner may erode his ideals of a marriage. However, a person has to remember that more often than not, there are usually more issues that are not related to sexual orientation that interfere with the marriage.

The marriages that are working on staying together often fall into three very important coping strategies. These strategies are communication, honesty, and availability of support groups. A rare find in the marriage world is to find one in which both spouses recognize the positive elements of their relationship, and use this basic love to renegotiate the terms of their marriage. These renegotiations are done without jeopardizing their identities and integrity. It is a fact that the traditional views of marriage are major obstacles in trying to make a marriage work. The level of impact, which the outside world has on a marriage directly, effects the outcome of said marriages.

The ability of the husband and wife to explore just what this new knowledge means for them, the marriage, and their family is the start of the second wave. Many men experience rage and anger at first, mostly due to the roles that society has placed on them. To be the man is to be the head of the household, to look after the woman (as she is weak), and to play the typical role of a stud. This all plays into the role of a woman feeling that in order to be complete she needs the husband, the house, the white picket fence and 2.5 kids. To have this entity means she will be happy. As youth, we grow up with these ideals enforced all around us. There is the idea that there are no problems in marriages, even if seen in our own parents' marriage. As these problems find us, we feel the need to show less to the world. We all know that the person next door has a perfect marriage. Married people usually put on faces to show the rest of the world that all is ok in their world. How false this information is to our children! It just keeps the myth going.

The third wave is if the couples have children. The process of telling them that their parent is gay is usually of less concern to them than the concern about having parents who love them and about living in a stable home. The children have to come to terms with the new information about a parent on top of dealing with what is happening in their family. The worry parents have, is a concern about what problems their children will incur outside of the home in their own school, neighborhood, and community that can be anti-gay in nature.

The fourth wave is the coming out to biological family. This can be met with either complete understanding or with an absolute denial of both person and situation. Many times this is linked to religion or ethnic beliefs. A person coming out to her biological family always fears the rejection of said family. Many gays find themselves more in situations of creating a family of choice (one who is totally accepting of a person with no expectations of that person).

The family members all face the same issues: sexuality, marriage and family, parent-child bond, identity, integrity, and belief system. Family members cope with each individual's own perspective as a parent, child, or spouse. As in life, there are different stages to the coping, and each member copes at the different stages in their own way, and often the stages are overlapping and processing occurs at different speeds.

Many women out there night after night weep silently beside uncaring, unloving husbands. These husbands do not see them as real people, and do not care about their pain. Also out there are women who, day after day, feel crushed by the guilt that they are hurting caring, loving husbands because they are gay. These are women who would be happy with another woman but will not make a change because they cannot bring themselves to hurt their spouse, even thou they themselves are living in hell.

There are many divorced women staring at four walls of an apartment with an ache in their hearts, wondering if a bad marriage would have been better than being alone. There are women pulled in different directions by the demands of their children, their girlfriends, their jobs, and their husbands who say they give "permission" for her to have a girlfriend. There are women living with their girlfriends and their children who are struggling to make it as two women in a man's world, as gay women in a straight world. There are women who wonder if they are really lesbian at all who just want the pain to go away, who would love to crawl back into the straight, married closet. There are women of deep faith who wonder if they are sinful, evil, and cannot come out to their own loved ones because of their shame. Women have lost jobs, health, girlfriends, and loved ones. There are women who feel as if they are women without a country, for neither the gay community nor the heterosexual world accepts them. A person will find that these are strong women, ones who have gone through a great deal and will continue to do so. Our society is slowing starting to become more accepting of different lifestyles. At the Illinois Wesleyan University, their Gay Student Alliance has a poster that states " In a typical class of 30 students, 8 students (27%) will be directly affected by homosexuality of self, one or more siblings, or one or more parents." Research shows that a MarBLe has many more options available to herself currently, as long as she remembers the following:

"It is a pause in motion- not a failure to move- a time to plan. As you are standing at a crossroads, you have your backpack on. All you need to do is stop a second and make sure you have gotten everything. Shift the weight a little and make sure this pack is comfortable. Listen to the wind, watch the sun, smell the air – like a deer sniffing—then choose your direction. This pause is so important, it is not a failure to decide, not a waste of time, but a moment you need to be "sure" of what you want to do." (Anonymous 2001)

I am one of these women. I am a MarBLe… Married but Lesbian.

Many thanks to the following :

Abbott, Deborah, and Ellen Farmer. From Wedded Wife to Lesbian Life. Freedom, California: The Crossing Press, 1995.

Anonymous. Letters to the author. 31 March – 20 May 2001

Buxton, Amity Pierce. The Other Side of the Closet. Santa Monica, Cal.: IBS Press, Inc., 1991.

Buxton, Amity Pierce. Personal interview. 29 April 2001

Cassingham, Barbee J., and Sally M. O'Neil. Previously Married Women's Journeys into Lesbian Relationships. Freeland, Wa: Soaring Eagle Publishing, 1999.

Jensen, Karol L. Lesbian Epiphanies - Women Coming out in Later Life. Harrington Park Press, Inc., 1999.

Gay Student Alliance. Gay Awareness. Illinois Wesleyan University

Hite, Shere. The Hite Report. New York: Macmillian, 1976.

For people who can't think for themselves... Just... Ask... Jacki

Give me a break. Wait!!! No....I don't mean that. Just kidding, kiddies. What? No sense of humor, either? Sigh. Life is tough all over, isn't it? Oh well. Not my problem, eh? Here's the scoop....Yes, there is a point here....Ms. Jacki is busy. That's it. None of your business, now, is it...busy at what? It's my life. I'll do what I want, when I want, and with no explanations to anyone, if you don't mind...well, even if you do mind, as far as that goes. Just make something exotic up in your imagination and go with it, ok? Little island in the Caribbean, soft breeze, palms swaying in the breeze, kettle drum music in the background, lots of cute little things in grass skirts moving to the music. You get the idea. Don't you? Gees. Anyway, see you next month...if nothing more interesting comes up for me in the meantime. Keep those questions coming, eh? Remember...without you...I'm nothing (who decided that?), but without me...you're clueless, darlin'...and don't you forget it! And while you're at it...don't forget this either...Love ya!

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