Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma by Ronni Sanlo

my life, I felt like I was someplace where I belonged, though I didn’t know a soul. I didn’t talk with anyone, just watched, just allowed myself to be present in this space that I knew was mine. My coming out had begun.
     
    My heart was very full that evening and I knew I needed to talk with another woman, another lesbian. I just had no idea where to begin to look for support or friendship. No rush though. I’d waited this long and I needed time to think about a game plan.
     
    I got home from the Parliament that night around 2 A.M. I didn’t get Jake’s beer because it was late, but really, I just forgot. I’m not a drinker myself, and I had so much on my mind that didn’t include him. Jake was waiting up for me. Though he had been in a fairly cheery mood earlier in the evening when he called me at work, he was furious now.
     
    “Where the hell have you been?” he screamed.
     
    “Shhh...you’ll wake the kids.”
     
    “The hell with the kids. It’s 2 A.M. Where’s my beer? What’ve you been doing all night with those faggots?”
     
    “Jake, what’s your problem? Are you angry that I went without you? What?”
     
    “I’m angry alright! Hell, I’m pissed! Faggots! If my son ever comes home and tells me he’s a faggot, I’ll get a gun and kill him!”
     
    What???? I felt both shock and terror, and deeply intense anger. Jake was a musician and had lots of gay friends. Some people even thought Jake himself was gay! And maybe that was the real issue but we, of course, didn’t go there. But kill his own child if he were gay? This guy was losing it, and I was frightened. What will he do when he learns about me?
     
    “Jake,” my words were deliberate and measured so that I wouldn’t explode. “How can you be so emotional, so angry, about something that may never happen, when you didn’t give a shit when your daughter was sexually molested a few months ago? What the hell is wrong with you?”
     
    I turned on my heels and walked away, not needing an answer to either of my questions. I don’t remember nor cared if or what his response might have been. My fear disengaged my brain.
     
    I barely recall having another conversation with him for months, until I nearly filed for divorce, just after our 7th anniversary that November of 1978.
     
     
     
     
    11. Coming Out
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    1979
    U.S. President : Jimmy Carter
    Best film : Kramer vs. Kramer; All That Jazz; Norma Rae; Apocalypse Now
    Best actors : Dustin Hoffman, Sally Field
    Best TV shows : The Dukes of Hazzard; Angie; Hart to Hart; Nightline; Knots Landing; Antiques Roadshow; This Old House
    Best songs : Le Freak, My Sharona, Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?, YMCA, Ring My Bell, Bad Girls, Reunited, I will Survive, Good Times, Hot Stuff, Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough
    Civics : Margaret Thatcher becomes British Prime Minister; Iranian militants seize U.S. embassy in Teheran: Kent State University massacre in Ohio; Nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, PA; CAT scan developed.
    Popular Culture : The Dead Zone by Stephen King, The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, and Sophie’s Choice by William Styron published.
    Deaths : Arthur Feidler, John Wayne, Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Mingus
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    Jake and the children and I went to Los Angeles to see my family during the winter school break of December, 1978. I tried to file for divorce a month earlier but didn’t have the courage to go through with it. Jake found the papers and demanded an explanation.
     
    “Why are you doing this?” he screamed through clenched teeth. It was Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, our seventh anniversary. (Funny, neither Jake nor I could ever remember the exact date of our anniversary from year to year. I finally mounted our wedding invitation on the wall of our bedroom just so it looked like we cared.)
     
    “Are you leaving me?”