Out in the Mountains

 

Remembering from page1

When I asked if she was lonely in the
years after her partner’s death, she replied,
“I think I would have been lonely, but I
became I a workaholic. I think people have
a tendency to put something in its place. I
worked so much, either at a job or at a
volunteer agency.” Staying so closeted was
difficult she says remembering, “since I
was alone, and am alone, I had to earn a
living, and that was utmost in my mind.
You do what you have to do to survive.”
We spoke after the Vermont ETV Hotline
show on gay life in Vermont and she said,
“It’s just like Keith (Goslant) said, you
have this ambivalence of not being your-
self, but (in a small town) you have to stay
in the closet.”

A friend of Anne’s from Weston was
over to watch the Hotline show the night we
spoke. She is listed as the Vermont contact
on the OITM’s resource page for the Con-
ference of Catholic Lesbians. Allaire cele-
brated her sixtieth birthday in April. In
1969, she was in working in Pennsylvania
for Bell Telephone. Her long-terrn four-
teen year relationship with another woman
was completely unacknowledged by her
friends and co-workers. “Probably a lot of
people knew what it was but I was never
really confronted by anyone at that time.”
She recalls that she never talked about her
relationship or lesbianism with anyone, not
even their other lesbian couple friends “as
incredible as that seems.” “It just wasn’t
discussed,” she said, “I had no knowledge
of any support, nowhere to turn when
things got bad, as eventually they did. You
just had to tough it out yourselves.” She
remembers, laughing, the softball teams of
Bell Telephone as a great place to meet

 

 

 

other lesbians.

Allaire didn’t move to Vermont until
1985 upon her retirement after 37 years
with Bell. By that time she’d already be-
come actively involved with the Confer-
ence of Catholic Lesbians and spent several
years on the equivalent of their Board of
Directors. She recalled on her first retreat
for lesbians in , one that eventually led to
the founding of CCL, she and her lover
made a pact to leave if all the other women
were wearing leather jackets. About her
Catholicism she says she’s sure “the good
ole boys in Rome wouldn’t consider me a
good Catholic, but I've come to define
Catholic in my terms. Consciousness is
primary.”

Elaine, in 1969, was married to a man
and living in the Burlington area with
nearly grown children. She did not call
herselfa lesbian but she was, however, very
unhappy. It was about that time she began
taking courses at UVM, including one on
ethics and “started having my conscious-
ness raised around feminist issues.” “In
69,” she says, “I still definitely considered
myself..., I never actually thought about itI
guess and if I had, I would have called
myself heterosexual.”

She didn’t know any lesbians though
several years prior two “diesel dyke”
women in overalls leaving a barbershop in
downtown Burlington made an impression
on her she never forgot. “I knew they were
different,” she says, “though I didn’t think
lesbian. I don’t think I even knew that
wor 

After more courses and much reading,
including Kate Millet’s book, §§X],]§1 Poli-
tics, she began calling herself a political
lesbian in 1974. “I knew at that point I
wanted to be very much woman-identified.

 

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It wasn’t till later that I met a woman and
fell madly in love and became a sexual

lesbian. Even if that had never happene¢1 ,

think I would have called myself a political
lesbian.”

Barbara was a “fierce environmental
activist” in the Washington, D.C. suburbs
in 1969. She’d taken the year off from a
paying job to do activist work. Despite this,
she says, she was totally unaware of any
political aspect to her lesbianism. “It all
had, in my mind, an unnatural sexual
emphasis, and no political content.” All the
lesbians she knew, she’d met directly or
indirectly through the bar culture. In 69,

she’d just broken up with a woman from a .

“four year attempt at marriage.” Shortly
after that a sexual fling she had with a man

caused her to loose the friendship of a close ,

lesbian friend.

Her bisexuality, she says, “has created
various uproars in my life. The uproar it
creates in 1969 was more worse than the
uproar it creates today. I lost a friendship
because of it back then, now I no longer
loose friends over it.”

Barbara, in reflecting on the changes 5

of the past 20 years says, “now I can meet
lesbians and bisexuals easily at a bar, or
political or theater events, I see things in the
mainstream media.” She finds much less
pressure to be in the closet, either as a
lesbian or bisexual, and says, “the tyranny
of labels is breaking down.” She describes «
herself as very politically aware and no
longer “on auto-pilot” in any sense.

Elaine is now in her sixties, and sighs
when asked to describe what her life is like
today. She is not currently in a relationship,
she says, though that doesn’t change her
feelings about herself. Too much of soci- '
ety, she says, thinks older women are asex-
ual, whether lesbian or not. Older womenin
general are not allowed to have sexual
feelings, she says.

Several weeks ago, Allaire came outto
her local chapter of A.C.O.A. She realized
if she really wanted to talk about any of her
problems, she really couldn’t becall-90
“everyone seemed to be very straight. Sol
delivered a little speech and ended it up bi
saying, ‘Just I as I celebrate the fact that
each of you are worth my love, Iknow that
I am worth yours.’ She got a round of
applause and hugs from both the men and
women present.

Anne Peters broke her silence in 1987
when the Vermont Legislature took “P '11‘
subject of gay rights. She wrote lettefs I0
herrepresentatives,SpeakerRalphW1'18hV ‘

(Continued on page 13)

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