Out in the Mountains

Martha and Belinda’s Excellent Adventure: Part 10

Part 10: Into Vermont & the Epilogue
Belinda Darcy

If you’ve never heard The Sound of Mu-
sic while driving through the pristine
Vermont countryside, you don’t know
what you’re missing. (Martha would like
it noted that she, being the culture-free lit-
tle philistine that she is, does not endorse
this sentiment). Being late September, the
hills were indeed alive, with the colors of
fall. I felt like I was in a car commercial,
As the orchestra swelled and Mother Su-
perior warbled Climb Every Mountain,
Martha lunged for the Sony Walkman and
jammed in her well-wom Pet Shop Boys

_ tape. She slept the rest of the way, until

we reached the outskirts of Burlington,

 

reative Design,
Training and

eisapportsérvicefs I

whereupon she leapt to life. We decided
to drive straight to her sister’s house for
an official welcome, and because we
couldn’t wait to see her munchkins, ages
3 and 1 1/2. At first they didn’t know who
we were, and then, just as Emily seemed
to remember me, Alina pulled her away
to watch Barney on video. Martha’s sister
shrugged and offered us a snack.

Next stop was Martha's parents’ house
(aka “the Big House”) to unpack. We
had the place to ourselves for two weeks
while they were away on vacation. We
sat outside with a couple of drinks and
watched an amazing sunset over Lake
Champlain. The only sound was a chip-
munk scurrying up a tree. Martha turned
to me and said, “Gee honey, I can’t think
why we left LA...”

December 1993

Well, we found a great apartment and we
survived the Dreaded Vermont Winter
with very few complaints, despite a daily
commute to Waterbury. Frankly it was a
breeze, compared to sitting in bumper-
to-bumper, noisy LA traffic, surrounded
by graffitti-covered concrete and steel
buildings and having to worry about
stray bullets and carjackers. I did have a
couple of nasty skids and soon learned
that black ice is not a cocktail.

Martha endured a six—week stint at
Sweetwaters where she was the only fe-
male i a tiny kitchen full of straight men,
most of whom had an abundance of fa-
cial hair and a penchant for Led Zep-
pelin. She was mercifully rescued from
that “hell hole” and landed a job work-
ing for a small business run by two won-
derful lesbians.

Meeting dykes proved to be harder than
we had anticipated. For one thing, here
in Vermont, straight women look exactly

like lesbians. They like short hair, mini-
mal makeup and sensible shoes. It makes
things very confusing. I considered writ-
ing a letter of protest to the Free Press,
demanding that straight women show
some consideration for lesbians, es-
pecially single ones, and wear some sort
of sign clearly indicating that they were
merely Homo Wannabes, and no sub-
stitute for the real thing. But then I de-
cided it was more fun to assume that
they were all dykes after all.

We stumbled upon the underground les-
bian scene quite by accident one cold
December night. Being on a tight bud-
get, Martha had convinced me to go to a
UVM women’s basketball game. I didn’t
know the first thing about basketball, so
the idea didn’t thrill me, but I was tired
of TV so I reluctantly agreed. It wasn’t
until we sat down in ‘our row and started
looking around that we discovered we
were surrounded by dykes! Suffice to
say that we began attending the games
regularly, and I am now on intimate
terms with every nuance of the game.

I was a travel agent for a bicycle touring
company in Waterbury until it was
bought and downsized. The I was an
“elf” at the Christmas Loft for 2 weeks.
Two long weeks. That was an ex-
perience (“Oh you must just love work-
ing here!” eighteen times a day) It had
its moments though, like the day I dis-
covered another lesbian elf who was just
as fed up with the homophobic com-
ments as I was. Then I found my current
job, working for a local silkscreening
shop, which I really enjoy. More im-
portantly we’ve made some great new
friends. So to anyone out there con-
templating a radical geographic move, I
wish you the best of luck and hope this
little tale has encouraged you to take that
leap of faith and “just do it”. We’re
mighty glad we did. V

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