Shame

Rage Pardon

Shame

When I turn over the coin of rage, I come to shame. They are the same currency. There is a world of shame that I carry about the entire Tibe situation, but lately I am thinking about my own shameful behavior of doubting lesbians, of not believing their experiences of bullying and shunning. Being the crazy woman who lays down her whole life for a dog, being the crazy woman on the other side of homophobic bullies and bigots, just occupying the simple space of a crazy woman at midlife causes one to reflect on the other crazy women. What I thought of them.

When I was young, in my twenties, there were women and men whose lives I looked at and I thought I understood. I thought I knew something of their struggles, their challenges. Now, I like at twenty-somethings with their looks of empathy and I want to go back in time and slap myself. I cannot, of course. But I remember and the shame appears.

I remember one woman in their forties, probably my age now, but my age then: in her forties in the early 1990s. She was a butch lesbian. The kind of butch lesbian I love. The details of this story are fuzzy to me; it was over twenty-five years ago, but I remember she had a job in social work and things were going well. She was a hard worker and caring and kind and compassionate, but something happened. A new boss, I seem to recall, and suddenly the whole job seemed to slip beyond her control and soon she was unemployed. The thing we all know, me, her, and everyone around her is that she had been targeted by a boss who was a bigot. She lost her job because of the thing that I loved about her most: her open, butch lesbianism. And this of course was perfectly legal and there was nothing that really could be done about it. And we all looked on with horror and disbelief and helplessness. And here is the source of my shame: I remember thinking, I am different from her, such a tragedy will never befall me, it could not happen to me, I am more careful, less blatant, I fit in, I do not rock the boat, I am safe, I am protected. I am different.

Though of course I am not. And twenty-five years later, something similar happened to me: a situation with some bigots got out of control and everything was perfectly legal, but suddenly we lost our home because we would not out down our beautiful dog to mollify the bullies. And around us were people thinking: I am safe, I am protected, I am different. I hate those people as I am sure this wonderful butch woman must have hated me twenty-five years ago.

This is how shame works, I think. That which we deny when we are younger, we see again when we cannot escape the inevitable truth. Over the past few months, I think again and again, I must find this woman and apologize. Though I imagine an apology would shock her. It is only in my heart that I thought, I am different. Only in my mind that I doubted the seriousness of her experience, the sharpness of her pain, the veracity of her truth. Yet those private expressions are enough to fill me with shame.

I want to apologize; I want to make myself whole through repentance. Mostly though I want to go back, rewind and erase these thoughts. I want to see and hear her from the truth that I now know at forty-six: the world is happy to bully lesbians, deny our humanity, make meaningless our lives.

This circular awareness and the weather today in Brooklyn reminds me of this song by Ferron.

I thank you your letters though they come to me slowly

I hear the city’s in a panic with its first foot of snow

I want to answer you quickly having read you again

‘Cause it sounds like you’re dancing

with time’s favorite friend

And it’s everyone’s secret and muttered refrain

That for all of our trouble we be lonely again