35 years in the US [audio]

Today is the 35th anniversary of me moving to this country to live with Kelley. (As opposed to the 36th anniversary of meeting and falling in love with her a year and a half earlier. And the 11th and 31st anniversaries of us getting married. Which we also celebrate. Carpe party!)

Here’s a photo of me, taken in Kelley’s tiny apartment in Duluth, Georgia, on her 29th birthday.1 It was the second to last night of a 6-week visit for us to decide if what we had was real, and, more to the point, strong enough to get us through all the hardships ahead. Because, oh, we knew there’s be hardships; and there were.

Taken in Duluth, Georgia, before flying back to the UK to pack my stuff and (ten weeks later) leave forever

That day thirty-five years ago was hard. I left my family and friends, my partner of ten years2, the culture I knew and belonged to, and came—on a tourist visa, good only for six months—to a country where I had no job, no health benefits, and no welcome (it was illegal to even enter the country as a lesbian). I brought two suitcases—my whole life in two suitcases. I had no money. I was also ill, with what was eventually diagnosed as MS, and broke. Saying the move was stressful is an understatement. Sometimes still, a week or so before the anniversary, I have stress dreams of wandering lost and alone in a strange place. I don’t think they’ll ever go away completely.

And today will be an extra specially estranging day—the first anniversary Kelley and I have ever spent apart. (She’s in Chicago on business.) I miss her—but ot nearly as much as I missed her all those years ago when we were separated by an ocean and homophobic immigration law. Here’s a song I wrote for Kelley in either late 1988 or early 1989, which I recorded on a boombox in my Hull kitchen and sent to her on a cassette.

I could write a whole book about those early years—the joy, the stress! the fear, the delight!—and one day I will, and call it The Georgia Years, Part II of my memoir. For now, though, I just want to be glad that everything turned out well. We’re married. We share a life built on shared work and love. And I’m a dual citizen. Life is as safe as we can make it. Life is good.

No, that’s not a dress: vest and shorts. I used to wear dresses occasionally—they’re comfy, and feel good, and are very easy to move in. But as my MS progressed it got harder to wear them: they don’t work well with crutches. Now that I’m in a wheelchair dresses are not a good idea (they don’t hang well when sitting). So I’m not philosophically opposed, I just…don’t. I think the last time I wore a dress might have been when we crossed the Atlantic on QE2. ︎A fine woman who did not deserve to be abandoned. I felt like a monster: she’d done nothing, not a single thing, wrong. And I still loved her. So it was hard. Very hard. Happily, though, a few years later she met and fell in love with and is now married to a lovely woman. In fact, I’m guessing she’s happier now than she ight have been with me. ︎