On finding other lesbians
It was like happenstance. It was like through work and as a result, I had a very small group of friends, which I found. I didn't recognize it at the time, how lonely that made me. And then, of course, I got involved in this 22 year relationship and my partner was so homophobic…
As two couples, we started to do all kinds of stuff together. They had a big circle of friends, so we met people at the Cape. But we had a life in the summer that didn't transfer back to the city until maybe a year or so later. They had a big party at their home in New Jersey and invited us. I walked into this party and I had never seen all, so many lesbians, you know! Not only that, but they were sitting on each other's lap. They were hugging each other. They were kissing each other. They were talking and my first reaction was, aaahhhh. And then, it was like, "This is where I belong." And that began to change things.
I have six to eight people that are really close friends now. That was just in the last four years. It's been a great ride. I have no regrets. Even my mistakes in the early years. I think I learned from them and I am better for them.
Our network of friends just seemed to expand from one friend to another. The girls from Louisiana would visit and we'd go to Louisiana and meet somebody there. Through gay friends we always had a large group to pull from.
You meet one and then you meet two and then you meet four. Next thing you know, you have a whole circle of friends.
We just never had a big group of friends. We would play ball. She [my girlfriend] formed a softball team in 1949 and that's when we started playing ball. Most of the girls that were on the ball team were gay, but we thought we were the only two like that. We wouldn't dare let anybody know. But then, that is when I really discovered there were others like me.
We had lots of friends. Many of them were straight, and that was good. I had not looked for a world of separates. But even when we found (and I was the one who always found people), even when we found them, again, nobody talked. Even though the women's movement had gone on and there was all this stuff happening, it was as if we were in some kind of a satellite that was enclosed and all of this was happening around us and not touching us.