Activist and Author
Activist and Author
From Josie Daigle – October 2024
It was 1998 and I had just put my 3-year-old son Justin down for a nap. It was a cold rainy winter day, perfect time for a lifetime movie. I turned on the tv, switched to the lifetime channel and remembered thinking oh great, I love Glenn Close. In the Gloaming and Paradise Road are two of my favorite movies. The movie that day was Serving in Silence. Based on a true story, Glenn Close was playing the role of a woman named Margarethe (Greta) Cammermeyer who was married, had children, and was a colonel in the Army. Greta was challenging her involuntary discharge because she admitted she was a gay woman. I was so confused…how could she be married and be gay. An hour and a half later I was driving to Barnes and Noble to buy the book, I was obsessed.
So let me back track a bit. I grew up in Stamford, CT. I was raised in a loving and conservative family, the youngest of 6 children and I had a Catholic education up until high school. It was the 70’s and life was easy filled with school, riding bikes, swimming at the club, and sleepovers. When I was about 10 years old I remember seeing a man in a dress and someone screamed “faggot”, so I just assumed they were gay. I really didn’t know what it meant to be gay but I knew it was not accepted, I knew that “those” people were not liked. I later met one girl in high school who was gay but never really thought about it. I remember telling her I didn’t care that she was gay as long as she didn’t like me. So, I was interested in boys. The first time I kissed a boy was in second grade, in the cloak room at St. Maurice elementary school. It was fun and exciting. In sixth grade I had my first boyfriend with a guy named Tim. I dated a few boys in junior high and high school but never had a serious boyfriend. My sister was in love, my best friend was in love and I was just trying to get a serious boyfriend. I liked boys but knew that when I kissed boys, what I felt was not what other girls felt. Unlike some of my friends I had no desire to do anything but kiss boys. I’m not sure if I was uncomfortable or stifling my emotions so it wouldn’t lead to anything improper. I was after all raised by a conservative mother who expected me to be a virgin on my wedding day. I eventually learned to go far enough sexually to keep boys from breaking up with me but held on to my virginity until I was 22 years old. In college I met and dated a guy named Steven for 5 years and after graduating college we got married. I didn’t make it to my wedding day, but I think it is important to note that Steven did wait 2 long years before we had intercourse. Sex was okay. I was comfortable with Steven; he was my best friend. Steven and I were happily married for a few years, started trying to get pregnant and succeeded within the first few months and we welcomed Justin Bailey into the world. When Justin was 6 months old, we started trying for baby #2. I was the youngest of 6 so I wanted to re-create my amazing family, yes, I wanted 6 children. After about 3 months of unsuccessfully getting pregnant, I made an appointment with my OB/GYN and he said, “You just had a baby, relax and keep trying.” So, we kept trying and a few months later I had my first miscarriage. I went through almost 3 years of trying to get pregnant, injecting myself with needles filled with who knows what hormones, 3 miscarriages, 3 failed IUI’s and an emotional rollercoaster of getting my hopes up every month and being disappointed every month. I had to face reality; I was not going to have 6 kids. I loved Justin and was so grateful for Justin, but I had enough motherly love for at least 6 kids. Oh poor Justin! So before sitting on that sofa, watching this lifetime movie I had been exploring who I was and what I really wanted to do with my life. I had a B.A. in Psychology from Uconn but I really just went to college to get my Mrs. so I could get married and have 6 kids. After almost 3 years of infertility I was broken inside but I was not going to feel broken and I certainly was not going to let anyone else know I was broken. So I cried, talked to family and friends and faced the fact that I was just going to have to figure out something else for my life purpose.
I was 33 years old when I sat there reading Serving in Silence, not once but twice. I then went back to Barnes and Noble and found they had a gay book section. I browsed a few books but I certainly was not going to purchase one. If I did, the lady at the counter would see the gay book and I couldn’t bring it home because then my husband would see the gay book. I was feeling scared and uncomfortable with my curiosity of all things gay. For months when Steven would have his time alone with Justin I would go to Barnes and Noble, pick up a gay book and read a story about a gay person. At that point I was thinking to myself that I might be gay, even though I was still trying to figure out what that meant.
So, one day I looked in the yellow pages under the word gay. I had no idea what I was looking for but I saw there was a gay bookstore in the city. I drove into the city and walked into the gay bookstore. Again, I was too nervous to actually purchase a book so I browsed through the 2 small aisle’s and the back wall until I saw a sign above the bookshelf that said Ladies Potluck, Friday night 7:00p. I inquired about the sign to the young girl behind the counter and she said “Oh it’s just a bunch of old lesbians that get together every Friday.” I quickly wrote down the address, got in my car and sped home. I told my husband about the ladies potluck(not the lesbian part) and that Friday night I found myself driving back into the city. There are lots of comical stories to tell about those potlucks but the most important thing I learned was there were not only gay bookstores but there were gay bars. I was baffled and immensely curious, what exactly was a gay bar.
I kept thinking about the gay bars but I was too scared to visit on my own so I decided it was time to call my best friend Cindy. I started the conversation with “Cindy, do you think I am gay?” which was followed by her hysterical laughter. I then divulged everything that had been happening to me for the past few months. I reminded her that I was a tom boy when we were young, that I loved exploring in the woods and always felt more comfortable playing with the boys then the girls. I reminded her that when we were 12, I bought a La Bagatelle purse from Bloomingdales, and she had to help me practice walking up and down the street with it because it kept falling off my shoulder. I reminded her that I would watch other girls when they were talking to boys. I didn’t know how to act with boys so I would watch how other girls adjusted their body language, spoke more softly, how they played with their hair, because none of that came natural for me. I told her about the gay book section at Barnes and Noble, the gay bookstore, the potlucks and about the gay bars. Her only question was, “What’s a gay bar”? The decision was made, she was going to visit me in Maryland (She still lived in CT) so we could go to the gay bar in Baltimore City. We walked into Coconuts (what other name is more fitting for a lesbian bar), and I immediately felt comfortable. Cindy was hanging on to me scared to death, but I was walking around looking at all of the gay women in one place. There was music, there were women sitting on bar stools with their legs apart like guys sit and there was a pool table, I loved playing pool! I remember thinking, “I have found my people.”
I knew it was time that I told Steven. At that time, I didn’t want a divorce, I just needed to allow him to go through this process with me. There were many tears shed from both of us. Steven and I had a wonderful marriage and were both scared to think we would not be together forever. He took off his wedding ring a few weeks later and told me I needed to explore my feelings. We both even thought that maybe it was just a phase or maybe I wouldn’t be comfortable. I had never been sexually attracted to a woman, never wanted to kiss another woman, never had any thought whatsoever about being intimate with another woman. I went on a few dates, kissed a few women and soon after met Brenda at the ladies tea dance. A year later, Steven and I divorced amicably with shared custody of Justin and lived close enough to each other to continue raising Justin together. Brenda and I recently celebrated 24 years!
Growing up, I always thought I wasn’t very sexual, that sex was something like eating or drinking, it was just a physical need to be met. After being intimate with Brenda for the first time, I experienced lust. For the first time I experienced being aroused before I was touched. I didn’t want to just have an orgasm, I wanted to have hours’ worth of foreplay. After being intimate for the first time, I wanted to stand naked and scream from the rooftops that I was truly in love for the first time in my life with a girl named Brenda!
