Subject: Roberts' Rules: Long Time Passing
From: "Shelly Roberts" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 16:09:37 +0000

ROBERTS' RULES
by 
Shelly Roberts

LONG TIME PASSING

She had her head in her hands, and would have had to stand on a ladder
to see an ant's underwear.  I'd gotten there as soon as I could,
because, on the phone, I could take coffee breaks between her intake
and exhale.  Some discussions demand face to face, and you usually
don't have to listen all that hard to hear a silent wail. So I
narrowed the distance and made eye contact.

"Yeah?  So?  How bad could it be?"

This time the intake and the out were consecutive, but so deep and
long, they'd have done a veteran camel smoker proud. "What's the
point?" she asked.

And I poised.  Waited to find out if the political was personal. Or
vice versa.

"I mean," she said, shedding no light whatsoever. "What IS the point?"

"You've broken up with, uh, whatsername?"  We hadn't keep in all that
close touch for the past year. We had different agendas to attend in
the political wars. We became fund-raiser friends.  Not that we hadn't
slathered bumperstickers together, crayon'd battle signs to decorate
pickets and protests.  We'd just fallen victim to the bane of the 90's
increased-productivity-or-die craze: too much more to do. But we were
still emergency friends.

"Could I buy a vowel, here? "

"Well, what did we get out of all this?  I've spent, let's see, how
long has it been since 1971?  I've spent that long at this. And the
net result is that the status, is quite well quo.

"The people who stand by the sidelines till the turn before the finish
line still jump in at the last second, break the tape, and get the
credit and the applause. Woman's nation is an angry little farm
surrounded by hostile, intolerant neighbors in Mississippi.  I have
three kids who all grew up to be everything I've fought and worked
against, perfect little traditional mommy&daddy couples, whose kids
think of ME as a grandmother, and in the same way I used to think
about Katherine Hepburn,. Old. Eccentric. Admirable.  And a little
shaky."

"Got it bad today, huh?" 

"Do you know that in the past two weeks I've spoken to four groups,
including a gold earring lesbian bunch that butter wouldn't melt in
their mouths.  Never been to a march.  Spend Pride Day at home
celebrating with each other. Still can't understand by we keep
`disturbing' them by asking them, if they can't actually come out in
the open, to go behind closed curtains, and at least vote their own
best interest. I don't know when I've been `tolerated' better.  Now I
know how that bum Nick Nolte played, how he felt when he stumbled into
that Beverly Hills house."  They just don't get it.  And they think
I'm the one whose a little strange.

"Then I spent twenty minutes on the phone with a gay republican.  Talk
about your contradiction in terms.  Who wanted me to vote for Bob
Dull. I tried to explain the term `beholden' to him, and he, in turn,
tried to tell me that Ralph Reed was just a harmless little organizer.
 And I asked him how tall he thought Hitler was?  He accused me of
changing the subject. You want some tea?"

"Hey I haven't been to a good pity party in a long time.  Might as
well have tea at this party. I_"

"And nobody ever says `Thank you.' J'you notice that?  They just
expect it like it's our damn job or something,  While they have
brunches and can afford dry cleaning any more.  She wasn't listening,
so I just tuned in to hearing her talk.

"Not that I was ever in it for the `Thanks. But, you know, it woulda
been nice. Once maybe. So I ask you one more time, what exactly was
the friggin' point? Maybe your memory's still working.

"Yesterday I was talking at the center to a bunch of newbies, and when
I left, I heard a couple behind me saying, `Wow, she must have been
something in her time." 

"Oh, I get it now, it's the aging activist's mid-life crisis."

"I d' know, "she shouted over the teacup. "How many hundred and six
year old activists have you met?  Maybe I shoulda been a stewardess
and married a doctor."

Before I could stop laughing, the doorbell rang.  It was a fatally
timed florist delivering a full box of daisies.  She read the card,
stared at the ceiling a long time, handed me the card, and let one
tear roll slowly down her right cheek.  

"Damn." She muttered "I was just beginning to enjoy this."

The card said:  "I didn't think I could live through coming out. You
made me laugh last night, so I could think. Maybe I won't jump just
yet. Thanks." 

We sipped the tea silently and both remembered what the point was.

________________________
(C) 1996. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved.
May be reprinted only in its entirety with written permission.

Shelly Roberts is a nationally syndicated columnist, speaker, and
author of Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living. Spinsters Ink.