From: shellyr@bridge.net
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 07:44:13 +0000

ROBERTS' RULES
by Shelly Roberts


PARLOR GAMES.


This isn't the only time in my life that being lesbian was considered
cool.

Gather around, Kiddies, while Grandma tells you a little story of the
olden days.

It was the middle 70's, and nearly every woman who didn't
mirror-qualify for airline stewardess (those joined us later, when the
benefits of good looks weren't any longer enough, or the urges got too
high.) came to sit in someone's living room to get her consciousness
raised.

Though no one in those earliest daze spoke much about it, there were
lesbians among us.

Before long, there were more and more lesbians among us. And some who
came to prove later genetic theories, because if they could have been
lesbians, they would have.

There were not a lot of stereotypes at the meetings. Few from
recognizable fringes - which at that time mostly included the more
butchly inclined. (Femmier types then, even as now, still being the
most invisible of creatures.) There were housewives, and business
women - in so far as we were allowed to diverge from the classic
female occupations of mommy, nursie, and caregiver. As well as
disaffected mommies, nursies, and caregivers. So there weren't a lot
of community elders available to pass on the Truths buried in the
available legends.

Women looked at the bad John Wayne imitators they'd married, then at
the soft, caring invitations of women with whom they were now
discovering long hidden, but universal commonalties, and made choices.
New, they thought amongst themselves, choices. 

But into the hives, lurked unsuspected danger. Danger those self-same
stereotypes could have easily warned us off. Diondra.

The predator. She wasn't bi-sexual. Or even pan- or omni-sexual. She
probably wasn't even all that sexual at core. What she was, was 
Trendy. Very stylish. Self-centered. Lost. Needy.  And she looked 
like fun.

She found the women's community, as we all did then, as a haven from
all the suddenly understood, but not forgiven, mistreatment that men
had been programmed into, and hadn't yet let go of through intellect
or force of will. It was a time when, at best, some men like Alan
Alda, or your brother, actually "helped" with housework, defining
exactly whose work it really was. We were her escape hatch.

Diondra was a Phd flirt. Doctor Diondra. She did it with men.
With women. With children. With small domestic animals, and
houseplants for all I know. It was a way to distance people. Keep them
arms length, and hold onto control. 

It didn't hurt, either, that she was gorgeous. Well, it didn't hurt at
first. Not drop-dead gorgeous, but her black locks waved in sensuous
tendrils. She had equally dark eyes, the depths of which let you
understand the definition of obsidian. And a body that made your skin
hungry. 

If you were of a mind to, or a need to, or the object of the billion
watt searchlight she used for a smile, you could pull up any fantasy
to include yourself. And, unfortunately, you could also begin to
believe, all surrounding light diminished, that you just might be the
one to make it a reality.

She was way out of the toaster-oven league. The side bets about who
would wed or bed her could have refurnished Watts. The recruiting
office, if it had really existed, would probably have been promising
three bedroom condo's, though ultimately, no one collected the prize.

The thing with Diondra, and her ilk (she has a definite ilk),
what was obvious to anyone not caught in her light, was that she 
could make sane lesbians completely oblivious to any of the 
duplicity, the over-weaning need for attention, and the callousness 
with which she played her spider-fly game. Maybe she really didn't 
know what she was doing. But, clearly, it had nothing to do with 
anyone else but Diondra. She did it because she could. And those of 
us who could see the game wanted to cry out "Not with MY friends you 
don't!" Not that they'd have listened.

I was talking to Maggie, the other day, a woman who had been netted,
gutted, fried and served for dinner by Diondra back then. Who took
decades to heal. (She wasn't the only one to make a soul investment. 
Support groups could have formed. Worldwide.)

It'd been long between visits, though we frequented the same
community. "Remember Diondra?" I inquired. "Doesn't she remind you of
Lisa?" I persisted, mentioning a newcomer wannabe who was suddenly
showing up, protesting too much, in too many lesbian places, and who
made me understand where exactly on my body my hackles were stored.

"Oh, yeah," replied my scar-tissued sister. "Isn't she adorable? And
it's good that she's exploring her sexuality. "

Some of us never learn. And some of us never have grandmothers to warn
us in advance.

Now that it's cool and trendy and stylish to be lesbian again, Diondra
lives. And she is coming back to your town for a visit. 

Consider this fair warning.

"Not with MY friends you don't!"

________________________
(C) 1997. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved.
May be commercially reprinted only in its entirety with written
permission.

Shelly Roberts is an internationally syndicated columnist, and the
author of the new  best-selling Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Break Ups.
(Spinsters Ink.)