The bookstore was dividing more and more into factions. I was the last of the straight women. Most of them had been run out of there by the lesbian separatists, who wanted no straight women in the collective. I stayed because I wanted to work with my sister, and I loved her lover as one loves one’s in laws. The lesbians used to call me all kinds of names, from dikey – likey to closet case, and I would good naturedly tell them to go fuck a man. We kidded each other, and sometimes things got unmercifully tense as a result. Mostly, we saw each other as compatriots for choosing to stay in the collective at woman to woman because we were taking a multi-cultural, multi-racial position in the movement to international feminism.
Next faction, Lesbians who were self identified as Sado Masochists vs. the Lesbians who were Pagans vs. Lesbians who wanted to have “baster babies” vs. the Zionists vs. the socialists, and the transgendered vs. the Butch dyke…to see two of those folks fighting about being female was quite an eye opener for me.
About this time, I decided to become a stand up comic. My first act was written for an all black/jewish/latina lesbian audience. The first time I performed was in the basement of woman to woman bookstore, in the year of our white lord ronald reagon, 1980.
