Once Upon a Dream

In many ways, I feel like this stage of my life is meant for dreaming; so like a good Disney princess, I’m sitting at my window, gazing out onto the starlit night, singing a melody to be reprised throughout the rest of this story. Afterwards, I’m going to put my head down on my pillow and whisper to no one in particular that I will realize my ’09 dreams, no matter what…then I’ll drift…quietly…into sleep…

For the past 3 years I have been writing. My favorite projects are a series of novels I’ve been working on (two are complete but unpublished, and I’m still working on the third). It became apparent to me, as I began combing the lesbian landscape, that there are not enough stories of hope, enough tales of love, enough books of girl-girl romance. When I open a book, I want to get in someone else’s head. I want to know them inside and out. I want to feel what they feel, love who they love, struggle when they struggle and get inspired. This is doubly fun when I have something in common with the protagonist—like oh, say, sexual orientation/romantic tendencies. I want to be titillated, dilated, exhilarated, annihilated. I want to read a book that destroys some sense of my preconceived notions about the way things are and rearranges them, or at least opens the window to a place where I can see a whole new world, a dazzling place I never knew…. I want to ride the magic carpet… I’m going to stop myself here in the spirit of staying classy.

When I started to accept that my life was going to look different than I thought it would: no picket fence, no husband, no heteronormativity (and apparently, no concern for actual English words…), I wanted to fill my head with new images of an ideal life. And, I began perusing the shelves of my local lesbian bookstore—to no avail. I wanted to read the lesbian version of The Fountainhead. I wanted to read the Bridges of Lesbian County. I wanted the lesbian Bridget Jones. Alas, I found nothing. Well, not NOTHING; there was a lot of erotica, but that didn’t seem to satisfy my heart. I found plenty of tragic stories (Rubyfruit Jungle; All She Wanted; etc), and lots of instructional manuals (The Whole Lesbian Sex Book, Box Lunch, Same Sex in the City…)—but none of these things inspired me. None of them showed me how to love.

Then came the L-word. I was forced by my lesbian welcoming committee to catch up on past seasons of this show and to attend the weekly screening of Showtime shenanigans for the following 14 weeks. Here I learned a lot about our “culture,” and I began to see frighteningly familiar social patterns. I enjoyed the camaraderie of the clan, gathering each week, despite our differences, to celebrate our community’s first “real” representation on a major television network. But I began to feel like a malcontent. This wasn’t doing it for me either. Where was the love? Where was the sincerity? Where the heck was the humor? My friends are hilarious! The thing I found hardest to believe about The L Word was not the absence of soft bodies and quirky smiles, but the glaring (and I mean GLARING) lack of wit. I was crestfallen.

I watched a few lesbo films too. “But I’m a Cheerleader” was the only one I came across that actually made me laugh out loud. “Another Gay Movie” attempted to be a comedy, but fell short (in my opinion)—and landed somewhere between offensive and boring. “Go Fish” should have been called “Scared Straight.” Holy hell. If I had seen this film before I had come out, I would have stayed in—if this were the only representation of lesbian life I had to go on, I probably would have joined the convent. Sheesh. There’s not a laugh to be had in this film—nor a sincere emotion for that matter. I dug “Desert Hearts,” “When Night Is Falling,” and “Imagine Me & You,” but again, my complaint was with a lack of humor. I could have done without “Lost & Delirious,” “My Summer of Love,” “Better Than Chocolate,” “The Incredibly True Story of 2 Girls in Love”—and I could probably name ten more. “Wild Side” & “Bound” were good for about 5 minutes each. The sex scenes are worth watching, but seriously, I fast-forwarded through the rest. If I were interested in a life as a con-artist, perhaps I would have identified with these characters; but, alas, I went to college, grew up playing soccer, had friends & family…not exactly the makings of a criminal. Where were the depictions of warm witty women like the ones I was coming to love?

I’m being negative.

The point here is not to criticize every piece of lesbian work that has come before—I am grateful that they produced something and allowed me to feed on some kind of gay media. Truly, I am thankful. The women who came before us really brought the wrecking crew—they knocked down walls and torched barriers left and right. It’s because of them that I’m able to do what I’m doing right this very moment. But, like Ariel under the sea, I want more! I want to be where the people are! So, I started writing the kinds of stories I wanted to read, to see. I wanted to produce something that showed lesbians the way I saw us: like regular real people.

The point in all of this, looking forward, is to ensure that I get these books published. If there were a posse of mice working for me, seven dwarves, a genie, a singing crustacean, or a team of household products who are inhabited by the spirits of my former servants somehow cursed by my own vanity and short-sightedness desperately trying to convince a brunette beauty to fall in love with me before the last petal falls off my magic rose…this is what they’d be working on—but I don’t have such tools. Instead I’ll be using good old fashioned ingenuity and perseverance. I’m going to get these books into the hands of every single girl who needs a laugh, who needs another option, who’s struggling to figure it out, who doesn’t know what she wants, or just wants to try a different kind of love.

This is my promise to myself and to you, faithful reader. This is the year that I will find my agent and get the books published. I think it’s time. And I hope that someday, some punk dyke sits up in the middle of the night, writing on her laptop, critiquing something it took me years to accomplish with a few swift taps of her keys. Dreaming of her own future success, enlisting the help of a Fairy God Mother, Mufasa, Zeus, Mulan, Tarzan, Mary Poppins, and every other power in the cosmos.

Happy 2009, everyone. Here’s to hopeful resolutions and big dreams.