Lee Lynch

Lee Lynch on the changes she's seen. As a gay kid in high school, when I wasn?t in the Village trying to fake my way into bars with my girlfriend, I used to hole up in my tiny room, reading Kerouac and Camus and listening to WBAI, an alternative radio station in New York. I refused to own an A.M. radio or watch anything on T.V. other than late night movies. The consequence of that and later similar behaviors was isolation. It was bad enough that I was gay in the 1960s, I hated the pre-Sgt. Pepper Beatles, James Bond flics and women?s clothing. I had nothing in common with most of my peers and couldn?t sustain conversation even with queers. I was a big bad rebel dyke who wanted nothing to do with pop culture. Well, not really. I was just a nice gay kid from Queens, but that?s what I felt like inside so I rejected much of what the dominant culture embraces. Forty-odd years later, I wonder what happened. Actually, I know what happened. In my thirties, I tried to write dialogue and realize

Christmas in the Lynch household, not your usual holiday. The winter holidays have always been a bit confusing for me. As a little kid, my mother gave me dolls I ignored and my big brother gave me the fun stuff: trucks and guns. We had a little tradition. My father would lug home a Christmas tree and hide it on the fire escape. Christmas morning, Santa would have it up, decorated and ringed with gifts. Except for the big package from my mother?s family in Boston ? how come they didn?t let Santa do his thing? It also puzzled me that Santa could be at Macy?s and Gertz?s, ringing the Salvation Army bells and circling the globe all at the same time. I somehow knew that I shouldn?t ask for explanations, though. Grownups enjoyed keeping their tricks secret too much. By the time I was eight, my family had a car. Suddenly, Santa wasn?t in New York any more, he was in Boston. How did he do that? My Boston aunt always had a ceiling-touching tree absolutely hidden under ornaments, garland and sil

Lee Lynch on the meaning of marriage. I spent way too much of my childhood learning not to be my mother. She was a wife and a housewife; I didn?t want to be either. Every time I hear one lesbian call another ?wife,? it sends shockwaves through my system. I have the same problem when lesbians use the term ?husband? although it sounds perfectly natural to me when gay men say it to each other. In the lesbian feminist movement of the 1970s, lesbian couples were sometimes accused of imitating heterosexuals. What was then called copping out is now a gay movement. I?m having a little problem segueing from the old revolutionary highway to the new, but my sweetheart and I hope to marry next year so I?d better get with the times. Heck, the desire to formally, legally, spiritually and officially marry is pretty much a surprise to me too. My best friend recently went down to a city hall in Connecticut and tied the knot with her partner of many years. She seemed a little squeamish about it, but her

Lee Lynch finds a good dyke cut hard to come by. After decades of discomfort in barber shops and beauty parlors, I finally found a lesbian haircutter. She co-owned a little salon on the north end of a hot dry town at the tail end of a series of mountain passes. Both owners were local moms, with a loyal following of housewives, retired ladies and dykes. It was a strange mix that might have made me hopeful that this right wing county would learn that we?re not contagious except that my haircutter, in her forties and a member of the pre-liberation generation, wasn?t out. Didn?t need to be because she could talk about her kids with the straights and whisper coded words with ?family.? Of course I had heard the old stereotype of gay men as hairdressers, but I?d never been lucky enough to find one. When I learned that lesbians did this sort of thing, well, I knew there was a haircut heaven somewhere. Another lesbian cut hair an hour west of us, but that was too far.  Once I?d experienced the

Lee Lynch on the secret lives of femmes. Goddess knows I try to fold neatly. I figured it was a butch thing or some unnamed disability: dysfoldia? Wrinkleism? Or that generic fallback, SLDS: scruffy little dyke syndrome. No matter how hard I have tried over the years, from washcloths to a canvas tent, there was always a corner poking out, borders not exactly mated, the deepest layer bunched and irretrievable. When I try to line up a towel?s edges, or smooth a blanket?s lump, I find myself with an armload of rumpled disaster. All my life I have thought that certain women ? femmes, whether gay or straight, female or male ? have an innate knack for this sort of impossible task, or were taught secret formulas for everyday dilemmas I found insurmountable. I was blown away to learn this was not the case. In a life-changing moment, I noticed that when my sweetheart folded a blanket she simply faced the rough edges to the wall where no one would see them. I was seriously shocked. I asked her,