‘Not Marriage Material’ – Submission 11: Girl Crushes by Judy Kiehart

Not Marriage Material is an upcoming anthology of non fiction and poetry – submissions are currently open. More information can be found here.

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Girl Crushes by Judy Kiehart

In the 1960s, Jermyn, Pennsylvania was like most small towns in the United States. My playmates came calling early in the day and we made chalk drawings on the asphalt streets, and roller skated on uneven sidewalks. Once the street lights came on, we played kickball on the corner. Dozens of kids lived in my neighborhood, and I’m not sure why I was drawn to Eva. She was a little older and ten-year-old me followed her around like a puppy. I adored Eva and looked up to her for approval in everything I did.

After two years, Eva outgrew me as a playmate and moved on to boys. It broke my heart. She and girls her age walked past my house giggling and sharing secrets about boys. Mom comforted me from her perch on the porch rocking chair, “They are growing into young women and are boy crazy. Judy, someday you will be, too.”

That same summer, the town hired Sonia for the local playground supervisor duty – a minimum-wage summer job that was not much more than a glorified babysitter. Sonia was older than Eva. She pulled her hair into a loose braid that looked like waves of sand down her back. A spray of freckles covered her cheeks. I volunteered as her assistant collecting stray balls and picking up trash. My heart skipped when I helped Sonia fold the badminton net because there were times our fingers touched. My infatuation with Sonia was so intense it hurt.

This was not how it had been with Eva. I didn’t understand why butterflies fluttered in the pit of my stomach whenever Sonia was near. As I lay in bed one night, I gently stroked my thigh, imagining I was touching Sonia’s leg. I didn’t understand why I liked how it felt. The stroking relaxed me. Then one afternoon, as I sat on the porch, Mom broke my trance when she said, “Judy, stop rubbing your leg.” It embarrassed me even though I was pretty certain Mom couldn’t read my mind. I became self-conscious with painful feelings that my secret emotions over Sonia would be exposed. I would never be boy-crazy. Did that mean I was girl-crazy?

In September of 1966, thanks to my pink-and-white Sears bicycle, I became an almost thirteen-year-old weekend stalker. With help from the telephone book, it was easy to know where people lived. I pedaled through Jermyn’s neighborhoods, and found the street and the house where Sonia lived. I circled the block again and again. I would have given a year’s worth of allowances for Sonia to notice me. Weeks passed without so much as a glimpse of her. The sounds of leaves crushing under the bicycle tires gave way to the first snowflakes. Somehow I learned Sonia was away at college, and I never saw her again.

The schools in our district that housed kindergarten through the sixth grade consolidated and in seventh grade, new students mixed with the old. It was then that I met Annie, Carol, and Elaine. We rode bicycles together, built huts in the woods, and took turns hosting sleepovers. Over the next several months I began to feel intense emotions for Elaine, sensations much stronger than those I experienced with Eva and Sonia. Elaine was my age and as middle school students, we had several classes together. On some weekend days, it would be just Elaine and I hanging out; those became my favorite days. We liked a lot of the same things (attending school, making rice krispie treats, riding bicycles, and the Beatles) and never talked about boys. Elaine became my big secret as we entered high school.

Raised in a church family, I was well aware of the emphasis the Russian Orthodox Church placed on the sacrament of Penance (confession). I knew the first step in getting over the guilt of keeping a secret was to own up to it. Confess it. I had no plans to confide in Father Vladimir and figured Annie and Carol were the next best thing. I wondered how to tell them about Elaine.

Annie, Carol, and I sprawled on Carol’s living room rug and listened to the Beatles’ newest album. Carol talked about someday dating Tommy and Annie was blurry-eyed over a boy named Sam. I was quiet, and both stopped talking and looked at me urging me to share.

I blurted, “You know how you two like boys? Well, this may sound weird, and I don’t know how to say it, except I don’t like boys that way. I like girls.” I continued talking because the silence made me nervous. “I know that makes me different. I keep trying not to be … but my feelings … my feelings … I can’t make them disappear.” I told them about Eva, Sonia, and now, Elaine. “I think this makes me girl crazy.”

Annie said, “You’re my friend, Judy, and I will love you forever. But, please be careful who you tell. My big sister knew a guy who liked another guy. He told someone he shouldn’t have told, and a bunch of guys picked a fight with him and his boyfriend.”

“Geez, Annie, do you think someone will beat me up?” 

“Only boys get beat up. I think … I don’t know for sure.” Annie’s concern for my safety showed behind her thick glasses as her eyes widened. “What about the boys from your church? You went to the movies with one, didn’t you?”

“One date, but I wouldn’t say I’d do it again. I didn’t like the way he wanted to hold my hand.”

“Maybe you haven’t been with the right boy?”

There never will be a right boy, I thought, sniffling.

Undaunted, Carol responded, “Well, I’m not sure what it all means. We’re still friends, right?” She moved close to me and stroked my back which made me cry harder.

“Of course, we’re still friends.” I turned to Carol, “I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know why I have these feelings. When you talk about making out and going all the way with a boy, it frightens me. I’d sooner be with a girl than with a boy. I’d like to date a girl.” 

Carol pondered the new information. “I didn’t know girls dated girls.” 

Annie said, “They don’t. And girls never marry other girls.”

“For a long time, I’ve wanted to kiss Elaine,” I said.

“Ohhh.” 

“Doesn’t Lenny have a crush on Elaine? I don’t think you should say anything to her. She’ll get all kinds of weird.” Annie stammered, “I mean, you’d get weird, I’d get weird. Erm … no hard feelings, Judy, but, well, you have to admit, it’s not normal, right?

“Right,” I said. “For now, I don’t need to tell anyone else.”

“Queers just aren’t marriage material,” Annie said and then suggested I pray to Saint Jude. “He’s the patron saint of hopeless and desperate causes. Judy, you have yourself a desperate cause.” 

“I don’t think he’ll listen. I’m not Catholic.”

“It won’t hurt to try. You have nothing to lose.” 

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During the next two decades I struggled to keep my girl crushes in check, a short distance away in New York’s West Village, on June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Revolution made its mark in history. Little did I realize how turbulent these times of fear and secrecy were.

I would not hear about the Stonewall Revolution for another twenty years. In the mid-1970s, during the Stonewall Era, other than the anti-Vietnam War protests, I was not aware of any liberation movements. I had not only been ‘in the closet’ but I had also been living a sheltered existence.

I married a guy to prove to my parents, the church, and everyone else that I was normal. We stayed married because we had a child and the pastor at the Baptist Church we attended preached homosexuality as a sin. The only time divorce was allowed was if one of the pair admitted to having homosexual tendencies or had committed adultery. It was the 1980s and legal battles over child custody in such cases, gave the non offending partner custody of the child. I heard there were risks of losing one’s job and even being committed to a mental asylum. There were times I hated myself for my secret crushes on other women in the workplace, the church, and the neighborhood. The love I had for my son was stronger than my desire to leave the marriage. I could not risk losing parental rights, so I kept my secret.

As we entered the last decade of the 20th Century, significant changes in the political and social climates were gaining footholds in the conservative communities in the States. Work and evening classes at a local university where diversity was accepted and welcomed opened my eyes to the possibilities of living authentically someday.

Our unstable marriage had become quite turbulent. Neither of us was happy. After a late-night argument, I left everything that tied me to the identity I had held for the past twenty-four years. It was a bold step. Eventually, my husband stopped contesting the divorce and signed the papers, freeing me to begin a new life.

The years ahead were promising. Homosexuals were ‘coming out’ in masses, same-sex pairs were calling themselves ‘partners’ and living together openly in many cities across the United States. The World Wide Web (i.e. AOL chat rooms) provided new ways to meet other queers.

In 1998 activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States. That year, at age 45, I met the woman who changed the direction of my world. We moved to a rural town in the Rocky Mountains to start a new life together. We were lesbians, but life in Colorado was not much different than life in Pennsylvania. While we were ‘out’ to friends, it was smarter to be ‘in the closet’ for our work as real estate appraisers because we relied on many conservative bankers and mortgage brokers for assignments. The risk to our livelihood was apparent in our low-populated, conservative county.

In January 2015, after the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the ruling that required all U.S. state laws to recognize same-sex marriages, we were the second same-sex couple married by the county judge. Several dozen friends – including my adult son – cheered from the courtroom. Our grocery store wedding cake featured a rainbow. Our honeymoon was a cruise from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand. The following year we marched in our little Colorado town’s first PRIDE parade. We were finally officially out!

Sixty-four years—a lifetime—have passed since my first girl crush on Eva. To live, to love, and to be free. Who thought the “girl who wasn’t marriage material” would someday be so happily married?

This short story is a combination of several excerpts from Judy’s award-winning memoir “Calico Lane: a memoir about family and breaking through social and cultural norms.”

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About the Author

Judy Kiehart lived most of her life in the Lackawanna Valley in NE Pennsylvania where she admittedly wrote ‘terrible short stories’ and ‘awful poetry.’ She attended Lakeland Schools and Lackawanna Jr. College. Years later, she earned an undergraduate degree while employed at Marywood University. At 45 years old she moved to Colorado, where she joined writing groups and honed her skills. In 2002, Slips was included in the Valley Voices Anthology. Recognition as a local playwright in Chaffee County, Colorado resulted when she adapted other works into one-act plays (performed by Stage Left Theater). Stage Left commissioned her to create a 90-minute holiday program (Global Holidays) which was performed during the 2010 Christmas Season. 

After retirement, Judy and her wife relocated to the Pacific Northwest, and during COVID 19 she wrote her memoir, Calico Lane which begins and ends in the neighborhood of her youth. Calico Lane was launched in January 2022 and later that year won the 2022 Best Indie Book Award (BIBA) in the LGBTQ Memoir category. In March 2023 it earned first place in the first quarter Firebird Book Awards (LGBTQ NonFiction).

Judy’s recent short story, Listen, the Board is Talking, has been published in the 2023 NIWA Anthology, Harbinger. Her recent play, LEON, was staged by two Readers’ Theater groups in Olympia, in 2022 and 2023.

She holds memberships with the National Association of Memoir Writers, the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association, the Chaffee County Writers Exchange of Colorado, and the South Sound Indie Authors. Judy is active on several FaceBook groups including We Love Memoirs.

Judy reads mostly memoirs and watches psychological thrillers. She is an avid saunterer, an enthusiastic dog greeter, and a fan of beach vacations. She lives with her wife, Eileen, and their dog, Suzy, in Olympia, the capital city of Washington.

For lots of fun stuff, visit Judy’s website

To purchase Calico Lane, click here.

Sue Bavey’s review of Calico Lane on Goodreads