This is long, but it’s exactly how it happened.
When no one was waiting for me in Schroon Lake, I panicked and then remembered I was supposed to call. There wasn’t a public phone in sight. The village center was at most two blocks long. One side of the New York Route 9 had no shops at all and the other side only a few. There was a café, an ice cream shop with a window for walk up service, a t-shirt shop, the bus ticket window, and a hardware store. The other side had the church, a small town hall, a miniscule post office, and a lodge of some sort. A block to the right was a drive-in sub shop. I dragged everything across the street, and using a borrowed phone from the ice cream shop called the retreat. I told the woman who I was and where I was. I told her the woman in charge was supposed to pick me up, and she said someone would be there shortly. I got an ice cream cone and dragged everything back to the spot in front of the church. It offered a great view both to the right and left, even down to the lake and was well out of the way of pedestrians. After about fifteen minutes, a dark blue Dodge sedan came into town from the north and slowed down across from me. It unloaded three teenagers who went into the ice cream shop and pulled away. I opened my guitar case and bean to play. After playing every song I knew, I checked my watch and saw I’d been waiting an hour. I called the retreat again and was told the woman in charge was still not in. I asked that someone, anyone, come pick me up as soon as they could and was assured someone would. I went back to my spot across the street and waited. Every car’s appearance lifted my hopes, but each time they drove past. The teenagers who’d been dropped off earlier walked down to the lake. I looked at my watch again and was startled to see I’d been waiting over two hours. I didn’t want to make waves, but was considering getting on the next bus and heading back to New Haven. I was very annoyed. Before I did, I thought I should call one more time. I was told someone would be right there. The letter in Ms sounded very professional. There would be group sessions, foot massage, reflexology, counseling, and recreational opportunities. I hoped there might be other lesbians I could talk to. I’d left my husband, come out to my family, friends, and co-workers, but had never had sex with another woman. What if I was really bad at being a lesbian? I’d already flunked heterosexuality. I’d waited for over three hours and was on a first name basis with the town policeman who periodically drove to the lake on his short circle patrol. I also knew the woman at the bus ticket window, the people in the café and ice cream shop. Maybe one of them would take me in for the night. Then I heard a car. Actually, I felt the vibrations before I heard the sound. Looking up, I saw a large brown station wagon, covered in dirt, its windows smeared with dirty streaks. I was aghast. I was waiting for a professional woman, someone who might wear jeans, but would certainly wear a knit pullover, someone with clean socks and a professional manner, and a clean car. This driver could not be the psychologist I had written. Its muffler throbbing loudly, the car pulled over at the sub shop and a small woman in jeans, a denim shirt and an extraordinary amount of hair got out. Whew. Then car came unerringly towards me then went past. Before I could sigh again, it made a U-turn and pulled up next to me. This was the car. The driver’s left hand rested on the steering wheel, holding a cigarette. Her right arm casually lay across the back of the front bench seat, an open beer car in her right hand. If possible, she had more hair than the other woman. Even with her sitting, I could tell she was tall. Her breasts were visible under the blue denim shirt she wore open to her navel. I focused on her eyes. I was considering running away when she asked if I was going to the women’s retreat. With no time to fashion a lie, I heard myself say, “Yes, I am.” She told me her name and patted the front seat. Clouds of dust rose, momentarily hiding her face. “Throw your stuff in the back and sit up front with us.” I wondered how easy it would be to get out if I got in the car. What if part of women’s liberation is that women get to be serial killers and advertise for their victims in MS? I opened the back door and noted the rear window of the station wagon was gone. The woman said, “Yeah, it sucks all the dirt in the county in here.” My pack and guitar case stored, I closed the door and opened the front door. There were seven inches of dirt on the front seat. At least seven inches. She patted the seat again and more dust arose. “C’mon.” I looked at my new gold brushed velour jeans, then at the dust on the seat. I knew that by sitting and sliding I would grind dirt into my new pants that would never come out. This wasn’t New Haven dirt. This was country dirt, and it was laughing at my pants. I got in the car carefully, lifting my butt as I moved. Perhaps the pants could be saved. She drove to the sub shop where the small woman was waiting. “Scoot over,” she said as she opened the door. Lift the butt. Move. Lift the butt. Move. Perhaps I could still save my new pants. “Here, baby,” the woman said. Reaching across me, she handed one of two Italian subs to the driver. Hmm. There was a real possibility these two women were lesbians. Not like any lesbians I had ever seen or thought of or imagined, but lesbians none the less. The small woman introduced herself in a husky voice. Where the driver was tall and ample, she was small and wiry. Her blue jeans were as tight as the other’s, but her denim shirt was only open to her breasts. Her sandwich in one hand, the driver juggled a cigarette and a beer in the other. “Hold this a minute, will ya?” She handed me the beer as she unwrapped the sub. With one end of the sub exposed, she reached for the beer can. A tomato, completely encased in olive oil, squirted out, slid down my new tan canvas jacket and settled on my pants. The woman to my right reached to grab it, inadvertently grinding tomato and oil farther into the fabric. Unfortunately, she was still juggling the beer can and cigarette, and the end result was a flurry of ashes, a tiny cinder, and a generous splash of beer all landing on my pants. Fortunately, the beer put out the cinder before it made more than a small hole in the material. It was over. I couldn’t save my clothes now. As we drove along the beautiful upstate New York roads, the women told me there were six other women at the retreat. When the car turned onto a dirt road I understood the full extent of problem with the rear window. Conversation became difficult, if not impossible as I coughed and choked on the dust. The driver stopped the car at a small bridge. On the right side of the road, she pointed out a small waterfall. The lake above the falls, she explained, was where they went swimming. It was a lovely spot, and I was glad I’d brought my camera. Suddenly a voice hailed us. At the top of the falls, a woman stuck her head out of the water and waved. Someone from the retreat, I learned. I smiled, and we all waved. Then the woman stood up. She was totally naked. She wore absolutely nothing. It was impossible to only look at her eyes. My mind was totally blank. There were no previous experiences to which I could relate this one. Southern girls just didn’t see other girls without their clothes. I don’t know why, but they didn’t. It was probably a good thing. I was aware of a buzzing in my head, as well as the car starting up again. And I knew my mouth, which had dropped open when the woman stood up, was still open. The two women in the car assumed I was the same person they’d picked in town, but they were wrong. The New Haven me, with my proper job at Yale, my religious family, and twenty-seven years of assumptions about life, was gone. The new me didn’t know anything about anything. Everything was up in the air. Not everyone looked as I did or thought as I did or behaved as I did. I no longer stood on solid ground, able to see where I’d come from and where I was going. I stood on the rolling deck of a ship at sea in the middle of giant swells, trying to keep my balance, feeling seasick, unsure of what was coming, aware of the danger of being swept away, but unwilling to miss the trip.
©2009 jgschenck
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