The Lady Shirt: On Lesbian Love and Friendship
In an Era When Many Lesbians Didn’t Even Know We Were Lesbians
Hi friends. Welcome, newcomers. This is part of a series about female friendship.
What happened to the lady shirt happened long ago, when my best friend Charlotte and I were in high school in Phoenix, Arizona. I was in love with her but oblivious the way lots of gay kids were oblivious in the dark ages before Ellen DeGeneres and marriage equality. I just knew I wanted to spend every minute with Charlotte. And I liked seeing her wear my shirt. I had no context to understand my feelings1 and no one with whom I could grieve when, through no fault of her own, Charlotte left me.
The shirt was too big for her, but that charmed me: my shirt on her body.
The lady shirt was a t-shirt made of a sensuously soft material. Female dancers inked with bold, blue gestures leaped across the front and back, as if they had discovered flight.
Charlotte called it my lady shirt. As an outspoken feminist who had infiltrated the boys’ intramural basketball games because Arcadia High did not offer a girls’ team, I could not relate to the word lady. Nothing ladylike about muscling teenage boys aside or flailing sharp elbows to protect a rebound. But Charlotte, a small, strong tennis ace with a blond ponytail, could do no wrong in my eyes, so lady shirt it was.
Charlotte coveted the shirt. I was reluctant to give it up. She made a game out of trying to steal it from me. Eventually, I relented. “Just for one day” initially, then “just for the summer.” The shirt was too big for her, but that charmed me: It looked like my shirt on her body. She wore it everywhere and I joked about how someday I would steal it back.
She never made me feel bad for having no Brads myself.
We spent our free time playing marathon ping-pong games; scampering up Camelback Mountain; whacking tennis balls; lounging on her bed listening to John Denver albums; tubing down the Verde River while the sun scorched us from above and the rushing water cooled us from below; and joining my family at Garcia’s for Mexican dinners. The legal drinking age was nineteen, but Dad would wink at the waiter and order two Margaritas, then slide his extra drink over to Charlotte and me. A refill or two later, we would stumble to the restroom, “needing” to link arms, the buzz providing an excuse for a smidgen of physical contact when I could conceive of no other way to express my feelings. Charlotte always had a boyfriend (Brad), and I never did, but we didn’t talk about dating, and she never made me feel bad for having no Brads myself.
As Charlotte and I gallivanted around Arizona, our happiness catapulting us from the valley floor to Camelback’s highest hump, I loved watching my shirt adorn her body but also wanted the shirt back. I felt those confusing cravings with a teenage intensity that was almost painful.
“After a good day with women, why go home with a man?”
My lesbian lightbulb would go off later, in my sophomore year of college, when a lesbian acquaintance asked: “After a good day with women, why go home with a man?” My awakening was based on the irrefutable logic of that rhetorical question. I had always preferred the company of girls and women. I get to “go home” with them too?
Most coming out stories involve noticing one’s emotions and attractions. In my case, the cultural cover-up had been so complete that I couldn’t interpret my own emotions, nor my attraction to Charlotte, until I looked back on it.
Later that same year of college, when Charlotte and I were in Phoenix visiting family and catching up over now-legal Margaritas at Garcia’s, I came out to her and confessed that I finally understood I’d been in love with her during high school.
“Oh, I was in love with you too.”
“Oh, I was in love with you too,” she said immediately.
I knew from the way she said it – without romantic nuance – that she was still straight. But what a gift! She could have tempered it: “I loved you, but not in that way.” Instead, she validated the depth of our bond.
And whatever became of the lady shirt?
The University of Arizona started its fall semester before Stanford did, so when Charlotte and I were departing for college, she had to leave first. We were standing in her bedroom packing her suitcases when I asked her to return the shirt.
It was the wrong thing to do. Charlotte had been planning to take it to college. I still wish I hadn’t asked for it. But when I think about the eighteen-year-old innocent who had fallen hard for her friend, I understand now that I was heartbroken about our impending separation – and grasping for a symbol of our “lady” love.
Charlotte passed me the shirt. To my shock, it looked old and threadbare – nothing like it had during our countless jaunts. The blues had blurred and dulled. The dancers, once flamboyant, looked shrunken. Disoriented. Falling rather than flying.
Simple explanation: too many washings. But it felt like a death. Charlotte and I had breathed vitality into the lady shirt, charging it with light and love until it took on a life of its own. Now, in that final reluctant transfer from Charlotte’s hands to mine, the lady shirt drooped, lifeless.
I helped Charlotte and her parents compress her suitcases, pillows, comforter, towels, John Denver albums, turntable, speakers, and their own three bodies into her parents’ sedan, then watched helplessly as they rolled downhill toward Tucson. Charlotte was heading south, while I was heading north. Standing alone in their driveway, clutching the now-inert shirt, I sobbed so unstoppably I had to lean on my knees to steady myself.
Back home, caressing the soft, lady shirt one more time, I tucked it carefully into a drawer, where it stayed.
Check out my new graphic short story: A Wild Swim: Why Do We Take Foolish Risks? Free for all paid subscribers and available on amazon in print and e-book.
Other stories in my female friendship series:
Recovery: A Love Story: Swimming Through Rough Waters with a Lifelong Friend
When a Friend Slams the Door on Her Way Out: Abrupt Departures and Lingering Questions
A longer version of this story first appeared in Bay to Ocean Journal, 2021.
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Adrienne Rich calls this “compulsory heterosexuality” in her brilliant 1980 essay on the topic: “On Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence,” later published in her 1986 book, Blood, Bread, and Poetry.
Thank you so, so much for pointing me to this beautiful, poignant essay. I loved the idea of a sorority of two and did wonder how that came to be. It reminded me of myself, though younger, as a 6th grader, with my then inseparable best friend. We made ourselves into a dancing, singing duo that we named “The Blister Sisters.” I have no idea why on earth that name! I long ago lost touch with her, but I will always remember that combo fondly.
beautiful essay Mariah.