Funny, all these years later, I’m thinking the same way about my own kids. My mother was 45 when I was born. She was a strong Catholic — no birth control. Let’s just say she was on the accelerated program where I was concerned. She was afraid that she wouldn’t be around somewhere down the road and that I had to learn to take care of myself. I was 43 myself when Thalia was born, and 48 for Aaron’s birth. I’m 55 now, and my children are 12 and 8 respectively. I can understand what my mother was thinking, because every once in a while I think the same way. However, as concerned as I am, their future will be their choice. (Of course, I say that now but who really knows what kind of irrational shit I’ll pull when the actual day of reckoning comes.)

Anyway, back to Aquinas. My ambivalence about college contributed as much to this decision as my mother’s concern. I did not embrace school. It wasn’t exciting to me. I could argue that the teachers were less than inspirational. That was true in some cases, but a lack of focus on my part contributed just as much. Somewhere down the road, however, I would realize that my education at Aquinas opened the door to my career in advertising and public relations, a career I was once totally happy in. But we’ll get to that.

So, I show up for my first day at Aquinas, and not a very taxing day at that. It was billed as “orientation,” so we broke into groups (according to our chosen career path), got the tour, looked around and got to eat there. I broke into a sweat when I first got there, probably from the sight of all the black and white penguin suits milling about. Nuns, nuns and more nuns…all waiting for us. However, as it turned out, we were taken on the tour by the seniors, not the nuns.

The TV lounge was great. It was big. It had two televisions (I think) at either end. There was a piano and a lot of very comfy chairs and coffee tables; it was very bright and sunny. It was actually clean. Amazing. As we walked through, I admit that I was expecting the students there to be watching Catholic television or some such thing, but they weren’t. They were watching the soaps and yelling things at the characters. We move through this lounge and on to our next destination. I’m thinking this is great that it’s all girls, but how much fun can I possibly have with that at a button-down, Roman Catholic college? I was about to get my answer.

All the way down at the end of a long corridor was the smoking lounge, or “The Smoker.” Yes, smoking cigarettes was still big in those days. Apparently, the nuns never went into the smoker because, if they did go into the smoker, they’d have freaked out. (At least, I thought they would have had to freak out at what I saw.) The room was smoke filled and loud. Some girls were just standing around talking and laughing. Others were singing to a song on the radio. However, I had very clear sightings of girls sitting on each others’ laps and kissing. Kissing. Lesbian encounters within the walls of a Roman Catholic college situated in whitebread Newton, Massachusetts were quite unheard of back then. They just didn’t happen. W-T-F?

Here I was, just 17 years old, looking around at all the goings-on. In my heart, I knew I was gay. I probably had not articulated that in any formal fashion, yet. I’m not sure I accepted that portion of the program totally at that time…until I got to the orientation. I think that day changed a lot for me. Frankly, it took a great weight off knowing that it wasn’t only me. Suddenly, it became apparent to me that I could have more fun there than I originally thought. People were actually acting on what they were feeling, and not worrying much about the consequences, I might add. I remember turning toward someone standing next to me and saying, “Hey, better living through lesbianism.” Hence, the title of the post. It’s the only comment I can remember making on that day all these years later.

I may not have wanted to be at Aquinas, but I made the absolute most of my time there. I made it through the two years and walked away with a degree, and I had an incredibly good time getting it. I never imagined, even on that day, that the two years I spent there would be where I’d get into some serious lesbian experiences. Nor did I dream that I would be graduating from Aquinas in a serious relationship with another student (a woman I went to high school with, no less), and that we would almost immediately move in together after graduating.

Incidentally, this relationship would thrust me into the middle of the most disturbing and freaky occurrence of my life. Stay tuned.

I do not want to give the impression that I don’t like men, however. There’s more to men than sex. I’ve always had a lot of male friends — in fact, more male friends than women over the years.

However, there were many tell-tale signs that I was a lesbian from a very young age. Oh, yes, I believe that these things can be deduced if you look for the right signs. Here were some of mine:

- I cannot remember how old I was, but I know my dad was still alive so I had to be younger than nine. I got a lifelike doll for Christmas. It was like the giant Barbies that were flooding the stores when my daughter, Thalia, was about five or six. I was one of the first kids to have it in my neighborhood. However, by the end of the day, the damned thing was buck naked and being shot off my rocking horse with a dart gun. A sure sign.

- Playing “doctor” is a normal thing, but I was playing doctor with all the little girls in the neighborhood. Another sure sign.

- The only guy I ever ‘dated’ (it was a dance, by the way) while in grammar school was a big fag, and I was comfortable with the fact that this particular relationship was going nowhere. I suspect the same was true for him.

- I did go to the high school prom…with a gay guy. It was a blast. We made our little appearance at the prom, then headed for a gay bar. I’m not sure how we even got into a gay bar, but I do know that my escort was older than us (I was only seventeen). I suspect he got us in. Can’t argue with that tell-tale sign, can you?

Of course, when I was very young I really didn’t know what to call it. I did, however, know that something was different about me. Oh, like, instead of coveting other girls’ guys, I was coveting the guys’ girls. See how that works? That’s different. And I ‘m not going to say that I never ‘worried’ about it. I did. It’s tough to be different, a fact not lost on my own daughter even today. While she’s not a lesbian that I know of (she may be someday, who knows?), she is also not anything like the other girls her age.

However, by the time I was onto my next educational adventure (an all-girls school) I was over all that worry. There’s not much you can do but go with the flow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It isn’t a lifestyle, people. It’s what it is.