Okay, so this title is probably totally misleading. I use this because I was less than enthusiastic about going to Aquinas Junior College (Newton, MA; now defunct and an aerial view is all I can find). Why? Well, it would be two more years of hanging with the nuns. That was the first thing. And it was a secretarial school. That was the second thing I didn’t like. I absolutely had no desire to be a secretary. I wanted to paint and write. My mother had other ideas. I had to be able to support myself and there was no room for negotiation.

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.

You know, the one thing a blog does is allow you to remember things as flashbacks. That’s probably the only way I’ll be able to remember my early life. This flashback requires the way back machine. I must have been around nine or ten years old, my dad had passed away and we were living in Everett with my grandmother, my aunt and my uncle.

My grandmother was pretty old at that time, and she had suffered several strokes and heart attacks over the years. Oddly enough, I was the only one who could tell when she was going to have a heart attack and that’s because it was usually preceeded by what I now call “nonsense talking.” She would be awake and alert and carrying on a conversation with you but she was making absolutely no sense.

Around this time she also began to hide eggs in her bureau drawers. This is never a good sign, people. If this isn’t an indicator that something is seriously amiss, then there’s something seriously amiss elsewhere as well. In my mind, eggs didn’t get hidden in drawers or anywhere else unless the Easter Bunny was coming.  However, I was just a kid so I accepted whatever I was told and/or asked to do.

So, they asked me to sleep with my grandmother since I was the only one who responded to her heart attacks. Okay. So, if anyone is wondering why I have this thing about sickeness and death, don’t wonder. I mean, seriously, no thought was ever given to what psychological effect this might have on me, particularly so close to losing my own dad to cancer. Of course, it wasn’t that my mom and aunts were callous. They just didn’t get it. There was no focus on psychology whatsoever.

When people ask me about my childhood, I genuinely have no complaints. I consider myself fortunate to have had the parents and sibilings I have, particularly after I see what others have been subjected to. But you’ve just got to admit that this kind of request of a child is a bit over the edge. No? I mean, it could very well be why I avoid doctors and health care in general. Who knows. I don’t like psychiatrists much either, so we’ll probably never find out.