Chapter 31: The Freedom Rides

I'm Terri Farmer, and I've led three lives. Herb Philbrick might have been a citizen, communist and counterspy, but me? I was a citizen, lesbian and student radical.

Peggy said we should write about ourselves; I can't do that. My life has never been about me; it was always about others. I was never much of a leader -- I was the faithful friend and companion -- the one who was there through thick and thin, where someone else has led.

When I showed an early draft of this to Peggy, she made me read the Lord of the Rings. It took a long time to get through the book, because after a few days, I took to reading it to Celia. It was clear from the first that Peggy was comparing me to Samwise Gamgee. At first it was amusing, then less so as the story progressed and I realized that Peggy, as usual, sees things the rest of us don't.

The hardest thing of all, though, was finding out what that story meant to Celia. When the only way you can communicate is with your eyes, a glance has to take the place of a million words. I knew she loved me reading to her, and I'd read her all sorts of things. But once I started on Lord of the Rings, that was the only thing she wanted to hear.

Late one night I finished reading the last book to her. I hugged her; I saw her smile. Three hours later they called me and said she'd passed on quietly in her sleep. My friends sustained me during the days that followed, but eventually I stopped wallowing in self pity long enough to realize that she wanted nothing more than to hear how the story ended. Once more Celia showed me what sacrifice and absolute devotion to a cause could accomplish.

I remember the first time I met Peggy Brewster who later became Peggy Sloan. It was late spring of 1957; I was a freshman at South Mountain High School in Phoenix. All kinds of things were different back then.

I'd played on the girl's basketball team and we'd done so-so, but the coach left right after the season ended in January. After that we were told we could work out in the gym, under the supervision of the Mr. Sloan, who was the men's coach, or go to study hall. I got good grades, and I really preferred studying at home than at school because it got me out of chores... so I went with the half-dozen girls who wanted to keep working out.

Mr. Sloan is a nice enough man, but he didn't want to coach grils. His idea of supervision was to send us down to the other end of the gym to shoot hoops. So long as we didn't fight or get into trouble, he really didn't care what we did.

At first it didn't occur to me that we were being short-changed, but it occurred to Celia. She was vocal and bitter at being left to ourselves. "We don't get coached!" was something she said over and over. After Peggy came, she agreed with Celia, that what we were doing on the court was getting worse, not better. We weren't learning good habits; mostly we learned bad ones.

I was a loner. I'd kept to myself from the very earliest days I was in school. I hated other kids; I hated my teachers; I pretty much hated everything around me. Of course, I'd learned that the adults around me didn't want to hear my opinions... so I learned to keep my mouth shut.

I can still remember that day, maybe the second or third day of school when I was just starting seventh grade. For the very first time we were expected to dress out for PE, to change from school clothes to shorts and t-shirts, then do whatever the PE teachers wanted, return to the locker room, quickly shower and change back again.

As a theoretical thing, I'd had no problems with it. Just one more piece of incomprehensibility that I had to put up with from adults. I got shorts, I got t-shirts; I was already wearing a bra. That first day, though, in the showers, I realized theory and reality were different. I was standing nude, outside the showers waiting my turn for my thirty seconds of water, and Celia Howard was standing in front of me.

I remember vividly, my eye following the curve of her butt, I remember my breathing speeding up, and I remember the hollow feeling in my stomach. In the shower, she turned and faced away from the shower, as did I. But for a second I could see her breasts, small dark brown cones, capped with tiny black nipples. It was pretty close to an orgasm I felt then, as close as I'd ever gotten in my life.

I left the showers a moment later and toweled off; thankfully Celia was with friends a few locker rows away. A good thing, because if I'd seen her toweling off, I probably would have come.

Things were different then, you can't imagine it. My father had told me several times if I had any trouble with niggers or spics, I should let him know, and he'd set it right. I knew at school what some people called the Negroes and Mexicans, but I used the words interchangeably. Except I didn't use them much, because there was no reason.

Eventually I learned my parents, particularly my father, were racists. The problem for my father was that he never talked to me that much and I never learned prejudice from him. My mother was a quiet housewife who said absolutely nothing to contradict my father... and when he wasn't around, said practically nothing.

Still, I spent some time thinking after I got home after that first day in the showers. I pictured Celia in my mind, and the hollow feeling returned. In a matter of minutes I learned to masturbate by simply exploring what felt best. And I did have my first ever orgasm.

I had known Celia, at that point, for two years, since fifth grade. Known, in the sense that I knew her name, because she sat right behind me in Mr. Hinton's class. Mr. Hinton was close to sixty, and towards the end of the year he was absent a lot, and the substitutes would call our names and we'd have to raise our hands and say "here!"

Some of the boys in the class gave the substitutes a lot of trouble, but not the girls.

I was curious about my feelings for Celia, once I realized I had them. Some of the others in my class talked about boys, particularly high school boys. There were no sex ed classes back then, and some of us were pretty ignorant about the subject.

Three weeks into the school year Conchita Ramirez vanished one day. It was something I happened to overhear in the PE locker room the next day -- she was pregnant and they'd made her quit.

It probably sounds unbelievable now, but in those days it was different. You can't imagine how different. I mean, I literally didn't know where babies came from. I'd had my first period and my mother had explained about "the curse" and all of that, but not any of the rest of the physical facts of life, much less something like where babies came from.

I wasn't sure why it was such a big deal that Conchita was pregnant... wasn't that something women did? I saw pregnant women all the time. I was clueless, and finally decided to ask my mother.

She explained a little more, and then later, when my father came home, she told him about someone in my class being pregnant.

I was doing homework, but the volcanic eruption of temper and rage that came from him that day interrupted everything. I was inquisitioned -- that's the only word for it. For an hour my father asked me questions -- questions about my school, my classmates and things I had no idea what he was talking about.

The next thing I knew, mother was giving me the real birds and bees lecture. Boys have a thing that they pee out of, but when it comes time to fertilize a girl's eggs, it wasn't pee that came out. You know the story.

That was probably the first time in my life I made an adult decision. I'd been masturbating for weeks by that time. Almost always it was while I was thinking about Celia. I tried to position myself so that I could see her undressed after PE, but I didn't push. At first, listening to my mother explaining about boys and girls, I was contemplating asking her about girls and girls. What stopped me was the memory of the anger in my father's voice.

It was clear to me that people didn't talk about sex, unless forced to. Boys, girls and babies were what everyone did. Thus, girls and girls probably wasn't something my father would approve of. I patiently waited until the end of my mother's lecture, and when she finished, I didn't ask the one question I had.

Seventh grade went on and on... it is easily the longest school year I remember. Late in the spring, I was sitting on the ground, reading Hiawatha, while others played baseball. Once a month on Friday afternoon, they would let all of the seventh graders out of regular classes. People would choose up sides in the sport du jour, and they'd play. There were usually a half-dozen games of one sort or another, but rarely more than half of us were on one of the teams. The rest of us were expected to be quiet, be orderly and other than that, we weren't bothered.

I heard someone laugh behind me, and I glanced back. A couple of the rougher boys, all white, were talking between themselves. They weren't making much effort to keep their voices down, and a common word in their conversation was "queer" and another common word was "fags."

Eventually, I realized they were talking about Alan Garner and Greg Simpson, who were sitting a ways off, talking between themselves. Both Alan and Greg were short, skinny and smart. Greg was, in fact, universally known as "The Professor" because of the way he talked and how much he knew.

I knew, pretty much, what the two of them were talking about, because Alan and I had been seated next to each other a few times over the years, and I'd heard the two of them talk on several occasions. They read lurid science fiction stories and it was always about space ships and aliens, blasters and ray guns. It wasn't something I was interested in, and I'd pretty much stopped thinking about them.

That night, at home, I got out the dictionary and looked up the words I'd heard. Have I said before that things were different back then? The Encyclopedia Britannica dictionary gave three meanings for queer, and the only one that I saw that could apply was odd or strange. From the angry way the boys had been talking, I didn't think that was it. Fag was slang for a cigarette. Sure, there were a few guys in my class that smoked. But most of them had been in the group talking about fags, and I was sure they were using the word to refer to Alan and Greg.

What can you say about serendipity? The next day I got a library pass to go find a book on American History so I could write a book report on it. There weren't very many people in the library, and right next to the card catalog was a stand with the huge dictionary on it: Webster's Unabridged.

I looked up queer just as a lark. Britannica had had three definitions; Webster's had seven. Number six was "homosexual" a word I'd never heard of before, and the type of entry was listed as "offensive slang." Entry seven said it was a "usage" entry and said the word referred to lesbians and gay men.

All I could do was scratch my head. I didn't know what lesbian meant, and while I knew meanings for "gay" and "man" the two together obviously didn't mean what I would have thought.

Take them in order, I thought. So I went to fag. The word had the same definitions as the Britannica had, but in addition, there were two other entries for the word, below the first, entries the Britannica hadn't had. The third said the same thing as I'd seen before: "Offensive slang" and the definition was "a disparaging term for a homosexual man."

That was a clue, and so off I went to find homosexual. And there it was. First, the meaning was "relating to or having a sexual orientation to a person of the same sex." Later, in the explanations that followed, I learned what gay man meant and what lesbian meant. I went and checked lesbian and yes, that was a woman whose sexual orientation was towards other women. I turned the dictionary to the word "perplexed" went and sat down.

I had definitions; I knew how I felt about Celia. I'm not stupid. This was unusual. For the first time in my life I seriously regretted not having a friend close enough to talk to about it. I was bitter and more than a little angry. For the first time I made no effort to see Celia in the showers.

Instead, as I was walking home, I had a brainstorm. Every day I walked past Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Catholic Church. I was Presbyterian, not Catholic, but I remembered that Catholic priests couldn't say anything to anyone about what someone confessed to them. I made up my mind in a flash.

I'd never been in a Catholic Church before. Like all churches, it was intimidating. That and it was a dozen times the size of ours. The smells were strange; everything was strange. On the other hand, shy or not, Presbyterian or not, I was desperate for someone to talk to.

Someone near the altar in a cassock saw me and headed my way. He was a rotund, Hispanic man of late middle age. He smiled benignly at me.

I braced myself and asked my first, easiest question. "Sir, is it true, a priest can't tell anyone what he hears in confession?"

He nodded, "Yes."

He smiled slightly, "Young woman, confession is a holy sacrament of the Catholic church. You're not Catholic."

"Oh," I was stunned.

He didn't laugh, he could have, but he didn't. "Have you done something you feel that you should confess?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so. What I have are questions, mostly. About sex."

"You are how old?" he asked.

"Twelve, sir. I'm in seventh grade."

"Come with me," he told me. We didn't head for the front of the church, like I expected. Instead, we went to the side, down a corridor, down another corridor and into a suite of offices. He ignored everyone and finally poked his head into an office with an open door.

"Sister Rose, do you have a few minutes?"

The woman was wearing a nun's habit, and looked up from what I was sure were a pile of school papers to be graded. She smiled at him and nodded, but her eyes were on me.

"This young woman has some questions; I think you might be better able to help her than I could."

She waved me to a chair, and I sat down. The priest turned and left, closing the door behind him.

The next two hours were the most difficult, but the most educational in my life. Sister Rose never asked my name, never asked anything but questions about what I thought about things. And I told her about my feelings for another girl, and that she wasn't white.

Sister Rose would shake her head and say, "Such things are a sin," and then would answer my question or explain something else. Gently, firmly, she tried to dissuade me, but at the same time she didn't make dissuasion the price of going forward.

I never went back. I never saw that priest again or Sister Rose. I've never had much use for churches at all, and have pretty much given up on them. Still, I remember her honesty and her ability to put it into perspective.

So, I knew I was a lesbian. I knew that I looked at boys and felt absolutely nothing. I knew I looked at Celia and felt a great deal. It was true there weren't any other girls that I looked at that meant any more to me than any of the boys I knew, but I was sure about my attraction to Celia.

But we were so different! She was black and she stayed with other black girls. There was virtually no social mixing of the races. Sure, our classrooms were integrated, but we practiced our own segregation. Celia was moderately popular, moderately athletic, and smart. I was as smart, but a loner and wasn't athletic.

A few weeks before the school year ended, on one of the Fridays, we were lined up, choosing teams. Celia had been put in charge of her volleyball team and she was choosing. She walked past me and for the first time ever, I spoke to her. "Choose me," I said as calmly as I could.

She looked at me, then held her arm up, and flexed her muscles. "Do that."

I did, not sure what she was after. She reached out when I did, and squeezed my arm. I nearly came, but she brought me back to earth. "Girl, you have spaghetti muscles. Little, tiny soft ones. No!"

She walked on down the line, picking those she wanted to play on her team. But not me.

It was, I realized, a turning point in my life. I held what all considered to be an unnatural passion for a person of my own sex and of a different race. The smart thing would have been to start taking cold showers instead of masturbating while thinking about Celia.

No, what I did was get a book on physical fitness out of the library, read it, and start exercising.

I said I was a loner and a good student. That meant I was bored a lot. I read, but after a while I'd gotten tired of the usual girl stuff they peddled to us -- you can only read Nancy Drew so many times before you want to throw up. So, I had a lot of time to exercise. And summer came, and there was more than a lot of time to exercise.

There was an important moment that summer, early on. It was a Saturday, which was the day my mother went shopping. First, though, she would take me to the public library, downtown at Central and McDowell.

I would make a turn to the right, just inside the front door to the juvenile room and try to find something interesting. Most days, I couldn't. That day, I saw Alan and Greg sitting at a table, a pile of books next to them. I know it's stupid (and later learned just plain wrong) but I thought that if they were gay, and I was gay, maybe we would like the same sorts of stories.

I walked up and asked them if they could tell me an interesting book to read. Me, who'd never voluntarily talked to anyone before, much less a boy. Two seconds later, I had a book from each. Greg contributed "Starman Jones" written by someone named Robert Heinlein, and Alan gave me "The Star Beast" by the same man.

Alan told me when he gave me Star Beast from his stack that he guaranteed that I would like it. Double my money back. Greg had laughed and said, "More like quadruple."

I thought they were strange, queer. I smiled.

I want to make something clear. I got to know Greg and Alan after that. Maybe we didn't talk often at first, but as time went by, we talked more. They weren't gay; they were simply best friends. I never had a best friend until Celia and I became lovers, and as we were lovers it always colored our relationship. If ever I had a best friend it was Peggy, but even there, sex was part of it. In truth, I've never had a best friend who wasn't also an occasional lover.

In 1967, Alan died at a place called Khe Sanh in Vietnam; he was a Marine lieutenant. Greg was the one who called to tell me, he was going to UCLA at the time, working on his doctorate in mathematics. Alan had wanted to save the world one way, Greg another.

September came and I was a different person. I'd been short all my life, and I'd had a growth spurt in August, but I went from four eight to four eleven. Nothing like towering or imposing. Still, I'd exercised hard and on the first day of school I was ready for Celia to feel my arm again. No more spaghetti muscles for me!

Well, I did get to see her in the shower a few days later. We weren't in the same class that year; the only time I saw her was in PE and once a week in choir, the only class we had together besides PE. Celia had changed too. Her breasts were larger, her nipples, though, had stayed small. My breasts were ugly, I thought, small grapefruit halves with large nipples that seemed, at times, about to overwhelm the rest of my breasts.

Oh yeah, Celia never touched me once that year.

The problem with unrequited love is that it's unrequited. I loved Celia and masturbated thinking about her a couple times a day. But that was at night. During the day, I was Miss Prim-and-Proper, never giving a hint how I felt.

At the end of eighth grade I'd grown again: now I was five two. Celia was closing in on her final five nine, and I was half a foot shorter. I was sure she would never, ever, notice me.

The summer before high school I went berserk. There was no school, and the hour I spent at the library was trivial. I did pushups and sit-ups. I ran, I jumped rope, I did every exercise you can imagine and every exercise in the books I'd read and I read a lot of them.

At the start of the year when I was a freshman, I was the same height as Celia: five eight. I had muscles on muscles on muscles. My father had put up a basketball hoop on the garage and half of my summer had been spent throwing the ball through the hoop.

The first day of practice, Celia grinned at me; then I stole the ball from her and sank it. I did it a half-dozen more times that day, making her a particular target.

Celia reacted by getting better. Some of her friends reacted by getting in my face. Celia didn't know about that, but they did. I ignored them, even when it meant bruises.

Then, at the end of the year, Peggy Brewster arrived. And after that, everything was different.

She walked into the gym and it was like a thunderbolt. We paid attention. It was clear she knew what she was doing, and knew what she wanted. Before the end of the school year, she had us eating out of the palm of her hand.

We learned a lot in those short few weeks. I was appreciative. So were most of the others. At the end of the year, we dispersed for the summer.

Except I'd heard Coach Brewster say to Coach Sloan that she was going to be coaching during the summer for the city at Encanto Park.

Encanto was a long, long way from where I lived. But my parents had their own interests and didn't care about mine. Half of Phoenix's kids headed for Encanto Park in the summer, I wasn't odd or unique that way.

I went that summer because I admired Coach Brewster. I didn't expect to see Celia until the fall, and in fact, I didn't. From the very first day of the summer program I noticed the Coach was spending a lot of time watching me.

I told myself it couldn't possibly be what I was thinking, but by then, at least to me, it was already clear Coach Brewster was a lesbian. I'd heard at school that she lived with another woman but since everyone knew how little teachers were paid, no one thought about it.

The more I watched, the more I noticed her looking at me. Maybe the first time I was unmoved, maybe the second time. By the third time, I was curious. Coach Brewster was, I thought, an adult. She knew what lesbians were, what she was. Me? I'd spent an hour or so talking to a nun about the philosophy of having a woman as a lover, with no practical details. Over the years since I'd heard a few more comments, but they ranged from obscure to obviously derogatory. For the first time someone else, though, was stirring the ache between my legs.

Then it happened, something I never imagined might be possible. My mother went to Los Angeles to be with her sister, who was very sick. Then my dad told me that the city wanted him to go to a meeting. It was very important, and meant he would be virtually assured of a promotion. Of course, it would mean I would be left by myself for most of a week.

My first thought was to ignore it. I was quite capable of taking care of myself. Then I looked at Coach Brewster and realized that this was my chance to learn exactly what being a lesbian meant. So I asked her, I asked my parents if I could spend the week with my coach. The latter agreed instantly, only Coach Brewster seemed reluctant.

I was a very, very happy young woman, when Coach Brewster taught me what was involved. I reciprocated, and was mildly surprised that her partner, Angie, never objected. I was, though, too wrapped up in my very first-ever requited love affair to care.

Then came the day, towards the end of summer when Coach Peggy and I had our last heart-to-heart. I told her of my love for Celia and she told me about her own mother's love for another black girl.

It was humbling, for one thing. Very humbling. If nothing else because I wasn't nearly the pioneer I'd thought I was. Still, I took comfort because it also meant such things were possible.

Our sophomore year started and the very first day I walked up to Celia, who, while not team Captain, might as well have been. "Hi, shrimp!" I told her, while trying to stand straighter.

I hurt. You can't describe it; you just have to endure it. At the end of my freshman year I was five eight -- I'd grown six inches in six months. That summer I continued to grow, finishing at six foot, even. I ached. Every inch of my bones pained me. But every one of those aches had been worth it, to get to say those two words.

It was the third week of school. We'd gone to a practice game at Camelback High School and were returning to school, late at night.

Celia and I were sitting in the front of the bus, the others sound asleep in the back.

"Not many white girls," she said, "want to sit with a nigger."

I laughed at her. Laughed. "Not many black girls want to sit with a white. I don't know the word, but I imagine you have one for us."

She grinned at me. "You'll never hear it from my lips."

"And you'll not hear that word you used from me, either!"

"Guess I better watch my language, then!" Celia agreed.

A week later, another away game, up at Phoenix Union. It was a rough game and we all came away bruised.

Celia and I weren't the captains or anything; the captain was a senior. But we were two girls who wanted our team to do better. Most of the trip back, that's what we talked about. Still, a few seconds before we were back, Celia gripped my arm. "Tell me the truth, Terri. I saw you staring at me when we were in seventh grade. And ever since. What do you think about, when you stare at me?"

My first thought was to lie; I'd gotten quite good at it. I looked Celia in the eye and realized that even though the Catholics hadn't gotten their hooks into me, I was facing eternal damnation.

Thus, I gave a totally BS answer, and stuck with it. "I look at you and wonder why we're different."

"What makes you think we're different?" she asked.

"At first I thought it was because you were tall and strong, popular with other kids. Then I found some old muscles lying around and then I grew a bit. I don't really want to be popular, but you're right. I don't think we're very different, not any more."

She grinned at me, and pitched her voice very low. "And here I was hoping you'd say you think I'm pretty."

"That too," I agreed. "Not many guys can look down on us, that sets us apart."

We arrived back at school, and Coach Brewster bustled around getting things put up. We helped her, Celia and I. Peggy had told me that she would take me home, Celia's parents were supposed to come get her. Except when it came time for the Coach to leave, they still hadn't arrived. Coach Brewster went back inside her office to call, and Celia watched her go.

Then she turned to me. "Terri, how much alike do you think we are?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I've talked to you more in the last couple of weeks than in all the rest of the years I've known you."

"Would you be grossed out if I tell you that sometimes, when you look at me, my nipples get tight and I start getting wet?"

I blinked. "Well, I guess that's interesting. I feel the same way when I look at you."

"You know, one of these days after school, you and I should get together and talk."

We did get together and while there was some talking, that's not the main form of intercourse we had. I remember feeling ten miles high and floating on air the next day when I nodded at Celia and gave Peggy a thumbs up.

We were the ultimate odd couple. Two tallish girls, one black, one white. Both of us were smart, both of us were looking ahead to college. We played basketball that year with a bunch of girls every bit as hungry to win as we were, as was Coach Brewster. We won the city championship easily, and in those days the only real competition at the state level was from Tucson and we were head and shoulders better than they were.

During the weeks before the season started, then during the season, there was not much time for our personal lives. We had practices and school, practices and games. We did find time to spend together and more than once we'd end up in a tangle of limbs, naked and sated. Sneaking was a way of life for both of us; Celia assured me that her parents didn't have a problem with her having a white friend; I could even come to their house. But my parents, particularly my father, would have exploded if they even knew I talked to one black girl. And while Celia's parents might not have minded her having a white friend, a lot of the black girls were giving her a hard time because of it.

Long before the season was over, Celia figured things out about Coach and me. It had been impossible to hide that I'd been with someone else. Coach didn't spend more time with me than with anyone else, but Celia saw right through it. When Celia asked me about it, I nearly had a heart attack. I did have a crisis of faith in our relationship; fortunately it was a short-lived attack and I decided that lying would be the absolute worst choice.

After she learned about Peggy, Celia hadn't seemed upset or in any way put out by learning about it. And after the season was over it was Celia who spoke out to me. "You watch Coach Brewster even more than you used to watch me. Girl, people are going to figure you out. And then they'll figure me out. None of us needs that."