Sheville Series

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Chapter 10: Don't Leave Me This Way

Matty McEire

Part of a series. Read the rest of the series here.

As the totally life-changing year of 1976 came to an end, so did my relationship with Z. The split wasn't sudden or even unexpected, but it was still heart-wrenching. The relationship had been steadily unraveling over the last three months, and I could not knit it back together. I do not remember any kind of heart-to-heart about what was happening; it was just over, and I knew it.

I tried living in denial, at first pretending it wasn't really happening at all, and then acknowledging that it was, but pretending that I was just fine. Some days this worked, but overall, it didn't. Next I got angry, throwing things across the room when my housemate wasn't home to see my tantrums, and screaming at the top of my lungs, “This is just not fair! Why is this happening to me?” Before I got very far into the bargaining phase, I realized I was very classically in the midst of Kübler Ross' five stages of grief and decided to just go ahead and accelerate the process. I gave it a few good, solid days and nights of abject depression, and then moved on into the acceptance phase. She hadn't left me for someone else, which would have made me feel really horrible, so at least that aspect of my dignity was still intact. Z and I did manage to maintain a friendship of sorts, but it was never the same, and despite my best efforts to speed the emotional process and put on my happy face, in truth, it took me a long time to completely get over it.

On the bright side, I now had four places to hang out and be a “regular”: the After Dark, Angel and Marcie's house, Verlee's trailer, and O.Henry's. I could fill the void created by the lack of a lover by spending time with friends in spaces where I could completely be myself, just as queer as I wanted to be. I now knew that even though Asheville was a small town, and most of us were still very closeted at work, I certainly wasn't the only lesbian in these parts. Every time I went out, I met more lesbians, not only from Asheville, but from the surrounding rural areas – from Burnsville, from Mars Hill, from Spruce Pine, from Waynesville, from Hendersonville . Now that we had places to go, we were beginning to form a network of sorts.

In addition to Verlee and Janis, another woman that I was beginning to run into frequently was a woman named Temple . Even though I would see her at all the places where lesbians congregated, she was straight. It struck me as kind of odd that she was hanging out with lesbians. I'd come across a lot of straight feminists at the few N.O.W. functions I'd attended with Z and Irma, but until I met Temple, I hadn't met any straight women at the gay bars - a few so called “fag hags” fraternizing with the boys, of course, but no straight women socializing with the lesbians. I shrugged it off, figuring if she was comfortable at the After Dark, then she must be pretty cool.

Temple, who was twenty, considered herself a radical, feminist activist, and had been involved in women's rights issues since she was sixteen. She was married at a very young age, but was already separated by the time I met her. Like me, she was born under the sign of Aquarius, so she had many friends and acquaintances, and was someone who would work tirelessly for something she thought was right and necessary for the betterment of society. She had a very sweet, soft-spoken voice, but her words were always articulated with conviction, especially when it came to anything having to do with feminism.

When I met Temple , she was just finishing up her first semester at the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA). She encountered several other radical feminists there that fall including my new friend, Janis, and they began meeting together to discuss politics. Temple was interested in Women's Studies, but UNCA did not have a major in that curriculum, so she and the others approached a female philosophy professor who consented to work with them through independent study classes. There was no women's center on campus, so many of their discussions took place at each other's homes or in local restaurants.

O.Henry's became one popular discussion venue, and another was Ike's, a Turkish-owned restaurant on Merrimon Avenue . Ike's was near the UNCA campus and had great, inexpensive food. The only drawback was that Ike would periodically come out of the back room with his strange, stringed instrument - some sort of Turkish bazuq - and proceed to wang away on it, serenading “the ladies” at the table and completely drowning out the political discussions. At one point UNCA's radical feminists took over the large lobby of the lower level women's room at the Ramsey Library and turned it into a women's center space, complete with feminist reading material, but Ike's continued to be the main hotbed of radical lesbian political discussion for years.

Temple was not just studying women's issues; she was actively doing something about them. In 1974, when she was only eighteen, she and three other women started the Asheville Rape Crisis Center . It was a grassroots effort organized by an all-volunteer staff and offered the first twenty-four hour crisis line. The RCC had its first office at the YWCA, and through the efforts of Temple and the other founding mothers, it grew to include dozens of volunteer counselors, eventually gaining non-profit status and a paid staff, and changing its name to Our Voice, Inc. Temple asked me about volunteering for the RCC, but it just wasn't my thing. I did, however, join in some of the political discussions at Ike's with her, Janis, and Marcie, who, like me, was not a UNCA student, but who could get extremely fired up and angry when it came to politics. If we'd had a radical feminist debate team, Marcie would have been its star orator. No one wanted to be on the opposite side of an argument from Marcie!

I don't think Marcie's argumentative, political theorizing sat too well with her partner, Angel, who was much more into the social aspects of the lesbian community. Angel was happy to provide a space for lesbians to get together, but just wanted us all to have a good time socializing, not ranting about whether or not something was “politically correct.” By the end of December, whenever I was at their house, I could feel an underlying friction between them. I enjoyed being with both of them, but it did feel like something was off kilter. I never said anything about it to either of them.

I took a week off from my job at the Y and flew up to see my family in Philadelphia for Christmas. I had not yet come out to my parents or my sister, and all my mother seemed to want to talk about was my friend Lance. She really had high hopes for me and Lance. Poor mom! I told her that Lance had moved into his grandmother's recently-vacated cottage next to his parents' house in Marion . I described to her how he was redecorating it: He painted the living room a deep, robin's egg blue. The bedroom walls were transformed from white to terracotta, accented by the roller blinds which he sprayed gold. He painted the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets Chinese red gloss enamel. He hung prints of the photographs he had taken for his photography classes in just the perfect locations throughout the house.

“Oh, it sounds lovely!” Mom exclaimed, hoping, I'm sure, that one day I'd be living there with him in wedded bliss and busily producing grandchildren. Mom always had a predilection for gay men; she just didn't know it.

I eventually escaped the conversation, and went out with my cousin Christopher and my friend Alice to a gay bar somewhere in the 69 th Street area. I was glad I was only going to be up there for a couple more days. Although it was great to see Christopher and Alice, I was already homesick for my newfound community in Asheville .

When I got home to Fairview , my housemate told me to call Angel right away. She said Angel had called three times and sounded kind of down. I threw my suitcase on my bed and went into the kitchen to call her. I had an inkling about what I was going to hear, and it was not going to be happy news. While I was away in Philly, Angel and Marcie were going to drive up to DC to stay with Marcie's mom for a few days, and then pack up all the rest of their belongings that were in storage to bring them back home to Asheville . Angel answered on the first ring.

“Hello?” came an almost inaudible voice on the other end of the line.

“Angel, is that you?”

I heard a sniff and then a faint “Yes.”

“Hi, Angel. It's Matty. I understand you've been trying to reach me. I just got home from Philly. What's up? How was your trip?”

Angel started to cry, and it was difficult at first to make out what she was saying. “What's the matter, Angel? Say that again.”

Between the sniffles, I heard her say, “Marcie's gone.”

“Marcie's gone? What do you mean?”

“She left me. She moved out.”

“Oh, Angel, I'm so sorry. What happened?”

Then she started sobbing with the full force of Niagara Falls , and I felt helpless, unable to console her very well from a distance over a phone line. “Angel, do you want me to come over?”

Between the sobbing and the nose-blowing, I heard an affirmative answer and told her I'd be there right away. It was already late, and I was tired from my day of traveling, but I threw my coat back on, hurriedly explained to my housemate where I was going, and jumped back in the car, heading toward Oakley. The usual fifteen minute trip seemed to take forever. When I arrived at Angel and Marcie's house, Angel came to the door wrapped in an afghan and holding a wad of Kleenex in her hand. The usual spark was missing from her beautiful, dark eyes, and her eyelids were so red and swollen, I hardly recognized her. I put my arm around her and we made our way in to the living room couch. The first thing I noticed was that Marcie's chair was gone. And there was no music playing. This was for real.

We stayed up half the night talking and holding each other. I went into the kitchen and made Angel a cup of hot tea. This was a switch. Angel was usually the one taking care of me in the kitchen. I was at a loss as to what else to do, but some hot tea, a good listener, and someone to hold her seemed to help a little. Sometime around four a.m., I finally convinced her to go to bed, and I fell asleep on the couch.

In the morning I awoke to the aroma of freshly ground coffee brewing and bacon sizzling on the stove. It was one of the rare Sundays that Angel was not at work, although I suspect she might have called in sick for the first time if she had been scheduled to go in. I opened one eye and Angel appeared, sitting down on the couch in the curl of my legs with cups of coffee for both of us. Even with only one myopic eye open, I could see that she looked a little better than she had the night before.

“Good morning, Matty,” she said gently, holding a coffee cup out in my direction.

“Good morning,” I managed to reply, opening the other eye and groping around on the end table for my glasses. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, took the cup, and sipped some of the fresh coffee with half and half – just the way I liked it.

“Are you awake?”

“I'm getting there. This is great coffee. Thanks.” I took two more sips, set the cup down on the end table, and got up to go to the bathroom. “I'll be right back.”

When I returned, we both sat on the couch sipping in silence for several minutes, but not uncomfortably like silence can be sometimes. Angel spoke first.

“Thank you,” was all she said, but it was a from-the-heart kind of thank you.

“You're welcome, but I didn't really do anything.”

“Yes, you did. I didn't want to be here by myself. You're a good friend, Matty,” she said and clasped her hand around mine.

We got up and went into the kitchen where Angel fixed us some eggs and toast to go with the coffee and bacon that she'd already prepared. Amigo, Angel's black and white cat, came around the corner and let out a funny yowling sound that probably meant, “Where's my breakfast?” and made us both laugh. Angel got up and put her favorite Neil Diamond record on the turntable, so that was a good sign, too.

We sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking for a long time. Although I had sensed that something wasn't quite right between Angel and Marcie, and there were some things Marcie had been doing that irritated Angel, I don't think Angel had any idea that Marcie was going to leave. It was somewhere on the road between Asheville and DC that Marcie told Angel that she wanted out of the relationship. She didn't say anything about being interested in anyone else; she just wanted out. As soon as they had gotten back to Asheville , she packed up her things and left, moving to a mobile home park out by Lake Julian where her friend Tara and a cluster of other lesbians were living at the time. It was a real jolt for Angel.

One of the things that hadn't occurred to me right away, but that struck me later that day as we were talking, was that Angel had never really lived alone. She came from a very large family with eleven brothers and sisters. Then she lived in a convent. After that she lived in the commune in DC. And when she left there, she moved in with Marcie. Not only was Angel bereft about losing her partner, she was also distressed about living alone. I asked Angel if she would like me to stay with her for a couple more nights, and without hesitation, she said that would be wonderful. So I drove back home to Fairview that afternoon, told my housemate what was happening, unpacked the suitcase from my Philadelphia trip, put some of the things away, stuffed the rest of it in my daypack, and made my way back to – I couldn't call it Angel and Marcie's house anymore – how weird!

I ended up staying there a week. Angel felt much better having me there. She started feeling a little better every day but said it was a hell of a way to start a new year. I agreed. We were kind of in the same boat, actually, with her trying to get on with life after Marcie and me coming to terms with being just Z's friend, not her lover. We actually had a pretty good week together. As I was packing up my things to go back home to Fairview again, Angel said she had an idea.

“We get along really well, you know. What would you think about moving in here with me? You can have the spare bedroom.”

My first thought was that my housemate would kill me; I'd only been living there a few months! My second thought was that I liked the idea. I was getting kind of tired of driving back and forth from Fairview to Asheville all the time. And I really liked Angel. We seemed very compatible. I told Angel I'd think about it.

I broached the idea with my housemate that evening. Much to my relief, she was not upset at all. I had just paid my January rent, so it was kind of like giving a month's notice. She was sure she could find someone else to move in and wasn't worried about it. I called Angel and told her the news. She was ecstatic.

The following Saturday, Angel borrowed a pick-up. Between the truck and my trusty, old Buick, we managed to move everything I owned in one trip. Verlee, who was now my neighbor, came by like the lesbian Welcome Wagon representative with a six-pack of beer and helped us unload everything. Afterwards, we sat around the kitchen table finishing up the last of the beer as Thelma Houston belted out “Don't Leave Me This Way” on the radio.

I raised my bottle in a toast. “Happy New Year, my friends! Out with the old, and in with the new!” The three of us clanked our bottles together and smiled.