#kanani kauka

[gatheringbones]

[“My girlfriend (I’ll call her Rachel) and I have been riding the same bus to the Metro station together nearly every weekday morning for the last two years. After a few weeks, all the commuters on the bus start to look familiar. You begin to notice who travels with whom. You start to give people secret nicknames (Franklin Planner Guy, Park Service Guy, Beautiful Woman, Vancouver Boy). Pretty soon you start noticing each other around town, start saying hi at the farmers’ market. You don’t know each other’s names, but if someone disappears from their regular bus for more than a few days, you begin to wonder if they’re okay, if they’ve moved or changed jobs. It’s an odd sort of community.

Rachel and I wondered sometimes if our fellow workers had nicknames for us, too. What would we call ourselves? Dress Alike Girls? We’ve committed the Ultimate Lesbian Sin—dressing alike—on more than one occasion. We have totally dissimilar clothing tastes, but an unfortunate affinity for the same colors, so we’ve been known to show up at each other’s houses in the morning to find one of us wearing tailored silk khakis, black pumps, and a dark blouse—that would be Rachel—and the other (that would be me) in khaki shorts, black sneakers, and a dark blue T-shirt. Embarrassing. We finally decided that our bus gang would call us Jointed at the Hip Girls. We’d sit at the back of the bus, hold hands sometimes, whisper. We didn’t need to wear T-shirts that said “Dyke.”

But we didn’t actually think about it very much either. We felt safe enough in our little bus world to be “straight acting” (ha ha).

And one morning, when we were standing on the platform at the Metro station, one of our bus buddies approached. She’s tall, light-skinned African-American woman with a penchant for outfits that Rachel admires, and we had wondered if she were family; she had that look about her. She apologized for interrupting and said, I just wanted to tell you guys that it’s so nice to see you in the mornings. I looked at Rachel, a little puzzled. I mean, the woman continued, You both just look really happy when you’re together, you sort of glow.

I started to blush. My ears got very, very hot.

Umm, I umm, I said.

Rachel was more composed (although she was blushing too). She thanked the woman graciously, and asked her name. Kara, she told us. I actually ran into Kara the other day at the grocery store, and we rode the bus home together. I found out that she’s a poet and a sculptor, and she lives three blocks from me. I told her I was writing about her in an essay I was doing for an anthology. She laughed and said, Oh, because of that thing I did that morning?, and chatted for a few more minutes. I don’t remember the rest of that conversation either, really. After all this time, is it possible that I’m still traumatized at the thought of coming out?”]

kanani kauka, from freedom rings, from a woman like that: lesbian and bisexual writers tell their coming out stories, 2000