Comic Relief: Lesbian Recycling

The title Lesbian Recycling might give the reader pause.  It might invoke images of Wednesday Addams inquiring about the girl scout cookies being proffered for her consideration, “Are they made from real girl scouts?”.

One might be tempted, though with slightly tongue-in-cheek trepidation, to ask: This Lesbian Recycling - are we talking about the recycling program on the Greek Island of Lesbos?  Or are we talking about the women-who-love-women kind, the lesbian of modern lore?  And if so, is the recycling being carried out by the lesbians, or for their benefit?  Unless...

Oh my, oh dear (insert Deity of choice), are we talking about the recycling OF lesbians?

If the idea has fairly set the reader’s mind to whirring, and to wondering from what side of the mystic Land O’Lez the writer is coming, let all be reassured that the perspective on these pages is that of a real, life-long woman lover who has, whether on account of her winning personality or the sheer length of her career, managed to sidestep most of the stereotypes attributed to her kind by those of little social experience or tolerance.

That said, there exist in the world of lady-loving-ladies certain idiosyncratic features of social interaction that bear explanation to the uninitiated.  If the reader has no lesbian of his or her own to explain these peculiarities, this missive may help lift the shroud of mystery on at least one such feature.

Recently a co-worker was explaining the complexities of her current dating scenario: the boy in question is someone she’s known since she was ten, and he is the ex-boyfriend both of her sister’s friend and her own cousin.  They never considered one-another as potential dating material while those relationships were taking place, but now it makes sense and feels right.  She is concerned for the feelings of the others so close to her; can they rise above it and give her their blessings, or will it be a mar on their relations forever?  When she finally stopped for a breath I said, “Sounds like you all are taking a page out of the Book of Lesbian”!

Since I came out in a small community (Coeur d’Alene Idaho in the 1980‘s small enough for ya? Aryan Nations and all?) I originally assumed it was simply a matter of the miniscule number of lesbians in circulation (it was highschool in a redneck town) that accounted for the fact that the girl that I was dating was the best friend of the girl whose boyfriend was the twin brother of my best friend, and that she had always had a crush on her.   But wait!  Who had a crush on whom?  Exactly.  And they eventually dated, after we broke up of course.  Who dated?  After you broke up with... What? 
Yup.  Mmmm-Hmmm. Lesbian Recycling.

Let it be known that the phrase “Lesbian Recycling Program” had not yet been coined in these early, fledgling years.  For that to happen I would first have to witness the phenomenon in larger circles.  As my sphere of lesbionic experience widened I found it happening on a much grander scale: whole groups of friends could practically devise a board game based on which person’s ex-lover was now with the best friend of that person’s first love; which two had previously dated the one who was now with the one whose best friend secretly had a thing for her (and let’s be clear: it is practically a prerequisite for Lesbian 101 to fall in love with one’s best friend at least once).  And it's not that woman-lovers are a promiscuous bunch- in fact the arrangement-of-choice tends to incline toward committed monogomy.  It's just that we run in circles that are- well, spirals. 

The Recycling term came into play once I lived in Spokane Washington:  When my girlfriend and I went to visit an ex of mine and her new girlfriend, we discovered that The Girl I’d Always Swooned Over was also there- with a girlfriend of her own.  During the long summer that ensued (dubbed the “summer stranger than others” on a mixed tape commemorating the time) in which my girlfriend broke up with me to go back to her ex but instead wound up with my ex and then her girlfriend (yup, the ones we were visiting earlier).  The Girl I’d Always Swooned Over left her girlfriend for me (and oh yes we all lived together) and then took off for three days to straighten out her head while we two did our best to support each-other in the strangeness and confusion of it all.

And this is the thing that Lesbians seem to do in romantic crisis: there is a prevailing tendency toward rising above the petty bitterness that surrounds the ending of  relationships.    Indeed it’s sometimes hard to tell whether a pair has split or not. We may be hurt, bereft, indeed shaking in our shoes with the immensity of our loss - but we very often grapple with the ensuing feelings of acrimony toward our exes or our ex’s future partners (or our current partners’ exes for that matter) with a transcendent sort of beatific idealism that baffles uninformed onlookers. 

Indeed, it can be baffling from within the inner circle as well.  When the feeling of forgiveness, or moving-beyond-it-ness arises in a situation of turmoil, pain, and loss, it is at first so incongruous as to be disorienting.  Whether it’s true that women have inherently nurturing natures, or are innately forgiving, or whether we just have a heightened need for internalized drama, lesbians have a strong predilection for remaining friends with their exes.

Maybe it’s that we seem to lack the off-switch that makes people stop caring about others just because the form of the relationship has shifted.
Alternately, there might be a lesbian tendency to fast-forward through the dating process and move straight into serious relationships, or it could be that the lesbian penchant for loving one’s friend works in reverse as well - that we value our friends so deeply we are reluctant to let go of them just because we’re no longer a matched set.

Whatever the underlying reason, when we reach the “rising above” point, there is a sense that we are bigger than ourselves, that we have the capacity to be magnanimous and perhaps transcend the bounds of conventional limitations... to be friends with our ex - and sure, our partner’s ex, and her best friend who’s begun dating our own ex... and to contribute meaningfully to one-another’s lives just because we are all incredible, smart, and progressive women.  There is also the tickle in the back of the brain that makes us wonder if we’ve just gone mad, but by then the deed is done.

When we are at our best I believe we appreciate the fact that the person we love has been challenged and blessed and therefore enriched by those who went before us, just as I believe that when we let someone go we (eventually, perhaps- nobody says this is instantaneous or without serious effort) we can bless their path and those they will come to love.  At our less-than best?  We covet security and find that the entry into our lives of any interloper (real or imagined) causes us to hold our breath, pick fights, and harbor anxiety.  We are all of us always holding out for the next transcendent moment, are we not?


Post Scripts:
1) Let those readers who are of the hetero, male, bi, transgender or other persuasions not believe for an instant that I believe the characteristics above described pertain only to those of the lesbian ilk.  We are each and every one of us transcendent, delicate, stuck and strong in our own ways.  I was only trying to be funny.
2) Oh, and for those who are wondering about the girl who was left by the Girl I Always Swooned Over?  Years later, in a different city and state, my partner at the time (not The Girl) and I broke up for our mutual benefit and went out to celebrate. Guess who we ran into?  Guess who she dated next (hint: it wasn't me)?  You're catching on.