Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women
Becky and she with me, but the little shoes by her front door broke my heart. Wes was hurt. Angry. We didn’t talk much by phone. Only once in person. He did not tell Becky’s husband, Pete, anything. He did tell me to think about her family. I told Becky it was over because of the little shoes. She disagreed. Yes, she had a family—was a mother and a wife—but she would decide what was right for her. She came to me at night. Crawled into my bed. We agreed we could not leave each other.
    She told Pete. Then she called me to tell me she told Pete. Pete, the assistant headmaster, told the headmaster. The headmaster told me I had four hours to get off campus. Called me a sinner. A homewrecker. Told me I was sick and could possibly teach again once I got help. I still had a handwritten note he put in my box a week earlier in which he expressed how thankful he was for my teaching and coaching. That parents and students had nothing but positive reports. In closing, he’d written that he hoped I would stay with the school a long, long time. I left that note in his school mailbox along with the keys he told me to return. I was the corpse in the woods who needed to disappear to keep the campus from being tainted.
    I loaded all I could fit into my Jeep. Zora sat in the passenger seat. And we drove to Becky’s friend’s house because I had nowhere else to go. Becky was fired, too. Pete begged her to stay with him, but she rented a house. They told their kids they were separating. I called my parents and siblings. Told them I was fired and gay. And I was as out as out can be. I was an outcast. My family offered nothing but love, but I lost every friend I had in Asheville, except Becky. I was not just out, I was inside out. Raw. I was a scandal. But I was still in love, and Becky and I played pool with Big Joan at a dive near my parents’ house the day after Christmas. The next semester, I got a job at the rival school—the day school that I had applied to before I moved to Asheville.
    But Becky’s mom sent her Christian pamphlets about the sinfulness of homosexuality and told her she was ruining her and her family’s lives. Pete often called her and cried. He is Catholic—one of the reasons for their three kids. And though I got along well with her kids, her daughter wasn’t sleeping well.
    One night after I timed her kids running the indoor obstacle course I made out of chairs, toys, balls, and canned food, she told me she was going to try to make things work with Pete. I ran seven miles down murky streets and never felt tired—just the pain that I was still alive.

    I ran and ran and ran and ran and ran. And running is magical. Eventually I get somewhere. Six years ago, I got to Lucy. We met training for the Boston Marathon.
    One night when the snow came down like feathers, I opened a beer because I knew school would be canceled the next day. Lucy, who never misses opportunities, called me and asked if I wanted company. We sat on the couch I had impulsively bought the day before. I drank a second beer as she sipped wine I worried had sat too long since I’d opened it. Her face flushed, and she explained that always happens when she drinks because she is half-Japanese. I had no excuse for my flushed face. I excused myself. Went to the bathroom. I washed my hands and then brushed my teeth. When I joined her on the sofa, she held my face and said, “Do you want to do this?” Yes, I did. Despite a broken marriage, despite the Christian pamphlets, despite losing a job, despite scandals, despite abandonment, despite Becky’s relationship with a woman other than me after leaving Pete a second and final time, despite the laws, despite gossip. I wanted Lucy. I wanted me. As we moved on the new couch together, I did not feel the fiery rush of the forbidden. I felt certain. As certain of us as I was that I would have the next day off to remember every detail of our first evening together.

    Lucy and I live together, and I’m
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