Sapphic Friends

Way back when, in the nineteen-fifties, people enjoyed much more personal freedom than today. Girls and women were allowed some leeway when it came to having Sapphic friendships, and I would say that most girls did in those days.
My best friend, Nikie, and I started a Sapphic friendship in high school. While were discrete about it, everyone knew. It was no secret. And we weren’t branded lesbians . People were accepting of two girls or women having a close personal relationship. Our parents certainly knew. We spent enough time naked together doing up our hair and such and just enjoying each other’s female companionship. We both had boyfriends who knew that we had a close relationship and they had no problem with that.
Then the two of us went off to college and we were both married and our husbands and then our kids knew that Nikie and I were close friends. Again, it was no secret. It wasn’t until much later, as he Gay movement started insisted on labeling everything that we both started having to actually be secret about this because the lesbian label was applied to everyone, curtailing such personal freedoms.
Nikie passed away last year and I do miss her dearly as she was a lifelong friend. But both of us really were very disappointed by so-called modern attitudes and where people think now by bringing everything “out into the Open,” and labeling it, that they are giving themselves “freedom” when all they have done is to restrict their freedom and put themselves into a box. If all of these uptight younger people would just loosen up in their stuffy attitudes and be more accepting themselves it would be a far better world.