I Find Myself In A Man's Embrace, Freely Delivered, His Knightingale

I was a sophomore and she was a senior. I was completely inexperienced, she was spreading her wings as a dominant lesbian. It was a complete surrender, but I hated it. After that encounter I regressed into asexuality, and being a 'good' girl. I never dated in high school. I was an art nerd, and my dream was art school. My family could well afford it. I was accepted at MICA for the Fine Arts program.

I met Roberta, an Art History major. Intellectual, smart, loving, affectionate, my missing link, I fell for her, hook, line and sinker. For the first time I was in love, and she fell just as hard for me. As baby lesbians we had to learn together. We fit, and slowly it became apparent, that my role was to be the 'dyke' in the relationship. I did not consider myself 'dyke', to me that was that girl who forced sex on me.

We left college for lesbian and art Mecca, San Francisco. To the literal den of horror. The lesbian movement was ascending, taken over by over aggressive dykes, of the worst kind. In a few weeks we knew we didn't belong there. That was not us. But broke artist we had to fall back on family. Roberta spent the fall at home, and called to let me know she was getting married, to a high school friend. She was apologetic, she would learn to love him, and she wanted a chance at children. Heart broken, I prayed for her, and cried myself to sleep the day she got married.

At home, broke, working part time for a home decor store, I met a man, one of those who lays down the law for you to obey, He gave me two options, get married and have children, or have children. Either way I was no longer single. The man was in the room and I wilted. I got married, Roberta assured me I would learn to love him, and hurry up and get pregnant.

I believe strongly that women have a make up that responds to authority, dominant males. Love is a word, dependent another word, vulnerable to pregnancy and its lifelong commitment, a woman had better pair up with a male that not only wants her, he wants her with his children. That is how I've rationalized being married, with children.

I don't like to go there, but a husband has to be 'as a father, and a wife as a daughter'. Why else do we so completely surrender? Is the poets refrain 'sweet surrender', that drives us women to a man's 'gilded cage', his 'Nightingale?'