Ann Bannon's Double Life Breaks My Heart

On a Saturday night, at a local bookstore, Ann Bannon spoke. She said, It's events like this that allow me to Ann Bannon for a night. That might not be exactly right. But it's pretty close. She said that, or something remarkably like that, more than once. She also told a story about appearing on Terry Gross' "Fresh Air" and talking about the novels she wrote in the 50s and 60s and her fear when she realized that collegues of hers -- people at SacState -- could be listening. She pointed out she was in a position of responsibility and made decisions about budgets and represented the university at events which, she implied, required a formal wardrobe. You had a position of responsibility, someone in the audience asked. Yes, she said. She had a position of responsibility.

She didn't say, I'm a lesbian. But she implied it. She didn't give her real name. Tonight, she said, I get to be Ann Bannon.

She talked about the ex-husband who was surprised and disbelieving despite the fact that her novels -- pulp paperbacks about lesbianism -- had been producing royalty checks. Beside the trips to Greenwich Village for the research which to make those novels accurate. She talked about the SacState history professors who leaned toward after the Terry Gross interview and said, Don't worry. We don't believe it. About the lesbian thing. Not you.

If Ann Bannon had said, I'm not a lesbian. I would have believed her.

I read my first Ann Bannon novel -- Odd Girl Out -- when I was 25. I lived in San Diego; my lover was asleep next to me as I finished the novel. My parents knew. Her parents knew. There were probably even situations in whcih we held hands in public. I read Beebo Brinker later that same year.

In both cases, I found a version of my life that I frequently lacked. Especially Beebo. I hadn't begun to apply the word "butch" to myself but reading that book I started to consider it. Even if it was a game that was only played in my head.

And ten years later, I sat in a folding chair in a bookstore listening to the author of those books talk and thinking -- at one early point -- Is she not a lesbian?

I don't have a right to judge and even now, writing this, looking over the header, I can't but feel that I have no right to have my heart broken by someone else's desire to keep a part of her life in something very much like a closet. But it does break my heart.

In the audience were people for whom those orginial book covers are camp. People -- like me -- who've been able to choose role models and openness and all sorts of ways of wearing their identity on their sleeve or through a pierced limp or in a Mr. Softie packed into BVD, the outline showing under jeans or a T-shirt that says "DYKE." And there was one woman who had the books and had bought them new for a nickle and they had the first covers, the one's that said only "A. Bannon" because the author was afraid to put her first name on them even though the last name was made up. And I can't even begin to imagine what those books could possibly have meant.

When I got to the end of Odd Girl Out, I felt hopeless. One girl went off into a sort of unseen fog and I wasn't sure then what would happen to her. I only knew she was sad. The other married because that was the real alternative. And even with my then-lover next to me I could not believe that we would be okay. That we wouldn't be overcome by what were supposed to do. It broke my heart.

And Ann Bannon broke my heart because I remember the end of that book and I remembered that hopeless feeling and I saw where it came from and, even though it's not the fifties and even though I live in San Francisco, I understood and the need to hide, for one brief moment, overwhelmed me.