From Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chana-wilson/the-opposite-of-being-visibly-out-hiding-in-plain-sight_b_2089707.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices
Chana Wilson
11/09/2012
In the historic aftermath of the American public voting to affirm marriage equality, it’s clear that the turnaround in majority public opinion comes in large part from ever-increasing LGBT visibility. Just about everyone knows someone who is gay: next-door neighbors, aunties, cousins and celebrities, all making gay folks real and human.
I’m remembering prior eras when the culture’s pervasive homophobia meant lying low for queer folks, and having to hide in turn reinforced prejudice. From 1959, when I was 8, through my sophomore year of high school, I went to Camp Birch Ridge, owned and directed by two women. We campers called them “Skipper” and “Hendy,” their camp nicknames. “Hendy” was short for “Mrs. Henderson.” Her hair was coiffed in soft waves, and she wore cotton culottes to mid-calf, pastel cotton shirts with Peter Pan collars, cotton anklets and sturdy Oxford shoes. Skipper had a strong hook nose and very short, dark hair that she wore slicked straight back with pomade, which left her broad forehead bare, and she always wore men’s khaki pants, the same cotton shirts with Peter Pan collars as Hendy (but only in white), and men’s work boots.
Hendy planned the menu, oversaw the kitchen and taught arts and crafts. She was a school nurse, so if you got banged up, you came to her for mercurochrome and Band-Aids. Skipper did all the hauling with the tractor, including emptying the portable toilets. She led the sing-alongs at the campfires, directed the daily flag-raising ceremony, barked out camper names at post office call and did the dreaded inspections of our tents for neatness.
Wasn’t it obvious, at least to the parents of the campers, that this was a lesbian couple? But, of course, there was a cover story. Hendy had been married and had grown children. Perhaps her husband had died, I don’t remember, but her heterosexuality was sealed with her status as “Mrs.” Skipper’s story was repeated by some counselor in a funereal whisper every year: She’d had a beau before World War II, and the gallant lad went off to battle and was shot dead. Thank goodness she had hooked up with Mrs. Henderson for companionship.
Their relationship was certainly volatile enough. Skipper used to scowl at Hendy during campfires as if they were in the midst of an interrupted fight, and sometimes she would storm off, leaving us mid-song, marshmallows flaming on sticks. No one said “lover’s quarrel,” but perhaps, in some unconscious way, we all knew.
Camp Birch Ridge was actually Hendy and Skipper’s year-round home. It was a beautiful piece of land in northern New Jersey, with woods and orchards and a lake big enough to canoe on. They lived in a huge, white farmhouse. Part of the house was used by the camp: a screened porch where we ate. There was an ironclad rule about the private areas: They were off-limits, forbidden for campers to ever enter. Later, I wondered: Did they not want us campers to see a shared bedroom, or pictures of the two of them, arms around each other’s shoulders, framed in the living room? God, I hope they had a sexual life, and that their passion was not killed by the secrecy, by the danger of their work involving children making it even more critical to stay hidden as lesbians.
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