lesbianartandartists:Two years after I made this self-portrait, I separated from the husband whose
lesbianartandartists: Two years after I made this self-portrait, I separated from the husband whose clothes I’m wearing and whose snapshot I’m holding, and began my first lesbian relationship. Soon after, Mother came to my house to tell me this story: “Before I married your daddy I was very much in love with a man from Cincinnati. I thought we were going to be married but he jilted me. I was so hurt, so distraught, that I decided I would never be that much in love again. Four boys had been asking me to marry me. I chose your daddy because I thought he would be the most successful. Years later, about a year before you were born, this old boyfriend came to Houston to find me and I wanted to leave Irvin for him. While I was trying to decide what to do, your daddy and I went on a cruise with three other couples and I told Irvin’s best friend what was on my mind. ‘You can’t leave my friend, Irvin! It would break his heart,’ he told me. So Irvin’s friend made a deal with me–an unspoken deal–to keep me from leaving your daddy. We met four or five times a year at the Rice Hotel, for the next twenty years.” What was your message that day? Were you encouraging me to stay with my husband and have my flings on the side, as you did, or were you wishing you had left your marriage, as I was doing? Perhaps you were simply telling me you understood. Regardless, I resented your trying to say we were alike. Gay Block -- source link
#art history