Rabbit Rabbit #16: Women Who Long, Love, Lust
Language, Lesbians, & Lacy in Chicago
The cast of Showtime’s The L Word
My first weekend in Chicago, my friends took me to a proper dyke bar. I’d been to a couple in New York –requisite visits to Cubbyhole and Henrietta’s– but anyone who knows anything about designated queer spaces in America, specifically lesbian bars, knows that they are somewhat a thing of the past. “This is so 1947!” I exclaimed upon entering Dorothy, the speakeasy located unassumingly behind an unmarked concrete slab of a door. It really was– our entrance felt straight out of the pages of Pat Highsmith’s diary; girls’ heads turned, couples hanging on each other, friend groups sprawled on velvet couches clutching custom cocktails. And all of them gay.
I’m currently in the fourth of a five week stay in the Windy City, where I am working on a play called The Lacy Project by Alena Smith. I’m living with Jane and Clara, two of my good friends from Oberlin, where we did theater together. Clara is directing the play and Jane is in it with me, playing the disgruntled, 9-to-5’er Charlotte to my spoiled, former child star Lacy. The three of us have a hilariously cartoonish rapport, calling each other by loving nicknames, one minute arguing over the dishwasher, and the next, curled up reading on the couch, six pairs of limbs entwined.
It’s been rejuvenating to be back with Jane and Clara after essentially not seeing them during the 1.5 years since we graduated. We’ve settled into a kind of clunky routine that can only sustain under a five-week deadline, making dinner every night in the starch-heavy vein of our college co-ops, then jetting off to a 7 PM rehearsal down the street at which we somehow still cannot bring ourselves to arrive punctually. Most nights, I sleep in the living room on the infamous “flattress,” a hybrid between a mattress and an egg crate, that I have surprisingly grown fond of. Jane and I take long walks around Humbholdt Park, sometimes gossiping and sometimes reciting our lines. Clara and I seem to constantly be doubled over in laughter, white-knuckling the kitchen counter to stay upright.
Jane and me at outdoor rehearsal
Aside from all this, I would say the most notable aspect of our temporary roommate-ship is that we’ve developed a hilarious, life-altering addiction to Showtime’s The L Word. Yes, the hit lesbian series from 2004. I had never seen it. For some reason, I wrote it off in my head as “that porn-y show with Jennifer Beals,” maybe because of how people talk about the sex scenes in it, or the fact that the cast is naked in every poster. Anyhow, I didn’t realize it was legit –let alone amazing– television until Jane, Clara, and I began to watch it every night after rehearsal. It’s gotten to the point where we’ll joke about canceling rehearsal so we can stay home to “watch El-ie,” as we lovingly call it. One time Clara was so tired when we got home, she crawled toward the TV and pleaded, “someone just please turn on El-ie.” This show is like a magical, healing balm. We cannot get enough.
Brief context: The L Word follows an ever-expanding cohort of queer women in their 20s and 30s in Los Angeles as they navigate friendships, romance, and careers. The bridge of the show’s iconic theme song, “The Way That We Live” by Betty (sung at random in this apartment countless times on any given day), describes it best:
Talking, laughing, loving, breathing
Fighting, fucking, crying, drinking
Riding, winning, losing, cheating
Kissing, thinking, dreaming
This is the way
It’s the way that we live
It’s the way that we live
And love
Needless to say, there’s a whole lot of drama. The characters are perfect. Sometimes we’ll catch ourselves talking to them through the screen. In fact, the show is so consuming that the three of us have accidentally created a shorthand language we slip into while watching. It involves taking the first letter of any word or name, say “T” for Tina, and adding the “ah” vowel after it: “Ta.” Understandably, it becomes a guessing game and a contest for whose paying the most attention. We’ll be driving and I could say, “Ugh. It’s so annoying that Ta cheated on Ba with a ma. I mean, they have a ba!,” and they will know exactly what I mean. Clara’s partner Emily told us we sounded ridiculous at first (which we do), but then twenty minutes later, they were syntactically lapping us, fluent.
I feel compelled to write about our endearing obsession with The L Word as emblematic of my time in Chicago for many reasons. First, it has surrounded me with a positive community of friends who delight in their queerness, can find the humor in it, and understand the struggles of being 23 and ambitious about everything in a predominantly heteronormative society, an experience that sometimes feels so singular and lonely you could swear you’re a floating planet. Watching an unapologetically messy, sexy, and funny show like this, with many femme-presenting (see: straight-passing) characters, is a breath of fresh air. There is no one way to be a lesbian, it tells us. It was, and is, essential to the construction of a positive self-image for queer viewers, especially young ones just discovering the show. And, despite the toxic nature of many relationships on the show, presents a tight-knit community to aspire to. Those women have each others’ backs.
It has also been an interesting parallel to the theater show we are working on, and will perform this time next week. When I engage with a piece of media I enjoy, I engage on a deeply serious and personal level. I do not take it lightly. I research the actors, creators, and producers. I watch all the interviews. To witness the unfolding of a work that was the first of its kind (in the sense of becoming mainstream media) while creating our own play that was coincidentally written and is set in 2004, has been inspiring and motivating. It’s easy to doubt yourself as an actor, question your choices and portrayal of a character. Am I doing this person’s story justice? How do I know when I’m being truthful? There isn’t a right answer, but when it works, you feel it. I feel that when I watch The L Word, and am in turn more assured in my worthiness as an actor in my own projects to take on daunting roles and themes. If I get nervous, I have these little reminders in my head that it can be done, and no one is better equipped to do it than me.
And so I know exactly what will happen when I leave Chicago: I’ll be ready to go back to New York, missing my friends (and bed) there, explaining to the five-year-old I babysit what I was doing instead of watcing her ballet classes, and it won’t hit me for a while. Weeks, months, maybe. And then it will: the first strums of “What’s Up?” by Four Non Blondes in my head, the giddiness of an unseasonably warm afternoon, spooning rice onto a dinner plate. I’ll remember all of it, this brief sliver of time, one that will change shape held up to the fleeting light of memory, a distant world. My five weeks in England, my five weeks in Narrowsburg, my five weeks in Chicago– the little lives we build for ourselves in brief stretches of time, incubating and forming us from the inside out in ways we can’t know until they’re long gone. How crucial, how fun.
Recs
Rose Troche is one of the writers on the original L Word. In 1994 she made an incredible, must-see independent film with Guinevere Turner called Go Fish. The movie depicts a group of young lesbians in Chicago and features gorgeous voiceover monologues and documentary-esque footage. A highlight of the archive.
Leisha Hailey, who plays Alice, is also a musician. She formed her first band, The Murmurs, at eighteen. They have an adorable song called “You Suck,” and the music video is just as angsty and sweet.
PANTS podcast with Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig, who plays Shane.
“Untouchable Face” by Ani DiFranco. “Rubbing elbows with the moon.” I am a caricature of myself.
Handsome podcast with Tig Notaro, Mae Martin, & Fortune Feimster. Genius trio; I wait for every Tuesday.
