It’s Saturday afternoon, and my wife has put on the Lilith Fair documentary. On one hand, it’s a big hot mug of warm nostalgia featuring beloved artists from my young adult years – Sarah McLauchlan, Lisa Loeb (huge crush), and Natalie Merchant, to name a few. And also, it has tapped into a well of grief. It makes me so sad I never got to experience this phenomenal sapphic gathering and its magical performances but it’s also about what it says about young-adult me.
Why wasn’t I there, and how did I miss out on this? It’s a bit weird actually, because, at the time, I was a true fan of some of these performers. And if you know me now without knowing my history, you’d probably be shocked I never went. I completely fit the demo. I’ve literally shared a stage with the Indigo Girls (as part of a chorus). If Lilith Fair reboot happened today, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
So what was going on with me back then?
In the Lilith fair era, approximately speaking, I was in my senior year of college. By then, I’d loosened myself from the grip of evangelical Christianity, thanks to a secular University of California education. But what had absolutely not budged inside 21-year-old me was the brainwash of compulsory heterosexuality. I’d been painfully aware of my own attraction to other women since adolescence, but actually dating women? Uh, no. Good girls don’t do that.