That Strange Intimacy

She came, I saw, I was conquered. In college, I didn't know two women making love was a mortal sin, but Lynn was Catholic and soon informed me. Ultimately, being lured by the beautiful liturgies of her church, I was baptized and entered a religious order dedicated to serving disturbed adolescent girls. After twelve years of joyous and deeply satisfying experiences, a misunderstanding with a superior and grave doubts about my vocation made the next five years most painful. At age forty-one, dispensed from my vows and determined to be heterosexual, I discover a world terrifyingly different from the one I had left seventeen years before. After workingt at a job I hated, during which time I am married briefly, am rejected by my family and am nearly murdered by a man I try to help, in desperation, I drop out and become a hippie, finding time to read and seek out possibilities for rebuilding my life. I finally meet some lesbian feminists who help set me securely on my way.