Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma by Ronni Sanlo Read Free Book Online Page B

invited me to spend the night. (Her father was famous in our neighborhood because he had a brand new fire-engine-red-with-white-interior Cadillac convertible. We Jews in Miami Beach back then LOVED those big-finned babies!)
     
    Olivia and I played a game whenever I spent the night, which was most weekends during the school year. When it was time to go to bed—and there was only one in Olivia’s room—we would hug and practice kissing, ostensibly preparing each other for kissing boys. We would cover our mouths with our fingers so it wouldn’t be a real kiss, just fingers touching in front of our mouths. Real kissing was reserved for boys. When the school year was over, Olivia moved on to junior high, and I never spent the night with her again.
     
    This did, however set up a pattern that I would maintain until I graduated from high school. I identified some girl as my “girlfriend” at the beginning of each school year in late August, after a summer of surfing, boating, and vacationing around Florida in the family station wagon. The girl—my girlfriend—never knew how I felt. She just thought we were best friends, and we were! But she was never aware that we were “going together.” That was reserved for the secret places of my head and heart. So she also didn’t know when we broke up in the spring, which we always did, just prior to the summer vacation from school. Every year, the same story. New girlfriend in the fall; she was clueless. Broke up in the spring; she was still clueless. And while I would secretly be elated in the fall and heartbroken in the spring, I liked the process. Though it became increasingly frustrating as I got older and went on to high school, it was certainly safe. No one knew I was a lesbian. I told no one and never acted on it outside of my pathetic little Walter Mitty brain. Sadly, this routine set in motion my being in and out of many relationships with women later in my life.
     
    But back to the fifth grade: despite my kissy practice with Olivia, and though my heart was reserved for Mousekateer Annette Funicello, I really liked Dana. I made Dana my best friend in the 5th grade so we could spend lots of time together and I could be close to her. That worked. When summer came, we broke up and I rarely ever saw her again.
     
    In the sixth grade, which back then was the last year of elementary school, I had no interest in Dana. I met Kathleen who, of course, became my new best friend. We “went steady” all year long, except, of course, she didn’t know, and we, of course, “broke up” when summer came, but she didn’t know that, either. And there was another actor that year as well. I was smitten with the character Zelda Gilroy, played by Sheila James on the television program called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Zelda was so strong, so smart. Forty-five years later, Sheila James Kuehl and I are friends in real life.
     
    I attended North Miami Beach Junior High School for grades seven, eight, and nine. In the seventh grade, my “girlfriend” was Penny. Penny was a bit dicey in my head because she wasn’t Jewish. Oy! We were in band together and sat next to one another in the clarinet section. (I started out on clarinet but switched to the Sousaphone after I broke my clarinet. My mother always called me a “bull in a china shop.” The clarinet was way too fragile for me. It’s darned hard to bust a Sousaphone!)
     
    Maybe it was because Penny wasn’t Jewish that I felt a bit more flirtatious with her than the others. Sometimes I walked her home from school. She lived south of 163rd Street where few Jews lived. Whenever I walked Penny home I felt like I was crossing into the badlands, both geographically and behaviorally. Sometimes I put my arm around her waist when we walked. It seemed to be okay with her. That was as bold as I ever got. With anyone. Ever.
     
    Eighth grade was Brenda. Ninth grade, Sandra, the most beautiful girl in the school. In fact, years later she