from OurChart.com | May-2007
My favorite character on The L Word is Peggy Peabody, whose name has been mispronounced for four seasons. Which says more about how we lesbians feel about elites than anything else I can think of.
If you let Peggy make love to you in 1974, her Year of Being a Lesbian; if you lunched with Peggy and Brooke Astor at Mortimer’s in the 1980s and strategized about New York City homelessness; if you blushed when your hand brushed against hers at a sustainable energy conference in the 1990s; or if you found yourself at the same LACMA or MOMA board meeting the other day, you would have texted me right away.
JANE WISH TO MAKE VITAL INTRODUCTION PLEASE CALL PRIVATE LINE TERRIBLY URGENT.
You’re so modern these days. They used to call it the “petit bleu,” the little blue envelope you put on a valet’s silver salver. It contained the note which a friend had written to introduce you, endorse you, to somebody new. But times have changed, even for you.
Of course I’d call you right back.
“Jane,” you’d say. “I’m fifty strides from the subway.” Ta-tock-ta-tock-ta-tock. “Are you still married?”
“Are you still taking your Alzheimer’s meds?”
“Don’t tease. Who can remember to pee these days, Christ! Are you still married?”
“What self-respecting lesbian my age who ever got married in the first place and still has a positive net worth isn’t still married? We’re the marrying kind,” I’d remind you.
“Damn. Because I just met somebody.”
“And?”
“Somebody for you, dear, not for me. Since you’re married.”
You’ve never made very much sense about that, and I’ve always wondered when your own banner year, your Year of Being a Lesbian, actually took place. But I humor you, knowing that our passionate connection will be brief.
“Who is she?”
“She’s Peggy Peebidee. Great Lesbian Heiresses 101. Hello!”
“I’m still here.”
“Of course you’re still there. I haven’t gone anywhere. The point is, get Peebidee. She’s fabulous.”
“Age?”
“Of a certain age, yes. She dates down. You date up.”
“Vitals?”
“Just out of the body shop. Looks great. All systems go go go.”
“Test driven?”
“As I told you, no. Jane, behave. So naughty.”
“So where did you meet her again?”
“In that TV show. I turned up at a board meeting, I mean I even did my reading for this one, and damned if it hadn’t been turned into a film shoot!”
“What? I thought that only happens on Project Runway.”
“I kid you not. So I was going through the agenda, and she corrected my grammar! That was when I knew she was for you.”
“Was that before or after she made love to you in the Ladies? Or was it the Green Room?”
“Jane! Really. I do not discus my sex life on the subway. I have trouble enough working out how to use the damn subway. But you insist, dear, so I do. If you don’t give this woman a Lifetime Achievement Award then I really have grave doubts about the future of your species. Peebidee, Peggy Peebidee, do you have a pencil?”
I roll my eyes. “I’ve written it down. P-E-A-B-O-D-Y. Is that Boston?”
“Or Bar Harbor. You should check that. Publishing, metals and mining, three-way Standard Oil heiress, some old goat ancestor funded all the libraries in the United States, her father was a war hero of the 10th Mountain Division who started Aspen, she sleeps three hours a night trying to cure AIDS and stop homelessness and hate crimes. Let’s see. She built senior housing for gays in L.A., collects Etruscan pottery and just had her painting stolen from a Dutch museum, very chic in the art world. She’s a published poet of blush-factor erotica, personal friend of Deneuve Allende and DeNiro, rumors over rift with Sontag, active in Darfur, serviceable Spanish and fluent French, Cordon Bleu de Paris, excellent grammar.”
“Photographed by Leibovitz?”
“Of course photographed by Leibovitz.”
Had I been in your employ, I realized, that sentence would have been followed by please prepare, Jane, and try to avoid wasting my time. “Jeez, sounds made in heaven. What do I tell Fair Spouse?”
“What do you mean? I’m losing you.”
“Wait! Back up the subway steps.” Pause till signal improves—just barely. “There. If Peebidee is the new Peggy Guggenheim of The L Word, the 21st century Natalie Barney and Ann Morgan and Winaretta Singer rolled into one, how will Gay Jane Austen control her unfulfilled desire to reproduce the Great Lesbian ideal from generation to generation? I can’t unmarry. That’s my destiny too. My great generational concern. What do I tell Fair Spouse?”
“She was at the same shoot, dear. She’s with Shane. Oh shit, look at the time, must dash!”
I just stare at the piece of paper. Peebidee, Peebidee, when will I ever be born in the right century?