I Learned the Truth at Just Fifteen
Most Saturdays when I was 15, I would walk to the Downtown Plaza in Salisbury, Maryland. My destination was Watson’s Smoke House at the very end of Main Street, a combo record store and head shop. Over the speakers, they would play the latest music and I would usually buy an album or two.
One fall day, my small world was changed forever in that store by a song and artist I’d never heard of. The song was playing over the speakers, acoustic guitar with a kind of salsa beat... “I learned the truth at seventeen, that love was meant for beauty queens, and high-school girls with clear-skinned smiles, who married young and then retired.…”
What was this—WHO was this—killing me softly with her song? I asked the guy behind the counter, and he showed me the album. On it, a profile shot of a beautiful woman, Janis Ian, the album called Between the Lines and the song, “At Seventeen.” My teenage world tilted on its axis—it was love at first sight and sound.
I bought the album and rushed home to play the whole thing. I was mesmerized. I didn’t know anything about Janis Ian, and it was not easy to find out in those pre-internet days. But I soon became a major fangirl and gobbled up any information I could get my hands on from music magazines, TV, radio, and the public library.
What I found out blew me away. She’d had a hit record in 1967 called “Society’s Child,” a then-controversial song about interracial dating. She was 14 or 15 when it hit the charts. I wanted to play guitar like her, write songs like hers. She became my role model and mentor. Music became my only muse, and it was all about Janis Ian.
At last, there was someone in my life who spoke authentic truth. Her music whispered to me, “I understand, I know what you’re going through. And it’s going to be OK.” There was no one in my life I could talk to about how I was feeling, particularly about other girls. Even thinking those thoughts was dangerous. The immensity of my feelings scared and confused me. Janis’s music calmed those fears and made it OK to have my feelings in secret. It was a secret we shared, although I didn’t know it then.
Some months later, there was a big story in the Village Voice, where Janis came out as bisexual. That scared me again because all my friends knew how obsessed I was with her. It would be guilt by association. I remember my older brother commenting on the fact, and I gathered my courage and said it made no difference to the music. And it didn’t. But it made a huge difference to me because, holy shit, Janis Ian liked girls, too!
Naturally, I began subscribing to the Voice and discovered the personal ads in the back. I perused the “Women Seeking Women” ads and found out that there were many women like me in the world. Maybe not in Salisbury, but certainly in New York. It was then I began to plan to move there.
The reality that even I recognized was that I was going to have to finish high school first. And then go to college. But I made a sacred vow to myself that I would honor my lesbianism when I got to college, when I was far away from all those small-town eyes and my family, and I could freely have my feelings and even maybe act on them. And that’s exactly what I did.
I have thanked Janis Ian in person numerous times over the years for the many gifts she brought into my life. I have seen her perform a dozen times and I always stay after her concerts to talk to her. Of course, fangirl that I remain, it’s not easy. Face-to-face, I still stutter and stammer. But I somehow manage to always thank her for the gift of music and for “seeing” me at such a tender age.
I will see her again in May. She has just released her final album, The Light at the End of the Line, and is touring for what she says is the last time. She’s done with the rigors of the road and since she’s been performing professionally since she was 12, I believe her when she says it’s time to retire from that and do other things. I feel the same way about my job. Our lives have moved kind of parallel to each other over time. But she’s nine years older than me, so she gets to go first, as always, my role model and mentor. But I won’t be too far behind. ▼
Beth Shockley is a public affairs specialist and a former editor of Letters.