“Excuse me. Have you got a flashlight I could borrow?” The quiet voice irritates me out of the sleep I was hoping to sink into as if into a pool of refreshing, forgiving water. I sit up, knowing my short brown hair is probably sticking up all over my head. I slide out of my sleeping bag and root, bear-like, amongst the gear in my tent.

“Here,” I mutter.

“Thanks very much.” The voice sounds embarrassed. “Sorry to bother you.” The young woman flashes my flashlight at a clump of weeds and pads off to the outhouse. She seems small, shy, tentative.

Now that I am fully awake, I am plunged back into the purgatory that led me to the Women’s Campout Retreat, organized by a liberal church in this Year of Our Lord 1985. I am one of two dozen women who have come here to find the peace of God or the Goddess, depending on our preference. The silence and the self-containment of nature are making me aware that I have no peace.

Whenever I am awake and alone, I am haunted by the misunderstandings that always seem to grow like cysts between me and a woman I care for until one of us cuts the other one out of her life. My last girlfriend claimed as she left me that I was hard, cold, selfish. I didn’t tell her how I was bleeding inside, since confessions of vulnerability only seemed likely to drive her further away at that point.

I hear night insects rubbing their wings together, and the rustlings and whisperings of women sharing the same tent. I am alone, as usual. I’m not even sure whether I ever want another “serious” relationship with a woman, since I have been worn down by serious grief. For me, the alternative to lesbian life is not a life spent with men but the life of a hermit or a nun, dedicated to something other than fruitless human relationships. A life of accomplishment.

Even when I sleep, I am possessed by dreams of my own clumsiness. Without meaning to, even against my will, I have hurt a friend or a lover by accidentally banging her with my elbows and knees in passing, or biting her when I only meant to kiss, or by bruising her ribs in a hug. She is crying, growing steadily more outraged. I try to explain that I love her, that I never wanted to harm her, that I would do anything to protect her from pain, including leaving her alone. She is incoherent.

Looking around me in the limbo of dreamland, I am shocked to see that I have also destroyed the things she values. Her guitar is cracked and missing its strings. Her clothes are stained and ripped. The posters she had framed and hung on her wall are hanging out of shattered glass. There are holes in her walls. She will never, never forgive me and neither will anyone she knows. I will be exiled, like Cain, from the tribe that nourished me.

“Get out,” she tells me in a voice of stone. “Just leave.” Sobbing, I pass through her door for the last time. I head for the wilderness, fearing that I am not fit for the refinements of civilization.

Sometimes I dream of groveling in remorse. “Oh my God (or my Goddess, who is in every woman),” I whisper in the isolation of my mind. “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee. I am rotten with sin, but I long for your cleansing love. If You will only forgive me my trespasses, I will accept your will forever.”

I soon find out that begging rarely leads to forgiveness or understanding, and it usually paves the way for abuse. I clutch the knees of a woman who tries to kick me away, calling me names. I apologize at length to a woman who ends the conversation by slamming the phone down in my ear or by returning my letter unopened. At a dance, I try to explain my good intentions to a woman who changes the subject and then waltzes away in the arms of another woman. I pretend not to notice how I am ignored, used or matronized by a woman who claims to be a devout feminist, a sister to all.

Whether in a dream or in real life, my humility usually ends with an explosion. “How dare you?” I yell, trading in my crippling feminine modesty for the aggression of a Valkyrie. “It’s my turn,” I point out to the woman of the moment. “I have a right to speak, a right to decide, a right to win. You have no right to stop me.” I always hope that by some miracle, the other woman will admire and support me. Instead, she is usually hurt beyond my power to cure. She accuses me wildly of attacking her for no good reason. Wounds I never intended to cause appear all over her body. The cycle begins again.

But the end is in sight, or so they say. With any luck, all cycles (emotional, spiritual, historical, menstrual) will end with the End of Days in 1999.

I have tried to pray, but I can no longer believe in a personal Deity of either sex. Because I can’t sleep, I am concentrating on the night sounds outside my tent. I hear my sister-camper’s light footsteps, crunch-crunch over the weeds and stones, coming back to her own tent. I wonder whether she will return my flashlight tonight or tomorrow morning. I am afraid of letting an unreturned flashlight become the catalyst for a feud between me and a woman I don’t even know yet.

“Pssst.” I feel ridiculous. “Hey,” I whisper, “I’m still awake.”

“Oh,” she whispers back, sounding embarrassed but also pleased. “Here’s your flashlight. Thanks for letting me use it.” She has a slight West Indian accent, but in my Canadian ignorance, I can’t identify the island. She is prepared to stumble back to her own tent with no light except the moonlight that filters unreliably through the trees.

“Would you like to talk?” I ask her. Of course not, I think. All good Christian girls like to sleep at night.

“Oh – yes, if you like. Where?”

“We can sit on those big rocks,” I tell her, “away from the tents.” Now she will think I’m a pushy type, but if I didn’t recommend the rocks she would think I was trying to inveigle her into my tent. Or we would sit in the midst of the tent circle and wake everyone else up with our unnecessary talk, thereby making enemies. I zip up my plaid robe, slide my feet into sandals and follow the light of my flashlight in her hand.

We adjust ourselves on the rocks. “I’m Anita,” she identifies herself. In the faint light that she refuses to aim at any part of her own body, I can see caramel-colored skin, gentle features and long but wiry black hair, barely controlled by a large clip. She is at least partly African, probably not born in Canada, while I was born in the White Anglo-Saxon Methodist culture of the stiff upper lip.

I can foresee a schism: she could accuse me of racism, although her manner suggests that she is more afraid that I might actually be racist (or hostile to her for some other reason) than she is willing to accuse me of it. I hope we can establish a truce. Even in the dark, she has a certain ladylike appeal.

“I’m Phyllis,” I tell her. “I work at the public library in town.” She probably doesn’t care to know this, but it seems like a safe thing to say. I slap a mosquito on my arm.

“Oh, that sounds like an interesting job,” she enthuses. She is excruciatingly polite. She seems to be in her mid-twenties, which would make her at least ten years younger than I am. She could accuse me of ageism.

“I really like to read,” she says. “I’m going to the institute, taking nursing. I’d like to specialize in ob/gyn. I was going to Bible college, but I never finished.” Aha, I think: a renegade Christian still wracked by moral qualms. From a fledgling minister or missionary to a healer of women is quite a leap.

“That’s a big change in interests,” I remark. Now she will definitely be offended.

Instead, she laughs. “When I stopped going to the Bible College, I went to the Women’s Employment Center where someone counseled me to take nursing because I’m interested in biology and I want to work with women.” I catch a hint of determination under her girlish politeness. She seems like a quick study who wants to know how the world runs. “I suppose we all have personal reasons for being here,” she lets drop. The conversation is getting more dangerous.

“I suppose,” I agree cautiously.

“I think I really lost my faith a few years ago. I’m not sure I can go to church at all any more, but sometimes I need that comfort. I came here to think things over.”

Of course you lost your faith, I think. You’re too intelligent to keep it. “If you’re not sure you can go,” I try, “you can probably find comfort somewhere else.”

I notice that the circle of light from my flashlight is still pointed at the ground near our feet like the wavering light of faith. She self-consciously flicks it off. Our eyes gradually adjust to the light of the moon and the stars.

“It’s more than accepting Christ as my personal savior. I still believe in God, but I can’t see myself as a man’s helpmeet and I can’t accept all the male dominance in the church. I want to live my own life.” I almost stop breathing.

“Is your family religious?” I ask, hoping this question is acceptable.

She sighs. “My parents split up before my mum brought me and my sister to Canada when we were children. They were never married.” She tells me this almost belligerently. “My mum goes to church all the time, and she takes my sister with her.” The resentment in her voice points to the hypocrisy, as she probably sees it, of a woman who lives on her knees and who has tried to raise two daughters in her own image. Anita does not seem to think her place of origin is worth mentioning.

“Your mother probably means well,” I venture to say.

“Oh, she does,” groans Anita. “She tried to raise us the way she was raised, in Jamaica. Always smiling at the right people and doing what she was told. I was always the troublemaker in the family.” This word seems like an exaggeration, and it probably means that Anita was her mother’s first child of sin, apparently born to make trouble. She doesn’t seem to want to discuss herself any further. “So now you know about me,” she says self-consciously.

“I think you’ll find what you’re looking for,” I try to comfort her, but she wants to be distracted from her own life by hearing about mine. “I needed to get away,” I tell her. “I lost a relationship with someone who meant a lot to me, and I’m trying to get over it.”

Anita murmurs sympathetically. A slight breeze shakes the tree branches, scattering moonlight over us like drops of water. “Maybe I’m better off alone,” I tell her, taking the risk that she will therefore leave me immediately. “I don’t know.”

“A man?” she asks.

I take a deep breath. “No.”

“Oh, a close friend,” she prompts.

“No,” I persist. “A woman. I’m a lesbian.”

She breathes in sharply. “I can understand that,” she assures me. “I mean, I’m not sure if I really understand, but sometimes I --.” She trails off. “I know women can be really close,” she finishes. At each other’s throats, I think. That’s an intimate position.

Obviously this innocent child has never tried to survive in lesbian or feminist circles. If I warn her about the sharp rocks below the surface of those deceptively silver pools of female energy, I will be a traitor to my kind. If I fail to warn her, I will be the predatory dyke that no mother wants her daughter to meet, especially at night in the woods. I can feel my sharp teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

I can speak for myself now, at this moment: a person who just broke up with another person. “She’s a vegetarian and she wanted me to stop eating meat completely,” I explain. “She thinks I’m too aggressive and too intellectual. She thinks I didn’t pay enough attention to her.” Pain and loss rise in my throat. “The list goes on. She misunderstood some things I said about a friend of hers, and when I tried to explain, she got more upset. It all seemed so unnecessary. But I loved being with her, in spite of everything.” Tears well up in my eyes as I imagine Cheryl’s warm skin and her taut, slim body. My arms ache with the need to hold her.

“Do you think you could get back together?” asks Anita. You sweet young fool, I think.

“She’s with someone else now,” I explain. “But I’m not interested in anyone else. I’ve gone through this too many times before. I see her all the time at the social events we both go to, and it’s torture.” I’ve probably said too much, but I need to say it to someone. “I got used to her smell,” I say, knowing I am probably embarrassing Anita to the point of hyperventilation. “Each woman is different. I was used to her body, her voice, her way of doing things. It’s hard to give up. You don’t know what it’s like.” The pain fills my body like the pain of a woman in labor (I imagine), but it will never come to a definite conclusion, and no midwife can help me with it.

Anita seems shocked but fascinated. “I didn’t know a relationship between women could end that way,” she admits.

“They don’t all,” I assure her. “Some women I know have been together for years. But I have no luck.”

I can feel her delicate sympathy curling around me like an invisible fog. Her pain and my pain give rise to a fragile rapport that grows thicker between us. I’m sure she has wondered how to find the lesbian community, and I’m afraid my rash words have caused trouble, as usual, by scaring her away from her spiritual home.

“We both need to sleep,” I tell her softly. “It’s late.”

Anita murmurs in agreement. “We should talk some more later. We should get together after the retreat.”

“Oh yes,” I agree with all sincerity, impulsively reaching for her nearest hand. She grasps mine. “If I ever say something you don’t like or don’t believe,” I say awkwardly, “you should tell me. It’s better not to keep your feelings in until they get out of hand.”

“I’ll try,” she consents. “You seem like an honest person. I’ll try to be as honest with you as you are with me.” Please woman, I think, keep lending me the light you see by as I lend you mine, no matter what happens or doesn’t happen between us.

“I’ll light you back to your tent,” I offer chivalrously. At some point in the conversation, I took back my flashlight.

“Thank you,” she replies with some coquettishness. As we stumble over the uneven ground, I wonder whether the only thing we can both believe in is the unlimited possibility of new beginnings, of the clumsy but hopeful reaching out of souls in each other’s direction. There is always the chance of missing, but there is always the chance of connecting.

“See you in the morning,” I whisper.

“Good night, Phyllis,” she whispers back before ducking into the opening of her tent. She, too, sleeps alone.

I silently ask the spinning universe for enough energy to keep going, to keep trying to hear what is really said as well as to say what I really mean. For the moment, Anita seems to have left a light perfume in the air I breathe, mixed with the smell of the pines. I think I’ll enjoy the sunshine better tomorrow than I did today.

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