Pam was 2-years-old when her mother found her life partner and co-parent: a Butch lesbian Pam affectionately refers to as ‘Pap’. Pam, who is gay herself and was named after her mother’s former lover, describes a happy, normal small-town childhood that was both attacked by straight society and embraced by some friends with kind hearts. “[The women] raised a family from the late ‘50s until 1975. They ended up splitting up, but I still had Pap in my life until she passed in her ‘80s.”
Pam views both women as her parents. “I adored Pap,” Pamela recollects. “I call her my Papi, as when I first met her, she was on a cane, so I took her cane because I just fell in love with her. I hid it so she didn’t leave. From that day on, I called her Papi.” The cane reminded her of an old man’s style.
Like many lesbians of the time, both parents were previously married to men. “My mom was married very early. She was in an orphanage and got pregnant around 14 … [Papi] was also married, and had a boy and a girl. As did my mom. They raised four kids together.” Pam views Papi’s children as her siblings and remains in contact with her sister, Papi’s daughter, who survives Papi’s son.
Pam’s parents could be viewed as a Butch-Femme couple. “[Papi] even [bound her chest]. Back in those days, it was very hard to live that way [Butch]. We are talking the late ’50s, early ’60s. She was my other mom, but mostly my dad, as I didn’t have a father. So she got Mother’s Day gifts along with Father’s Day gifts,” Pam laughs.
While Pam’s childhood was happy and normal to her, the community’s judgment was palpable and difficult to ignore. “It was hard. I was very protective of Papi. They would call my parents ‘queers’. Or they’d say, ‘look at those lesbians’ … I wasn’t allowed to have friends spend the night because their parents would think my parents would molest them. Walking to school, I’d hear kids hollering, ‘your mother is a lesbian’ or ‘queer’. When Papi and I would go somewhere, people would stop and stare. I’d hear, ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’”
Society was the issue, not Pam’s family. Pam was fierce in the face of homophobes. “I was very young, but it pissed the shit out of me. I was the baby of the family. I would get so mad when people looked that I’d yell back, as little as I was, ‘Did you lose something? Then quit looking.’”
Yes, there were hard times, but the family had people who supported them. “My parents had lots and lots of friends who visited every day. They were all straight people. There weren’t any gay people coming to the house because they didn’t want the state to take us kids away from them. So they raised us ‘properly’ and had mainly just the relatives on both sides of the family around, or it was just straight neighbours, and they loved them.”
While the family had two female parents at a time when men were the only ones expected to work, they didn’t go without. “My Pap could turn circles around 10 men. She concreted driveways, did mechanic work, painted, played guitar, and sang. My mom played the accordion, piano, and harmonica. We had music all the time in our house growing up. They would both do side jobs and made it with 4 kids.”
Pam describes the hard work, social connections and creativity of hustlers. “They remodelled vacant homes for a realtor and get them ready for move-ins. My Pap could do everything and anything a man can do and probably better … neighbours would always have odd jobs for her. She did roof work as well. And she cooked and was very artistic. She was full-blooded Italian,” Pam laughs. “When she cussed, it was in Italian … I have a lot more of her ways than I have of my mom.”
Pam soon realised she liked girls, too. “I didn’t know any lesbians in my small town in Pennsylvania. I ended up in high school, checking out this butch basketball player. She was 2 grades higher than me. She had a girlfriend, but somehow she found me attractive, and we started dating. She broke up with her girlfriend.”
Pam’s parents separated when she was 18. “My mom was having jealousy issues over a neighbour she thought my Pap was cheating with. So they ended up splitting. My mom took off with me to Texas.”
While Pap ended up with the “neighbour lady,” Pam never lost touch with her. “I still would talk to her every day, on the phone. I would fly back home and stay with her and her new partner … She was my everything until she passed away. I got to stay with her in October; she passed the following December.”
Heteronormative pressure eventually got to Pam, just as it had to her mother and Pap at the beginning. “I ended up getting married to a man and having two kids. Didn’t last long, as I ended up with my next-door neighbour and moved away with her. She was married too, but she was very Butch,” Pam laughs.
New Year’s Eve is a special time for Pam, who cherishes pictures of her parents from that time of year in gay clubs. “My mom would tell me stories of how the women had to hurry and each grab a guy in the clubs, so they didn’t get raided and put in jail.”
To make New Year’s Eve more sentimental, Pam met her current partner at a gay club on NYE in the early 80s, when she was around 21. “I was with a girlfriend, the one who was my neighbor but we both divorced our husbands and took off together. My current partner was with a girlfriend, too. The club was so packed. There were no seats.
“This good-looking butch came up to us and asked if we would like to sit at their table with them and another couple. She had her tux on, and I just thought how cute she was. We made friends with her couple that night. She and I danced the whole evening; both of our partners didn’t want to dance, so they sat and talked. We respected each other… she was with hers, I was with mine.
“Our songs were Prince’s “1999”–that was definitely a dance song–the other was a slow dance, “The Closer I Get To You.” Then there was the last song of the evening, “Last Dance.” For many long years, she and I had this special flirtatious relationship. I was with different people, and so was she. But we said to each other that, no matter who or what happens, we would keep a date for the year 1999, on New Year’s Eve.
“We quit talking for many, many years, with us both having different partners. But she called me in 1999 to see how I was doing. We were both pretty much single. We kept our date for New Year’s Eve, 1999. It’s 2026, and we’re still together.”
Pam believes her parents loved each other until they died. “My mom would go visit Pap [and her partner], and would stay, too. Papi would always tell me [on visits], ‘tell your mom to listen to the song “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You,” or “I Will Leave This World Loving You”.”
Pam’s then-85-year-old mother saw Papi for the final time when Pam took her on a family visit to the area. “[Papi’s] partner was there, but she loved my mom. The partner left the room so my parents could have some time to talk.”
Pam was there with her current partner. She was touched by the scene. “Watching them two both in their golden years, sickly and getting ready to pass within a few years, was very hard. Papi said to my partner, ‘Please promise you will take care of my Pammy and you take care of each other’.”
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