Playing House

Not everyone has lived in a refurbished chicken coop. And I mean a real chicken coop, not a small house the size of a chicken coop. I lived in such a structure near Iowa City, Iowa. It had three rooms and the tiniest bathroom imaginable. The entrance to the house was the back door and the kitchen was the first room you entered. It was barely functional, with miniature appliances: a narrow fridge with a breadbox-sized freezer on top, an abbreviated stove with two burners and a small oven underneath, the size of which could not accommodate a cookie sheet. The sink was small and shallow, with enough counter space for a drainboard and not much else. I had found a small drop-leaf table in a free store/junk shop and squeezed it in a corner next to the tiny refrigerator, but only with its hinged leaves in a downward position. The house had one closet and it was in the kitchen. It was stuffed with clothes I had hauled across the country, representing all the stages of my short 24-year life: some dresses from high school, sweat clothes from college, dozens of thrift store tunics, blue jeans and skirts. The elfin bathroom was off the kitchen. 

The living room, where any actual living could take place, was square, about 9 by 9, with two windows and a radiator floor vent. It was furnished with two small upholstered chairs and a loveseat. Crammed into one corner was a wooden school desk that the university in town had given away. The third and last room was the bedroom. In it was a full-size mattress on a frame and a dresser. To open the dresser, I had to sit cross-legged on the bed — and even then the drawers could only open halfway. There was literally no space in this room to move except on the top of the bed. 

This is not a story about a house or about architecture; it is not a tale of how a young personmakes the best of a less-than-ideal situation — though I could see how you might think this is where I am going. Instead, it’s the story of a relationship, first describing the place I lived while it ebbed and flowed into one of the strangest experiences of my life. His name was Greg. Gregory Oskar Weber. Professor Greg Weber was the chairman of the Ceramics Department of the University of Iowa. After my starter marriage ended, the one that brought me to Iowa in the first place, I relocated to my tiny dwelling within walking distance to the University. My ex-husband had left for New Jersey, taking the car and half of the things we owned (which were about four pieces of furniture). I scrounged for the next several years, making a little life work well enough. 

I held an assortment of odd part-time jobs for many years, running the gamut from helping the medical school design a new catalog to working in a toy store, with stints in between at restaurants, the University library and a nursery school. I worked these jobs to make the monthly rent payment and to pay for every ceramics class the University offered. I had fallen in love with throwing pots. I got in-state tuition and this allowed me to study hand building, the making of clay bodies and glazes, and kiln construction. At night, I sketched pictures of spouts, lids, teapots, cylinders and bowls. I was obsessed with clay — with molding it, throwing it, making it into beautiful, functional objects. I even considered getting a Masters of Fine Arts degree, though this never came to be.

I took every class Greg Weber taught. He was an excellent teacher and I’m sure I was a gratifying student, spending inordinate amounts of time in the studio. When I wasn’t at one of my many piecemeal jobs, I was there throwing pot after pot, repeating the motions like a musician practicing scales. Greg was there often, even in the wee hours of the morning. Kilns had to be opened, emptied at particular times — there was a science and a precision to ceramics that captivated me. Along with three or four other clay-crazed students, I helped him run the studio, learning as I went. I was so absorbed that I did not notice the shift that was taking place before my eyes. 

It was in the spring of 1972 that Professor Greg Weber started paying another kind of attention to me — one that was not focused on art or the chemistry of clay. He started bringing dinner for the two of us, sandwiches he had made himself, cut-up fruit, cookies baked for him by his mother (who lived in a nearby town). Sometimes he would bring a bottle of wine or a couple of beers. We started taking dinner breaks, going into his small office away from the dust and clay debris in the studio. He told me about his life outside ceramics: stories of his childhood, his father dying when he was 12, his younger sister who lived in Chicago, and then about his marriage, which had ended three years before, his children, his love of camping, the Southwest, and his Honda motorcycle. 

So here I was, a divorced young woman of 25, living in a renovated chicken coop, working to make enough money to pay the rent and keep some food on the table; a little older than an adolescent, I wanted to be good at something, to be loved and desired. If I could have weighed the importance of ceramics in my life versus the need to be wanted by someone, I can say that the latter was heavier by far. So I proceeded into a romantic relationship with Professor Greg Weber.

I could not know it then, but I would come love his children, I would have a relationship with his mother, and I would, sadly, stop making pots. It would become too uncomfortable to be in the studio with all the other students while in a relationship with the professor. I was unaware of so many things, blinded by the irresistible state of being chosen, loved in a way, and swept into the life of another person. I was divorced, after all, and wondered if, on some level, I was defective. My being in a relationship with Greg, someone so respected by me and my fellow classmates, seemed to assure my little fledgling sense of self that I was someone. 

We spent almost three years together. I remained living in the chicken coop, while he lived about 10 blocks away in a small, two-bedroom house, plain and ordinary on the outside, but filled with his beautiful sculptures and pots on the inside. He had the energy of a bungee cord. It seemed he never stopped moving, transforming matter into art almost everywhere. He designed a unique play area in his backyard for his kids, complete with a labyrinth and a sandbox in the shape of a doughnut with a pool of water in the hole; he made a clever entertainment center for his stereo equipment and television out of an antique quarter-sawn oak icebox that he bought at a farm auction.

We spent weeks at a time at one of our houses, then we would switch to the other. I never knew exactly at which house particular clothes were, but we managed this way for months at a time. Every so often he would initiate a tense conversation about his need for more “space.” He meant relational space, not the space within our houses. This precipitated a kind of time-out in the relationship, where he would date other women and I would wait for him to get tired and come back — which he did fairly quickly. We had endless discussions about what he was searching for and on one occasion, I raised my voice, declaring that he would not find it in women’s private parts. Of course this eventually led to a permanent breakup, but I stayed for enough masochistic cycles of intimacy and separation to last a lifetime. 

During the years we were together, he introduced me to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area between northern Minnesota and Canada. He had a Grumman canoe and we paddled pristine lakes farther away from civilization than I had ever been. He taught me how to canoe, what to do if we capsized, how to pitch a tent and how to portage long distances. Having grown up in New York City, I was completely unaware of the beauty in this country. I loved creating little homesteads out of these campsites with Greg. We were more compatible in the wild than we were in our university town. During the last year of our relationship, we took a camping trip to the Four Corners area in the Southwest. We pitched our tent on a mesa in Colorado, next to a Navajo lake in New Mexico, in a canyon in Utah and in the middle of a petrified forest in Arizona. I saw things I never knew existed. My world got bigger. And while I was focusing on the wide-open vistas and gorgeous terrain in this country, I was not paying attention to the small details of our fraying relationship.

Greg and his ex-wife had two children: a 6-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter. They had a custody arrangement whereby he got to be with his kids every other weekend and every Wednesday night. In the summers, he got them for a month. Slowly they became a part of my life, and I looked forward to our time together, the four of us, like a little pretend family. I was young, almost a child myself, and so playing house was something I apparently did with great enthusiasm. I did not foresee that the attachment between the children and me had really no place to go if the relationship I was having with their father ended. I kept myself remarkably unaware of the consequences of this investment I was making — and for what? For the illusion that what I wanted to see, what I wanted to feel, was reliable. If I did not see trouble, then no trouble existed. 

I hoped that my relationship with Greg would work out for all the wrong reasons. The truth was, I did not know what to do with my young life. I was in graduate school by this time, studying psychology, and I suppose I envisioned myself married to Greg, a stepmom to his sweet kids, and practicing therapy in the Counseling Center at the University. We would be a University couple; I would have some sort of identity; I would have children I could love without responsibilities. I relinquished my passion for making pottery. And in looking back, I abandoned   my inclinations to see, to discern, to question, to be curious. I turned a blind eye to details, small lapses in connection. I did not notice, for example, that I had started dressing in ways Greg liked — which were totally uncomfortable for me. Greg wanted me to get dressed up in skirts and dresses with dark pantyhose. I had never liked dressing up and certainly I was averse to wearing pantyhose. I had always enjoyed wearing plaid shirts, blue jeans and flat, comfortable shoes. I had lived in flannel nightgowns my entire life, but there was no flannel to be seen. Only slinky nylon, shiny silk and black shimmery polyester. I had disavowed my own taste, my own preferences, allowing Greg to dress me, or have me dress to his likings. I abandoned myself in the service of avoiding living on my own. 

It was in the fall of year three of our relationship that I finally said to Greg that I was done, that I could not go through another cycle of togetherness followed by space. I moved all my clothes, kitchen items, hiking boots and sleeping bag to my tiny house, where I was determined to steady myself and start a new life. I knew I would not be able to return to the Ceramics Department. I was thinking that after graduate school, I might move to Boston to live near my sister. I could take up pottery there. I felt more relieved than sad about breaking up. In truth, I was tiring of his energy. What I missed were his kids. And I vowed to myself to never get involved again with someone who had children. It was too hard to love them and not be a part of seeing them grow up. 

About three weeks after the separation, I got a call from Greg. He was sobbing into the receiver and said there was something he had to tell me. He asked if he could come over to my house to talk. He had started seeing a counselor at the University Counseling Center. Something had come up in one of his sessions and his counselor highly recommended that he talk to me. 

Greg came in the back door (which was the front door) and took off his cowboy boots and sat cross-legged on my bed. He was crying, almost moaning. I thought maybe something terrible had happened to one of his children. But no, it was a secret he had been keeping. And he had to get it off his chest. He hoped that by my knowing it, we could reunite and build a strong partnership. He said, with great difficulty, that he had been sneaking around during our entire time together, but not with other women. Rather, he had been taking my clothes, my underwear, my shoes, and dressing up in them in private. This was in 1974 and cross-dressing was not as accepted as it is today. Men in drag were a shameful anomaly, and their behavior was described and diagnosed in psychology literature. 

What got to me was not so much that Greg liked to dress up in women’s clothes, although this took a number of weeks to get my arms around — what made me upset was that these were MY clothes. Where exactly had I been for three years that I did not know that my skirts, bras, pantyhose and shoes were missing? I had been lied to. I had been misled. It was similar, I assumed, to finding out your partner was having an affair with another person. But in this case, he was having an affair with my clothes.

Greg could barely articulate his confession because he was crying so hard. He sputtered: “I am a heterosexual transvestite.” Memories flooded my mind of times in Manhattan when my sister and I used to watch men in drag in the Couture Department at Bloomingdale’s. I was in shock. I could barely compute this information. I was aware mostly of feeling sad for Greg, having carried this secret with him for most of his life. He admitted that his wife caught him in the act of walking around in the middle of the night, fully made-up wearing her short black dress. It precipitated their divorce and she promised him she would never tell anyone what she saw. He was petrified of losing his tenured position at the University, which, of course, she was invested in too, since his salary would provide her with alimony and child support.

In the weeks that followed his confession, Greg was contrite and accommodating. His counselor said that for our relationship to go on, he would need to allow me to ask him any questions I had about his behaviors. The thinking was that the secret needed to be fully exposed for his shame to dissipate, and that for the relationship to have any chance of survival, I would need the assurance that there were no more secrets. Greg told me anxiously that he would be forthright about everything and that no question or comment would be off limits.

I felt as though cold water had been splashed on my face. I had to wake up, refocus, and reflect. Gradually, I remembered curious incidents in our past and asked him to confirm facts. One example: during the previous summer, I flew to New York to visit my parents. The least expensive flights were in and out of Des Moines, almost two hours away from Iowa City. Greg wanted to pick me up from the airport when I returned, which was thoughtful and appreciated. I came out of the baggage claim area and he was waiting, the trunk of his brown Chevrolet Vega opened, ready for my suitcase. He embraced me with warm enthusiasm. I had been gone for about five days. I moved some ceramics materials around in his trunk to make room for the bag. He had gone to a supply store while in Des Moines to pick up some material for the studio. Under some shopping bags was a dress of mine. It was a dress I had not worn since high school and it been hanging in the very back of my closet in my chicken coop house. The dress was made of green and magenta wool. A narrow black velvet belt separated the bodice from the skirt. I hated the dress but liked the fabric and thought that someday maybe I might learn to sew and could use the fabric to make something else. 

Of course I immediately asked Greg why the dress was there. Seamlessly, he said that he wanted to take me out for a special dinner in Des Moines and looked in my closet for a nice dress for me to wear. Now this was July in Iowa; the weather was hot and sticky. I thought to myself: a wool dress in the summer?? I chalked it up to male ignorance. What did men know about fabric and the seasons? I told him I would love to go to dinner, but could not wear a wool dress on such a hot evening. He laughed at himself, saying yes, how silly of me to bring a winter dress. He held the door open to the car and off we went to the restaurant.

When I got the green light to ask him questions, I brought up the wool dress in his car that evening in Des Moines. He admitted he had gone into the closet in my house while I was in New York, found the dress, brought it to his house, and had worn it; he had forgotten to put it back. I could not figure out the reason this news caused me to feel sick. Was it the betrayal I felt, the lies told that I believed? Was it the reality that my clothing was being worn by my boyfriend? Or was it the sudden awareness that I had allowed my perception of reality to be distorted? I considered myself an astute observer of people, having grown up in a family where being on my toes about what was under the surface of relationships served me well. So maybe what bothered me was more about me than about Greg’s cross-dressing with my clothes. 

One Sunday night about three weeks from his cross-legged confession, we were at his house spending the evening with his children. Greg had created a wonderful playroom in his basement and the four of us had great fun making a city out of Legos. When it was time for the kids to go home to their mother, I told Greg I would clean up while he drove them to his ex-wife’s house, about 20 minutes away. I deconstructed our urban Lego universe and put the pieces in a bin, which I returned to an open shelf alongside the playroom. I was not then, nor am I now, a person who hears a voice or a presence guiding her. But at the moment I placed the Lego bin on the shelf, something told me to look up. The ceiling of the basement was made of vinyl insulated ceiling tiles suspended from the joists. Directly above where I was standing, there was an irregular space between two tiles, as though they had been moved purposely. I got a small ladder from a tool closet and climbed it to see if I could figure out why the tiles had been separated; I moved them farther apart so I could fit my head into the space. I found myself staring at three lidded shoeboxes sitting on top of one of the tiles. Inside one box was, shockingly, a handgun. In the second one, there were pieces of underwear, many of them mine, and some hosiery and garter belts (not mine). And in the last box were two pairs of high-heeled shoes. I had never owned nor even tried on high-heeled shoes. And I had never seen a handgun.

My insides were quivering. My head felt heavy and hot and my hands were shaking. Not only did I find some of my clothing items lying next to a garter belt and high heel shoes, but I also saw a gun. Greg had confessed for weeks  about the clothes, but the handgun was a total shock. As I stood on the ladder, I instantly knew that I wanted nothing to do with the gun, nor did I even want to hear about it. I put the lids back on the boxes. I climbed down the ladder and stepped onto the floor making sure the ceiling tiles were positioned as I found them. I returned the ladder to the closet. I had to get out of Greg’s house. I ran upstairs and scribbled a note to him saying I wanted to sleep alone at my house, then grabbed my coat and drove home. Greg called me later, but I did not answer the phone. I was in bed under the covers in the tiny bedroom of my chicken coop house crying into my pillow. I did not know what to do with myself. I did not want to be in this story that was revealing itself before my eyes. 

Of course, there were too many secrets and lies between us to reconcile our relationship, so it inevitably ended. I never told him that I saw the gun and the boxes above the ceiling tiles. I just knew they were a message to me, not so much of Greg’s secret obsessions, but of my own abdication of my true self. I had permitted myself to be shaped and molded into someone who was there to meet the surreptitious needs of a man. How could I have allowed that? I knew I was young, but I had seen through so many masks and personas in Manhattan growing up. What was so difficult to get over was not Greg’s transvestism (although at the time, I could not envision how that was going to work in my life), but rather my complicity in living two lives. I was outwardly living one life and inwardly ignoring another. I was living a heterosexual fake person’s life in a chicken coop of a house, trying to squeeze myself into someone else’s future. Thank God something told me to look up, and thank God for the shoeboxes. Their contents jolted me into reality and propelled me back into my own life. I gave the nylon slinky clothing items in my closet to Goodwill, along with the wool dress. And when I got my flannel nightgown unearthed from the bottom of a drawer, I felt like an archeologist finding the Rosetta Stone. I clutched it before I put it on, as one might do reuniting with an old friend after having been away on a long and arduous journey.