She Swung Her Hips and Brushed Back Her Blonde Hair in Santa Fe and Every Lesbian Fell Down

She Swung Her Hips and Brushed Back Her Blonde Hair in Santa Fe and 

Every Lesbian 

Fell Down

Driving around Santa Fe now, 2019, you see brown adobe buildings, niche shops, art museums, galleries, and government buildings. You see tourists and the working class. Initially, you don't see gays and lesbians. But we or they are HERE!

I am sitting with another shy gay teacher and since we aren't in the lunchroom, I am a bit less shy and more open about chatting. I  am telling a story to  him about a co-worker who taught me how to sketch and draw.

And I am saying the words and thinking, Gads, I HAVE to write about Guine's character, because she is a wise icon!

I have been a storyteller since 4th, 5th grade, a writer but I never saw myself as an Artist. I do a mean stick figure, and can do some pretty loud sign-block-letters, but my watercolours were blah and any attempt at mountains or faces were flat.

When you work at a desk job, there is the internet, work and chit chat. When you work at a Call Center, the computer is 99 % for work and chit chat is discouraged because it carries onto the microphones and the phones.

So when "Guine Persefphone" (not her real name) rolled five pencils, all different darkness and sharpness next to her keyboard to sketch tremendous duplicates of magazine photos, I began to learn. And what I really want to talk about is how once in the past, this calm smooth talking grandmother-aged mystic was the talk of the town, a woman who ruled Santa Fe as one of many hot lesbians. And she is my friend.

Santa Fe. My Photo.

A teen in the radical 1960's, Guine was once told by a tarot friend about the 100 or more terms LGBTQI young adults use, such as polyamorous when people used to say bi-sexual. All these "terms" said Guine, shaking her head, smiling and wondering. That is a clue that Guine is not a "has-bein" what means Past-tense famous Lesbian, all washed up. No, in this case I believe Guine is an icon and a fortress of wisdom.

"I would sell my natural herbs, people would come in the shop and I would wink at them and give them some other healthy medicines found in the back of the shop..."

I want to time-travel back to those years. I want to see a You Tube of Guine sauntering around town, I want to make a L-word chart of who she knew and who she mingled with, to see six-degrees of separation, how life intertwines. I want to find out when she "became" a lesbian, and trace her travels to Los Angeles, Japan, Colorado, New Mexico, a paradise island, and now a Red State to gather fodder for more stories and ah-ha moments of Life.

Santa Fe has a very long reputation of being accepting to artists and eccentrics. It is the fifth most same-sex couples. Her union with s guru / self journey coach from the East Coast who had been to India, Asia, and Gallup, New Mexico! Somehow she un-entangled herself and embarked upon a single-woman, mother and feminist very soon afterwards, sharing only her son "David" who is her only child and her only love.

"A friend sent me to an island. I just had to go back..."
Guine booked a ticket to Paradise and lived seven years there. Her eyes glaze and you can tell she would go back there in a minute. If not for her worry-sick over David's health, and for things the government changed, Social Security, health care, and import/export rules. 

A Part of New Mexico that I thought looked like an ISLAND. My Photo.

No doubt cognitive-dissonance would be true because Guine's spirituality is so similar to mine, yet her beliefs and openness allows my ideas to shatter from their black and white coloring book lines. She reads Tarot, she has shaman - abilities, she understands Judaism and Christianity, but allows for Buddhism and Hinduism.  Her belief in a great creator raises a feminine Boss, and that is eye opening. You are talking to her and thinking, is she high? But she keeps talking and it makes a ton of sense. And she is taking what both of you know and raising it to a higher level.   What does it mean to say one is a Metaphysic?  She sure is!

Sample Tarot not hers

"I have been an avid Metaphysical student since 1969, having the Sun in my 12th house; of course I would be drawn to Metaphysics and all the occult subjects. In 1982 I took my first class on Tarot at the Ark Bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico and began reading for family and friends, I became a professional Tarot card reader in 1999. In 2003, Bali called me to come and I moved there in 2004. After 4 years of living in Bali, I received a vision, it was the Bali Tarot deck spread out fully in front of me I started at once to draw and design the deck. Hopefully it will soon be published; I have no publisher as yet, working on writing the last few cards for the companion booklet “The Bali Tarot Deck, Major Arcana. I do consider myself to be a Spiritual Mystic, an intuitive reader who is earthly, practical and is of the highest integrity. My readings are non-judgmental, reality based, spirituality focused. I am a natural intuitive reader and do not utilize Tarot as “fortune telling”, the energy of free will is operable during a Tarot card reading and the future will and can change by your actions now. I believe that the source of a Tarot reading emanates from within and aids in guidance to contact one’s Higher Self. I am here to offer guidance and the opportunity to be all that you can be. Relationships, love, money, business, connecting to your higher power, all subjects are welcomed.


I lived in Bali for 8 years, I also had an eBay store with animal totem carvings, Goddess, Celtic, Buddha etc. pendants and figurines. All hand carved in my shop in Bali. Now I am back in USA and that business is starting to wind down. My carvers carve my designs and theirs, I place selected gemstones for energy in each piece."\

She is open about her Recovery. If I knew one to ten men and women struggling with alcohol abuse, I would gently send them her way. She attends those meetings and values and cherishes them as her help. I have listened to her listen to young adults talking about "maybe I am using too much marijuana..." and she softly gives advice.  Then one day she suggested and admitted she uses the medical type....I was again in a mud slide thinking that I personally have trouble with the gray areas, using pot does not fit in, but she is supportive of occasional use. I was just "not in front of any kids or teens under 18..."!  I got scared. I should not have been. 

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