I.
Story by Robin Lind
It was well past midnight on that memorable evening in September 1994. I said goodnight to my best friend Michael and his lover Leonard in front of their house and crossed the street toward my upstairs studio apartment at the foot of Twin Peaks in San Francisco’s Noe Valley. I paused for only a moment at the top of the hill to look down over the beautiful city that I had grown to love over the past few years.
Tonight, my life is perfect. After nearly twenty years of being married to the wrong person, I found a lifelong treasure that I had been waiting my entire life to find but had never known to look for. I found a Diamond, the most precious and sought-after Jewel in the world.
A sudden cool breeze sent an involuntary chill through my body, but I knew it was caused by more than air temperature. I tightened my hug slightly around the petite woman who was with me and sighed softly.
“This is almost heaven!” I whispered, my lips barely brushing her ear. I marveled all over again at how this entire weekend had come about.
I had been 17 when my parents sent me to Orchill Hills, an exclusive boarding school snuggled in the green mountains of North Carolina. That year, Michael Diamond was to change my life forever. He was the new music teacher, a young, quiet, sophisticated, and extremely talented musician from Los Angeles who at once recognized and appreciated my own musical talents. Out of all the sopranos in the entire school, Mr. Diamond chose me to work as his student secretary in the music department. Mrs. Diamond was the girls’ dormitory dean. But being a “good girl” who didn’t get into trouble, I didn’t get to know her very well. At the end of the school year, Mr. D—as we called him—and his shy Filipino wife disappeared. I grew up and got married.
Two decades and two babies later, I knew that my life had to change. Through persistence and ingenuity, I found Mr. Diamond again. He and Mrs. Diamond had divorced many years before when Michael had come out as a gay man. He had moved to San Francisco where he became a prominent theater organ performer in the famous Castro District. Since I was in charge of Orchill Hills Alumni Homecoming, I invited Mr. Diamond to be our guest concert artist one year. There was instant bonding, a rekindling of an old relationship in a new setting. I knew I had found the best friend that my heart had always longed for. I visited him in San Francisco and knew that I had to move here. It felt more like home than anywhere else in the world!
Despite an insanely jealous husband who nearly killed both Michael and me with a shotgun, I left the dysfunctional marriage. I quit my factory job of nineteen years, sold most of my personal possessions, and moved across the country to The City in the summer of 1992. Together Michael and I started Diamond Music Enterprises to record, publish, and distribute his exceptionally popular movie music performances and the printed arrangements that were so much in demand from his adoring fans.
For the next year, Michael and I spent long days—and nights—building Diamond Music Enterprises, in recording sessions, computer music engraving, and endless advertising and promotional endeavors. But our efforts were well rewarded with the increasing sales revenues and contracts that poured in.
Then Leonard Starr, a brilliant young actor, came into Michael’s life. He and Michael went to Guerneville for the Fourth of July weekend. For the first time since I had moved from North Carolina, I was alone with my thoughts and feelings. For the first time, I had to face some options. If I do not spend the rest of my life alone, then with who? Not with a man, never again! But…with a woman?
I allowed myself to indulge in fantasies that I never dreamed possible. I rented videos from Good Vibrations and bought magazines that I had never noticed were for sale before. I dated JoAnn Spicer, a gorgeous alto with long curly brown hair that drove me wild. When we sang together in the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco, I nearly could not contain the intensity of passion that was growing exponentially inside of me. Unfortunately, JoAnn did not share the same level of fervor.
One day, in a rare moment of idle time, I found a lesbian bulletin board on America Online. A woman who posted as Jewel Stone caught my attention. We began e-mailing. She was so much like me—a musician, computer user, and now ex-wife and single mom who also had recently come out. She lived several states away and was dating a local schoolteacher named Janelle. It intrigued me.
“Janelle must be a very, very, very lucky lady!” I told Jewel, “and I feel just as lucky to have the chance to be your friend.”
Jewel sent me MIDI files of some lesbian music that she had written, with the lyrics in an e-mail. I knew I had to talk to her on the phone. Though total strangers, we exchanged phone numbers.
After our first six-hour phone conversation, I felt a rapidly growing affinity for this woman whose face I had never seen. I told Michael, who was unquestionably my best friend, about it all. I showed him printouts of our e-mail.
He studied for a long moment. “She writes so much like my Jewel,” he observed thoughtfully.
“Mrs. Diamond?!” I gasped. “Do you know where she is now?”
“The last I knew several years ago, she had moved to Texas, married some military man, and was rearing several children.” He shrugged.
“Jewel Stone is in Texas!” I exclaimed. “She’s divorcing an Air Force creep, has two children— Do you suppose—?” My mind raced, and my heart beat even faster. “We have to meet her!”
“Diamond Music will fly her here,” Michael offered, a wry grin spreading across his face. “We must audition her lesbian songs. Perhaps I can even do arrangements of them.” He winked.
When I confronted her, Jewel did not deny that she was the long-ago dean of my adolescent years.
“Our mutual friend Allen Rodgers told me about you several months ago, after he met you in person on Michael’s last concert tour to Iowa,” she confessed, “but I never expected to find you on an AOL lesbian bulletin board. How could I know that the astute entrepreneur Robin Lind was the Robin Jackson of Orchill Hills? But when you said you were a musician in San Francisco, I figured you had to know the illustrious Michael Diamond. Then I checked your AOL online profile and found out that you’re his business partner!”
With my ingenuity, I reunited Jewel Stone and Michael Diamond via e-mail on America Online on the very day that would have been the 30th anniversary of their wedding and the 25th anniversary of their divorce. I was overcome with joy at their happiness in discovering that they both still loved each other with a brother-sister kind of family love that had never diminished through their years of separation. When Jewel’s divorce was final a few weeks later, she had her name legally changed back to Jewel Diamond.
Jewel shared one of her fantasies with me. For several years, it had been her wildest dream to work with and for a woman executive in the music industry. She would be a demanding woman who was harsh and exacting of her employees, but who would take a special liking to Jewel because of her superior computer and music skills. Eventually this tough, elite sophisticate, who was a few years younger than Jewel, would ravish her after hours in her own private studio. In Jewel’s fantasy, the woman was a blonde lady with voluptuous breasts and wore a red business suit with a white silk blouse. Perfect—absolutely perfect!
