kids came up and said he wanted to go to have some lunch, and our conversation was just cut off. It was such a terrible feeling just being totally cut off. We both felt so frustrated. My friend said that if she had more thoughts on the subject, she would write me a letter, but it wasn't the same. You've lost the moment. You've lost the dynamic. And that's what I feel is missing from my life--the chance to explore these kinds of issues. (227)
Consciousness-raising groups have been a partial answer to the dilemma posed by the interrupted conversation. Women must set aside the time to communicate if it is not provided in the course of everyday discourse. In our real scenario, we will see that if two women are truly connected by a close friendship, they will find the time to be together.
If two women, one a lesbian, and the other a heterosexual, were to have their friendship threatened by some factor, presumably homophobia, it is highly likely that the friendship would survive. We will examine an actual relationship between two women of differing orientations to see if their friendship does, in fact, survive the dissonance provided by such a pairing.
Denise and Leslie had been friends for almost eight years. They had gone to both undergraduate and medical school together, and had helped one another survive the rigors of early medical training. Late night study sessions in undergraduate school had lead them to exemplary grades in the sciences. In undergraduate science courses, they were in a minority with the three-fourths of the chemistry and physics classes who were male. Many of the male students assumed that Denise and Leslie were in the nursing program because they were women. While undergraduates, they both occasionally dated men, but both women tried to focus on study to the exclusion of much social life. They were largely inseparable. If their friends and acquaintances assumed they were tog...