EACH ACCORDING TO HER NEED

Warm egg yolk dripped onto crispy corned beef hash: Saturday breakfast delight.

When I moved to SF in 1978, I lived collectively with dykes in a railroad flat where we did total income sharing. I got a job frying doughnuts right away and was bringing home $100 a week for four days of hot labour, which was very good pay. Rents were still cheap, and my income going into the kitty helped out flatmates who were not so fortunate in their employment. After we paid bills, bought our shared food, and purchased monthly Fast Passes for each of us, we had $5 each per week as running around money, which we'd distribute to ourselves each Friday.

It doesn't sound like much, but it was plenty. A lot of museums and cultural events were free. Hanging out at the wimmin's bookstore could take hours on a Saturday. Poetry readings were 50 cents to maybe a buck 50 for all day. Arthouse movies were a buck. Wimmin's music events were seldom more than two bucks. And for a treat, I could go to the Artemis and get a great bowl of corn chowder with baguette for $1.50 plus 50 cents tip. I could hear Robin Flower or Trish Nugent or Woody Simmons while eating dinner surrounded by dykes in a space where male conditioning was not coddled.

I think the lesbian cultural push toward collectivism taught me more about class than any amount of academic courses could have. And it set our revolution apart from anything which has followed. We failed, of course, but learned extremely valuable things in that failure. Especially about our conditioning as girls, what to keep and what to relearn. If you don't examine your conditioning by honestly claiming who they had shoved you to be by age six, how on earth can you find and follow an ethical liberation path?