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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Jody Aliesan 
May 7, 1996  
Cassette 4, Side 2 
 
 
Julie O'Grady  00:02 
Okay, we're continuing. This is tape four, side B. 
 
Jody Aliesan  00:10 
Oh and so anyway, I was back in connection, back in touch with what was, what gave me--what 
I would consider a passion. I was back with passion and with the lives of, um, other human 
beings, and with all the things that the people were writing about who were being analyzed 
during graduate school. That is something I found very interesting in retrospect, how in an art 
school, the primary purpose is the making of what we call visual art. And there may be a small 
department of art history, but in an English department--at least then, this was before creative 
writing programs--everybody was analyzing the work of folks who were, as makers of it, 
allowed one class. They--the parasitical population [laughs] was much larger, by far than the 
host.  
 
Jody Aliesan  01:17 
Anyway, it was during graduate school that I had my first and last scholarly publication. It was a 
paper that I wrote about Emily Brontë. And it was a passionate connection with her poems, 
which are not very well-known at all. And then the person who was teaching the class I was in, 
whom I respect, and I remember, actually suggested that I send it to a national journal, and it was 
published. 
 
Julie O'Grady  01:17 
What was the name of the journal? 
 
Jody Aliesan  02:05 
The um, Victorian Newsletter. Then, see how--during graduate school that my first song was 
recorded, too by our-our group. It was a 45 recording that came to happen, but it was recorded. 
Um...  
 
Julie O'Grady  02:27 
What was the name of it? 
 
Jody Aliesan  02:31 
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[?"Holding Near"?]. Then, um... Let's see... This isn't exactly, well-- When I left the political 
work, and I went to Washington, DC--I mean, left the academic stuff, and at first I was--went to 
Alabama, and then after that, I went to Washington, DC. And to pay the grant, I got a part-time 
job as, um, an editor for a publishing company. The owner of the publishing company turned out 
to have been very active in civil rights, and we felt a political kinship, so that when I got more 
and more involved against the war, I worked fewer and fewer hours at the publishing company, 
and that was all right with him, as long as we both understood that I was still going to be able to 
pay my bills and buy food. But I also was able to use a company car, and some of my tasks at the 
beginning were to do visits--go up to--from Washington, DC, to New York City and actually 
drive the streets of Manhattan, going to community colleges to solicit manuscripts from faculty 
for a line of books that they were considering for community colleges on, um, social and political 
issues.  
 
Jody Aliesan  04:02 
And what, and when I went there, when I was in New York, I remember traveling alone. I'm in 
my 20s, going to hotels, having to put up a lot with people's assumptions about whether or not I 
would like company. I actually had to fight someone in my hotel room who, who sat--came to 
my table--I was sitting alone in the restaurant--and asked me, he said, he goes, he really didn't 
want to bother me, but he was tired of being alone. Could he sit down at the same table? And it 
was fine. What little talking we did, he turned out to be a representative of a printer, and I said, 
"Coincidental, I'm here from a publisher." And he said, "Oh, could I give you some materials to 
take back with me? With you?" "Sure," I said. And so then when I got back to my room, he 
called me, and I said--he told me that he wanted to tell me ahead of time that he was coming, so 
that I wouldn't feel, um, any difficulty about-about it when he knocked on my door, and I 
thought he was handling the whole thing very appropriately. And then when I did open the door, 
he pushed his way in and closed the door behind him, and wanted me to give him a blow job! It 
was just an incredible moment, and I finally had to physically fight him, after running around the 
room a lot and telling him that I would bite it off [laughs] and a number of other things that I 
hoped would discourage him, and we ended up going tumbling over some of the furniture, and 
he finally realized that I very much meant what I was saying, and the whole thing may have just 
taken, uh, his desire out of the picture, too, but that was that.  
 
Jody Aliesan  05:45 
That sort of thing that you never knew, um, about, you know, whether it was going to happen or 
how it was going to happen. And a lot of my life, I've just lived with a desire to continue trusting, 
and-and a desire not to generalize about any member of a group of people, to take individuals 
one at a time. So [it was] only in the last couple of years, I've realized that I really set myself up, 
um, as a chump and a sucker a lot, and that I have to start to, I have to let go of what innocence I 
would like, um, to believe I could have held onto. And I think finally have lost my innocence, in 
a way, that, um--not that I will start generalizing, but that I won't necessarily trust. Trust will 
have to be earned, rather than my just offering it. But that's maybe a phase two.  
 
Jody Aliesan  06:43 
At any rate, one of the other things that happened to me was that I noticed after a while that very 
often, I would be seated near men's rooms. As if traveling alone, being by myself in a hotel at a 
time when women weren't doing the sorts of things that I was doing, was some indication that I 
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was looking for a different kind of business. I don't know. [Huffs.] That may or may not be true, 
but it seems awfully coincidental. I had to ask to be reseated a number of times in New York 
during those months.  
 
Jody Aliesan  07:14 
Um, I don't know what made me so attractive. I remember in high school and college, especially 
in college, apparently, men found me attractive. I'm not sure what it was... But anyway, during 
that time, this as this one hotel, I came in late after an off--night flight, and there was a young 
man sitting at the reception desk, and, um, I got into a brief conversation with him about what I 
was doing, what he was doing. He turned out to have written the screenplay for "David and 
Lisa," a film that was out at the time. I showed my surprise and my shock. And I said, "What are 
you doing? What are you doing behind that desk? What are you doing there?" And he echoed 
Thoreau's words when somebody asked him why he was in jail, when he was in protest against 
the Mexican War against Mexico, he said, "What are you doing out there?" And that was a 
challenge. I realized that he had arranged his life around what was important to him, which was 
writing. He was working this nighttime receptionist job. [Chuckles.]  
 
Jody Aliesan  07:50 
May have affected me more than I realized, now that I'm working a half-time receptionist job. 
And I real--and he was feeling that he was on track. And there I was running around New York 
for this publishing company, staying in hotels, fighting off printer's representatives, saying, 
"What are you doing out there?" Very important moment. Does that make sense?  
 
Julie O'Grady  09:23 
Mhm [affirmative].  
 
Jody Aliesan  09:24 
Whether--and the parallel with Thoreau? 
 
Jody Aliesan  09:25 
Yeah. Well, I guess the rest of the story has kind of already been told, that my work with the 
publishing company diminished, my work against the war increased. I started singing. Left anti-
war movement to connect with the women's movement, where my singing and then writing 
became increasingly important. Where I really found myself, for the first time [inaudible], 
speaking for those who didn't have the words, speaking for those who couldn't speak, being told 
by other women that I was saying it for them, that I was articulating things in a way that was 
useful to them. And-and being a cultural worker, finding my function as a poet in the 
community.  
 
Julie O'Grady  09:26 
Mhm [affirmative].  
 
Jody Aliesan  10:31 
And-and then all--with all the support from the women around me, getting me to a point where I 
said, "Okay, you are always talking about how you want to write, but you're not doing anything 
about it. So either change your life, or shut up." And I changed my life by leaving full-time 
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political work to, um, accept the call and take on the job of, uh, of poet. [Chuckles.] Whatever, 
whatever it was I was being called to do. And I guess that's--that can be defined in different 
ways. Singer, poet, depending on what the product looks like. Right now, for instance, I'm 
writing a non-fiction book, but the main step was acknowledging that I was receiving 
instructions and an assignment, and that it was important for me to surrender my plans or 
anybody else's expectations and trust the direction I got. And I've been doing that imperfectly 
ever since. [Pause.] Anything else that you want me to say, talk about? 
 
Julie O'Grady  12:24 
Oh, oh, are you [inaudible]? 
 
Jody Aliesan  12:27 
Yeah. 
 
Julie O'Grady  12:27 
[Recorder clicks.] The tape recorder was off for about 20 minutes to take a break, and now we 
are going to continue. 
 
Jody Aliesan  12:33 
All right, and we're going to continue in a very different place, because this last little outline I 
have here is on the subject of sexuality. Which has been, as I said, off the record, um, for better 
or worse, very important in my life. And I've-I've mentioned different pieces of this particular 
self in astrological terms, because it's useful metaphorically to me. Um, Aquarius rising fits the 
political and social efforts. Taurus is really at the--at the base of who I feel I am in the world. 
And in my astrological chart, Taurus is at the bottom. It's the foundation on what I stand on. And 
then overhead is the full moon in Scorpio, and that's where sexuality comes into the picture. 
Because I really do feel I understand what it means, full moon in Scorpio.  
 
Jody Aliesan  13:39 
And, um, I find myself smiling grimly when I talk about sexuality. Um, and I have to go back a 
long way to-to begin, because I first became aware of myself as a sexual being when I was 
younger than eight years old. So I remember what house I was living in at the time. My first 
experience of a genital sensation that I recall was when I fell off of a porch and ended up landing 
with my heel in my crotch, and experiencing pain, and then as the pain went away, experiencing 
the pleasure. I had discovered something important, [chuckles] and I was certainly a very 
creative masturbator when I was in grade school. And because I started entering puberty in 
fourth grade, my breasts in fourth grade started menstruating in fifth grade, sexuality was a part 
of my life early on, and it was an androgynous sexuality.  
 
Jody Aliesan  14:51 
My sense of my body at that point before puberty was, um, androgynous. I could-I could play out 
being female. I could play out being male. All my early writing has a persona as a male, which I 
think made people around me, my teachers and my mother uncomfortable. The first signs of 
something to be concerned about. But a lot of things I wrote about I couldn't imagine the 
conventional female in the conventional female role doing. So, um, it turned out to be male by 
default, I suppose you'd have to say. But the--that early androgyny has really shaped my life 
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sexually, since. The fact that I was practicing sexuality before I reached puberty has meant that I 
identified with that androgyny first, and so that now, I'm--don't feel that I'm being true to myself 
leaning towards either a butch or a femme sense of self, somewhere in between.  
 
Jody Aliesan  15:56 
And so I suppose I could really start out by saying that I experience myself in the present as a 
single, celibate, woman-identified bisexual. Some people will say, people who have this 
information about bisexuality, that-that would be an impossibility, because they think of 
bisexuals as, um... In need of having at least two partners at the same time in order to satisfy 
those aspects of themselves. But I would respond by saying that there are a lot of people, for 
instance, in monasteries and convents, who will identify with the majority of them, with being 
heterosexual, who may never have had a sexual experience in their life.  
 
Jody Aliesan  17:00 
Um, so my first, uh, sexual feelings were with myself, and my sexual practice with myself, 
which I suppose is true for everybody. And, um, when I was living in that same house, so it was 
before I was eight years old, I had, um, a sexy relationship with, um, another girl of the same 
age. And one of the things that we did was draw pictures of naked women, we got off on that. I 
rem--[laughs] we were drawing these in the back seat of the car with our parents, our mothers 
driving ahead of us, and sneakily slipping them out the back window and wondering who would 
find them, whether the--whether they would-would be outraged or excited by these pictures of 
naked women that we were drawing them. One of our mothers discovered what we were doing. I 
guess another early sign that I needed to be watched. [Laughs.] 
 
Jody Aliesan  18:01 
So as--I was, uh, in fourth grade, when I got my breasts, was the first sexual experience I had 
with another person, and that was with Diane, um, kissing in the ball shed on the playground. 
That was really nice. I will--looking back saying that I disliked athletics, or at least I wasn't 
involved in athletics, didn't enjoy them, either as a participant or a spectator, and-and don't to this 
day. Um, there are a couple exceptions to that, which--and one was, was gymnastics. That was 
probably the only athletic activity that I was ever any good at, was high school gymnastics. 
Which is a solitary sort of thing, actually, um, and has a lot to do with why, over the years, I've 
been drawn to yoga, to some of the same reasons. But the other thing I liked, the only team sport 
that I ever enjoyed was softball. So this was Diane and the ball shed and softball diamond, um, in 
grade school. 
 
Jody Aliesan  19:10 
And that was definitely--although it didn't go beyond kissing--definitely a sexual experience that 
was delightful and inspiring and would alter my day. Then, in fifth grade, just when I began 
menstruating, and late grade school, um, there was another friend, her name was Marcia, who 
lived around the block. Our mothers were-were friends--and this was after I moved from Kansas 
to California--and she and I would do sexual play together, and usually imagine ourselves as one 
form of animal or another. [Laughs.] And it was all very delightful. Fortunately for me, I had 
sexual experiences before it became really clear to me that other people disapproved of that, so 
that their power, uh, to make me feel guilty was impaired. I knew I needed to be discreet and 
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even secret, but I didn't feel I was doing anything that was wrong, and I feel grateful I didn't have 
to unlearn guilt.  
 
Jody Aliesan  20:36 
Then it was in, um, junior high, I was courted and romanced by, um, Katie, who was in high 
school. And that was one of like--one of the horrible moments in my life was when my brother 
found, um, our letters to one another. Katie had bought me hiking boots. She had all the good 
sense to become a friend of my mother's [chuckles] and do what she could to ingratiate herself 
with my family. And then I can remember my brother coming out with the letters, very innocent 
of what he was doing, and saying, with some disgust, "These sound like they were written by a 
boy." Busted. Another problem.  
 
Jody Aliesan  21:25 
My mother became very permissive in terms of, um, my possible relationships with boys. When 
I was growing up, there was--it was boys I played with because I wasn't interested in the things 
that girls were supposed to play, and I could find very, very few girls who felt the same way I 
did. And I remember when my body started changing, I was pushing my bike up the hill with one 
of my buddies walking behind me, and he said, "Why do you swing your hips like that?" I 
apologized. I mean, I wasn't ashamed, but I explained to him, "My body's changing, and it does 
this. You know, it's just the way it is. I'm not trying to do it." But there came a time when in the 
evolution of things, the division occurs, and, and buddies can't be of, uh, mixed sexes anymore.  
 
Jody Aliesan  22:18 
Um, so I remember feeling, though, that although my initial attractions sexually were to other 
females, that I had to learn to be attracted to males. And that was where I returned to the 
encyclopedia, and I looked up pictures of male genitals, and started, um, educating myself. I'm 
not sure what kind of brainwashing this is or what kind of, um, indoctrination I'm talking about, 
but it became clear to me that in order to grow up or-or be this, maturing female that I was, that I 
was supposed to learn how to be attracted to boys, uh, in the same delightful and, and um, erotic 
ways that I had been to girls. Before that, boys were pals or buddies or brothers. And actually, I 
still feel that that is what determines my relationship with men now. Initially, even with the men 
that I came to have sexual relationships with, the initial attraction was as buddies, and there were 
people--there were men like Randy that I lived with for 11 years, where we were really brothers 
and sisters, siblings.  
 
Jody Aliesan  23:52 
I would--I found myself feeling that I needed to do this in order to be, um... I'm not sure it ever 
came to my mind that this would make me normal, that I was abnormal the other way, but I had 
the sense that this is what you had to do to be a grown-up. And also, I was aware that my mother 
was concerned about me, even frantic about the fact that I wasn't feminine, didn't--wasn't 
interested in clothing and makeup and hairstyles and parties and-and all those things. And, um, 
she was afraid that maybe--that I was abnormal, or something was wrong with me, or that I 
would never make it in the world, that I was arrested in my development, and worst of all, could 
be queer, and boys wouldn't be attracted to me, and what would that mean for my future?  
 
Jody Aliesan  24:48 
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Um. And so she would give me all kinds of latitude for any kind of, uh, companionship with 
boys, but at the same time, feeling really scared and ambivalent about what that might mean, the 
danger of it from her point of view. It was tough for her, but she made it easy for me to spend 
time with boys, and so I had, uh, opportunities for sexual, physical and sexual experimentation, 
and I would--I would date, because I was active--asked to go out, asked to go for these things, 
and because I thought I was supposed to do it. But one thing I found early on, and I was able to, 
um, articulate early on, is that after fending them off, physically, I'm fighting them off and 
physically and emotionally, in terms of how much time they wanted to spend with me. Their pur-
-their pursuit. I was learning about this whole pursuit that boys and men need to fill-fulfill their 
conquest, um, programming. If I slept with them and then said no, they would believe me. It was 
like that. I couldn't possibly mean no, how could I turn down this wonderful opportunity for their 
[inaudible]. But if I went ahead and followed through with it, and then made it clear that I didn't 
want to do it again, there--they would smooth their feathers down, and they would they would 
take me seriously. 
 
Julie O'Grady  26:35 
And this was in high school? Or [inaudible] high school? 
 
Jody Aliesan  26:38 
And that-that continued into college, too. And what was really important for me is to stay 
independent. To not-- I mean, there were there were boys who wanted to go steady or have me 
connected to them in one way or another, and when I didn't have the skills to know how to make 
clear that that wasn't happening, um. Well, for instance, one boy I remember who felt that 
because he had asked me out a number of times in a row, and I had accepted a number of times 
in a row, that that meant something. And I suppose maybe in the whole dating game, it does 
mean something, but I never figured out really very clearly what the signals and the etiquette was 
about that. So that was kind of a, I suppose, a passive resistance. But when one time when we 
were dancing and the song came on, "You Don't Own Me," I sang it loudly in his ear, "You don't 
own me." And that's the way I felt, and that's what I tried to communicate. I will do these things. 
We will enjoy them, maybe, but nobody owns me.  
 
Jody Aliesan  27:46 
And when it was necessary, then--one thing I did was, uh, connect with a boy who was away at 
college all the time, and sometimes my mother would take me there to visit him, which was 
interesting for both Tom and me. He later came out, also [chuckles]. But what made it possible 
for both of us, Tom and for, for me, to have an excuse not to go out with other people, because 
we were being faithful to someone who was far away, and I don't think we were, either of us, 
really conscious about what we were doing at the time, but it was very helpful, because, um, it 
meant two years of high school for me when I had an excuse not to go out that everybody 
accepted and didn't think was, uh, introverted or emotionally immature or queer or anything that 
they had to be concerned about. 
 
Jody Aliesan  28:49 
Um. And then I guess I've mentioned it before that I started going into a real cloud. When I was 
in junior high, I told my mother that I really wanted to be a nun, which also terrified her. And I-
I'm glad I didn't go into a convent and enter any kind of, uh, religious life, but I think I really did 
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have my finger on what was best for me, and it's taken all the intervening years of kind of 
proving to society that I've tried to have relationships with people of both sexes that were, um, 
long-term and monogamous and all the rest of it, that now I can say, just like I said to those boys, 
"Okay, I slept with you." or "Okay, I did this. I don't want it. I don't like it. I don't want to do it 
again." And that's okay not to want to, and it's okay to be by myself, because I really feel that 
I've come around to that middle school girl under--and understood why she used the word "nun" 
to describe what has turned out to be the best possible life for me. When I went into the fog of 
college and finally did just give up and accept the heterosexual expectation--[Recording cuts 
off.] 
 