Where This Title Came From

“This is crazy.”

I’m standing in the doorway of my novice director’s office.  It’s a small room filled with books and her big desk.  The brick-red Italian tile floor, the old iron-framed windows, lend it a medieval air.  And my novice director, Sr. Deborah Franicis, all 4’11” of her, fits with the room.  Her habit and veil might have come, if not from the 15th century, at least the 19th.  

She leans back in her chair and looks at me.  “What’s crazy?”  She asks.

I show her the first copy of the latest book I’ve written, entitled Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians, and the Dilemmas of Citizenship.  It is my fifth book on lesbian/gay/queer politics.  Recently a friend had called me “the lesbian politics maven” in inviting me to give the keynote address to the National Women’s Studies Association annual convention.  I also edit a book series on queer politics and theory; I have chaired the American Political Science Association’s Committee on the Status of Lesbians and Gays in the Profession, and the Gay and Lesbian Caucus.  I’m not just queer: I’ve made a career out of queer.

I say: “I’m this big queer, and now I’m going to be a nun?”  

Without blinking an eye she responds: “So you’ll be a big queer nun.”

And I think to myself: That sounds like a book title.