“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”
from The Diamond Trilogy
Copyright 2021 by Jewel Diamond
Listen to this story, “The Diamond” (Music, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”)
by Robin Lind
as told to Jewel Diamond
Summary:
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.
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 dude, 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!
When Leonard and Michael and I met Jewel at the airport, I made sure I wore my red blazer with a white silk blouse and black suede pants. Coincidentally, I had just been to Dennis, my hairdresser, for my twice-yearly coloring to keep my coiffeur as blonde as it had been when I was 17. Before Jewel arrived, Michael had asked me if I thought I could be physically attracted to the woman who had once been my boarding school dormitory dean.
“I’m not ruling out anything,” had been my response to him. And I had said to Jewel in an e-mail before her trip, “I’m not assuming or presuming anything.”
But when I watched her emerge from the plane, my complete body and soul leaped with an indescribable fire that I never knew was possible. Leonard and I watched with genuine delight as Jewel and Michael hugged, long and hard, with giggles and tears of joy. Then it was my turn. After weeks of e-mail and phone, with never even an exchange of GIF file photos, I had fallen in love with Jewel Stone, now Jewel Diamond. I did not allow her to leave my embrace for the rest of the evening, through an entire meal at The Sausage Factory on Castro, which I ate entirely with my left hand.
My arm was still around her as I unlocked the outer door to my apartment building. I felt Jewel cringe at the sight of the long carpeted staircase. I placed my hand gently under her arm as we ascended in silence. I instinctively pushed aside all other thoughts except the awesomeness of a more-than-two-decade-old acquaintance renewed. There was an undeniable ease between us, as if we had never lost touch with each other for all of those years. Now, as two adult women, we shared many common bonds—mainly because of our mutual love for the famed Michael Diamond of The Castro Theatre.
With Michael’s expertise, I had carefully cleaned and decorated my little apartment. Everything was meticulously arranged—from the few but exquisite pieces of furniture that I had acquired, to my mother’s china and crystal displayed in the glass case that stood in the entryway. With Michael’s help, too, the room lighting was perfect. Jewel’s sigh of obvious delight pleased and flattered me.
Jewel grinned mischievously as she turned toward me now. “I’m looking forward to that back rub!” She reminded me of my casual e-mail promise.
“Of course, my dear!” I grinned back with the smile that had not left my face since the moment of Jewel’s arrival at the airport. I had already taken off the red suit jacket.
Jewel chuckled easily. “But if you’re too tired tonight—”
“Not at all,” was my quick reply. I slipped out of my shoes and then unzipped my black suede pants.
Jewel did not appear to be comfortable undressing in front of another woman friend for the first time, and I tried hard to not stare…. The lavender silk sheets were smooth and soft, and Jewel stretched out on her stomach and buried her head in the fluffy pillow. I turned off the room lamp, and only the faint glow of the streetlight outside on the corner filtered into the quiet room. This room, from which I had heard Jewel’s voice on the phone for so many hours over the past few months, now took on a new reality. In those late hours, when we were each struggling to stay awake, we had talked often about how nice it would be to go to sleep together in the same room.
My hands began to gently knead the stiff muscles in her neck and shoulders. “Mmm,” Jewel murmured, “that feels so good.” Now she comfortably removed her sleep shirt—after all, it was dark—so I could reach her back more easily. Then Jewel massaged my neck and shoulders from the front as we lay side by side. I wondered—but somehow knew instinctively—how I would respond to more intimate caressing.
As our hands explored each other’s bodies, we both marveled silently—as always—at how soft and smooth a woman is. How very nice to touch and be touched by another woman, to lie side by side, to hug, to kiss, to caress.
“I love to hug and kiss and cuddle,” I had told Jewel in an e-mail. Now my hungry lips found hers, warm, succulent, slightly open. Our tongues entwined easily and naturally.
“It’s hard to believe that you’ve never kissed a woman like this before,” Jewel teased. “You could not have learned this level of enjoyment in kissing a man.”
I couldn’t answer. How do I know exactly how to kiss her, how to respond so perfectly and instinctively, how to touch and caress her delicate body?! We both relaxed and embraced even more fervently.
After some time had passed, the initial throes of passion blossomed into an inevitable crescendo of orgasmic explosions that left me gasping for breath but satisfied beyond anything that I had ever before experienced—or even imagined. As she, too, reached that absolute peak of total physical and emotional climax and then sighed in contentment, I knew that we both felt a deep sense of bonding, of caring more than either of us had expected, of secretly wishing that this fantasy weekend would never have to end.
Jewel fell asleep first, and I covered her exquisite naked body with my purple down comforter, then slid into the bed beside her. Although she was sound asleep, she snuggled up to me, put her head on my shoulder, and wrapped her arms around me. Nothing I had ever felt before, or will ever feel again, could have prepared me for the small, soft, and oh-so-warm body pressed against mine! If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget the ecstasy she brought to me that night. She is incomparably beautiful, erotic, soft, huggable, and intelligent. She has given me the gift of herself in the most beautiful way possible.
Jewel and I had not had very many hours of actual sleep when the phone rang early on Friday morning. It was Michael, of course.
“It’s nine o’clock,” he informed me.
I groaned sleepily. “We aren’t even awake yet.”
“I have a lot planned,” he reminded, almost impatiently. “When do you think Jewel will be ready to leave?” Ah, yes. I had promised Michael that he could have this entire day with Jewel, to tour her around San Francisco, to catch up on the last twenty years.
I looked at the still-sleeping form, just beginning to stir under a rumpled sheet. “Soon,” I yawned. “I promise.”
At ten-thirty, Jewel and I stepped outside into a characteristically overcast San Francisco morning. Michael was just coming down his front steps, dressed casually in black slacks and a white turtleneck under a gray textured cardigan with the word “Provincetown” stitched neatly in small purple lettering on the left side. One look at my face told Michael all he needed—or wanted—to know about what had transpired in that second-story apartment across the street from his house.
After the red VW Jetta disappeared down the hill, somehow I went to work that Friday at my day job in the Financial District. I felt a blushing glow all day and was sure that my office co-workers could see it, as well. But no one said anything. I could hardly wait for Michael to bring Jewel back that night.
Michael and I had a full schedule of activities planned for the weekend with Jewel. We drove to visit friends and music business acquaintances in Napa, Larkspur, San Rafael, and San Jose. One evening we wined and dined her at the celebrated Tonga Room of the Fairmont, and another evening had an intimate supper at Pachas. We took her to breakfast at Bagdad Café, known for its strikingly good-looking lesbian waitresses. And, of course, Jewel heard Michael play nightly on the “Mighty Wurlitzer” in the Castro Theatre. She and Michael even performed a duo on Sunday at the legendary Golden Gate Club, one of many places that booked Michael regularly. But the nights, as short as they seemed, were ours—mine and Jewel’s—spent in my futon. We packed an unbelievable amount of pleasure into that weekend.
When I said goodbye to Jewel at the airport on Monday morning, I felt that my heart was being ripped out of me. We hugged through drenching tears and promised to keep in touch. “How can I leave you here?” she asked softly as she kissed my cheek. I don’t know how I can let you go! But I have to. My body is aching with the desire to hold you against it, and my heart is nearly ready to explode with joy.
As her plane taxied down the runway and soared high into the sky, I felt an agonizing emptiness. I now have a new fantasy, one that I will probably never realize, that I can go to sleep every night with her beside me and wake up every morning with her tongue and lips on mine. I love her more than I knew it was possible to love someone. I love her more than life itself.
It was almost impossible to fall asleep alone that night. This bed never seemed big before, but tonight it is huge and empty. I cannot face doing laundry. I don’t want to wash the smell and feel of her off the sheets and towels!
I didn’t ask for or expect miracles, but I wanted nothing more than to share her life, every little piece of it, on a day-to-day basis. The very thought of her hand touching mine, her lips pressed against mine and her body held close to me, sent all of my senses into high gear. Just the memory of licking her lips tasted so good and caressing her body in imagination started fires in me that only she could quench. But even greater than the dynamic physical love, the intellectual and spiritual eroticism that she initiated was positively explosive. I became possessed by a complete and eternal love for her.
For the next two years, we e-mailed daily and phoned nightly, except on the weekends that Janelle spent at Jewel’s house. We visited as often as we each could save up enough money for a plane ticket between Dallas and San Francisco, which was never often enough. I loved her so much that I was willing to “share” her with Janelle, torn between the ecstasy of loving her and the panic that I would lose her.
Through whatever miracle of life, the day came that I flew to Texas for the last time. Jewel had completed her contract as a Service Engineer at Microsoft in Dallas and was ready to pursue her career path in California’s Silicon Valley. I helped her pack her four-bedroom house into a 27-foot U-Haul truck, then drove it across the formidable 1800 miles, and moved our combined earthly belongings into a charming Victorian flat in the quaint little town of Alameda across the bay. From the stretch of beach that runs the length of the island where we walk hand in hand, we can see my beloved city that sparkles like a thousand diamonds over the black night waters of San Francisco Bay. Michael and I are still business partners and best friends, but Jewel has become everything that Michael is to me—and much more. I know that a lifetime will not be long enough to live with and love my most priceless treasure, Jewel Diamond.