Apples & Oranges: My Journey Through Sexual Identity.* Jan Clausen * Houghton Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Company is a leading educational publisher in the United States. The company's headquarters is located in Boston's Back Bay. It publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers * $24 After 12 years in a lesbian marriage, Jan Clausen fell in love with a man. Since her identities as writer and lesbian were intertwined, all hell broke loose. In her brave memoir, Apples & Oranges: My Journey Through Sexual Identity, Clausen, author of eight previous books, details her exile from the "Garden of Dykedom." In New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , during the heady days of '70s lesbian feminism, Clausen falls in love with a woman she calls "Leslie." They cofound co·found tr.v. co·found·ed, co·found·ing, co·founds To establish or found in concert with another or others. co·found a magazine, raise a child, and eventually come down with a bad case of lesbian bed death Lesbian bed death is a term invented by sex researcher Pepper Schwartz to describe the supposedly inevitable diminishment of sexual passion in long term lesbian relationships. The term is sometimes used to refer to diminished sexual activity in any long term relationship. . Clausen is stunned when she finds herself attracted to Benjamin, a black lawyer she meets during a dangerous trip to Nicaragua in 1987. They return to Brooklyn, Clausen begins an affair, and Leslie disowns her. The consequences don't stop there. Clausen's books are yanked off college reading lists. She loses friends, community, and status. One feels sympathy for a good writer ostracized from the culture she helped create. "`Leaving a woman for a man,'" she muses, "is still the lesbian equivalent of a mortal sin." Nevertheless, Clausen's tone is evenhanded e·ven·hand·ed adj. Showing no partiality; fair. e  ven·hand . Nowadays she believes
that sexuality is fluid; she refuses to label herself lesbian, straight,
or bisexual. She writes: "Who I am is not a noun, but a
narrative."
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