Fare thee well. (frames of mind).

When I first started writing this column 5 1/2 years ago, my goal was modest: to provide quarterly evidence that a lesbian sense of humor truly existed. I feared that my tribe had acquired an unsavory reputation for victimhood, self-righteousness, and save-the-world messianism. Perhaps one jovial lifestyle column could lighten the load and make a difference.

I recall that my first target was the misbegotten phrase "life partner," which lesbians in the mid '90s were so fond of flaunting. Yes, I know, most of those couples have broken up by now; so much for life sentences. But I railed against the whole partnership concept as lacking in sexiness as well as originality.

I went on to write about the need for more lesbian flight attendants so that lesbian passengers perennially watching the boys flirt could get their propers too. And about the need to upgrade lesbian decors in honor of the lesbian founding mother of interior design, Elsie de Wolfe.

On a trip to Europe I even wrote about nostalgia for pre-baby boom gay society, where naps were still reserved for hungover adults. I wrote about coming out in the family and about the insidious homophobia of siblings. I survived a breakup along the way and found Mary, my own true love, which led to columns on flirting and younger women and my experience with in-laws. Sometimes my words have come back to haunt me, like the time my next-door neighbors interrupted my gardening by shouting over the fence, "Ruby does it in the bushes," inspired by a column on my youthful travel to Cuba and Brazil. It's been a great ride.

Inevitably, I also got in touch with my own inner lesbian and discovered the column made a handy call-to-action soapbox. When an old friend of mine, the painter Hollis Sigler, was fighting terminal breast cancer (by then in her bones and liver), I wrote of the inequity between the care and funds dedicated to gay men and their partners fighting AIDS and the invisibility and lack of resources facing lesbians and partners fighting breast cancer. Holly finally lost the fight: This March marks the second anniversary of her death. The disequilibrium, sadly, remains.

A lot has changed during the half-decade of Frames of Mind. Queer constituencies changed the tenor of U.S. politics, won significant battles and legal rights, and were poised in the final days of the Clinton presidency to acquire mainstream acceptance and power. First Monica, then Osama, and most of all George W. and all his daddy's men have ushered in a brand new world.

Post-September 11 my sense of humor took a hit. Suddenly I was no longer satisfied with tweaking the foibles of lesbian society. For a while I dedicated myself to teaching and writing about film in times of national panic, paranoia, and control. (It's a project I hope to continue with a book reexamining everything from The Manchurian Candidate to Born in Flames, from The Battle of Algiers to Three Kings.) So, dear reader, I find that I have written myself out of a gig: This is my final column.

Naturally, I can't resist some parting advice. First and foremost, lighten up, gals. These are serious times, and there's no point in confusing allies with enemies over petty disagreements. Second, for the guys, consider a redistribution of resources: As drug cocktails change the life expectancy of those living with AIDS, it's about time for lesbians with life-threatening illness and disabilities (lupus, breast cancer) to be eligible for support from this enlightened infrastructure we helped put in place. Finally, I call for us all to respect differences: Now more than ever we need the awareness of other cultures that lesbians and gay men can uniquely bring.

We got sprung from the strictures of the nuclear family, parish church, small town by our aberrant (queer and proud) sexualities. Now we must remember that the Office of Homeland Security does not have our interests in mind at all, that too often in U.S. history the greatest threat has come from those who round us up in the name of protection. "Not in our name" deserves to be our slogan too. And as the teenagers used to say in leaving: peace.