THE AUDACITY OF A KISS: A MEMOIR
LESLIE COHEN
� 2021 Rutgers University Press
$24.95 / higher in Canada
235 pages

Behind every statue is a story, and the one behind those representing four people in Christopher Park in New York's Greenwich Village is no different. But to explain how this monument came about means also telling a long love story and a tale about a nightclub.

Author Leslie Cohen's mother was her very best friend, although there were misunderstandings in the relationship. Seven-year-old Leslie couldn't see why she received pink, girly things for her birthday. In later years, she couldn't understand why her mother deferred to Leslie's father and endured his abuse.

The one thing she did understand was that once puberty hit, the boys in her neighborhood were no longer pals to roughhouse with. She was supposed to want to date them. It didn't entirely make sense, but Cohen went along with it even after she left home for college. She went out with boys and lost her virginity to one, but meeting Beth was the most remarkable thing about higher learning. She was sure she was in love with her, but Beth was obsessed with a boy and so Cohen moved on.

She moved on to other men and then women, at a time between when women loving women was unthinkable. Cohen embraced her lesbianism, fell in and out of love, and went into a partnership with three other women in 1976 to open New York's first nightclub where Lesbians and straight feminists were welcome to dance and drink, and it played host to many a luminary.

To be sure, it was a heady time. Cohen worked nonstop, gained confidence, and learned to run a bar business. She was busy, but happy.

And then Beth came back into her life... for fifty years. This enduring couple became the models for the two women in the famous statue in Christopher Park, across from the Stonewall Inn.

Let's face it: Cohen's life story is basically like that of a lot of Lesbians born at the beginning of the Baby Boom. A solid childhood, confusion, self-awareness, entrepreneurship all make a somewhat familiar story, set apart by one abundant thing: warmth.

Indeed, The Audacity of a Kiss is an easy tale. It's comfortable, like a cushy sofa with a glass of wine and a crackling fireplace. There are accomplishments here, told so that you really share the pride in them. Readers are shown the struggles that Cohen experienced too, but they are well framed by explanations of the times in which they occurred, with nothing overly dramatic — just the unabashed truth, and more warmth.

Younger Lesbians will get a lot from this book, but anyone who's been there will relish it.