GLR September-October 2025

In the swimming pool, a girl chosen to officiate would be des ignated the “caller.” She’d yell out a prearranged set of com mands to the rest—the bride was an “orange,” the groom a “diver,” the bridesmaids “swimmers”—with certain letters of each word spelling out: “I now pronounce you man and wife.” When she finished, peers would dunk the happy couple to com plete the ceremony. Similar rituals were established for holding weddings at choir practice or in line at the dining hall. Some girls claimed they were bullied into participating in lesbian activities, threatened with beatings if they didn’t com ply. Others swore nothing sexual ever took place outside a mar riage, and girls who didn’t want to participate could pair up in pretended relationships to be left alone. The two “daddies,” far from leading a reign of terror, were described by nearly every one as popular girls. Such a highly developed subculture couldn’t have been es tablished within a few weeks. Those who claimed lesbian ac tivity had begun with the arrival of the Los Angeles transfers had likely been telling school officials what they wanted to hear. One girl told Herbert more than twenty marriages had taken place in the pool since the prior summer. The facility had been closed for the season since fall, well before the transfers arrived. Soon after Herbert’s story appeared, the official denials

began. Sheriff’s deputies tried to blame the riots on racial ten sion: The two girls whose transfer to Napa had touched off the violence were Black. A school chaplain who’d been present each day of the rioting quickly refuted that claim, saying he’d never seen any group of children or adults in which race was less of an issue. Reporters had noted from the start that color lines seemed nonexistent among rioters and non-rioters alike. The CYA’s Herman Stark claimed that homosexuality was no more prevalent at Los Guilucos than at any other institution, and at least a hundred of the girls had not been involved. But his numbers seemed to imply the school had been more than one third lesbian, a figure that would sound shockingly high to most outside observers. School Superintendent Julia Combs lent cre dence to Herbert’s story by announcing: “We’re going to cut out this ‘chick’ business.” Nonetheless, the CYA’s official po sition was that the riot’s cause was unknown. “After all,” said Chief Psychologist Burton Castner, “we’re dealing with dis turbed, adolescent children, and it is not unusual that they should get out of hand occasionally.” The agency’s final report, released nearly six months after the riots, ignored the causes and focused instead on the inade quate security measures that allowed them to happen. Combs resigned from her position eight weeks after the riots, allegedly

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sexual Adventurer ARTMEMO

cent Millay. Its fourth-place finish was con troversial, as many believed it should have won. When it appeared in 1912 in The Lyric Year anthology , “Renascence” was warmly praised by critics. Another poet represented in the volume, Arthur Davison Ficke, who later became friends with Millay, scoffed at the idea a twenty-year-old woman had penned the powerful “Renascence,” saying

a women’s college, romances between stu dents were common, and Millay had several affairs with wealthier classmates. One of Millay’s Vassar romances was with Edith Wynne Matthison, who would go on to be come a stage and silent film actor. In a letter to Matthison, the young writer revealed: “Somehow I know that your feeling for me ... is of the nature of love.” The epistle was signed: “With love, Vin cent Millay.” After graduating in

D ENISE N OE My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light! — Edna St. Vincent Millay P ERHAPS THERE IS no more famous celebration of madcap fun than “First Fig,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950). This gifted writer created ex traordinary works while living a remarkable and unconventional life, romancing both women and men. English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy said of her work: “The America of the 1920s made two major con tributions to the world: skyscrapers and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.” Millay and her two sisters were raised in Maine by a divorced mother who struggled to make ends meet but encouraged her daughters’ intellectual aspirations. As a child, Millay was exuberant and curious: She loved to learn and write, especially poems, and won poetry prizes from a chil dren’s magazine. In high school, she wrote and starred in school plays and edited the school’s literary magazine. At age nineteen, she had a high school diploma but no money for college. She stayed home, keeping house and writing. She entered the lengthy poem “Renascence” in a poetry contest under the name E. Vin

it had to have been written by “a brawny male.” An of fended Millay replied: “I simply will not be a ‘brawny male.’ ... I cling to my femininity!” Her femininity was strik ing in her delicate features, and photographs show an ethereal quality to her beauty. However, from an early age Millay adopted androgynous styles that, to gether with her traditionally feminine qualities, played

1917, Millay settled into Greenwich Village, where she worked with Eugene O’Neill’s Provincetown Players and helped start the experimental drama group Cherry Lane The atre. Here again, she made no secret of her bi sexuality, boldly and openly dating both women and men. When staying in Paris in 1921, she and American artist Thelma Wood became ro

exuberantly and cleverly with gender conventions. From childhood, she often used her masculine middle name, Vincent, and she sometimes sported neckties. Millay began attending Vassar College in 1913, when she was 21, with tuition support from arts patron Caroline B. Dow, who was strongly impressed by Millay’s recitation of her own poetry. At Vassar, then exclusively

mantically involved. (Wood’s relationship with Djuna Barnes was portrayed in lightly fictionalized form in Barnes’ classic novel Nightwood , one of the earliest mod ern novels to explicitly depict romance be tween women.) In 1923, Millay became the first female

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