In an attempt to build a few intertextual bridges, we use images from lesbian literature to illustrate principles we find most useful in thinking psychoanalytically about homosexuality. We call these principles lesbian rules. A lesbian rule was originally a mason's rule made of lead […] Thus, figuratively, it became, […] a principle allowing flexibility. […] Clinical psychoanalysis uses many such lesbian rules.

Tell me, he demanded, how to throw a man over my head and break his neck, for I am going to kill you, and I wish to know this thing before you die. Of all the ingenuous declarations I have ever heard, this one copped the proverbial bun.

The entire beach was my backyard, from the Hiltons' house in the south all the way to Steele Hunter's house in the north.

Let the priest in surplice white/That defunctive music can/ Be the death-divining swan/ Lest the requiem lack his right.