Uncovering Leah Lax

“Memory is a weird thing,” says author Leah Lax as she recalls writing her memoir, Uncovered. Lax, the Dallas-born writer now in her late 50s, spent 30 years living as an Hasidic Jew – no TV, no Internet, no microwave, no birth control. But after three decades, seven children, and one affair, Lax came out as a lesbian.

“When I think back on it now, I see it as a repressed but simmering presence that picks up like a drum beat,” says Lax about realizing she was gay while still married. Ultimately, it was poetry that sparked the match that lit the fire.

As a mother of multiple children, she began to suffer from insomnia, but instead of counting sheep, she turned to writing for help. “I wrote my friends' secrets and then hid them under the bed so no one would find them, but I hated my writing. It felt stilted.” Against her religion, Lax began to frequent the library to “learn how other people did it.”

Feminist poet, Adrienne Rich, ignited that first spark. “One night I was reading her book of poetry while my bearded husband read the Torah across from me and I came across some really hot lesbian poetry. My heart sped up – I’d never been aroused like that in my life. That was my first turning point. Adrienne Rich was the first woman I fell in love with.”

Lax turned to Hasidism at 16 upon falling in love with her future-husband. Having grown up in a liberal Jewish household, Lax attributes her obsession with the pious religion as her rebellion. “When I went to school at UT-Austin, kids all over were jumping into ‘right-wing rebellion’ against our liberal Sixties-era parents. We didn't think our parents were grown-ups so we were going to be grown-ups better. I was part of that movement.”

But eventually the shimmer wore off and Lax realized she had little to no control over her life or her body. With seven children – two of whom were still babies – Lax became pregnant for the eighth time. “My body screamed,” she remembers. “It was survival instinct, but I was convinced that if I had that baby I would have died. I knew I needed an abortion, and once I made the decision I told my husband and we spoke to a rabbi.” Somehow she convinced both men to not only let her get the abortion, but to also get her tubes tied.

“That’s when I realized that no one would ever again tell me what to do with my body. If I hadn’t gotten ownership of my body though, I’d still be there. After that I started to own my lesbianism.”

The queerness, however, she says was always there. “I’m sorta genderqueer in my head. I never could wrap my brain around a ‘superficial’ male or female psyche. But then we didn’t have a vocabulary for those things when I was growing up. As a kid in the Sixties you didn’t think, ‘I had a weird dream that I was a boy – what does that mean? Let me go find my people.’ But those dreams were always there.”

Ultimately, it was an affair that pulled Lax out of her marriage and her religious community. “I had an affair with a woman while I was still married,” she explains. “I’m not proud of it, but it rocketed me out of that world and life has been amazing since.”

Despite her attempt to distance herself from her family, Lax says they welcomed her back quickly with open arms. Today, Lax calls Houston home where she lives with her wife. Though the two married last April, they’ve been together for 10 years.

“My book is about the consequences of [all] those choices,” Lax sums up. Uncovered is her first memoir, but her work has been featured in multiple anthologies as well as the Houston Chronicle.

Lax will be in town tonight, Feb. 16, for a special reading at the Austin Jewish Community Center. The event is free and begins at 7pm.