Personally

Lesbo heartbreak shocker

by Susan Ryan-Vollmar

I am crushed that Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres have split up. Ever since Ellen came out -- officially, that is -- on the cover of Time magazine in 1997 and went public about her relationship with Anne, I have been obsessed with the couple. (They met at a Vanity Fair Oscar party. Anne fell in love with Ellen at first sight. Ellen thought Anne was out of her depth. Betty DeGeneres refers to Anne -- well, referred to Anne -- as her other daughter.)

Shortly after they came out together, I started watching E! for the first time in my life, hoping to catch a bit of gossip about them. Although most of my friends were disgusted when the hyper-successful Ellen and Anne made their claims about being blacklisted from Hollywood, I secretly reveled in their self-absorption. Every couple should do stupid things together in the name of backing each other up. I laughed when they threatened to move to Ojai, an artists' colony north of Los Angeles. I noted how they seemed to look more and more alike (similar haircuts) the longer they lived together. They both dressed in white for a Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington.

So I was stunned when I learned of their break-up and shocked when I heard about Anne's Margot Kidder-like appearance in the Fresno (!) home of people she didn't know and her subsequent hospitalization. This was the realization of the worst fears I'd had about the couple. Over the years, I'd wondered: were they happy? Was Anne cheating on Ellen? Would the relationship last? I was happy to see them together at this year's march on Washington. I was relieved to hear that they were working together on the HBO special If These Walls Could Talk 2. And I noted that they dressed in white again for the Advocate photo shoot publicizing the movie.

I would be ashamed of this obsession if I didn't know that other lesbians (and no small number of gay men) feel the same way. One friend of mine went out and bought a pair of Hush Puppies after seeing Ellen's closet full of them during that infamous interview with Diane Sawyer. Another e-mailed plot summaries of Ellen to everyone in his Outlook Express address book during the season build-up to her coming-out episode.

This collective obsession has its roots in a cliché: Ellen and Anne were role models (not that I or any of my friends -- most of whom have been out since Ronald Reagan's first term in office -- necessarily needed any). Ellen and Anne did something no other gay or lesbian Hollywood couple had done before -- they fell in love and risked their careers to nurture that love. Everyone in America knew about them. When they declared that they wanted to get hitched, they put a face -- and an attractive one at that -- on the battle to win the right to marry.

But I don't really care about all that. Nor do any of my friends who can't stop talking about the celebrity break-up of the year. Here's what I really care about: what's going to happen to Ellen now? Will Anne have a nervous breakdown -- or show up with Vince Vaughn on her arm in six months? Or, better yet, will Ellen and Anne get back together again? The suspense is killing me.