Hallowe'en by Ricky

The symbol of "Candy Day"

My earliest memories of Hallowe'en involve two years of costumes and large shopping bags of goodies. I only remember one of my costumes, Superman. (I even had a cape.) Mother made it for me. During both years, I remember  mother and father walked with me and several neighborhood parents with kids around to a lot of houses.

This is NOT me.

In those days homemade and store bought goodies were about equally distributed. My favorite was the chocolate candies as one might expect. Somehow the overstuffed very large shopping bags (we went out again when the first bag was full) I lugged about were mysteriously emptied long before I could have eaten even a tenth of my haul. Don’t you just love parents who “wisely” protect you from all that candy? Of course, these were the days before apples with inserted razor blades created a Hallowe'en panic among parents.

While living with my grandparents on their farm, there was no Hallowe'en trick or treating. The neighbors were too far away. So, I had to be content with the in school Hallowe'en “parties”. In replacement, we did celebrate “May Day” in the farming communities on May first each year. Basically, we would deliver a basket of goodies to a neighbor’s farm house, knock on the door and yell “May Day”, then run and hide in a large scale game of Hide-and-Seek.

Grandparent's farm house in Minnesota.

Once back with my mother, I went by myself trick or treating until my little brother and sister were old enough to go, and then I took them. One year (the last I ever went) my friend, Jimmy and I did pull a couple of “tricks” on two houses. We used ski wax to write four letter words on two-car's windows. Ski wax is hard to get off.

On the path to delinquency.

I was not always a nice kid.

It is said that, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” (referring to not educating a mind), and that is certainly true. However, when a person has a good, sound, healthy, and well educated mind, but doesn't use the knowledge stored therein, I submit it is a greater tragedy and even a bigger waste. Unfortunately, I once fell into this category (at least I hope it was only once). 


Back-in-the-day, whatever day that was, I was married and living in Marana, AZ. It was in late October when I arrived home for lunch and discovered that my wife had just finished “cooking down” a pumpkin in preparation to making pumpkin pie. I rushed over to taste it and she warned me that it was hot. So, not being stupid (or so I thought then), I obtained a spoon from the silverware drawer and dipped it into the golden elixir, started to blow upon it to cool it down to enjoyable tasting temperature, then she also warned me that there was no “spice” in it yet. So, not being stupid (or so I thought then), I replied, “So what? It's pumpkin!”. I then proceeded to put the spoon in my mouth to enjoy the near ambrosia delicacy. I removed the spoon, swirled the contents about my mouth, and promptly spit it out into the sink. This wasn't pumpkin, it was squash!! I have hated squash ever since I was 4.

I did learn several things from this event:  

1. Pumpkins are squashes; 

2. I hate the flavor of squash not the texture; 

3. What good is knowledge if you don't use it?; 

4. When someone warns you about something, if there is time, ask “What are you warning me about?”; 

5. Unpleasant things can be made pleasurable, if disguised properly; 

6. I'm not stupid, but I don't know everything; 

7. I should have put more trust in my wife, because she remembered that I didn't like squash and warned me; and 

8. My wife made an outstanding pumpkin pie.

This one is MINE! Go get your own.

About the Author



Emerald Bay - Lake Tahoe

Ricky was born in June of 1948 in downtown Los Angeles, California. He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA.  Just prior to turning 8 years old, he went to live with his grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.

When united with his mother and new stepfather, he lived at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After two tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children.  His wife passed away from complications of breast cancer four days after 9-11.

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.  "I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic."

Ricky's story blog is TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com.

Queer, Just How Queer by Phillip Hoyle

      I love to use the word queer, the term brought into gay prominence in political and academic queering movements of the 1960s through the 90s. I also like it for the memories it raises of my grandma Pink, who in old fashion used the word for anything odd. I like it for its political symbolism and for making positive a word too long used as a pejorative. I like it for its strength. I like it for its inclusive quality covering the bases of LGBTandQ concerns. I like it for its exclusive quality, as in not too many people I run into want to be called by this moniker. I especially like the discomfort its use raises among some of my gay friends! It’s a word of wide potential and great humor. So just how queer am I? It’s a fair question. I’ll try to answer it once and for all.

     This morning I looked through the photographs on my digital camera that included those I took last summer at Pridefest Denver 2012. I was surprised to find there quite a few more images, ones I thought had been erased when I uploaded them into my computer. I flipped through frame after frame and saw so much of my life there, even photos from Pridefest Denver 2011. First I saw a photo of my partner’s 90-year-old mother, sitting at the kitchen table drinking her morning coffee. I often kid her about all her gay sons although only one of her offspring turned out to be gay. Her multiplicity of gay sons is made up of all of Jim’s and my gay friends. I call them her growing family of gay kids. She smiles for me and takes delight in these others who bring her presents of chocolate, humor, and unaffected affection. She represents in this picture a nine-year connection I have with her son and the growing numbers of her other gay sons. The photo reveals layer after layer of queer experience and relationship, but it’s just the beginning. I did mention two sets of photos taken at Pridefest, but I haven’t yet told of the hundreds of photos of the family of plastic pink flamingos that live in our yard shown standing alone and together among a variety of ferns. I took these and many more in the past couple of years, the queer obsession of a queer artist! I also haven’t mentioned many photos of flowers, of my artwork, of self-portraits, of extreme Christmas decorations at a local gay bar, of the bunch of men I run with at parties, in restaurants, and on the street. I haven’t told you of pictures of an art display, of drag queens, of small, large, and supersized lesbians, of gay architects and engineers, of employees of Chipotle restaurants, of young people polling for the Obama campaign, of great arches of rainbow colored balloons, of a guy wearing fairy wings, of a barely-clad muscle man standing by a muscle car, of the model in a platinum blond wig and red bikini sitting in a red convertible advertising At the Beach, of a parade on-looker smoking a huge stogie, of people dancing, of a young drag queen posing sexily for me, of a young man in shorts sitting on the curb with his little dog watching the parade, of political signs urging the election of sane officials, of leather studs, of a drum and bagpipe band in their smart kilts, of religiously motivated anti-gay protesters, of two young guys in interestingly revealing slacks, of Senior Citizens doing a dance routine with their walkers, of youngsters calling attention to Rainbow Alley, of the prominent landmark The Center makes along the route, of the partiers on its roof sometimes watching the parade passing by below, of the poignant reminder of the ongoing presence of AIDS among us, of wild hairdos, of the Imperial Court, or of the leathery Uncle Sam who stopped to ask me, “Where’s the free beer?” I haven’t said a word of many other pictures of musicians, dancers, activists, on and on. These photos are my people whom I celebrate with my little digital camera as passionately as Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century celebrated the democracy of America, the endless variety of life, the human body, his own body, and his sturdy comrades with whom he liked to lie in Leaves of Grass. 

     So just how queer am I? Really, really queer. I’ve been trying to tell you just how queer in my stories! In summary of all I’ve said to you in the past, hear this: 

* I’m as queer as the little boy who wanted to wear both cowboy and Indian costumes in public.
* I’m as queer as the boy who donned his great aunt’s wig and sister’s skirt and went to the family grocery store to show himself to his dad.
* I’m as queer as the teen who used to lie in bed next to his dad, not only to read alongside him but also to smell him.
* I’m as queer as the teen who bragged to another boy about marking his friend with hickies.
* I’m as queer as any teen boy singing in the school choir and more than most of them.
* I’m as queer as the high schooler who looked forward to each issue of House Beautiful.
* I’m as queer as the boy who ordered prints from a NYC art print company and treasured the company’s catalogue with its variety of homoerotic images.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered the striking 
International Male ads and catalogue.
* I’m as queer as the young man whose first male friend in adulthood was homosexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who read all the homosexual-theme books in the public library.
* I’m as queer as the young man with wife and children who at age thirty fell in love with another man.
* I’m as queer as the young man who reveled in the idea he was bisexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered that his homosexual proclivities lay at the center of his sexuality.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who had sexual affairs with other men.
* I’m as queer as the writer who when he was asked to include cultural diversity in an adult religious education resource anthology quoted gay writers and HIV-related themes alongside many other cultural writings.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who left his wife to live as a gay man in a large city.
* I’m as queer as the old man who snapped photos at Pridfest knowing he was as queer as anyone there and loved the notion and the reality of it.

     I am the old man who says all these things proudly and with love, deep love for all my companions:
* Male and female
* Educated and uneducated
* Professional and worker
* Wealthy and dirt-poor
* Crazy and sane
* Chic and tasteless
* Laughing and crying
* Hale and exhausted
* Living it up and overwhelmed
     
     So, how queer am I? Pretty darn queer and happy as a lark about it.
     And now, if you’ll pose, I’ll take even more pictures with my camera, snapshots of the folk who add so richly to the queerness of my existence and the joy of my gay life. 

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

Over the River and through the Woods by Ray S

Nostalgia is my trunk in the attic full of fantasies, make-believe, and many memories, some of childhood days and some more recently of wonderful straight and gay adventures.

In fact this life has been quite a trip over many rivers and some really interesting trips to the woods.

Remember the first time you skinny dipped with the other boys at Y Camp?  Exciting alright!  The revelation that all 13 year olds were not born  equal.   Some even sported strategic pubic hair; and some, it turns out, were blessed with being hidden behind the door when God passed out the genitalia--and later to learn that that’s as good as it gets. Beware of the latent pubic hair appearing on the palm of your hand or you’re going to burn in hell if you don’t stop playing with yourself.   Oh the joys of sin and early youth.

Originally my fertile imagination always conjured up visions of Currier and Ives 19th century nostalgia when “Over the River, etc.” reared its bucolic head.  “One Horse Open Sleigh” and all.

With growing exposure to birds and bees one learned that they were not the only creatures in the bushes.  Oh to run naked through the fields of lush green grass and exploring passion in the primeval forest lie nude with a newly discovered lover.

The rivers still run and woods still conceal soft beds of leaves to sleep upon with the fairy queen of your choice.

As for me my trip isn’t over yet.  There is much too much nostalgia creation coming my way before I close the lid on the old trunk and make my way out of the attic.

About the Author

Epiphany by Gillian

I have been fortunate enough to have several epiphanies in my life. None has taught me anything new, but simply emblazoned on my consciousness what my sub-conscious already knew.  For that reason they have a certain comic aspect. In retrospect I always envision myself at these moments as a comic strip character, slapping my forehead while a starburst leaps from my head containing those immortal words:  “Well, duh!”

The time and place of these revelations is burned in my brain the way those of our generation all remember where we were when Kennedy was shot.

I don’t think I could say I have ever had a huge epiphanic (can it be an adjective?) moment, but rather several little epiphanettes.

I was nine years old when I had my first “well, duh!” moment.

I was in church on Christmas Eve, surrounded by friends, neighbors and family lustily belting out the traditional tried-and-true carols. Even at nine I could sing them all with little attention and meanwhile was surveying the obligatory stable and manger set piece reposing on a rickety table before the old stone font. The nativity scene had been hand carved sometime doubtless during Queen Victoria’s reign and was dutifully dusted off for a few days every Christmas season. Eyeing the Baby Jesus’ tarnished wire hallow it came upon me.

Now, given the time and place one might well expect a Visitation from Christ, but I fear it was more from the Antichrist.

“This is just a load of codswallop,”  came to me in a blinding flash.  “I don’t need any of it. I will find my own way to God in my own time and my own space and the last thing I need is interference from this mumbling, bumbling old bishop.”

And here endeth my participation in organized religion.

I loved my college years. They were probably the happiest days of my life, until now that is; now is the best ever, but that’s another story. Those happy days were marred by only one thing; this man/woman business. I had no interest in any of it.  But I played my part and went on dates and petted in dark corners and hated it all.

Then suddenly, hiking beside a trickling stream on a purple hillside one weekend, it hit me  I didn’t have to  play the game. Nobody was forcing me. I could simply say “no” to the dates and the dances and the mixers, enjoy my ever widening circle of friends and revel in my new learning. That was what I was there for after all.

“Well, duh!”

I had just let the letter slip through the slot of one of those very British bright red mailboxes. The rain poured down its shiny red sides as my wet hair dripped into my eyes and I wriggled cold toes in soggy shoes.

Why had I mailed that application? I didn’t even want the job. But in a Britain still suffering from post war austerity there were not many jobs to chose from. I had graduated from college and left that particular bubble of unreality, so with wet feet now firmly on wet ground, I had to do something.

Standing staring at that dripping mailbox, all was suddenly illuminated.  I didn’t have to stay here, in this place where the future looked as gray and bleak as the weather. I was young and fit and fairly intelligent, with my shiny new degree in my back pocket I could go anywhere, do anything.   I was free.

“Well, duh!”

I loved my new job at IBM, but I had taken it for the sole purpose of saving enough money for the airfare back to Britain. After all, I had only left home for a year or so, just to see something of the world before settling down to a career and, I supposed, a family. I hadn’t emigrated. That rang too much of finality, of no return; of stinking ships’ holds and Ellis Island.

After only three months with IBM I had enough money for the fare. But if I stayed just a little longer ….

And then it was summer, and the sun shone and the mountains were beautiful, so why rush home to the cold rain of an English summer?  And then it was Fall, and the aspen trees glowed …..And I was driving down North Wadsworth one day, through the peaceful farming country that still existed in those days, and it came just like a flash of dazzling light. (Apparently epiphanies come the road to Denver as well as the road to Damascus!)  I didn’t have to leave Colorado. Ever. There was no rule, no law. I could stay here in this beautiful place where the sun shone 300 days of the year; where I had a job I loved and many wonderful friends.  Forever.

“Well, duh!”

I never should have married. At some level of consciousness I knew that before I married and for every minute that I remained married. But I took those vows seriously, had chosen my path of my own free will, and made it work.  I was happy.

Sitting in the departure lounge of Raleigh-Durham airport, waiting for a delayed flight home from a business trip, I realized with sudden blinding clarity that I didn’t want that plane to turn up. I didn’t want to go home.

When sitting for interminable hours in an airport is preferable to something else, you know there’s a whole lot wrong with the something else.  I was not happy.   Not, at least with the married part of my life.  My stepchildren, whom I would never have abandoned, were essentially grown up.  It was just my husband and I, and I didn’t want to go home.  But I didn’t have to struggle on, making it work. I would not be the first woman to get divorced, and certainly not the last.

“Well, duh!”

Once I had settled comfortably into my divorced skin, I had one last revelation to go. I was sitting on my deck with the cat on my lap and morning coffee in my hand, listening to Anne Murray tapes. Now you may not know this, but many a lesbian of my age was at one time madly in love with old Annie.  I was slowly realizing that the feelings in my groin, not entirely appropriate for six o’clock on a Sunday morning were, even less appropriately, entirely engendered by Ms. Murray.

The lightning struck.

“Oh my God! I’m gay! I’m queer! I’m a lesbian!”

Far from being scary, it was thrilling and uplifting, powerful with promise.

“Oh … my … God!”

Half the people in the world are women and a certain percentage of them feel like I do. And there is nothing in this world to stop me getting out and finding them.

“Oh … my … God!”

“Well, duh!”

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Epiphany by Colin Dale

Epiphany, in my American Heritage College Dictionary, has three possible meanings.  I'm interested in only the third of the three.  The first, the Christian holiday tied to the arrival of the Wise Men in Bethlehem.  The second, any revelatory manifestation of God, much like the roadside conversion of St. Paul.  The third--my kind of epiphany--a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.   One and two are not for me.  I've never been visited by any wandering Wise Men.  Nor have I ever been knocked off my ass on the road to Damascus, or heading anywhere, for that matter.  No, my epiphany--or epiphanies, because we've all had many--have been of the mundane kind: no gods, no midday starbursts, no basso voices from aloft.  In fact, as I sorted through my epiphanies, the one I'll tell you about involves only an ordinary park bench in an ordinary town park near an ordinary mountain stream on an ordinary--although absolutely beautiful--sunny day.

I chose this particular epiphany because it's somewhat topical and reasonably recent.  I could have gone back to some of my earlier epiphanies, back to my gullible college days when I sought the meaning of life, over and over again, and found it, over and over again, back to the days of The Teachings of Don Juan and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, back to when I'd write "How true!" in the margins every time I'd find the meaning of life, over and over again--when, if "How true!" were underlined several times, with maybe three exclamation points, it meant I'd found the Mother of All Meanings of Life.  Instead I'm going to tell you about an epiphany that's more workaday, more down-to-earth, one that many of us, possibly, will relate to.  Why relate to?  Well, besides a park bench and a mountain stream, it also involves a computer.

I should warn you before going any further what follows contains a fairly graphic depiction of the death of a computer, a MacBook laptop.  If you've a queasy stomach, you may want excuse yourself.  If you've chosen to stay--and trusting you're all over 18--here goes . . .

Two years ago I was involved in a readers' theater production of Twelfth Night.  We had rehearsed the play amply and performed it several times in Boulder, so when invited to do a short week's worth of performances in Breckenridge we didn't feel the need to do more than one rehearsal in the Breckenridge theater, plus the performances.  That meant lots of free time.  That amounted to a mountain "vacation:" a few hours' work evenings, but our days completely free.  Cast and crew were offered group lodging, but me--a tenacious loner--I opted for a single room in a downtown hotel.  I had packed as per usual: socks, underwear, toothbrush and paste, too many books--and my Mac laptop.  Now, truth in storytelling requires I say that at this time I was your typical all-American computer user: I traveled knowing in advance I'd have Internet access, and, before checking the HBO lineup or looking for bedbugs, I'd confirm my Internet access.

I found the hotel's guest network, signed on, and . . . and here's where it gets graphic . . . my MacBook began to consume itself.  I knew it felt unusually hot only minutes after startup, like a lasagna dish just out of the microwave.  And then the screen--remember going to movies years ago, before film was digitized? how the cellulose, so-called "safety" stock would catch in the projector's film gate and look like it had caught fire? instead of Cary Grant clinging to the roof's edge, suddenly this almost pretty mosaic of cinnamon brown and honey yellow, the whole screen a wiggling mosaic of melting film?  Well, that was the MacBook screen.  I did what all quick-thinking Mac jockeys do in a situation like that: I rebooted.  Nothing.  Dead screen.  John Cleese would have said my MacBook was now an ex-computer, it had ceased to be, it was bereft of life, it had joined the choir invisible.

The groundwork was now laid for my epiphany.  My MacBook was dead.  And this was Day 1 of a full week away from home.  I'm sure I didn't notice at first, but soon, stretched out on the hotel bed, my rapidly cooling laptop sitting useless on my lap, I noticed I was having a physical response.  Not just an emotional response: I'm cut off for a week!  Not just an intellectual response: How will I keep up with what's going on?  But a physical response: My heartbeat quickened.  My breathing was staccato.  My stomach felt like its bottom trap had sprung open.  I knew it was nuts to have felt this way, but all I could think was, What am I going to do now?

Cue the town park.  Cue the mountain stream.  Enter the park bench.

I did what, had I a living MacBook, would have been unimaginable: I went for a walk.  Outside the hotel I found a serpentine path, the Breckenridge Riverwalk.   A mile or so's stroll led me to the town park and an empty bench.  I sat there looking around, watching the river, watching the passersby.  I was having a good time.  If I'd been paying attention there might have been a basso voice, not from the sky, but from inside: Hey, Ray, isn't this better?  Had it been a Bible moment, it might have been: Hey, Ray, why persecuteth thyself?

By now you all know where this is going, but what the heck.

My epiphany on the park bench did not change me overnight.  A week later, back in Denver, I bought a new MacBook.  And I did set out pretty quick to keep its use in proportion.  Nor did the park bench turn me into a Luddite, sneering at all technology.  Far from it.  My MacBook today--which is I the one I bought after Breckenridge--is first and foremost my typewriter.  Yes, it connects me to the Internet and is my link to email, but I use these features sparingly.  Email, for instance--I limit myself to one hour each morning.  As for web browsing, I try to restrict it to real research, and even then I gang my searches for what usually amounts to an hour's browsing late in the day.  I did, for a time, subscribe to Freedom.com, the lockout service that blocks the Internet, email, the works, for the number of minutes you specify.  I've now weaned myself from Freedom.com.  Now when I'm typing, I just don't look anywhere else.

I realize there's a danger in this tale.  It makes me seem holier than thou.   I don't mean it to sound that way, because that's not how I feel.  I'm not a better person for my laptop epiphany.  I'm not even sure I'm a better person than the me before Breckenridge.  I think I am a happier person.  A more patient person.  A more relaxed person.   And I seem to get a lot more done than the old me ever did.  In a funny way, I feel more free.  I feel freer since Breckenridge to say yes to things as they come along.  I have more focus.  I'm a hell of a lot better at following through on things.  Best of all, I've learned the unbeatable joy of mono-tasking.

So, to wrap it up, we've all had many epiphanies.  Here an epiphany, there an epiphany.  This was a snapshot of one of mine.  It's been fun to go back over this particular epiphany, to see again my MacBook liquefying before my eyes, to re-feel the What-do-I-do-now? panic, to remember the jittery walk to the Breckenridge park, to re-experience the uninstallation of anxiety and to celebrate the reinstallation of a peace of heart, mind, and spirit I'd forgotten was my birthright.

Metaphorically speaking, the Riverwalk was my road to Damascus.  And, metaphorically speaking, I certainly was knocked off my ass.

About the Author

Colin Dale couldn't be happier to be involved again at the Center.  Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center.  Then and since he has been an actor and director in Colorado regional theatre.  Old enough to report his many stage roles as "countless," Colin lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The Doctor's Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at the Arvada Center.  For the past 17 years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder's Colorado Shakespeare Festival.  Largely retired from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing--plays, travel, and memoir.

Little Things That Mean A Lot by Merlyn

The little things that I have shared one on one with others that mean the most to me are the times when one of us by just by using simple gestures like a wink, a look, or just a smile can say so much. 

Hi it’s good to see you.

I’m proud of you.

Are you OK?

I do care enough to notice how you are feeling.

I find myself saying less and less out loud to Michael; since we can have a whole conversation just looking at each other without saying a word.

I love you.

Do you want to?

Maybe.

Now.

Ok.

About the Author

I'm a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

The Little Things in Life by Jon Krey

Little doesn’t necessary mean little as in small but much more. When a parent or grandparent gives you a hug. My first crush or rather crushes. My first car, second car, anything but my present car. It needs to give way to something more recent. Something within the past 20 years??

I remember TV shows as a kid. “I Love Lucy”. The Jack Benny Show, The Twilight shows, Dragnet, One Step Beyond. I remember the TV’s that came before these. My next door neighbor had the first in our neck of the woods. My whole family and theirs gathered around it waiting for the station to begin its broadcast day (of about 5 hours). It had a small 8” screen with an enclosure as large as a small fridge. When it began we could barely see much other than a guy with some ad and the local news. We sat there entranced by this quasi lucid picture with lines angling through it. My neighbor got up and continually adjusted the picture and the rabbit ears antenna. He finally gave up and we went home… My dad said TV would never amount to anything.

I remember Christmas in the late Forties. One Christmas at Dad’s parents in Hyattville, KS.  We’d come up from Tulsa for Christmas. It was snowing hard and my grandparents little house was empty on arrival. Mom said they probably went to church.  It was a small Methodist church just about 4 city blocks from the house. We drove there and Dad got out to go inside while I and my sister remained in the car. Oh, the beautiful Christmas music. The 8 person choir and congregation sang alongside of a church reed organ. The church windows bright with candlelight. So there we sat among the heavy snow drifts waiting. I felt so good with all this magical music, light and snow falling. I thought “so this is what Christmas is all about”.

Times go on though through other Christmas’s not so good but there were other “little things”. My first crushes. It seemed there was always one if not two in every grade up through graduation from High School. It was always love at first sight. No they never knew but I did. Such male beauty. I always thought I’d be with one of them one day. That never happened but I did find others though never quite the same.

Then there was Aunt Martha, a Pennsylvania Dutch woman who denied any German ancestry. That wasn’t the point though. She and her husband back then were for me and my sister a second mom and dad. They loved us so much. In 1949 she and her husband were to visit us in Tulsa. Again there was copious snow on Christmas Eve. Before their arrival the door bell rang. Mom answered and it was UPS or whomever back then, holding a big rectangle box which had MY name on it. She brought it inside but said I couldn’t open it yet. It seemed like eternity but Aunt Martha and Uncle Paul finally arrived. I tore the box open and found an electric train! OH MY GOD! Wonderful!! Mom and Dad couldn’t have afforded it but they weren’t poor. What a gift, what a time of memories.

So much over the years of little things have now past. My first bicycle, my first motorcycle, my first car. My first sexual connection.

Maybe some of the happiest memories of the past would also include two additional things. At Mom’s parent’s farmhouse at two in the morning hearing the night train chug out of downtown Ft. Scott. Watching it as its dim headlight moved slowly upward on the inclining grade. What a trip!

The other at Dad’s parents again. Early on one morning during a visit from Tulsa I awakened from the night on their old feather bed in their two room home. I heard their windup WESTCLOX alarm clock tick/tacking away while Grandma and Grandpa still slept soundly . I loved listening to it run. Just minutes later that morning, only one block away, came the slow chug, chug, chug of another train, this time a passenger one. It stopped very briefly to dislodge a couple of locals then headed on its way north.

Lastly, since I’m into this sort of thing, I inadvisably was plowing through my Grandma’s wallboard once and found Granddad’s ancient Elgin pocket watch. WOW! I HAD to WIND it and listen to it tick. But, Mom saw me and that was it! The watch was taken away and hidden. Shit!! I hadn’t even gotten to take the back off it yet! Still what a discovery, and equal to the time Granddad caught me play driving in his 1936 Dodge in the garage. That watch, not the car, represented so much  to me then as it still does today. I finally inherited it around 15 years ago, where it now holds a very special place in my watch collection but much to the chagrin and displeasure of my cousins who believed they should have been its heir.   

Yes, little things in life; little things do mean a lot. But until the day I finally fall over, my spring unwound, these are just a very few of the best of my memories. For in the great eternity within the universe it’s little things that do mean a lot.

About the Author

"I'm just a guy from Tulsa (God forbid). So overlook my shortcomings, they're an illusion."

Acting by Donny Kaye

Acting.  Actors.  Acting out.  Acting up.  Acting weird.  Strange acting.  Not acting right.  Was that just an act?  Act your age.  Is this the final act?  Acts of the apostles. An act of Congress. A heroic act.  Caught in the act.

When does the actor put away the act and become real? 

When do I finally become real, and begin to act?

What an interesting word.  It is only three letters in length excluding a different suffix.  It seems that the use of the word would result in clarity and yet, it like most of our language is not as precise as it is assumed.  The user as well as the one to whom the word is being directed can exist with very different interpretations of the intended meaning and consequently great disparity regarding the meaning of what it is that is actually being talked about. 

Saturday morning a small group of friends gathered on my balcony for early morning coffee.  We talked about love.  We talked about relationships.  We talked about sexuality and its relationship to spirituality.  The conversation was rich and filled with energy that stretched the coffee hour to nearly four, yet we grew increasingly aware of the differences in how we each language our thoughts and how both speaker and the listener often do not exist with shared mind around the intended meaning even though we used similar language to express our thoughts and ideas.

As a child I don’t remember when I didn’t notice men.  Their bodies were exciting for me to gaze upon.  There were teachers at school.  There were young men and boys in the neighborhood.  I especially remember Mr. Harrington, my accordion teacher who also owned a bright red ’56 Mercury convertible who had captured my attention by the age of 10, well beyond cording and bellow-shakes.  In elementary school we got to attend a ballet at the Denver Auditorium Theatre and my interest in that ballet was in the costuming, especially the men’s tights which seemed ever so-o revealing. Any interest I’ve ever had in football was focused on the tight fitting player’s jersey, pants and their muscular torsos. 

Along with the awareness was a cultured learning to act as if I didn’t notice other males.  My actions were about acting right and not acting interested or acting badly as a result of my interests in other males.  My actions were intended to help me deny my very own orientation.  I needed to act like my culture and what my parents, family and religion expected.  There was no room for acting out my sexual interests.  I became a skilled actor in maintaining a secret that resulted in any number of undesirable actions on my part resulting from my denial, frustration and anger and not experiencing the spaciousness to be who I am. 

When I would take action on my sexual orientation, my performance expectations as an actor merely had to increase to act as if nothing was going on in my life that could be associated with the actions of a queer. In many realms of my life, I acted as a seasoned breeder, winning many accolades for my convincing performances. 

Today I am no longer acting as a result of my shame for my sexual orientation.  I am taking action to live in integrity with my very Being.  My acts now are more complete, grounded in compassion and an increasing sense of self worth.  My actions are expressions of my awareness of wholeness as a gay man. I ‘act’ out with a deepening sense of pride in who it is that I Am.  In most realms of my life the actions have not changed, however; the actions are expressions not of an actor, playing a prescribed part but instead as, Donny the one taking action for living this life.

Acting.  Actors.  Acting out.  Acting up.  Acting weird.  Strange acting.  Not acting right.  Was that just an act?  Act your age.  Is this the final act?

Possibly!

About the Author

The House on the Plains by Cecil Bethea

Out east of Denver, off the Interstate and about twenty miles south on state road 95 stands the house.  Being two storied sets it apart from most houses of its era, about World War I.  The others were usual one storied with some Victorian trappings: a tower, a bit of stained glass in the front door, fancifully turned spindles in the the porch’s bannisters.  This house, facing east, stands off the highway about a hundred yards amid three thirst stunted cottonwoods and some desiccated shrubs unwatered for years.  Off to the left runs a rutted road that leads to the back.  Recent tire marks suggest a rendevous for teen age frolics in illicit drinking or couplings.  The yard was naked except for weeds dead from the December cold. 

No mailbox stood out front -- not even a tilted post remained although the ground was still compressed by the wheels of the R.F.D. drivers making their daily stops.  Steps leading up to porch are rickety at best even without the three missing treads.  Also gone is part of the porch bannister.  An empty space is agape where a door and sidelights had once stood possibly the result of a midnight raid of a homebuilder with not quite enough money.  The two story porch is supported by square columns made of six inch planks still showing a few splotches of white, perhaps the remains of plantation pretensions.  Boards long gone from the porch floor make like miniature moats to the trespasser.  Probably this area had been furnished with caned-back rockers, benches, a glider, a porch swing, maybe even a hammock.

Inside the dust driven by the winds has accumulated in whirls.  Of course the kids years ago had come for miles to pleasure themselves breaking out the windows .  Each of the four downstairs rooms has a fireplace that had been sealed up with holes for the pipes of the heating stoves.  Even though every room has two windows, at least the occupants had some heat.  A dozen or so recent Coors cans attest to a rustic bacchanal.  Evidently once there had been a built in sideboard because its alcove is an ugly void.  Attached to the dining room is the kitchen which juts out west toward the mountains.  The sink is long gone with only a hole in the floor which had held the drain pipe.  Probably pried out for scrap and sold by some desperate soul to feed his family during hard times or to slake his thirst with a six pack of Coors or maybe even two.

The northwest room downstairs has a built-in closet added later.  This was probably the bedroom of the parents or maybe the grandparents so that they could avoid the stairs.  Upstairs would be the sleeping quarters for the rest of the family.  Four rooms seems a bit excessive even for the fecund families who lived on the plains but were also frugal.  Even if the parents did sleep upstairs with the grandparents down below, two rooms could have easily held eight children with two to the bed.  Maybe the spare room was for a spinster sister or aunt who had no where else to go.  It could have belonged to a bachelor brother who owned a piece of the farm.  We’ll never know.

No doubt at least four generations had once called this place home, a place to cherish or escape.  Today we can only imagine the love and hate that strutted through the rooms, crises that waxed and waned, problems that bubbled and boiled.  Love of a parent for an unworthy child. Brothers vying for anything.  Sisters comparing boy friends.   Fighting amongst the kin over an inheritance.  A wedding for love or necessity.  The death of a grandchild from whooping cough or the death of a grandparent from old age.  The parties on a summer Saturday.  Christmas dinners.  The prayers for rain.  The worries about making mortgage payments.  If we knew such tales as these, we could embody the ghosts that drift about the place.

The house is blasted by the winter winds and broiled by the summer suns. the boards are warped with protruding nail heads. Each year it weakens.  Finally one winter worse than those of past decades will pile snow upon the roof.  A blast will descend from the ice caked banks of the Yukon and blow the house down.  An alternative is that on a hot summer’s day a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand will grow into one that’s as black as a mother-in-law’s heart and stretches from here to yonder.  Darts of lightening will spark down to earth.  A funnel will form and metastasize hitting the house with one wild eddy of wind and scattering the shards all over the plains. A more realistic expectation is that some liquored up teenagers, seeking new thrills, will set it afire to see a really big fire.  They will dance to rhythms unconceived and the sparks will soar into the purple night of the plains.

As yet, the house still stands moldering away out on the emptiness of the plains, a mute Wurthering Heights waiting for a Bronte to tell its tale.

About the Author


My Biography in 264 Words

          Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18th, 2012.

          Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era.  No matter we survived.  I am talking about my sister, brother, and I .  There are two things that set me apart from people.  From about the third grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

          After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar.  Through our early life we traveled extensively in the mountain West.  Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now those happy travels are only memories.

          I was amongst the first members of the memoire writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feed back.  Also just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

          Carl is now in a nursing home, I don’t drive any more.  We totter on.