Going Pink by Will Stanton

     I have nothing lengthy nor profound to say about the topic of “going pink.”  Instead, I have just two, very short presentations.  Here’s the first:

     “Pan!  You’re pink!”

     Originally, I was going to leave it at just that, but I decided not to surprise everyone with just a four-word presentation.  So, here’s the second; it has to do with blushing.

     When I was in college eons ago, my classmate Ed discovered at the beginning of the semester that he had a roommate who could cause blushes at will, blushes, that is, with gay guys.  The evening that Ed arrived at his dorm, his assigned roommate had not shown up yet.  So, Ed chose the upper bunk and went to sleep.

     The next morning, Ed wondered if his roommate had come in during the night.  He looked over the edge of his bunk to the berth below.  His gaze was met with a totally unexpected and startling sight : the most beautiful young-male face he ever had seen punctuated by the biggest, shiniest blue eyes in the world looking right back at him.  Ed said that, for a moment, his heart stopped.  His roommate may or may not have noted Ed’s thunderstruck look, but what he immediately did see was Ed’s deep and uncontrolled blushing.  To add to Ed’s consternation was his roommate’s puzzled comment noting Ed’s deep-pink face.

     Climbing down from the bunk and stumbling for words, Ed tried to change the focus of the conversation and to introduce himself.  In the course of the exchange, it was established that Ed was gay but his roommate was not.  To Ed’s embarrassment, the roommate Chris returned to the topic of Ed’s blushing, so Ed resignedly explained that, whether Chris was aware of it or not, Chris was drop-dead gorgeous, and his eyes could devastate any gay guy who met his gaze.  Chris found this to be terribly amusing and stated that he would try it out on any guy that he sensed was looking at him.

     Perhaps Ed took pity on any potential gay victims of that devastating gaze and, therefore, tried to dissuade Chris from pursuing his plan; but Chris proceeded to practice his new-found power upon a whole series of unsuspecting gay guys.  Ed and I observed the unfailing results.

     Chris could sense when he was being admired.  He developed a strategy of casually walking past his next victim, then quietly turning around a few yards away, and looking right into the gay guy’s eyes. Whamo!  Immediate results.  Deep blushing.  I don’t know for how long Chris pursued his hobby of watching gay guys turn pink.  He may have become bored; it just was far too easy.

© 06 August 2012

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

Details by Colin Dale

The setting of houses, cafés, the neighborhood
that I’ve seen and walked through years on end:

I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.

And, for me, the whole of you is transformed into feeling.
     
      Lady Luck.  Serendipity.  Fluke.  Whatever you want to call it, when I found my idea for today's story it was a remarkable moment.  And thank god I sat down to look for something a few days ago and didn't do what I usually do and wait until Monday morning.  Looking for an idea, I checked my Bartlett's, but was unprepared for the coincidence--the GLBT coincidence--I'd find.
     
      Under details, Bartlett's had only two citations: the first, God is in the details, by Anonymous, and the 5-line poem with its: I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,/with so many incidents, so many details.
     
      The poet is gay icon Constantine Cavafy, known today in GLBT circles for his homoerotic poetry.  To be fair, though, only a portion of Cavafy's work is homoerotic.   Virtually unpublished in his lifetime, Cavafy is today regarded as one of the great European poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
     
      Constantine Cavafy died in 1933 at the age of 70.   Born to Greek parents in the Egyptian port-city of Alexandria, Cavafy lived the entirety of his life closeted.  His poetry was introduced to the English-speaking world by his friend and then equally closeted writer E.M. Forster.  Forster, though, who died in 1970 at 91, managed in his last years to emerge some from the closet.  Cavafy, dying 1933, wasn't so lucky.
     
      A prolific writer, Cavafy drew heavily from classical history, Greek and Hellenistic.  History, and Cavafy's home Alexandria with its own rich history, serve as metaphor for the whole of the human experience.
     
      First this--to make today seem a little less like a grad seminar in poetry:
     
It's not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust -
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.
     
      This is not Cavafy.  This is another of my heroes: Leonard Cohen.  Cohen transformed Cavafy's poem, The God Abandons Antony, into a somewhat autobiographical love song, changing Alexandria to Alexandra.  In the Cavafy poem ...
       
      Anthony is Marc Antony, Cleopatra's lover. The story goes when Alexandria was besieged, the night before the city fell, Antony dreamed he heard an invisible troupe leaving the city.  He awoke the next morning to find that his soldiers had in fact deserted him--which Antony took to mean even the god Dionysus, his protector, had abandoned him.  The poem has many layers of meaning beyond the historical.   Most say it's about facing up to great loss: lost loves, lost dreams, lost opportunities--ultimately, of course, life itself.

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don't mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don't fool yourself, don't say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don't degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with cowardly pleas and protests;
listen--as a last pleasure--to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
     
      I'd wondered whether a poetry sampler was appropriate stuff for Storytellers.  It's hardly run-of-the-mill memoir ("Then in 1988 this happened to me ... "), but as a taste of some of the poetry I like, it qualifies, I think, as memoir-light.
     
      But, you're thinking, what about those homoerotic poems?  I'll give you a sample of two of Cavafy's shorter homoerotic poems.    Now, neither one is going to make you go, Oh my God how could someone write that? --but consider when these were written.  Cavafy's homoerotic poems, mild as they may seem to us today, do evoke the stifling repression that made emotional cripples of men like Cavafy and Forster.

He lost him completely. And he now tries to find
his lips in the lips of each new lover,
he tries in the union with each new lover
to convince himself that it’s the same young man,
that it’s to him he gives himself.

He lost him completely, as though he never existed.
He wanted, his lover said, to save himself
from the tainted, unhealthy form of sexual pleasure,
the tainted, shameful form of sexual pleasure.
There was still time, he said, to save himself.

He lost him completely, as though he never existed.
Through fantasy, through hallucination,
he tries to find his lips in the lips of other young men,
he longs to feel his kind of love once more.

      Tame, no, by what we're used to?  But the works of kindred spirits like those of Constantine Cavafy and E.M. Forster--written only a few generations ago--remind us of how much we've to be thankful for today.
     
      That last poem is called In Despair.  This:
     
At the Next Table

He must be barely twenty-two years old—
yet I’m certain that almost that many years ago
I enjoyed the very same body.

It isn’t erotic fever at all.
And I’ve been in the casino for a few minutes only,
so I haven’t had time to drink a great deal.
I enjoyed that very same body.

And if I don’t remember where, this one lapse of memory
doesn’t mean a thing.

There, now that he’s sitting down at the next table,
I recognize every motion he makes—and under his clothes
I see again those beloved naked limbs.
     
      I'll end with a cut of one of Cavafy's best-known poems Ithaka.  You can find a YouTube video of Sean Connery reading Ithaka.  "Since Homer's Odyssey . . . [and I shoplifted this from a Cavafy website] . . . Since Homer's Odyssey, the island, Ithaca, symbolizes the destination of a long journey, the supreme aim that every man tries to fulfill all his life long . . . "
     
As you set out for Ithaka
hope that your journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare sensation
touches your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so that you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would have not set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

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.

Acting by Gillian

I have often said that members of the GLBT community are the best actors around. Most of us played a part for at least some of our lives after all: a few for most or even all of it.
I’m not so sure it was acting though, in my case at least, and I can only speak for myself.
I don’t know what it was, and I have never tried to write about it before so who knows what sense it will make.

But here goes.

I’m tempted to say, I was two people, but that’s not quite right; not what I understand, and admittedly that’s very little, schizophrenia to be.
It was not that I had more than one personality and they were interchangeable, coming and going on some undisclosed schedule. 
They certainly were not equal partners.
Rather, my body was off doing its own thing while the real me, whatever form that took, was separate, flitting about somewhere, watching what my body was up to.
I mean, how weird is that?
I have described this, verbally, to a few other GLBT people, but have yet to hear anyone say
Oh yes I know exactly what you mean …… it was just the same for me ……. anything like that.

But anyway ……. Back to my body and soul. Not that I pretend to grasp the meaning of the word soul but it’s the best I can do given the situation; something other than, quite apart from, my body.
My body went on its merry way: working, marrying, raising kids.
I watched. Rather like watching a play.

I didn’t judge.
I didn’t advise.
I observed.
I felt nothing.

That body was not me. At least the life it lived was not.
The bodily me was not unhappy. The bodily me felt very little.
It was not happy, neither was it unhappy.
It just was.

This continued until around forty, when I was swept away in an avalanche of emotion and came out. 
To myself, and that was all that mattered.
I will never forget that moment when I knew, unequivocally, what and who I was.
The two parts of me came together.
They had never been joined.
Not as long as I could remember.
Now they were.
Now we were.

I have been one ever since.

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.

Mayan Pottery and How It Came To Be by Merlyn and Michael

     As we go back beyond the time of what most people think of as the era of recorded history, the archaeologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have the bits and pieces that form a different pre-history every few years.

     Our story starts about 32,000 years ago in a village on the Tigris River. There was at that time a famous soothsayer whose reputation had spread for thousands of miles. This was unusual since most travel was within 40 or 50 miles from any given location. One day a young man by the name of Yahoo (not to be confused with a search engine) came to the soothsayer to find out about his future. The soothsayer was shocked beyond comprehension as Yahoo was to be the ancestor of most of the movers and shakers of history; Abraham, Lao Tse, Gautama Sid Hartha, Moses, Confucius, Jesus, and Mother Theresa. All this the soothsayer saw. He also told Yahoo that his descendants would populate a very large land to the west that wouldn’t be discovered by the majority of humanity for another 25,000 years.

     And as predicted a number of groups of the descendants of Yahoo crossed the frozen ice from present day Russia to the Alaskan frontier about 20,000 years ago. One group sought shelter where Sara Palin’s house overlooks the shores of Russia. The state of Alaska must have been paying the electric bill as the porch light may have guided them there. This group was starving when, as if by some miracle, a herd of reindeer passed by and several were slaughtered which saved their DNA for the later Tabasco, Olmec, and Mayan peoples. One of the reindeer was curious and smelled his bleeding relativities and ended up getting his nose covered with blood, all the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names, but he ended up becoming famous 20,000 years later. He became the most famous reindeer of them all.

     Those descendants of Yahoo coming from the north eventually migrated as far south as present day Peru while as late as 5,000 years ago some of the descendant of Abraham (also Yahoo) traveled by boat across the Atlantic following the winds and ocean currents and arriving just south of where Columbus landed just 508 years ago, more DNA proof of the descendants of Yahoo.

     What is now considered to be the first true civilization of the Americas is the Olmec, 500 BC-150 AD, who were the primary cultivators of the early ancestor of Corn which may have originally come from south western South America. Other contributions to future civilizations were pottery and sacrifice. The Mayans perfected the role of a leader god through using the famous golden poison arrow frog’s venom, the most potent venom known at the time, to slowly take very, very small doses until eventually developing both immunity and an addiction to the poison. The royal family could then hold a tiny gold frog that if touched by anyone else could kill as many as a hundred grown men. A room about 12X12X12 was discovered a few years back that was full of skeletons of these tiny creatures.

     Another of the annual sacrificial pageant performances performed by the god king was the piercing of the penis with a flint blade so the blood would bring about a good harvest. We can’t imagine what his appendage would look like after a few decades of such ceremonial sacrifices.

     One of the interesting things about the Mayans was their passion with astronomy. They built on the Olmec calendar which was already at least 1500 years old. They continued revising until today we have a calendar whose origin is about 3500 years in the making. Contemporary voodooists and nut cases predict that even Nostradamus knew of this time, the end of or the starting of some Time Rock, the Mayan calendar.

     A special characteristic of Mayan pottery is known as Mayan Blue, a glaze which has stood the test of time beyond any other. So here goes on Mayan pottery. Take any piece that has survived to this day and put it up against one done today that you might find on Santa Fe’s Art District on first Fridays in Denver and the only thing about the Mayan is that it’s old and characteristic of a bygone era. Beauty and the appreciation of objects are very subjective, sometimes interesting in a museum, but not necessarily in our house. If you compare the old stuff with those on Santa Fe, the Mayan looks like it was done by amatuers and of course in many ways it was. It is nice that there are those who appreciate antiquity and will preserve it for those yet to come and be the later descendants of Yahoo. It takes a study of the Mayan culture to appreciate the utilitarian function and the significance of the figures and designs.

     The Mayan calendar is one of the things we focus on since 12-21-2012 is only a few days from now. Archaeologists have unearthed a Mayan mural of a calendar projecting some 7,000 years into the future. The 5,125 years of the present calendar is the end of an era with the new and productive era being heralded in by the god of creation and war, Bolon Yokte. So we’re safe for at least another calendar and a half. We can wonder, however, what this god will do on Friday.  We think he would at least call on President Obama to plan out our future. They’ll probably do a better job than trying to work with the House and the Senate.

     This will also introduce an era where we can all wear huge feather headdresses and little skirts. Just think of the businesses that can grow and all the unemployed will be put to work making these highly desired fashions. The world economy will become healthy and President Obama will be honored with another Nobel Peace Prize. The religions of the world will have to make adjustments and the new Mayan pottery industry will surpass anything that has ever been on the New York Stock Exchange. Because the god Bolon Yokte is the god of creation and war, through these negotiations the global warming can be reversed to provide universally perfect weather conditions. All war will be terminated and the ensuing peace will save trillions of dollars. Sara Palin will be known as the savior of the indigenous peoples. Historians will discover that this was all predicted before it came to pass by a couple of gay senior citizens at the GLBT Center in Denver.

About the Authors

Michael

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities," Telling your Story"," Men's Coffee" and the "Open Art Studio". I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

Merlyn

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 Wisdom of LGBT Identity (Living Outside the Box) by Nicholas

  Gay is code. The word “gay” was used by generations of gay men to refer to a lot more than a state of happiness. One could say one had been to a gay party over the weekend and most co-workers would assume it was a pleasant get together while some would know the fuller and more specific meaning. Not only was this clever code, it denoted that you were a clever person—smart, witty and gay—and you went to interesting, unusual, maybe ever artful, parties. Gay set you apart not only as a sexual minority but as a lively, quick-witted, sophisticated individual.

  It’s a good thing to be born outside the box or to be thrown outside the box and have to imagine your own life because you have no standard guideposts to lean on. That, to me, is the heart of the wisdom of being L, G, B and T. Imagination is required for each of those letters. And your reward for each imaginative step you take is that you are blessed with more imagination. Gay liberation simply took that quality beyond cocktail hour. Being gay means one accumulates imagination, one develops the colorful side of the brain—right, left or both, maybe. You just make it up as you go along.

So, here are some points I have learned as I have made it up and watched others make it up as we go along.

        1.) Life is about more than money in this money obsessed culture. Life choices are not always made just on the basis of good career moves (although coming out these days can be a good career move). There are other values to live by, like integrity, satisfaction, wit, intelligence, selfhood, fun.

        2.) Life is not always fun. Sometimes you have to upset the apple cart and put yourself and those you love through some stress. The road to happiness can have some bumps along the way but happiness is still to be found at the end of the journey.

        3.) Life is not always fun, part 2. There are consequences. You take care of those you partied with or marched with or worked out your identity with. You do not abandon the needy, the sick and the dying.

        4.) Still, however, when you’re having fun, really do it. Don’t just have fun, make it fabulous fun. You want to give—or go to—parties that will become legends.

        5.) Question authority, all authority, especially the highest authorities. Defy standards everyday—it is, after all, the little things that count. Most lives aren’t lived in historical epochs but on a day-by-day basis with daily resistance and daily creativity.

        6.) Life is not all about just being young. As we grow older, we grow richer in experience and feeling. Having re-invented youth and masculinity, having restored a number of city neighborhoods, having shown America another model for compassionate, community-based health care support, we are now busy re-defining old age.

        Yes, there’s still that urge for the fabulous. There won’t be pastels in any nursing home I go to.

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

Epiphany by Peg

     Life is an epiphany.


     Beginning with a transition from total dependence for all of our needs, secure and warm, protected and nourished, oblivious of everything beyond the walls of our mother’s womb.  Forces beyond our control begin to squeeze and push, in a while we enter a completely different dimension.  Suddenly we are now separate, an individual and well designed for this new experience.

     When we die, what new dimension will we enter?  What epiphany will that turn out to be?  That answer lies far beyond our understanding.  Some have certainty, others don’t, in my mind I’ll just wait and see.

     I see life as Lewis Carroll wrote, “As through a looking glass.” Picture a window in a wall; from inside, the view is very different from the view observed from outside the glass.  We can interpret the same scene in quite different ways.  Looking in we might see a place of comfort, safety, and security in everything being known and predictable.  To another’s perspective that scene might look confining, stifling and boring.

     The glass has no opinion of it’s own, it doesn’t care.

     From the other side of the glass looking out, one might see danger, uncertainty and insecurity.  To another it calls for exploration and discovery, and perhaps a strong need to experience complete uncertainty.  What each perceives is his or her own personal choice, we alone decide.  It’s our choice; we may experience peace achieved through reasoned negotiation, or war driven by greed and the desire for supremacy.  Life is a series of choices.  All are decided by our own or collective needs and wants.

 

     The glass has no preference it is just there.

 

     The glass is in it’s own dimension, existing both inside and outside at the same time.  If it had eyes it could see both ways at once, if it had a mind it could know every thought produced by each observation.

     The glass doesn’t care what we see or do with the view.  In truth, the glass doesn’t see anything, it doesn’t feel anything or think, it is just there.  It has no preference if the scene is peaceful or a battlefield, is the weather calm or stormy, is it day or night.

     The glass doesn’t care.

     My epiphany?  Long ago I was taught that the glass was there and did care. I believed that the window provided the scenes for us, put there to test us and decide our fates.

     I have since then made my own choice by believing that the window that guides us is a myth.  I am not directed by dogma and I decide myself how to interpret the scenes.  I understood that I can decide my own destiny, that others beliefs and opinions are theirs and my life is mine alone.  If someone has some difficulty with that, they have the problem not me.

     There is no glass there to care. 

     Someone long ago decided otherwise, he believed the glass was there, did care and since he had that belief, he also believed it needed a name; and he called it …  God.

About the Author

I was born and raised in Denver Colorado and I have a divided history, I went to school, learned a trade, served in the military, married and fathered two sons. And I am Trans; I transitioned in 1986 after being fired for “not fitting in to their program”. 18 years ago I fulfilled my lifelong need to shed the package and become female. I continued working in my trade until retiring in 2006. I have been active in PFLAG Denver and served five years on the board of directors, two years as President of our chapter. Living now as a woman has let me be who I always knew I was and I am genuinely happy.

Memoir: A Pile of Leaves by Cecil Bethea

     With the end of September comes the annual event of the falling of the leaves and the concomitant chore of raking them up and getting rid of them one way or another.  Back home we used to heap them up into piles and then set them afire.  The burning leaves produced an aroma, not a smell, that was a delight to the senses but pleasured us only once a year and is not forgotten decades later.  Since then I’ve often wondered whether a forest fire amongst deciduous trees produces so sweet a smell.  Anyhow I still have a Pavlovian reaction to burning leaves of memories from the distant past in Alabama.

     Friday I decided to start the series of rakings necessary to rid the yard of leaves.  Can’t burn them now without being inundated with police and vile thoughts of the neighbors.  Steven, who lives next door, operates a compost heap and is delighted with garbage cans of leaves.
  
     For some reason or another, I felt Puritanical and tackled the trash collected along the fence.  Pulling the leaves and other trash into a pile, I marched at a slow step down the fence.  Then it dawned that the pile had the shape of a recently dug grave.  By a quirk of mental contortions, I realized that it was also the 150th anniversary of my grandfather’s birthday.  This meant that Saturday, October 1st, would be the 77th anniversary of my brother’s.
     
     I decided to sit down and have a cigarette.  All sorts of thoughts from a country churchyard spun through my head.  Moreover I now frequently ponder matters mortal.  These two men were and still are important to me.  Papa was born in 1860 remarkably two days after the census was taken.  His entire life was spent in Meadeville, Mississippi, thirty miles east of Natchez.  The population has always been less than 500 depending upon what had happened during the previous decade.  He vituprertivly denounced Lincoln and all his works.  Years later, I could understand his thinking.  Being born when he was, Papa could not remember what life was before the War.  No doubt his elders looked back at those times as a golden era.  We know this wasn’t so because by 1860 the nation was just recovering from the Panic of 1857.  
     
     No matter, he was old enough to remember when the Yankees came.  He had learned that the blue bellies were booger men who liked to steal bad little boys.  Then suddenly one day the whole front yard was filled with blue bellies.  Like any small boy, he went screaming to his mother.  The commanding officer picked him up and tried to calm him.  The result was that they discovered that Papa’s Christian name DeMont was the same as the officer’s sir name.  Papa was convinced that the Yankees did not burn the house because of this happy accident.  Maybe.  Even the Yankees did not have the time to burn every house they ran across.  

     Papa inadvertently taught me about aging.  Dying at ninety-seven, he was the oldest citizen of Franklin County.  The men who were mere elders gave him a birthday party organized primarily by Mr. John Rounds every year.  He told me that those men hadn’t been his friends. His comment was, “Why, I danced at the wedding of John Rounds’ folks.”  A body’s friends go, then his contemporaries, and finally only memories remain.

     My brother was born in 1933 and was named for our grandfather, but nobody called him Wentworth except Mother.  Those W’s and R were too much for me to cope with, so I called him Wimpy.  Then our sister, Duane, came along nine years later and called him Bibi, which became a name limited to the family.  To everybody else, he was Wimpy.  

     The three of us looked nothing alike.  My hair was dark brown back in those days, Bibi was early on tow headed which later became a dark blonde,  Duane was a red head.

     Bibi was six feet at fourteen and ended up at 6'2".  His two sons grew to 6'6" and 6'7".  Duane’s boy is somewhere over six feet.  I just got none of the height genes in the family.
     
     Bibi deserves to be remembered by the world at large for one statement he made,  We were discussing intellectuals, what they were, their qualities, their purpose in society, et alia,  At the end of the conversation, he summarized by saying, “Intellectuals are just like Christians; many are called but few are chosen.”

     Later in his life during one week-end, one of his boys was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and the other was admitted to med school.  This would be a feather in any parent’s cap–actually two feathers.  Bibi was more modest; he asked the question “What did I do right?”  He realized that he was in as much a quandary as those parents who ask, “What did I do wrong?”  To me these questions show how iffy parenthood is.  
     
     Another more egocentric reason for my remembering him so fondly took place in Venice.  He was sitting at a table in an outdoor café in the Piazza watching the people, taking in the sights, and generally enjoying his place in the sun,  While studying the facade of St.  Mark’s, he noticed and remembered the four horses.  They were part of the loot the Venetians brought home from Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade.  I believe they were had been removed from Rome by one of the early emperors.  Anyhow Bibi said he remembered my telling him the history of the horses when he was a little boy. .  From all the verbiage that I have spewed during my years on this earth, he is the only person to say that he had remembered some of my words years later.  I did say that my reasons were egocentric.

     Papa is buried in Meadeville cemetery amongst his friends and family.  Bibi’s ashes are scattered somewhere in the Smoky Mountains.

     Life goes on at least of some sort or another.  I picked up the rake and continued my chores. 

About the Author 

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 18the, 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 memoir writing class. While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback. 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.

His Story by Donny Kaye

     My story is an historical accounting of my life experience in this realm. It starts at birth, and even before. It is the accumulation of events and experiences documenting this life.

     All of the stories of my "history" exist within me. All are memorable, each for their very own reasons. Many of the stories stir delight and goodness in my recollection of the experience. In my history is the remembrance of riding my bike the first time without the assistance of training wheels or someone running beside me steadying the teetering cycle. I re-collect the stories of making of new friends who have grown old with me in time, remaining as witnesses to a life that has unfolded in time. There are those friends whose appearance was brief in the experience called my life.

     Some of my history is more painful to recall or even want to remember. Those times when for whatever reason I was at dis-ease with myself. I have recollections of feeling different and consequently, not enough. What is intriguing to realize is that the events of my history are all interpreted by me. My interpretation colors the experience in a good, bad or neutral way.

     There have been those experiences when I have not acted from a higher place within. My uncertainty has resulted in actions that only untruth can cover. The time I damaged another's property intentionally; a reflection of unexpressed anger or emotions I couldn't understand much less directly express. A test I cheated on because I didn't hold confidence in my very own capacity. Actions I took out of fear that I wasn't good enough in my own right. Moments of sadness and a sense of disconnection. My history is riddled with actions where I acted from a sense of lack rather than abundance and confidence.

All of who I am is an expression of the learning in my life that have become my history. What are the stories that get told? Of more significance than the history that gets told are the stories that don't get told. What is realized is that only I get to choose the revelations of my history. No different from authors, publishers and political parties that are about a certain truth only achievable by withholding the truth, the whole truth that is.

     And so it is in this life; my history comes together with yours. Each believing in the history, at least to the extent that we choose to reveal. A new friend appears, the attraction found in the stories we tell--either ourselves or the other. The truth expressed and withheld.

     And so it is; my history comes together with “His Story”. And only history will tell the impact of the two, stories intertwined into one.

About the Author

Donny Kaye is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.”

Story Time at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community. 

Mayan Pottery by Ricky

     From the time I was 10-years old through my 18th birthday, every December around Christmas time, I journeyed from South Lake Tahoe to Los Angeles via the Greyhound bus line. Each year the bus either went to Sacramento where I had to change to a different bus, or through Carson City, where I had a four or five hour layover before riding another bus to Los Angeles.

     Carson City had no lavish bus depot. It consisted of a small “office” with a small storage area for packages and unclaimed baggage. The bus driver had a key to the baggage area where he put my luggage but the office would not open until just before the scheduled arrival time for the north/south buses; in my case a four or five hour wait. I was ten when I took that first trip alone to Los Angeles via Carson City. I arrived at the still closed bus depot at 7:30 AM and had to wait until 12:30 PM to catch my bus.

     So I did what any 10-year old boy would do to stay warm and not be bored; I went street walking to find something to do. I was not hungry yet and I never ran across an open cafe. Carson City’s casinos were open but unavailable to me. Around 8:00, I arrived at an old building that resembled my schoolhouse from Minnesota. I stopped to read the sign, which informed me that the building was not an old school, but was the Nevada State Museum, formerly the U.S. Mint at Carson City.

     The museum was open and admission was free with donations accepted. Being on a very limited budget with enough funds for two snack meals to get me to my dad, I did not donate but entered anyway. I spent the next several hours in the museum wandering around and viewing all the exhibits that interested me.

     The first exhibit I saw was on the left side of the hall after entering. In a small room was a display of all the formal silverware presented to the navy's battleship Nevada as a gift from the State of Nevada. Also on display were the ship's bell and other items. All those items were returned or given to the state after the ship was selected to be the target ship for the hydrogen bomb test at the Bikini Atoll.

     Another item in the room was an old stamp or press machine, which actually placed the coin’s designs onto silver or gold coin “blanks.” In one side of the room was an old walk-in vault. The vault contained a permanent display of a private collection of gold and silver coins minted at the Carson City mint.

     I continued to wander through the museum for the next few hours reading all the posted display information and in general enjoying myself. I learned a lot about things not taught in school at the fifth grade level. The museum had an extensive display of Native American baskets and pottery, but no Mayan pottery or baskets. Eventually, I left through the basement exit mock up of a silver mine and caught my bus to Los Angeles. From then on, every time I ended up in Carson City to change buses, I spent my waiting time in the museum. I have been a “museumphile” ever since.

     As time passed and I visited other museums, I saw many examples of ancient pottery; ancient in this case meaning older than 500 years. The first ancient artifacts that discretely held my attention were not pottery, but wood, and came from Africa. It was a representative display of the various depictions of fertility gods, totems, or icons. These typically had either large breasts or over-sized and erect male genitals; a few actually had both.

     I have always been attracted to “images” that show or represent male genitals perhaps due to my adolescent fixation on all things sexual. I began to wonder how a museum could display such “naughty” things. It was many years before I understood the concept of understanding other cultures through anthropology. In other words, these cultures did not view these artifacts as being “naughty.”

     Many of the museums I visited had these types of displays and I was attracted to them all. When I finally arrived in Denver and visited the Denver Art Museum, I saw my first pieces of Mayan pottery (or at least pottery from Central and South America during the existence {and in the trading area} of the Mayan culture). Pieces on display came in various sizes, some small enough to fit on one’s palm and other pieces large enough to carry one or two gallons of liquid. Naturally, there were sizes in between the smallest and the largest artifacts.

Denver Art Museum -- 4th Floor

     The ones of particular interest to me are the pieces with male genitalia. One of the larger items is a seated male in the act of masturbation. It is displayed in such a manner that anyone can see what the “man” is doing. It is prominently displayed on the bottom shelf of the display area, where any child can easily view it. On a higher shelf to the viewer's right, is what appears to be an engraved penis perhaps used as a pre-Colombian sex toy or maybe venerated as a power symbol as did the ancient Romans and Greeks. This object is also within easy viewing of the young.

Denver Art Museum -- 4th Floor

     Is it not strange that our “enlightened” culture can define a pottery man masturbating or an "engraved" penis as art, but proclaims a photograph of a real man masturbating or of a real erect penis as pornography?

© 16 December 2012

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky was born in 1948 in downtown Los Angeles. He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA. Just days prior to turning 8 years old, he was sent 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 reunited with his mother and new stepfather, he lived one summer at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three 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. He says, “I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic.”  

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

Goofy Tales by Colin Dale

It's probably true for each one of us, we sit down a few days before Storytellers, or the day before, or the morning of, look at the topic and think, What the hell can I say about this one?  I've said just about every other Monday about how I had to scrounge for inspiration.  Somehow, though, sometimes with only an hour to spare--and sometimes thanks to the dictionary, a memory, or Google--something would suggest itself.  Looking at today's topic, Goofy Tales, right up to this past Saturday morning I was thinking maybe I would just skip today, or take a pass and just be a listener.  But then on Saturday...

I went to the first meeting of a writers' workshop I'd enrolled in.  The instructor had warned us by email the previous week, in addition to the usual first-day stuff--introducing ourselves, talking about our individual goals, and laying out a plan for the coming four weeks--we'd do a half hour or so of free writing.  The topic would be revealed to us on the spot.  So last Saturday morning, we met at the appointed hour, did the go-round of introductions--seven women and me--stumbled through defining short literary nonfiction, when the instructor said, Okay, it's time for some free writing.  The topic is guilty pleasures. "I want you to begin," she said, "by thinking of one of your guilty pleasures, and remembering one particular time when you were really enjoying it.  I'm going to interrupt you several times to redirect your thinking, but I want you to start by telling us--in the present tense, create a scene, use dialogue if you like--what it feels like, this guilty pleasure, to be really, really enjoying it.  And then, without warning, you're interrupted.  What do you do?"

Each of us pulled back into our own private worlds--the seven women and me--and began scribbling.

Three, four minutes of head-scratching and panicky scribbling and the instructor said, "The interruption is over.  You're free to go back to enjoying your guilty pleasure.  What do you do now?"

A few more minutes of wild writing and the instructor said, "Now think back to one time--an earlier time--when you were caught in the act of your guilty pleasure-absolutely caught.  Again, create a scene, but now using the past tense, tell us what that was like.  What did you say to the person who caught you in the act?"

Heads down, scribble, scribble, and we were done.  The reason I've mentioned already that the workshop was made up of seven women--the instructor was also a woman--and me, is because of what these other students had come up with for their guilty pleasures, and what I'd written.  We started around the table clockwise, reading aloud our free writing.  Denise--and here I'm using phony names--Denise, a bank manager from Louisville, confessed her addiction to dark chocolate.  Tessa, a Montesori teacher from Golden, opened up about her secret love for reality TV.  Joyce, who introduced herself as "only a housewife," revealed her passion for celebrity gossip magazines.  The youngest workshopper, Karen, a sophomore at Metro, said something about not being able to pass up Starbucks lattes.  Then they all turned to look at me.  The instructor said, "Well, Colin, what have you written?"

I thought: dark chocolate, reality TV, celebrity gossip, Starbucks lattes.  I looked down at what I had written, with no time to change anything, looked up at all the women--who all now looked like my mother, even Karen--and began:

"I have it in my hand when they come in.  Surprised like that, there's no way I can put it away quickly.  I do the best I can, though, and press it into my lap...

Back to the workshop.  There were a few uneasy coughs around the table, and I could hear folding chairs squeak--but I knew there was no turning back, so I read on...

"Luckily there is a copy of Westword next to me, which I quickly slide over, making of it a sort of paper apron.  'You didn't knock.  You scared me,' I say, joking.

"'Yeah, boo,' Gerry, the jock asshole says, screwing up his nose.  'You got the paper upside down.  Whatcha hiding?'"

"Tony, the assistant asshole, who hangs back by the door, says, 'We're gonna go workout.   Wanna come?'

"'Let's see what you got there,' the jock asshole says, and grabs for the Westword.

"'Nothing,' I say, letting the paper get taken, knowing in the split-second I had had I have moved it deep down and out of sight.  'See?'

"'Yeah, well, thought you were hiding some good shit.'

"'Let's go,' says the assistant asshole, and they disappear as abruptly as they appeared.

Back when I'd been doing the free writing, this was when the instructor broke in: "The interruption is over.  What do you do now"?  Now, reading what I'd written, I looked up at the women, each one with an expression of Oh, no, am I the only one who thinks she knows what Ray is telling us?  Confident my salvation is just ahead, I go back to what I'd written and read on...

"From where I'm sitting I'm able to lean forward and reach the door without standing.   Turning the twist-latch I feel a return of reasonable privacy.  I reach down between my legs, around the curve of my inner thigh, lift it into the light of day and hold it with both hands: The Oxford Book of English Verse.  My breathing quickens as I open to Coleridge--back to The Ancient Mariner:

                 Like one that on a lonesome road
                 Doth walk in fear and dread,
                  And having once turned round walks on,
                  And turns no more his head;
                  Because he knows, a frightful fiend
                  Doth close behind him tread.

"My guilty pleasure (I wrote) in this freshman land of asshole jocks is 19th-century romantic poetry. My 1942 Oxford goes with me everywhere."

I got that far Saturday in my free writing about guilty pleasures and I thought, Good Lord, this is silly.  And then, driving home Saturday from the workshop, I also thought, You know, the story I just free wrote and then had to read aloud--it wasn't just silly.  It was goofy!  But back again to Saturday...  

Back to when we were free writing.  The instructor interrupted for the last time and asked us to recall an earlier time when we had been caught--in no uncertain terms--in the act of our guilty pleasures, I wrote:

"My father, who had no interest in literature, and who was outspoken especially in his contempt for poetry--fag lit, as far as he was concerned--threw open my bedroom door, making the big posters taped over my bed--my unframed Virginia Woolf and Walt Whitman portraits rattle like paper flags.  And there I was, spread-eagled on my bed, the Oxford in my hand, savoring again my Ancient Mariner.  Caught dead to rights in the act.

"'Damn it, son,' my father said, a look of deep disgust on his face, 'I've told you what that shit will do to you.'

"'But, Dad...

"'Give it to me,' he said, thrusting his hand toward the Oxford. 

"'No, Dad!" I yelped, recoiling against the headboard.  'Please!'

"'Stop with that shit now, son.  Hand it over.'

"'No, please, Dad, no.  Please let me read my Coleridge.  Please.  I promise, Dad, I really do, I promise I'll stop before I go blind."

Here endeth the free writing.

And here endeth today's goofy tale.

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.