Decisions, decisions: the choices I have made mark the chronicle of my life. When I decided to do something, many times after long procrastination, my life took on a new direction with momentous consequences. And maybe my memory is playing tricks on me but the most significant decisions I have made have all turned out to be success stories. If I have forgotten the disasters, let them stay forgotten. I will talk about my successes.
1964: After 12 years of Catholic schooling, I decided that I wanted to see the world, so I chose not to go to the Catholic college that most of my high school friends cheerfully enrolled in. I wanted to meet the world and I found it at Ohio State University. And I loved it and grew there.
1968: Had to take a break from college but my student deferment was saving me from going to war in Viet Nam, so I hatched a plan to leave school and fight the draft. I moved to San Francisco where I learned a lot about life--and me.
1973: Again at loose ends, I decided to join VISTA, the domestic Peace Corps, where I trained as a paralegal advocate to help free crazy people from wrongful confinement in a state hospital. They really weren’t that crazy.
1975: Falling in love with history, I decided to go to graduate school.
1977: Falling out of love with grad school which had become an expensive hobby with slim chance of meaningful employment, I left it when an interesting job came my way working on school desegregation in Cleveland. That job launched my career in journalism.
1978: When I decided I’d been alone and sexless long enough, I made that phone call to a gay helpline in Cleveland, found a community, came out and promptly fell in love.
1979: I decided to return to California to continue growing, have lots of adventures (some in dark places), fall in and out of love, find out what having fun really means, and how to help some friends struggle with a horrible disease.
1985: Despite doubts about my ability to do the job, I decided to take up the offer to be news editor of San Francisco’s gay newspaper, Bay Area Reporter. Best job I ever had in an exciting time for the LGBT community.
1987: Met Jamie. I decided, after nearly missing all the cues, that this time was different. As a friend put it in a poem: I heard his song and he heard mine. He was a keeper, as they say. So, he kept me.
1990: Now we made decisions. We decided to leave San Francisco for sunny, warm and cheaper Denver and a new life.
2008: We decided to get married and live happily ever after.
2009: Now in my 60s, I decided it was time to stop working and begin a new adventure to expand my life, not “retire” it.
It could be my mantra: when I decided.
March 2014
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