Reframing Reality by Ricky

Perhaps a better term would be Remaking Reality. I am sure most of us have at one time or another wished we could make changes in the actual reality we exist in or that surrounds us all. For example, changes that would allow all people to age but whose bodies would not show age or become infirm; diseases would not exist; no one would seek to harm anyone else; everyone would live peaceably; and everyone would practice good manners with common courtesy towards all. These seem to be examples of reframing or remaking reality that would be good, nice, and pleasant to have surrounding us. You could think of other changes that also would appear to be beneficial. Society could certainly gain much from such a remaking. But, what would society or more specifically, individual people lose with the changes?

At 12 years old, I remade my reality by mentality deciding that like Peter Pan, I did not want to “grow up.” To a very large degree, my subconscious made that happen mentality but could not stop the biological progression from boy to man. With some outside influences, I have lived within that reality my whole life from 12 forward. While my life’s “journey” has had great swings in stress levels and peacefulness, I have maintained a childlike personality that is able to see humor in the darkest of events and make jokes amid tragedy. I can even see the positive in negative events, sometimes even as the events are occurring.

Consequently, I can appreciate good health because I’ve experienced illness. I can appreciate the routine and proper operation of my body’s parts because I’ve experienced pain. I can appreciate and bask in love because I’ve experienced the lack of love and seen hate. I can appreciate life because I’ve seen and experienced the death of others. I can enjoy and appreciate good music because I’ve heard noise and screaming lyrics posing as music. I can enjoy family and friends because I’ve been alone. I am grateful for my finances because I’ve been poor. I appreciate my education because I’ve seen and experienced ignorance in myself and others. I can appreciate even modest food because I’ve seen starvation. I can work for peace because I’ve seen the results of war. I can be as generous as I can because I’ve seen greed destroy. I can be drug and alcohol free because I’ve grown up with alcoholics and seen the results of drug use. I can obey traffic laws because I’ve been to too many accidents where men, women, and children died. I know joy and happiness because I’ve suffered depression and sorrow. I can face life’s challenges because I’ve developed the inner strength and resourcefulness needed to overcome the challenges.

What one LOSES by remaking reality into what appears to be a happy, peaceful, bucolic existence is an appreciation of WHY such an existence IS happy, peaceful, bucolic, and desirable in the first place. The “silver lining” in the cloud of a “hard-knock-life” is, knowing exactly what happiness, joyfulness, peacefulness, goodness, and love really feel like when one encounters them. In other words, without the negatives for comparison, there can be no positives.

From a religious point of view, Adam and Eve HAD to eat that “apple” or they would not have known the difference between obedience and disobedience but would have remained in ignorance for as long as they lived. That one act introduced the negatives into Earth life and we have all been blessed as the result.

Homophobic ignoramuses don’t need to have their reality reframed or remade. All they need is an attitude adjustment by a swift kick in the pants—preferably by their fathers and a dose of castor oil from their mothers. That should do the trick. Maybe we can get the governor to arrange for “film at 11” reporting on the event.

© 18 June 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

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

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Long Ago, Far Away by Phillip Hoyle

Many years ago (at least fifty) and far away in the galaxy (at places like Kansas, Texas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Oklahoma) I lived a rational life. Reason guided my decisions, took precedence over desires or fears, led me in ways that served cultural, educational, career, and personal ideals. I followed this rational trajectory, not uncritically, but still in a somewhat ordinary fashion. I lived a good life yet one that signaled caution whenever feelings were on the rise—either mine or those of others around me. Were I to look for a metaphor, I’d certainly have to entertain the notion that I lived a rather Dr. Spockian life, if you know what I mean.

It wasn’t that I failed to experience emotion; I had plenty of feelings. After all, I was reared the only boy with four sisters. As a child I sometimes became so frustrated and angry that I stomped through the house slamming doors and throwing myself on the bed where I either screamed or cried. But before too long I gave up such childish ways and assumed a rational exterior. Then if I were still angry or felt frustrated, I’d go out to the garage and talk to Tippy my beagle. She was a great counselor with unlimited acceptance and constant warmth in my presence. She’d lick away my wounds and allow me to go on with my rational life. So, I grew up pulling in my emotions, always ruled by good manners. When I observed others throwing fits or getting too emotional, I’d evaluate their effectiveness and eventually distance myself.

As a working adult I served as a study of self-control in order to facilitate a group’s process. My work was effective! I watched how someone’s emotions would cloud issues impeding a program’s movement towards some goal, and then, setting aside my own emotional needs, would offer rational and workable solutions. I got along well.

Eventually I was done with all that. My memories of childhood served as my mentors in this change—not just my fits of pique, but my involvement in many childhood activities of play, dance, unstoppable laughter, and running around with my friends. My observations of artists further encouraged me to change. For instance, in a collage workshop, the teacher asked me about what I was doing. I described the “why” of my design. “But I can’t read your piece,” she observed. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but her comment pushed me right where I need pushing! I turned to the piece and angrily added the two essential figures that were missing, an older man adoring a younger man. When she came by my table about an hour later, she said, “Now that I can really read.” I was thrilled. I had something to say in my art! Furthermore, this terminal experience opened me to a new level of communication with my wife.

As healthy as that may sound, I realized that my artistic and personal self-indulgences would have the effect of focusing my life away from the groups that had so enriched my first fifty years. Away from my old life focused on church and family I moved to Denver and hoped thereby to learn how trust my feelings and let them lead me into helpful decisions.

I need to clarify. My half-century of life had not gone by without emotional outlets. I was a musician; such an artistic and emotion-filled pursuit allowed me to tolerate all the self-control demanded by the rest of my work. From about age thirty, I also lived with an increasing focus on visual arts and on writing. Finally I sensed I had things to express in both. So essentially at age fifty-one I replaced the loss of music making and self-discipline with wild dancing at Charlie’s of Denver, the Denver Wrangler, TRAX, and Denver BASIX. I employed recorded music of many varieties as a background in my new massage practice. I created collage after collage, painting after painting, works that helped move me along a road of emotional expression. Still, I am in touch with that Dr. Spock part of myself, that careful monitor of feelings and their possible misdirection.

But a few weeks ago, just after recording a Colorado Public Broadcast radio interview of an older and a younger gay man, the journalist/producer asked us if there were revelations in the taping we’d not want to hear in the eventual show. The twenty three-year-old guy said, “No, I’m always careful with what I say.” Then I, the sixty-six-year-old man, said, “Not at all. I’ve spent the past fifteen years learning to say what I am feeling. Use anything you want.”

Denver, 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

Anger by Pat Gourley

It was often noted in my teens and twenties in particular that I had quite the Irish temper. This seems to have greatly diminished over the years and now is an emotion I rarely indulge in. Much of the anger I have expressed over the years has really been not much more that self-indulgent bravado. Often the sort of flash in the pan display that passes quickly usually followed by regret and at times an appropriate apology.

There have however been at least two instances in my life where my anger was sustained and in one of those seems at times to persist to this day. Both of these involve the suicides of two people close to me, one professionally and the other a dear friend of many decades. Today I will address the suicide of a co-worker from over twenty years ago. The other death will be the focus of an upcoming piece.

Even this anger, at a tragic death, certainly seems to have a quality of indignant rage – ‘how could you do this to me’ which in some respects seems quite silly since they are the ones who are dead, but then so much of my life has always really been about me.

This first suicide involved a psychiatric nurse who worked in the AIDS Clinic at Denver Health in the early 1990’s. She was a lesbian woman who on the surface seemed very strong and as put together as anyone I knew. Unbeknownst to me, but not to several others in her life, she purchased a handgun I believe in late 1992, saying she feared for her safety around the passage by referendum of Amendment Two by the voters of Colorado which read as follows:

Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination. This Section of the Constitution shall be in all respects self-executing.

I thought after the fact that if I had known about her gun purchase and the stated reason for it I would certainly have confronted it for the bullshit it turned out to be. Even back then I was sort of the resident out radical queer in an AIDS Clinic no less a place full of ACT Up members in 1992 and I would have said “oh honey all they are doing is finally being honest about how they hate us”. The statewide vote on the referendum was something like 53% in favor of literally codifying discrimination across the board based solely on sexual preference and 47% opposed. We were simply being put on notice to a fact that had always been the reality. This was of course challenged in court and overturned eventually by the United States Supreme Court in the case Evans vs. Romer in 1996.

I would in hindsight have been right to call her on this purchase since she used the gun along with some alcohol and prescribed medications as lubrication to drive up to St. Mary’s Glacier in early January of 1993 and blow her brains out. I would hope I would have insisted on a better reason, than homophobes run amok, for buying a lethal weapon by a person who was in many instances a very out and proud queer woman.

You must remember this was in 1993 and the peak of the AIDS nightmare. So many of our clients were valiantly struggling to often just stay alive for one more day and this crazy-ass women who I loved and admired, in excellent physical health as far as we knew, goes and kills herself. It was a great blow to many of my staff and her clinic patients to whom she provided psychotherapy. It was difficult for me to even speak her name for many months but we did finally put up a plaque in her memory when our own unbelievably raw feelings subsided and perhaps I personally better appreciated whatever the mental anguish she was suffering from. There were apparently major relationship issues in her life and perhaps these involved anger on her part or maybe it was simply an overwhelming depression made worse by well intentioned use of psychiatric medicines that unfortunately proved to be disinhibiting in the long run and maybe even direct facilitators in pulling the trigger. Suicides seem to often to be impulsively facilitated in our society by the criminally easy access to guns along with alcohol and certain psychotropic medications most often legally prescribed.

My feelings around suicides of people in my life are not however universal and do not always involve anger. In those days in particular end of life decisions to speed the dying process along by many suffering terribly from the ravages of AIDS were not uncommon. For those unfamiliar with this time and its nearly unbearable realities I would encourage you to see the current HBO movie version of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, visually at least it is much more riveting and intensely in your face than the play ever was.

The best suicides as I recall from those days were well thought out and often involved much support from lovers, family and friends. The act was rarely impulsive, rarely to my knowledge involved a gun and rarely if ever done in isolation. News of these passing when they would reach the clinic often invoked great sadness and sometimes a sense of relief but no anger.

If this is to be an act with integrity it seems to me it should never occur as a result of subterfuge and certainly not as an expression of anger toward others or one’s self. That itself seems to be a very angry last dance that certainly does not affect in any positive fashion others in your life, many of who may care deeply about you. It strikes me as not only very angry but selfish. I appreciate that deep depression can often set the stage but a common caveat about suicide is that it is mostly the choice when one is coming out of depression.

As mentioned above I will again explore suicide in a future piece, one by a dear friend of many decades and my own personal feelings about it. Most days I tend to take a Buddhist approach that suicide will only result in another reincarnation something to be avoided and continued samsara on the wheel of death and rebirth, which could go very wrong with one perhaps returning as a banana slug.

June, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

Goofy Tales: Draggin' Main by Lewis

Draggin’ Main Street is a uniquely American teenage ritual. At least, it was in my home town of Hutchinson, Kansas. It didn’t matter whether you were male or female, drove a new Corvette or Thunderbird or your grandfather’s 1951 Plymouth. The main point was just makin’ the scene.

Of course, there were rules of decorum. If you were a boy-becoming-man, you were expected to look like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, aloof and unapproachable. Above all, you had to appear the master of all you surveyed, most especially, your “wheels.” “Goofiness,” meaning any mistake as insignificant as forgetting to put your tranny in a lower gear at a red light or, heaven forbid, stalling your engine on a jackrabbit start, was certain to make you the subject of an urban legend that would shame your progeny for generations.

Such was the milieu within which the story of my most embarrassing goofiness unfolded.

I was about 20 and the season was summer. My “baby” was a British racing green 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 convertible. Ensconced within, loosely speaking, were I and three long-time best buds. The Main Street run extended from downtown to a Sandy’s (nee McDonald’s) restaurant near 27th Street—a distance of about 2 miles. Just past the restaurant was a gas station.

On this particular day, my attention was captured by something other than the rapid approach of the driveway into which it was customary to turn to make the southbound leg of the Main Street Drag. Realizing my predicament, I attempted to compensate by making my version of a ‘J Turn’ which, as every bootlegger knows, involves a skillfully coordinated application of the brakes combined with a violent spin of the steering wheel. As executed by me, however, it resulted in a yawing, skewing slide across three lanes of opposing traffic, up the drive of the gas station, and coming to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke within arm’s reach of the first pump.

The looks on my passengers’ faces reminded me of the time I had taken a group of friends to see Psycho at the South Hutch drive-in. Wanting to set their minds at ease—and mine, as well—I said the first thing that popped into my head, “Fill ’er up!”

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn't getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband's home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

Falling among Forbidden Fruit by Gillian

Oh, Adam and Eve have a lot to answer for! Things have gone downhill ever since she gave him that damn apple. Much of humankind seem to consider themselves sufficiently righteous to sit in judgment of others; not to say that applies to all of the people all of the time, but sadly it’s probably true for most of the people most of the time. Equally sadly, it’s not confined to those who proclaim themselves to be Christians, either, so we cannot hold Adam and Eve completely responsible.

We judge others to be different and therefore inferior, but worse than that we fear and hate them. Why, I have never understood. I’m sure I have my parents to thank for that, as they never understood it either. It may also be, at least partly, in our case, that we simply did not encounter these ‘others.’ I grew up in a very homogeneous area, as perhaps many of us of our generation did, and so was really not challenged in acceptance until I left home for college. One would like to believe that a university is not the place where one learns prejudices, so all in all I think I was fairly well sheltered from bigotry until a later stage of maturity by which time I was pretty well protected against acquiring it.

The bigots of this world make ‘them’ the forbidden fruit. In this country, as in many others, it was anyone of a different national origin, ethnicity, language, religion, and especially race. And now, of course, the big battle over same-sex relationships. Multiple prejudices been writ large throughout the history of this ‘melting pot’ of which we are so proud. I observed the horror of it in amazement. I have no more comprehension of it now than I have ever had. I simply cannot get inside the head of prejudiced hate-mongers and so have little hope of gaining any understanding. The very beast inclusivity we can hope for from most people seems to be the old joke,

“Oh yeah I guess they,” whichever particular ‘they’ you may be discussing, “are OK. But you wouldn’t want your sister to marry one!”

So it was with further amazement that I suddenly found myself to have fallen among forbidden fruit.

When I came out, I suddenly realized; I am now one of the Undesirables. I intuited that I should not talk about what I did at the weekend; people might not want to hear it. I had become that person who wouldn’t be coming to dinner; at least not unless I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut and ‘act normal.’ As forbidden fruit I could lie on the orchard floor and rot. Quickly understanding that I was allowing myself to be victimized by the judgment of others, I ceased to modify my reality for their comfort and relaxed.

Then, in 1992, along came Amendment 2. I cried, as I’m sure many of us did, waking in the morning following Election Day and finding myself to be, and really feel to be, someone who could be discriminated against. Legally. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I was one of God knows how many throughout the world and over the ages. I had sympathized with them, but until that moment never actually empathized. And my problems were essentially non-existent compared with those of so many others. I was not immediately threatened with death, imprisonment, or deportation. I would not lose my home nor would I lose my job. Practically, I had no fear that the passage of Amendment 2 would effect my life in any way. Yet I felt insulted and violated. Also, luckily, I was very, very, angry.

That was the final point, I think, in my total ‘outing’ process. I will not let these ignorant bigots make me feel like this. I will not be their victim. I will not let the attitude of others make me feel bad about myself. I will not apologize, even to myself, no, above all not to myself, for who I am. I know I have done nothing wrong and that is all that matters.

And if I have become forbidden fruit to others, it is their problem and not mine.

I will not lie silently, invisibly, under the tree and rot, while the wasps buzz hungrily, angrily, around me.

I will pick myself up and dust myself off, and mix with pride with the rest of the beautiful shiny forbidden fruit, enclosed in that strongly woven basket of understanding, support, and caring that fills me with pure joy at what and who I am, without one single ounce of regret.

April, 2014

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.

Right Now by Will Stanton

From time to time, I have heard the phrase, “You think too much.” That probably applies to me. I'm a thinky type of person. Of course, the type of thinking one does determines whether or not the thinking is “too much.” We often waste too much time with non-productive thinking. I'm good at that; I've had lots of experience with it.

Opposed to that, I'm reminded by a recent news story about the brilliant fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka who spent so much time in the Johns Hopkins lab that he often slept on a cot, and he even missed his own birthday. All his thinking resulted in his discovering a new, fast way of detecting pancreatic cancer. He won the youth-achievement Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award along with $75,000. So, all that thinking resulted in something truly worthwhile. His efforts and thinking were in the right-now.

I suppose that I can admit to having an “artist's nature,” as opposed to a “scientist's nature.” Dreamy minds may not be the best for focusing on the right-now.

Having been part of Story Time for going on three years, I have had ample opportunity to avoid thinking about the right-now. Instead, I have allowed my mind to wander back several decades to my youth, dredging up old memories, even in fine detail, and spending time writing them down to share with the other members of the group. I'm afraid that I also have engaged too frequently in thinking back in time and wondering what I might have done differently, what if circumstances had been different, how could my life have been different. So, I probably have spent far too much time in the past, not in the right-now.

Also,I had the habit for many years of wondering about the future, not necessarily making pragmatic plans to carry out, but rather, less organized musings about who I wanted to be when I grew up. I probably continued doing that even through mid-life, which does not make very much sense. Time seems to have passed by quickly, and I definitely am way beyond the point where I should be wondering about what I want to be when I grow up. All that wondering was not in the right-now, either.

I always have accused myself of being a slow learner, but it's beginning to dawn on me that concentrating upon the right-now throughout my life most likely would have been much more productive. Also, living in the moment can prove to be more enjoyable and satisfying. I'm sure that's true with some humans, but I've seen that frequently with dogs.

I realize that it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks; but in my case, I suppose living in the right-now probably is a skill I need to practice. So for right-now, I'm going to enjoy listening to the other members' stories, and I'll put off until later debating whether or not after Story Time I want to go across the street to get a cup of coffee and a fresh-baked cookie.

© 12 December 2013

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.

Secrets: High School by Ricky

My guess is that many people have things that they really don’t want everyone to know that would fall into the category of “personal” rather than “secret.” Of course governments and politicians or others in authority routinely abuse the “official” system of designating some information as belonging to the class “state secrets.”

The only one of those that I am personally aware of (and involved in not keeping) occurred when I was stationed in Florida with the Air Force during the Vietnam era. One day my First Sergeant called me into his office and asked me what my security clearance level was. I told him Top Secret. He then handed me a folder and said read this. Inside was a message labeled “Secret” which said, “The Inspector General team will arrive at your base at 1300 hours [tomorrow—I don’t remember the date].” It was nice to get a heads up, but my section (Headquarters Squadron Section; Orderly Room) was already “perfect,” if I do say so myself. So, I didn’t need the warning. But it did indicate that someone at higher headquarters was circumventing the system of surprise inspections. I’ve never trusted the government since; or at least became suspicious every time some official claimed, “Sorry, that’s classified information.”

In high school I was pretty much an honest person and had nothing to hide. Naturally, I didn’t want just anyone in high school to know that I liked to suck dick, but since I remained naïve throughout the time period that 69ing was a definition of homosexuality, I still classify that item as personal and not a secret per say; you can disagree, but that was how I viewed it. Mostly because at the time, I didn’t even know what a homosexual was as I never had heard the word used or defined in my presence.

This weekend, while here at So. Lake Tahoe, I attended my 45th class reunion. I was worried that no one would remember me as I was a nerdy type who never socialized after school due to having to be home to babysit my younger siblings. I worried for nothing. Within 5 minutes one elderly dude (I can say that because the class of ’66 members are the same age and 63 is pushing “elderly” in my book; not “old”, but “senior citizens”). I didn’t not recognize him and when he began to tell me that “you lived on this street [drawing in the air with his hands] and I lived over here on Becka Street.” I knew he remembered much that I didn’t. He then “reminded” me that he had been to my house a couple of times so I could teach him how to play chess. When I asked him how we met, he looked at me and said, “Duh, high school,” and then gave me the embarrassment coup-de-gra by stating, “I was in your Explorer Scout Post.” Strangely adding to my embarrassment, just a few days earlier I had seen in the old newspapers I was researching for articles on Scouting, a large photograph of our Explorer Post and he was not in it when the photo was taken.

I met others and when the subject came up I discovered that several admitted that their parents had been alcoholics also. Most of those who shared that information (personal or secret you be the judge) with me also said that many classmates they spoke to besides me had said the same thing.

The biggest secret from high school then, turned out to be that while individually we all may have thought that all our classmates had “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It to Beaver” home lives, we actually had the darker side of family life in common. How much better high school could have been if we had only known and not had be to be so stressed out to not let others know of our personal pain and shame.

@ 2012

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

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

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

My Favorite Transportation by Phillip Hoyle

The temps climbed, the sun burned through car windows, the air conditioning in my Ford Fiesta made a noble effort to mitigate the early August blaze. We were making our way home from western Colorado, planning one more stop to see my folks in north-central Kansas, thus my choice of a route north of I-70. My wife and kids hated prolonging the return home, but I wanted to see a different road and so followed one of the trails Dad drove years before on treks to and from the Rocky Mountains. Myrna and our two kids wanted no part of the slowdown; they were ready to get back to Missouri and initiate their fall schedules. I was reluctant to return even one hour before it was necessary thinking I should recover from my vacation on work time. As a result, the side trip to Beecher Island amounted to dragging my family off to see an old landmark I’d read about when a teen. I knew its approximate location, so when I spotted the modest sign, I turned north to see what was there.

The gravel road seemed long due to that phenomenon of traveling an unfamiliar road: the way there seems longer than the return since the constant searching for signs slows one’s progress. Sometimes the dust caught up with us, engulfing the car like fog, making my impatient family sure we were wasting time. Finally a sign called for a left turn. We dropped into a shallow valley, and I saw Beecher Island for real, yet a reality that was more than a century from its original state when a troop of US Cavalry ran their horses there hoping to find shelter from bullets of a group of hostile Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors.

Dust and wind had already tired out Myrna, Mike, and Desma; I was thankful that my family humored my odd interest. I wanted to see the stream, the island, the surroundings so I could envision the true state of the story I’d read several times. I’d saved the magazine I’d purchased way back then. I’d read the account in a number of books. I’d already been there many times in my imagination.

Getting out of the car I saw that the island was just a sand bar in a nearly flat landscape. I saw the US military memorial of the historical event: names of soldiers who were killed there listed on a plaque attached to a pile of rocks held together with mortar. Old Glory topped a flagpole waving in the prevailing south-westerly Colorado summer wind. I read the plaque wondering how many other folk had taken the time to visit there that summer. From the looks of the place, I imagined few. I stifled an impulse to knock on the door of the house across the road to find out since I didn’t want to push my luck with my wife and kids.

No ruins remained there for us to see, just an unkempt and weedy park. In my imagination I removed the cluster of trees and restored the buffalo grass. I dug shallow trenches in which the soldiers hid, restored clumps of yucca, soap brush, and sage behind which warriors crouched as they kept the solders pinned. I saw the famous Cheyenne chief Roman Nose with his magical anti-bullet medicine taking the fatal shot like Achilles succumbing to the Trojan missile. I saw a hero die and the end of an era pass.

This Military memorial recalls losses that were part of a larger campaign of US conquest, a grabbing of lands, all seemingly justified even when often in direct conflict with the laws of the land. It’s an ugly story, an old human story. But this memorial is not only a history written by the victors. It’s also a place of grief that represents the traditions, victories, and losses of differing peoples. The winners of the war erected the memorial. The losers were forgotten as if winners didn’t require losers, as if the resolution of that war didn’t need to recognize the people pushed away into permanent poverty and a continuing threat of annihilation. In the skirmish at Beecher Island the Cavalry unit was besieged, eventually the Cheyenne and Arapahoe warriors scattered, repelled by the superior fire power of the newly-issued Spencer repeating rifles of the troops. One account claimed the remains of the chief were found laid out in a deserted tepee several miles from the island. I looked around for such a place even though I knew it would not have been in sight of the island.

Customs differ. I thought about the presence of the White interpretation and was not surprised by the absence of a list of native warriors who died in that conflict. The park had been built but not maintained with much care. Still the bronze plaque held witness to US Cavalry deaths. A few bushes grew near the memorial apparently planted to decorate the place. Beyond the island, on the far sides of the stream grew native cottonwoods and willows that clustered around the water. They seemed to me native mourners of the American Indians who died there, a reminder to the tourist that stories about victories and losses were kept alive in accounts still told in tribal gatherings.

Then I departed in my old car with my now eager-to-get-out-of-there wife and children who patiently had indulged my need. The trip was hardly more than an assertion of a car owner, a traveler, a reader, an Indian enthusiast, a tourist! No one else was really there. Already the trip seemed a lost dream. I realized the trips I’d taken there by reading were actually more satisfying to me, but my run in with the reality of the place served to correct my imagination. Now here I am writing about an emotional moment of my young adult life. Daily now I’m pushed back into literary travel due to my decision no longer to own a car. At least, I travel less by auto and more by imagination these days, and I’m pretty sure memory with imagination offers more. It’s become my favorite mode of transportation.

Denver, 2011

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

So Many Roads: A Great Performance by Pat Gourley

It was July 9th 1995 at Soldier Field in Chicago, a Grateful Dead concert. The second of two sold out shows with over 60,000 in attendance each night. It was the end of that summer’s concert run for the Dead and the whole tour had been plagued by troubles – too many kids wanting to see the band, too few tickets, tension between the oldsters and the youngsters and very often too much too fast for way too many. The whole scene was truly turning weird. The draw for these shows though for me was simply too strong and the chance to see family back in the Chicago-land area to good to pass up, so I snapped up tickets the minute the went on sale through Grateful Dead mail order, a service available to the truly faithful. They were reserved floor seats, now mind you the shows were in a football stadium so I guess “good seats” was rather relative.

I had come from Denver without my partner David for the shows but did take Brian my blind bother to the second show. David was not well and stayed back home. I would have been able a few years prior to get him to two shows of a run without much cajoling, getting him to see four in a row though never happened.

These were the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic with protease inhibitors still a year or so away from general availability and use. The deaths did seem to have slowed down mostly because the most affected generation had already been decimated; many of those infected in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s were already gone.

I remember little about the first show on the 8th except that the band was not at their best for sure. Garcia in particular looked bloated, tired and at times almost listless. But you know congestive heart failure, a rather significant heroin addiction and uncontrolled diabetes tends to take the wind out of your sails.

There are several memories though about the shows I recall. One was the hassle of finding parking which for both shows was available only it seemed in public lots south of the stadium in a quite dicey neighborhood. The long walk back to the car the second night in particular was quite a trip in its own, a mugging I am sure was averted thanks in part due to having a blind guy with a cane on my arm. I have always been thankful for Brian coming to that show with me. Also there was a great fireworks display after the second show and the several big screens set up for the folks in the back made the show a bit more accessible.

The music or rather the musicianship both nights was quite forgettable. My LSD days were many years behind me so if the band didn’t come though at any particular show it could be a bust but more often than not the crowd would provide me with endless entertainment. Most of the time though the band would come through for at least one good or even great set, if not both.

That night there was in fact only one song that stuck with me and that was the version of So Many Roads in the second set. It was a relatively new song having only been in the rotation since 1992 and I had heard it only once before that I could recall. It was one of a long line of soulful ballads that were almost always Garcia tunes and played usually middle to late in the second set. The thought that this would be the last time the Grateful Dead would perform with Garcia never of course entered my mind.

Despite people’s impressions, who are unfamiliar with the Dead, they were, Garcia especially, remarkably good at a soulful ballad that at times I suppose might described by some as a dirge. And the Dead were sensitive to play these longer and slower tunes later in the second set when the drugs had perhaps peaked even though they often ended their shows with a rousing couple of numbers. The encores were again often slow tunes to take the edge off before sending the masses into the night in a mellow frame of mind and almost always a single tune. They did a very rare second encore song that night, an old gem called A Box of Rain.

At the risk of loosing my Deadhead card I must say I don’t remember that either. Sorry folks it was the gut wrenching beauty of So Many Roads that has stuck with me for nearly twenty years now. I distinctly remember turning to Brian after that song and saying “well that was worth the fucking price of admission”. I am not sure he agreed. He had quite few beers that night and taking a blind guy to the port-a-potties at a Grateful Dead show is another whole story.

I do remember leaving the show singing to myself the chorus to So Many Roads. We made it back to the car safe and sound with only one stoned Deadhead tripping on my brother’s cane. The crowd was in general very sensitive to him and his needs as I swear only Deadheads could be.

A month later Jerry was dead from a cardiac arrest in the middle of the night at a rehab center in Marin County. That I had been to the last two shows was hard to comprehend. This was of course devastating to me and I will always remember David’s loving call to me at work about Garcia’s death to make sure I was doing OK. The much bigger blow though was to come with David’s death another month later.

So many roads indeed.

April, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

Mayan Pottery by Lewis

I haven’t much to say on the subject of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art for the simple reason that this is all made up and I know nothing about the subject. However, were that not the case, I would probably write something like the following--

Sadly, my only exposure to Mayan pottery was a very brief time of possession of a single artifact, purchased by a great uncle at a Pottery Barn in La Paz and given to me as a gift three Christmases ago. I say “brief” because over a year ago, I was visited by a brace of scientists from the Smithsonian Museum of Columbian antiquities. I say “sadly” because of what happened soon after. The scientists were interested in the piece because of the hubbub over the legend that the Mayan calendar prognosticates that the world will end in the year 2012, exactly on the day of the winter solstice. One of the frescos on the piece that I had interpreted as the second coming of Christ with souls being lifted into heaven was, according to them, actually what happens when Earth’s gravity suddenly stops gravitating.

They offered a tidy sum to “borrow” my vase for a few months, which I readily accepted, as I was in dire need of replenishing my hash stash. To my horror, who should show up a few weeks later than the Drug Enforcement Administration, armed with a warrant for my arrest for pot possession. It seems that when the Smithsonian technicians upended the vase to get to the bottom of the apocalyptic mystery, three cannabis seeds fell out. So, actually, you see, for me this whole farce is more about the end of my world as I knew it than anything else. By the way, if you’re interested, the vase was returned to me and I have put it up for sale in the classified section of The Onion under “antiquities.”

December 17,2012

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn't getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband's home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

Boredom by Gillian

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity ? 

Dorothy Parker 

Boredom is an emotional state experienced when an individual is ….. not interested in their surroundings.
Wikipedia

I thought of simply copying the first part of last week’s story, Forbidden Fruits, replacing the words bigotry and prejudice with the word boredom, because I can no more relate to boredom than to bigotry, and I’m sure that in great part I have my parents to thank for it. They were never bored, I’m sure, and naturally it rubbed off on me. They were never bored because they reveled in tiny insignificant things. When I came across the above quotations, I wondered if it was all about curiosity, but I think not, at least not with Mum and Dad. It was simply, with them, more the Wiki way. They indeed had an intense interest in their surroundings: whatever, wherever.

I’m not claiming that nothing is ever boring; but you don’t have to become it’s victim and be bored. There are endless cures available.

“Look at that!” said my dad, in awe.

A tiny ant labored over the muddy lumps of clay at Dad’s feet, carrying an upright blade of grass as if shouldering a gun, except to be in scale a man would have to march with a rifle about 300 feet long.

“Oh, look!” breathed my delighted mother, “A Red Admiral!” One of Britain’s more common butterflies so not a great discovery, but a thing of beauty nonetheless. “Oh, those colors!”

She would stop whatever she was doing and watch every move the creature made until it flew off, just as Dad studied the progress of the ant.

It wasn’t that they were simply lovers of nature. I see them, looking back, yes, possibly through rose-colored glasses, as lovers of everything. (Except, sadly, of each other, but that’s yet another story.)

Dad would study a newly-purchased car part, or Mum a new batch of wool, in every detail; running their hands over it, caressing it, getting to know it. Appreciating it. My dad would listen to the sounds of the engine in the old tractor driven by our neighboring farmer, as intently as my mom would listen to the sounds of her pupils playing beneath her classroom window.

During, and for several years after, World War II, gas was severely rationed and our old car rested on blocks behind the house. Dad looked after it as if we were off in it on Sunday to see the Queen.

“It’s still here,” he told me one day, answering an unasked question, apparently with little regret. I understood, then, that the value of something was that it was there: to be appreciated, loved, revered; from an ant to an automobile.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. 
Ellen Parr

An aunt put the icing on this particular cake for me. Perhaps, coming from my parents, I might have rejected, if only subconsciously, this love for the detail that was now, as children so often fail to respond positively to their parent’s values. But I spent several much-loved summer holidays with my aunt and uncle in the north of England. My uncle was at work most of the time and he was, incredibly, even more silent than my father, so he did not loom large in my life. But my aunt, she held me in the palm of her hand. Anything, with her, was an adventure. We roamed the moors, a la Wuthering Heights, although neither of us was on any search for Mr. Heathcliff.

Who needed anyone or anything? Everything was at our fingertips.

We wandered beside streams, sitting on the grassy banks to examine the flowers fluttering there; never to pick them, just to look. We had a tiny brass-rimmed magnifying glass through which we peered, sometimes with great difficulty in the wind and rain. My aunt would never permit any adventure to be missed or even curtailed by the mere fact of atrocious weather. On sunny days we’d lie on the spongy moss-covered hillsides, listening to birds sing while watching others glide on the thermals above us. It was my aunt who first inspired my fascination with geology. She had taught herself some of the basics, and would scoop a handful of rounded, shiny, wet pebbles from a stream-bed and sift them through her fingers, searching for anything from a kind of rock or fossil she could maybe identify, simply to one that looked like a frog, or a cow, or my uncle! Waiting in the cold and rain for an overdue bus, she would examine in detail the grain of the wood making up the bench we stood beside, it being much too soggy to actually sit on. Or she made up silly names and acronyms from the license plates of passing cars, the same way my mother did. Looking back at it now, I suppose they must have once done this together, as little girls growing up at the time of the first appearance of cars on the country roads.

Looking back to thank the older generations for what they gave me, I’m forced to wonder about today’s youngsters. With that multiplicity of gadgets they should never be bored, but I’m not so sure. With their multi-tasking high-speed lives, do they ever have the time, or indeed the inclination, to sit silently and listen to the breeze? And yet, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Every generation has its own way of embracing life, and come to that, each person deals with it in a unique way. However it’s accomplished, my sincerest wish for everyone is that they may never ever be bored. It has to be the greatest possible waste of the privilege we are given, to inhabit, albeit for a fleeting moment, this beautiful, incredible, planet.

And as a postscript, I stumbled upon this quote, so it looks as if no one in this room need ever be bored, at least according to William S. Burroughs, who proclaims,

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

May, 2014

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.

Drifting by Will Stanton

This presentation is going to be very short and un-sweet. I'll be succinct and not belabor what I have to say. Saying too much would be, as the old adage goes, “like beating a dead horse.”

Our parents often have high expectations of us. Our society has certain expectations, too. To be supposedly a worthy member of society and (quote) “successful,” we should know very early on what we want to do in our lives and what we want to be. In our society, apparently that means making a lot of money and being envied, like a Wall-Street banker, football quarterback, TV star, rock singer - - or perhaps being a professional, whatever that is - - doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.

Much of what determines how we turn out is what we have learned in childhood. If a child has a good parental roll model, that's helpful. Maximum opportunity to learn, to experiment, to gain experience are good, too. Having a strong sense of identity is essential. Without it, we may end up drifting. Sometimes, as in my case, I did not have a good parental roll model, a father or even a mother I could identify with, to wish to be like, to wish to do the same job. I was pretty much on my own in that department.

What we have inherited from our genes has a strong influence upon our personalities, too. Significantly in those relatively unenlightened times of my childhood, too little was understood about children's personalities and what difficulties there might be. The early version of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory had been around since 1943, but researchers and school-counselors seemed to be more focused upon how rapidly individuals could learn. They seemed to regard comparative points and percentiles as as the tell-all, the end-all, like how much money one had in the bank.

I attended a university-run elementary school, and I seemed to be able to answer questions quickly. As a result, a pair of university researchers singled me out for an extended interview. They said that they just want to know “what made me tick.” They concluded the session by stating (and I'll never forget this) that (quote) “I could be anything I want to be.” I suppose that meant “doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.”

Apparently, they did not consider “self-actualized and happy” as being essential to a good life. What they did not take into account was my confusion and preoccupation with who I might be that interfered, yes, even stymied, my focusing upon choosing a career path that would result in my becoming a (quote) “universally admired, well-healed professional, happily married as expected, and a contented family man.” They did not take into account my orientation. Even if they had, they would not have understood the impact such confusion and preoccupation would have upon my thinking and actions. My uniformed and Puritanical parents would not have understood, either, let alone accepted my orientation.

As a consequence, I have spent most of my life drifting. Yes, I did manage to sporadically concentrate upon making a life of sorts, but it was likely not what it might have been had I not been incumbered with the endless searching and emotional confusion that dominated my life. Like a leaf floating upon a stream, I have drifted wherever circumstances have taken me. I never was a powerboat, capable of going in any direction I wished to go.

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.

Magic by Ricky

No matter how hard we wish or dream or day-dream about the concept, “magic” does not exist. This is assuredly a very good thing because who among us is perfect enough to use such power wisely and judiciously. Certainly no one I know of or heard of. All people have thoughts and ideas of what they would do with the ability to utilize “magical” power. Some would attempt to do good deeds, some altruistic deeds, or to meet personal needs and to meet the needs of others. But also there would be those who abuse the potential magic offers by enriching themselves at the expense of others or to commit crimes against others or society at large. What if the Nazis, Stalin, homophobes, or even homosexuals had such power? Or worst yet religious leaders. How would you like to be a Methodist one minute and a Catholic (or some other religion) the next, always changing at random intervals as some religious fanatic uses his “magic”?  The result is chaos. Only in story books like Isaac Asimov's Foundation, is there a “happy ending,” but still with the loss of “free will.”

No! No one can be trusted to wield such power. It would destroy our ability to choose our own destiny. I am the most perfect person I know, but I cannot even trust myself. If I cannot be trusted with such power, then no one should.

Stage magicians don’t have magic. They know only the “secrets” of sleight-of-hand, smoke, mirrors, and misdirection. They are the masters of illusion only.

Religious magic is usually referred to as “miracles”. While some reported miraculous events may be very hard, if not impossible, to believe, others are not so easily dismissed out of hand. While scientific analysis using knowledge gained over the centuries may explain the cause-and-effect relationship to certain mystical or miraculous occurrences which follow the laws of nature, there still remains the issue of the timing/occurrence of the miraculous event matching the recorded need at the precise moment. Undoubtedly, even those “coincidences” will be “scientifically” explained someday.

Too many coincidences indicate that some not understood “force” is at work. As the fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, said in Chapter Six of The Sign of Four, “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” The problem for us today is to determine exactly “what is impossible.” If it is true that “whatever man can imagine, he can do,” then ultimately, is anything really impossible?

Perhaps there is some reality to the “power of belief” that has yet to be scientifically proven as legitimate and fact.

There is one area where “magic” is real—within the usage of language and music to convey a specific aura or feeling. One can describe a sunrise or sunset using words which accurately and literally express the scene being viewed with a dry and boring text. But alter the words used just a little and add music and the word “magical” describing how it made you feel — and the impact does indeed swell within one’s breast.

This then is the real realm of magic; taking common everyday occurrences in nature or life and giving them the power to influence our lives for better or worse.

© 26 August 2013

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

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

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Mirror Image by Phillip Hoyle

I want to see myself as I really am and present that in my stories, memoirs, and fictions. 

(My reaction to a line in Stendhal’s The Red and the Black)


A distortion is always present when I assess myself. It’s easiest to see when I gaze in the mirror where the part in my hair on the left appears to be on the right. For the truth of me, I might as well be looking at my image in a carnival mirror. Then the distortion would be maximized. My head might look huge, my legs extra long, and my middle skinny, or in the mirror next to it my head might look like a pin, my torso nearly missing, my legs fat as watermelons, my feet tiny as a baby’s. What’s the truth in these images? Only something to be made fun of. I suppose as a male I could keep moving from mirror to mirror in the side show until I find the one that would maximize my hips and their appendage, turning me into the world’s most hung man. But of course I would not be deluded into believing what I saw there. I’d easily recognize the truth and falsehood of that image. So, what’s the truth in the mirror? It seems an important question. 

I know the question was important in my childhood and teen years for in the bathroom mirror I gauged my growing and maturing. Like a critic I evaluated my changes, comparing them occasionally with the photos from school that provided rather accurate annual points of comparison. I looked for changes but usually noticed the pimples or how skinny I seemed or how my muscles had little shape except for those that defined my legs. I looked closely and proudly at my few new hairs and wondered how furry I might become. I turned this way and that searching for new profiles of my fast-changing body. I watched and thought and wondered at the new feelings, the complications of relationships, and the essence of me. 

I recall the day in my mid-twenties when I looked at myself in the mirror all dressed ready to go to work. That day I realized that I dressed so much like my father as to be scary. That day I also reaffirmed my dedication never to let fat gather beneath my beltline, and I meant it. But in my mid-fifties, I realized I had lost my dedication to that goal or had lost my ability to keep it. I was just too much like my dad. I wonder if the emerging imago of a cicada ever looks back at its drying shell there on the bark of the elm tree it has climbed. 

I still look in the mirror these many years later. I think I could forego the experience if it weren’t for my need to shave. Sometimes I don’t especially like what I see: smaller muscle size, sagging skin, and the like. But often as a teenager I didn’t like what I saw. Perhaps in this way I haven’t changed. I still observe myself, my development. I still study my life and the way I look in it and the way I look at it. 

So I wonder. If the image in a mirror can be so misleading, how inaccurate is any other assessment? Am I prone to believe what others tell me, others who may have something to gain in fooling me? Am I too much like the king in his new clothes, unready for the truth-telling of the uninitiated child who loudly said that the king had no clothes? It’s really not difficult to become so self-deluded. After all even the physical mirror image is inaccurate. As a result I wonder, beyond looks, whose image do I most reflect?

I am somewhat like my father in that I have been crazy about music and deeply dedicated to the church. Eventually I dressed similarly to him—neat but not manipulated by fads or being fancy. Like him I developed a great tolerance of people and openness to them. I too have a heart for the disadvantaged and grew to be at least modestly visually artistic. Like him I seem over-ready to volunteer, even when I know better.

I am somewhat like my mother in that I became a creative planner of educational process, see humor easily, and love to laugh. We both displayed an odd sense of logic and a great tolerance for difference. Like her I too came to think in terms of others’ needs before my own and displayed a high sense of self-confidence.

Seeing young teenaged me in a cowboy hat, one man said I looked just like one of my grandfathers, the one who wore a Stetson. I wondered if his observation was true or simply the impact of seeing me in the hat! Perhaps the assessor had recognized a facial expression he had appreciated in my grandfather. Who knows? I wasn’t an actor and so hadn’t looked at my mood-related expressions. Still I was pleased to be identified with my then-deceased grandpa who had let me ride with him on the tractor, made me gifts, and took me fishing and hunting. I was pleased to be developing somewhat in his image! 

For the past thirteen years I have been working on my image, not to improve it, not to believe it, not to change it, but rather to describe it through memoir and fiction. I’ve run through many notebooks and thrown away many expended ballpoint pens in that task and am still at a loss to grasp so many of my truths. I realize that my perspective is distorted. To find the truth of my life seems impossible. Still I tell my stories hoping that at least someone will be entertained, someone else may gain insight into his or her own experience, yet another may be encouraged to keep living with hope. Memory after distorted memory, story after inaccurate story, experience after not-yet-understood experience I write, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Slowly I am gaining shreds of insight, but I’m most pleased that my stories entertain me! Perhaps they will cause my grand kids to laugh or to wonder or to look lovingly at their own lives.

Denver, 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

Shopping and Drinking by Pat Gourley

If by drinking we were referring to alcohol with this topic selection I was never much of an over-the-top imbiber despite my Irish heritage but I did enjoy a frequent vodka tonic and often found the buzz very enjoyable. It also made the company of some others in my social life much more tolerable when alcohol was part of the mix. Oh and of course would gay bar cruising have been at all feasible or at least remotely enjoyable without a few drinks under one’s belt?

Not being particularly adept at the art of semi-inebriated cruising is the reason I suppose I was attracted to the bathes. Though I would certainly on occasion go to the tubs having partaken of some hallucinogen or the other in the 1970’s my preference was to be totally sober. A state I found much more facilitating for lining up a good fuck or two.

I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in the past five or so years related to my pancreatic issues. These problems seemed to have started with several renegade gallstones that found their way into my main pancreatic duct. If you have never experienced it pancreatitis is something to be avoided at all costs. I have a niece who has experienced both several natural childbirths and bouts of pancreatitis and she is adamant that she would always take the childbirth over the pancreatitis if given the choice.

Having my gallbladder removed seemed to only partially address the issue, so blame stared to fall on the years of HIV meds I have been on. The choice there is pretty clear – learn to live with and adjust the meds or slowly cash it in. Since alcohol is the greatest of all pancreatic irritants that seemed a small sacrifice to make.

Two things about my lack of alcohol consumption though have surprised me. The first is how little I seem to miss it especially the further in the past it is. The second is I have come to realize how very little sense others are making after a few drinks. When I am around friends and they are drinking, and I am not, the whole scene often becomes nearly unbearable after a few hours. Were the conversations when I was drinking as boring and banal as these discussions now seem to be by about 9 PM and a couple bottles of wine later? What is pronounced with great gusto as profound after having had a couple drinks really isn’t as erudite as it might seem sober!

When it comes to shopping this falls into the category of “didn’t get that gay gene either” for me, sort of like Opera I guess. When I think of shopping I know that can apply to all sorts of stuff but clothes come to mind. I have never been much of a clothes’ horse as any one who knows me can attest and in part I blame the fact that I am really quite colorblind. Oh and I am quite a lazy fuck really and spending time searching for clothing that matches and in fashion falls into the category of watching paint dry.

These days comfort takes preference always and that means loose fitting shirts and pants with an elastic waistband. I haven’t worn a belt in years. My work life can happen in scrubs, the greatest medical invention of all time. I really only wear scrub pants everywhere, that is except when sleeping. I have slept nude since college. I learned the freedom and joy of nude sleeping from a straight college roommate my first year in the dorms when he would most mornings wake up having kicked off his covers and sporting a delightfully erect penis – good morning indeed.

Again thanks to years of HIV meds and the resulting metabolic syndrome I have an inordinate amount of belly fat. Before you say just put down the Ben and Jerry’s I would gladly point out my skinny face, extremities and less than bubbly butt. I am not really overweight at all it is just a distribution nightmare.

In an attempt to try and further weave in the element of impermanence to this piece I am going to delve into what was truly an existential crisis I had last week after reading a piece on global warming a Buddhist writer named Zhiwa Woodbury had posted on a great site called ECOBUDDHISM : http://www.ecobuddhism.org
Despite the snow in Denver in the middle of May, not a particularly unusual occurrence actually, a long list of really unassailable facts presented by Woodbury results in his final conclusion, which is that “the great anthropocentric dying is upon us – and our condition is terminal.”

After reading his piece I was nearly overcome with a sense of hopelessness. A very unusual feeling for me since I have been at least partially successful at incorporating that whole Buddhist theme that we really need to focus on the moment and that pondering the future or even sillier the past is really just a recipe for suffering.

I have for quite sometime believed that the human race is going to be a short lived evolutionary digression but that Gaia, life in some form, would persist until perhaps the sun burns itself out in a few more billion years. Part of what bummed me out so about the ECOBUDDHISM piece was his strong case for the whole show unraveling in just a few short decades perhaps while I am still alive. Again, still a strange reaction on my part especially in light of the fact that I have lived with HIV for more than 30 years now and much of the past 25 year spent working in an AIDS clinic. I have looked death in the face more times than I have cared to and somehow managed to keep my head above water throughout it all. I need to explore and write on this further so you can expect more tortured and twisted topic manipulation on my part as a form of psychotherapy at Story Telling.

I guess I just find it incredibly sad that this beautiful planet and our incredibly unlikely existence on it are so being disrespected. Perhaps that is the inescapable nature of being human at this stage of our evolution: if we only had a few more millennia to get our act together. There is plenty of blame to go around and I’ll accept my share. My personal, really rather pathetic response to the impending sixth great extinction seems to be turning down the thermostat, driving a fuel efficient car, walking whenever I can, recycling, oh, and of course less shopping.

May, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.