The Solar System, by Gillian

I don't think we had a Solar System back in the day. We had the sun, the moon, and the stars, with a few planets thrown in. We had galaxies, I think, and we had The Universe, which we believed to be infinite and now we think not, which is OK with me because I never could completely get my head around that concept anyway. Then we were sure it was ever expanding; now we're not so sure.

Courtesy of The Bible we had The Heavens and, better still, The Firmament; a word, one among many, that my mother loved. She would roll it lovingly around her tongue and tuck it, for later use, in her cheek. The word occurs several times in the King James Version of The Bible, and my mother, not generally given to biblical quotations, would trot out her favorites while gazing skyward in wonder.

"The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork," she would expound, giving The Book of Psalms it's due.

Or, turning her mind to The Book of Daniel, she would sometimes respond to one of my know-it-all moments with a touch of Biblical sarcasm:

“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament."

Fortunately, Mum died before her local church replaced the magical words of the 'old' Bible with the soul-less heretical ones of the 'new'. Had she still been around at that time, I fear she would have exposed her true religious colors and never attended church again.

With our exponentially-increasing knowledge of what we now choose to call the Solar System, the mysteries, the very mysticism, of it, have gone the way of the King James Bible. Oh, yes, knowledge is a wonderful thing, but is does not sit comfortably with mysticism and mystique; nor, come to that, with romance.

Much poetry has been written about the moon and the stars. Frank Sinatra, along with many others, sang romantic ballads extolling their magic.

"Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me .."

I fear even old blue eyes himself could not have created a classic love song out of, "Fly me to the Solar System ..."

© October 2016

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Here and There, by Ricky

Well, here I am. Where else would I be, over there? “Over There” reminds me of the WWI hubristic song proclaiming to the Germans and their allies that the Yanks are coming over there to finish the war. Finish it we did, not by force of arms, but by governments, over there, finally succumbing to the horrific and catastrophic amount of death – basically just agreeing to stop the killing and negotiate what turned out to be an unjust peace treaty. The same peace treaty which set the conditions making WWII inevitable to begin over there and dragging us over here into the conflict.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, California

Well, here I am still in the here and now but wishing I could be back there in an earlier time – a time when I only had juvenile worries and few responsibilities – a time when I lived at The Emerald Bay Resort at Lake Tahoe in 1958. I can close my eyes and suddenly, there I am. I had no playmates there at the resort, but I still had the best time being the deckhand on my step-father’s tour boat, Skipalong. We would take people on an all-day cruise around the lake.

The Skipalong

I listened to the tour spiel my step-father, Paul, gave our passengers and quickly memorized it. I would spend most of my time in the bow “cockpit” talking to any children or adults who wanted to ride there. (The cockpit was the lookout’s station during the time the boat was used as a rum-runner in San Francisco.) I would give adults the tour spiel and talk to the kids about kid stuff.

While living at Emerald Bay that summer of ’58, I saw Jerry Colonna in the restaurant where my mother worked. She was able to meet several Hollywood stars there, because the resort was popular among the rich and famous.

Jerry Colonna

Other than seeing Jerry Colonna, my only other star sighting that I can recall from that period of time and place, I will relate to you. I was there so I am the proverbial eye witness in this case.

My step-father and I just had docked Skipalong along the resort’s pier at the half-way point of our tour so our passengers could have lunch at the restaurant. While securing the bow of the boat to the pier, I looked up and saw a family walking down the bank to the pier. The parents apparently had bought tickets to ride in the Chris Craft speed-boat, Effie Moon, which was also tied up at the pier. I immediately recognized the boy walking with his parents.

Back then and there, I faithfully watched the Mickey Mouse Club on TV. Being a boy, I loved the club’s serial shorts and the child actors within them, forming a wistful attachment to them. Oh be still my pounding heart, for there he was walking towards me, in the flesh, David Stollery III.

David Stollery III (left) & Tim Considine (right)

Of course at that time, I knew him as Marty Markham from Disney’s Spin and Marty famed series. The best thing was that he was telling his parents that he wanted to ride on the “big boat” (my boat). I was hoping he would get to ride. My fervent hope was dashed a moment later when his mother told him, “No” and he began to scream repeatedly, “I want to ride on the big boat!” I was only 10 and David was a short and small 17, but I had already learned by age 3 that yelling at one’s parents demanding to get something was not going to work; at least it never did for me.

David had to ride the Effie Moon that day, but he apparently learned the “don’t yell at your parents” lesson. He grew up to become an automobile designer with GM and Toyota. At Toyota, he designed the second generation A40 series Toyota Celica in 1978. He then continued to design 22 other models for Toyota.

But that was there and then. I am here now, but I would rather be there.

© 4 May 2015

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

Greens, by Ray S

“Greens” is the color of my green bucks. Last Friday in a fit of self indulgence I took some eight and a half of them and went to the movies.

Alright, I got around that subject matter and now with your indulgence, you get to try to survive some more of the results of my attempting to keep up with the rest of you, my storytellers. Not hardly literature, just the incidental “off the wall” stuff I usually come to this séance with.

I bet you’ve guessed already—a movie review instead of my favorite recipe for Caesar salad.

First, I will certainly understand should you wish to close your ears and eyes while I get on with this little essay. It won’t take long and not likely to enlighten you, unless you’re a Woody Allen movie freak. Yes, the local Esquire movie palace (somewhat diminished) is showing his latest effort CAFÉ SOCIETY. If you have followed Allen’s cinema career you might recognize his timeless and sometimes tired themes—but soldier on and you will discover a new and magic story-line with each of his many films.

Of course, he has continued to mine the nostalgia store with Café’s pre-WWII setting. Most of you are too young to relate to this time and will see this aspect as quaint and maybe “Was it really like that then?” Well, yes, only Hollywood always goes them one better. You know, bigger than life.

That said about the book drop, Allen has written a charmingly witty story that will catch your imagination and keep you waiting for the next curveball which he so adept at throwing or tossing in this case.

The ethnicity of the players, the reality of human nature and how it molds each of us in so many different ways is well portrayed. The voice-over, if not read by the author-director himself, could easily pass for him, as well as the actor who plays the lead. A 20-something mensch from New York turned loose in 1939 Hollywood.

Enough already! If you want some escape that isn’t mind-numbing violence or sci-fi, take the afternoon off for some off-the-wall Woody Allen time.

© 8 August 2016

About the Author

Clubs, by Phillip Hoyle

For me clubs have always been about responsibility: treasurer, president, secretary, vice-president, committee chair, on and on. I am sure I learned this from the outset when we neighborhood boys formed the Ark Club. But that was play, kind of like Cowboys and Indians or Army but with paperwork. Then adults began to organize us in a moral effort to control kids and their activities: Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, choirs, and youth groups. These clubs attracted me for their activities but not their group pride, personal recognition, or promised advantages. I don’t say this as a matter of criticism but simply as a description of my introverted preference and deep independence. I liked having things to do if they matched my interests, I got along well with peers, and I was respectful to adult leaders. Often I became some kind of leader although I didn’t seek such leadership preferring simply to help and to enjoy. I didn’t care to beat a drum for attention. I could tolerate
responsibility for short periods of time, but mostly I wanted to learn and to experience.

Around age thirty, my career was on the line demanding of me a choice between doing church work and teaching music history. I gave myself six months to figure out which way I’d go. In so doing, I realized I needed to give the church career a better chance. So I attended some religious education events, first, an intense training program organized by the Regional and General levels of the church and second, the meeting of a professional association of religious educators. Over-all the groups did not do much for me, the former seeming too much related to the status quo of congregational life, the latter seeming just a bit too embarrassing to me to make a strong identification. Still at each of these meetings I met some nice people and at each event a couple of very impressive individuals. Furthermore I observed interactions that attracted me, not relationships I wanted but ones that revealed these leaders were as complicated as I was and as bright or brighter. Certainly some of them were living life rather largely (a term I will not address in this story).

I compared these religious educators with the professors I knew, that other professional group I was observing, and found as much or more creativity among the church educators. Plus for me, I realized, I needed the stimulation of working with people of all ages rather than the small age range of undergrads in college. Church offered more freewheeling educational leadership opportunities. I opted for a career in congregations.

Some years later I was recruited to run for president elect in the professional association, a group that still slightly embarrassed me. Beyond the embarrassment I had friends in the group and annual meetings had become an important time away from work and family. I thought over the offer and realized it came with a four to five year sentence: attendance at annual meetings for running for office, serving as president-elect, serving as president, serving as immediate past president whose responsibility it was to oversee the next elections, and my requirement to show up at the following meeting unlike almost every past president I had known in the group. Did I really want to do this? I thought I saw an opportunity to help the organization become less an in-group and more open to the paraprofessional educators most congregations were hiring to organize and oversee their programs. There were fewer and fewer full-time jobs for seminary-trained educators on the horizon. Still the nomination promised mostly a bunch of work.

I did that work and stayed through my sentence. I didn’t regret it and learned so much during the five years, but I also got too close to the bared emotions of people for whom such a position was seen as a great honor that took them on a power trip. Yuck. This work was important—okay—but to take oneself so seriously in its execution seemed hopeless to me, too much like what I observed in some pastors, preachers, and evangelists. Worse than embarrassing!

Clubs: for the most part, I’m not interested. Still today I am leading a program and attend several gatherings of artists, writers, and storytellers. And I go out with a gang of guys for happy hour every Friday night. But the real attraction in these groups is the interesting people I see and the new things I learn as we write, read, tell stories, and make art together.

Denver, © 30 March 2015

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.com

Help, by Gillian

I, like many of us, I suspect, am not very good at asking for help - though perhaps, with me in my fourth week of putting no weight on my broken ankle, Betsy might not find that statement to ring quite true right now!

No, most of us prefer to maintain our independence; I can do it, whether in large things or small. I walk into the kitchen to find Betsy, wielding our three-foot long 'grabber', or standing precariously on a step-stool, reaching for an item on the top shelf.

'Why didn't you call me? I can reach it,' I say from my lofty height of a slowly shrinking 5'6''.

'I know,' she shrugs, 'but I can do it.'

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems strange, given the fact that we humans are apparently programmed to offer it. We have an innate need to help our fellow beings. If you don't believe me, go and buy a five dollar pair of battered old crutches at the thrift shop, keep one knee bent double, and go hop around the store for a while. You will have more offers of assistance than you know what to do with. Frequently, faced with disasters, our urge to help is stronger, apparently, than either the fight or flight response. How often do we witness live scenes on TV where so many people ignore the risk of toppling buildings in order to help those already in trouble.

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems even stranger, given the fact that giving yourself up completely to the power of those who wish to help you, is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. Once Betsy and I had gazed at my still-swelling ankle for long enough and come to the reluctant conclusion that Urgent Care was the only option, and I had hopped on our old crutches to the car, I let go of all pretense of self-determination. I relaxed completely. I sat contentedly in the car as she parked and then went off in search of a wheelchair from the Kaiser lobby, returned with it and assisted me in. By this time I had reached an almost rag-doll stage of relaxation. Nothing complicated remained to do. Just follow orders: sign here, wait there, sit here, put you leg up here, place your foot there. Just relax, they kept saying, and effortlessly I complied. I was carried away on a comforting cloud of caring. The only decision I was called upon to make was the color of my cast.

After almost five weeks of Betsy would you just ...... and Betsy can you fetch .... I suppose my faithful caregiver has had enough. More than enough. That basic human need to offer help and support to others can run pretty thin pretty fast. She denies this, however, and says she is not in any way tired of being my helper. She'd better be careful with statements like that, as I find I could happily float along on my comforting cloud of care indefinitely. But something tells me I had better be over it before the snow hits the ski slopes - and My Beautiful Betsy with it!

© September 2016

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Smoking, by Will Stanton

James died of lung cancer. They took out part of his lung. Then, it spread to his brain, and they had to operate on his brain. It spread more throughout his remaining lungs. He suffered for six years. I cared for him. He struggled hard the whole time. I understand that he struggled so hard because he did not want to leave me alone. He felt leaving was a betrayal. He said so as he lay dying.

When he was very young, a long time ago, his father (who always addressed James by his middle name) warned him, “Howard, never take up smoking.” His father was a terribly poor Georgian and did not know how to read; but, in his own way, he was very wise. And, this was long before the tobacco companies finally were forced to admit that smoking kills. Sociopaths as they were, those tobacco-men made billions of dollars over many years, selling an addictive poison. And, poor James fell for it. After all, everyone in the movies was smoking. Everyone smoked on the streets, in the shops, and in the work-places where James went.

Later in San Antonio, James was eagerly accepted into the classy social crowd, which is not surprising. James was exceedingly handsome, intelligent, and charismatic. Everybody wanted James to come to their parties. Of course, there always was lots of booze, and it was regarded as the smart thing to smoke. Everyone else was, so James started smoking, too. With so much influence from all his good friends, why would he heed his father's early warning?

I can't say that I was much wiser. I never bothered to take up smoking and, as a consequence, did not really know much about it. This was still before the cigarette drug-dealers admitted that smoking could cause cancer.

When I met James, his affect was that of a very educated, elegant gentleman. When he smoked, that was just part of his persona. For him, of course, it was a deep-seated addiction.

So, for his birthday, I gave him a gold Tiffany cigarette lighter and a gold cigarette case. In my ignorance, I became an enabler.

Several years went by, and James developed a chronic cough. He went to see a doctor, who told him, “I don't like the architecture of your lungs.” I shall never forget those words. James had developed chronic bronchitis and was ordered to stop smoking. Within just a few days, James' face no longer looked so gray, but the damage was done.

In 1991, James came home from the doctor and told me the news: he had lung cancer. He cried. All I could do then, and for the rest of his life, was to stand by him, to help him in every way I could. Some acquaintances actually asked me, “Why don't you leave him?” I was shocked. How could I? I took care of him for six years and was with him when he drew his last breath.

Those final days happened already two decades ago; yet, in some ways, it seems like just yesterday. The years have gone by; I have grown older. When I think back, we had some good years together, fourteen out of twenty. But I keep wondering, “What would it have been like to have continued together to this very day in good health?”

© 6 July 2016

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.

Communications, by Ricky

"What we've got here is …. failure to communicate" is a movie line from Cool Hand Luke spoken by Paul Newman that is perfectly delivered, humorously and sarcastically, in keeping with the character's personality. Unfortunately for Luke, the senior guard was not amused, receptive, or tolerant of the mocking of the Captain's phrase. Herein lies the difficulty with communicating with anyone; words.

The Captain and the Boss were communicating a message to Luke but their words were not precise enough for Luke to clearly understand. Thus, the Captain and the Boss were the ones who failed to communicate. They should have made it perfectly clear that if Luke tried to escape again, he would be shot dead; they didn't and Luke died.

Words arrive containing varying numbers of syllables, shades of meaning, and ease of pronunciation. The definition of words can be modified from the original by common usage, which tends to happen because members of society do not learn enough vocabulary so they can pick the perfectly accurate but seldom used word. Some people use many long words and complex sentences to communicate simple ideas; a practice which often leads to misunderstandings. There are yet others who can communicate powerful ideas using simple and everyday words. An example is Abraham Lincoln's statement, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” Do you suppose Lincoln was warning other politicians, warning the public, or giving politicians a tip on how to get elected?

Some communications take on a life of their own and are so common in usage as to become cliches. “Houston, we have a problem.” is one of those. The phrase originated following the Apollo 13 disaster. Unfortunately, no one ever said those words. Here is the actual conversation between the Houston command center and Apollo 13.

John Swigert: 'Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.' Houston: 'This is Houston. Say again please.' James Lovell: 'Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a main B bus undervolt.'

For dramatic effect, the movie of the events surrounding Apollo 13, altered the exact words. The incorrect phrase was picked up by the movie going public and now is commonly used to indicate any problem not just very serious ones.

Likewise,"Beam me up, Scotty" is a catchphrase that made its way into popular culture from the science fiction television series Star Trek. Though it has become irrevocably associated with the series and movies, the exact phrase was never actually spoken in any Star Trek television episode or film.

"Beam me up, Scotty" is similar to the phrase, “Just the facts ma'am”, attributed to Jack Webb's character of Joe Friday on Dragnet; "It's elementary, my dear Watson", attributed to Sherlock Holmes; "Luke, I am your father", attributed to Darth Vader; or "Play it again, Sam", attributed to Humphrey Bogart's character in Casablanca; and "We don't need no stinkin' badges!" attributed to Gold Hat in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. All five lines are the best known quotations from these works for many viewers, but not one is an actual, direct quotation. Yet each of them conveys an idea, concept, and image that communicates very well because a large number of people have seen the source of the misquoted dialog and the erroneous version has become ubiquitous in our culture.

Communication also suffers when the sender and the receiver are not talking about the same concept or idea. Remember the dialogue between Tom Hanks and Elizabeth Perkins in the movie "Big"?

Susan: I'm not so sure we should do this. Josh: Do what? Susan: Well, I like you ... and I want to spend the night with you. Josh: Do you mean sleep over? Susan: Well, yeah. Josh: OK ... but I get to be on top.

One conversation between two different people, but on two incompatible topics. This particular conversation also illustrates the effect differences in age and experience (or lack thereof) can have upon the inferred meaning of the words heard.

Yet another problem with communication arises when one party doesn't understand the clear and plain message he was given or does not take it seriously. While in the Air Force, one of my commanding officers was a colonel and a pilot. He related to me the following.

Before becoming a pilot he was a navigator on a military transport aircraft approaching his U.S. destination after crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The plane was understandably low on fuel. Their primary destination had bad weather to the point that they could not land and there was just enough fuel to make it to the alternate airport. The navigator called the traffic controller for permission to depart for the alternate destination. He was told to standby to which he replied that they needed to leave now or not have enough fuel to make it. Again he was told to standby. He repeated the situation yet again and was told to standby. At this point the pilot called on the intercom asking if they had permission to depart for the alternate airport. The navigator told him yes even though no permission was given. The person on the ground did not appreciate the gravity of the situation and let himself be bogged down with control issues.

Sometimes the person initiating the communication sends an accurate message composed of factual data but in reality doesn't state the actual issue. For example, when I was young I once told my mother that my urine was runny (a fact), which did not impart any information to her. The real issue was I had diarrhea. Another example would be the numerous politicians who when asked a question answer with information not directly related to the question. I think they have a condition known as “Diarrhea of the Mouth”.

The moral of this essay: Be gay when the concept or idea or message goes through without resulting in chaos. The word gay is used correctly, but did it, the other words, and the sentence structure combine to confuse or clarify the message? This is yet another example of the potential for a message to get “lost in translation” when there is a poor choice of words and grammar by the sender.

The real moral of this essay: In your next life, pay attention in language class.

© 22 April 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

Eavesdrop Follow Up, by Ray S

At lunch the other day I was concentrating on my ham on rye when I couldn’t avoid overhearing two men on the adjoining bar stools. Maybe their two-martini lunches encouraged their animated conversation when one exclaimed to the other, “But I don’t understand, how after all these years she could do that to Harry? What about the business? What about the children?”

His friend responded, “She’s been that way all her life—so they say.” I wonder who ‘they’ were and why Harry didn’t have a clue.

“Guess not, be damned if the two of them aren’t friendly with each other, all three of them, that is.”

The next response was something like: “Look, you ought to know. You’re married. Women are so flighty and unpredictable, like lovey dovey and then ‘Not tonight, I’ve got a headache,’ or ‘We did it last Wednesday.’”

I’ve got experience, what with a wife and two daughters. I can’t figure them out. So I just grin and bear it. The other guy followed with something like, “I’d throw the bitch out—after marriage counseling. Ha!”

By this time the ham on rye was finished and so was I. I felt like an intruder, unwanted guest, and personally imposed upon by their noise. I picked up my check and headed for the cashier, and back to the office. Somehow the experience at lunch hung over my thoughts all afternoon—so much so that that evening I called a longtime friend who is a counselor at the GLBT Center here in town. She and her partner were the first lesbians I ever met and a real eye opening pleasure for a straight man.

We talked for quite awhile. The over-heard story at lunch time made me wonder too about their question—idle curiosity I guess, because when I met Nel and Liz I simply accepted them as another new couple of acquaintances to add to my list of good friends.

Nel was quite open in her reply—after she regained her composure from smiling knowingly and a controlled laugh. “Jim,” she replied, “It isn’t that complicated, just a lifetime of misguided, badly twisted, confusing thoughts about who you really are. And that condition isn’t exclusively homosexual information. From our previous talks about you and Doris, it is something that comes early or sometimes late in life. It’s the relationship between two people who have discovered how much they mean to each other, not how much they need each other. Being needy isn’t being in love, so perhaps the woman who was the subject of your accidental eavesdropping had that epiphany and started to live honestly and authentically with her new wife.”

"Nel, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and with that same heart wish that your thoughts could penetrate the alcohol hanging over those two guys’ heads. And maybe filter through to their unfortunate wives."

Next time I’ll pass on lunch at the bar. Think I’ll take Doris to lunch. The company will be superior, and I’ll be with my most-loved one.

© 18 July 2016

Setting Up House, by Pat Gourley

Having moved many times in my adult life and once while still living at home with my parents I am quite familiar with setting up house. The first move in my teenage years was when my family left Northern Indiana and relocated to NE Illinois in 1965, I was 16 years old at the time. This was as it turned out a great change getting me out of rural Indiana. Unfortunately, Mike Pence is really not an anomaly back there, and into a new home and school. At Marion Central Catholic High School, I was taught by a great radical Holy Cross nun who to this day influences my world view. Oh, and there was the older gentleman I met in my new surroundings who became my first queer love.

Though I have been very fortunate for never having to “set up house” after any sort of natural or manmade disaster I think this move as a teenager really set a tone for me later in life making frequent moves much easier. All but one of my moves since age 18 has involved setting up home with other folks and a wide variety of individuals at that. Two moves in the last 50 years, totally 28 years, have involved setting up shop with a male lover. Having a loving companion in your life with whom you decide to share living space with is always a bit different than moving in with people who are just roommates.

My most recent move, now a little over three years ago, is unique in my adult life in that it has involved no one else – not a lover or any roommates. I really do yearn for more companionship in my day-to-day living situation and would prefer this be somebody or somebodies on site. A lover at this time is fraught with hurtles and unlikely to happen. My HIV status complicates this certainly but really the big issue is finding someone who could stand to share a bed with me. I get up to pee at night an inordinate number of times and my propensity to fart in bed occurs often enough each night to be a contribution to global warming, a form of methane one step from being weaponized: the one and really only drawback to a largely plant-based diet.

Even my cat has had to adjust to these frequent nightly wind emissions. He will only sleep spooning my belly even though it is just as cozy in the crook of my leg. The leg position however puts him directly in the line of fire and is avoided it seems at all costs.

So, if I am to avoid one of my greatest fears of aging, living out my last years alone, it will need to be with roommates and individual bedrooms. I have many years of experience living communally and do hope that these last few years of going it alone have not made me into such a fussy old queen that sharing living space is now out of the question.

Though I have certainly learned to never say never I find the prospect of any sort of assisted living very unsettling and something I hope to avoid at all costs. Let’s be honest “assisted living” has become the politically correct euphemism for nursing home. Oh, sure a few assisted living situations come with a supported modicum of independence but these often involve significant financial resources. Ending up in such a place is something I personally dread more than dying alone and being eaten by my cat before someone finds my body. I am therefore in support of ballot initiative 106, the medical aid in dying proposal on the November 2016 ballot here in Colorado. [It passed.]

I have, I think, walked a fine line in this writing group acknowledging the reality of my HIV status while trying to avoid weaving it into everything I have to say. It is far from everything I have to say and I feel stating it too often can really be disingenuous to say the least. Having said that my options for finding like-minded individuals these days to set up house with has been severely limited by the many individuals l have lost out of my life from AIDS. I would therefore find it a bit cathartic to have us write some time about taking down a house after the death of a lover, parent perhaps or simply a roommate. This would I think be something most if not all of us could write about.

© 11 September 2016

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.

Pack Rats, by Louis Brown

The Disappearance of a Museum

You could say my parents were a kind of pack rats. They inherited a large volume of furnishings, oil paintings, gowns, chinaware, crystal ware, jewelry, silverware and a large volume of 19th century photographs. My mother tried desperately to sort the photos out and put them in chronological order. Since there was just too much, she finally gave up.

The photos depicted the members of two prominent puritanical families, the Browns and the Wilcox’s. Actually they were Presbyterians. Prudence Aldrich’s portrait was particularly intriguing. She looked particularly dour. My grandmother told me that she looked “dour” and “bitter” because she had had lost three children in childbirth, i.e. 3 miscarriages, 3 still births. So despite her otherwise comfortable circumstances, she was not a happy person. Prudence was born toward the end of the 18th century and lived to be ninety years old. Prudence’s husband was the right reverend James Bishop Wilcox who founded the Middlebury Presbyterian Seminary in Middlebury, Vermont.

My parents were poor, my grandparents were poor, but my great grandfather was a millionaire. His name was Captain Francis Leicester Brown who served in the Unin Army in the Civil War. Mark Hanna of the Republican Party of post-Civil War USA offered my great grandfather an opportunity to become a U. S. presidential candidate. My great grandfather turned him down. Francis Leicester tended to give his money to the Union soldier veterans in his regiment, to set them up in business or just to pay bills. By the time he died there was not much left to leave his son, my grandfather, Arthur August Brown.

I remember that, among the Chinaware, there were several sets of Limoges demi-tasse cups that were truly magnificent works of art. And the Wedgwood blue chocolate pitcher and the Wedgwood green cream pitcher with the dryads dancing on the outside. And the dazzling sterling silverware. And then the jewelry. During the last 4 years of my father’s life, DeWitt Brown became senile and suspicious. He let perfect strangers run around our house. I could not live home all the time. My father never listened to me. I told my brothers in California about my father’s self-destructive behaviors, but they did not believe me.

Included in the vast pile of papers were signed letters from President Abraham Lincoln. Another letter signed Aaron Burr (my great great great great uncle). Another letter was written by Horace Greeley that he had sent to Karl Marx. How it got back into the Brown papers I do not know.

Another antique was a sampler stitched by my great great great great grandmother, Hannah Hopkins Hodge, Prudence Aldrich’s mother. She spelled out a fifteen line religious poem, then the alphabet in capital then small letters. She finished the sampler on her 13th birthday, May 10th, 1819, according to the sampler. So the sampler was not only dated, it gave the birthday of the young girl who completed it. An appraiser saw the sampler and said it was worth a small fortune and belonged in a museum.

By the time my father died, all this stuff had disappeared. I could have opened a Victorian museum with the Victorian furnishings and documents I had. And then, if my father’s visitors were out to exploit him, how could any of them been educated enough to understand the actual value of these documents and antiques?

Francis Leicester Brown’s father was Hiram Brown who was a multi-millionaire due to the success of the Shortsville Drill Company, a precursor of what later became the International Harvester Company. He was also founder of the Owosso Manufacturing Company, in Owosso, Michigan. He founded another profitable company in Chanute, Kansas. But he continued to live in Shortsville, NY. Hiram’s father was Charles Brown, a poor farmer.

Pack rats are usually very poor and accumulate piles of junk to symbolize imaginary wealth. My parents do not quite fit that definition, but we did sort of live in a past of affluence and social status. Also did you know there is a category of elder abuse called “exploitation of the elderly.” It should be taken seriously although my brothers did not take me seriously.

© 20 October 2016

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA's. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

Strange Vibrations, by Gillian

I was driving north on Wadsworth, probably somewhere about 80th street. It was April 10th 1967. I was working swing shift at IBM's new facility located between Boulder and Longmont. I lived in Lakewood on 32nd street so it was a long commute, but I enjoyed the drive through what was mostly, at that time, still peaceful farming country. Suddenly my car fell victim to some very strange vibrations. It shook. It bounced. The steering wheel wrenched free of my grip. Shit, I thought, I must have a flat. Now I would be late for work. I regained control of the wheel, breaking hard, and pulled the car off onto the shoulder where I came to a stop and turned off the engine. Strangely, the car still seemed to be shaking. Or maybe it was I who was shaking. I stepped out onto the road, immediately loosing my footing and almost falling. What was the matter with me?

With one hand on the car, I gingerly walked around it, still feeling very wobbly on my feet. No flat tire. At the same time, I was gradually realizing that I was not alone in pulling over. Other vehicles, both ahead of and behind me, had also stopped. Other drivers were standing beside their cars looking confused and puzzled. Then I saw it was the same story across the street; southbound traffic had also come to a standstill.

An older man and woman leaned warily against a pick-up a few feet from me. They peered questioningly at me, he from under a big, battered, cowboy hat.

'What in Hell was that?' he asked, querulously.

I shrugged, helpless.

'I never felt nothin' like that before,' offered a young man sitting coiled astride his motorcycle as if ready to spring off at the first signs of any further misbehavior.

'I'd guess it had to be an earthquake,' offered a woman, pointing meaningfully to the California license plate on her bumper. I have experience with such things, she implied.

We all digested that in silence, pondering, but we don't have those here, do we?

Slowly, we all returned to our vehicles and went unsurely on our way.

In August of that same year, I was once more heading north on Wadsworth, this time in the half-light of early morning as I was by then working the day shift. Suddenly my car fell victim to some very strange vibrations. It shook. It bounced. The steering wheel wrenched free of my grip.

Shit, I thought, I must have a flat. But just as quickly followed another thought. Oh no you don't, you don't fool me twice like that - fool me once, etcetera - this is another bloody earthquake.

As I, and other drivers, hurriedly pulled off the road, I could see myself as that California woman: experienced, blasé. But I rather fell down on sophistication by checking out the tires anyway, immediately I was out of the car. No flat. I was too slow off the mark, anyhow, to impress anybody.

'Another goddamn earthquake,' grumbled a voice.

'Guess so,' agreed another.

With world-weary shrugs we drove off.

The quake of April 10th was determined to be a magnitude 5.0. The second one I experienced later that year, the strongest ever felt in Denver, was 5.3. These two were the strongest of a whole series of relatively minor quakes over several years; The Colorado School of Mines recorded more than 300 earthquakes here in 1967 alone. This unexpected surge in earthquake activity was determined by the USGS to have been induced by pumping waste fluids into a deep disposal well at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and as a result this practice was discontinued.

Those were, indeed, strange vibrations. Mercifully they remained relatively small and no major damage resulted. But the population of the entire Denver Metro area at that time was at most 800,000. Now it is three million. If the current crowded high-speed highways shook now as they did then, it is hard to imagine there would not be many multi-car pileups.

Alas, however, we don't seem to have learned a thing from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal saga.

Fracking results in the same kind of fluid injection deep below the surface, many areas involved in fracking operations are suffering incredibly large numbers of small quakes and yet we refuse to accept any possible cause and effect here. Oklahoma, as if that poor state didn't suffer enough from tornadoes, is a case in point. In 2009 there were 20 earthquakes recorded in Oklahoma measuring 3.0 and above. Since then, as fracking continues, the number has risen steadily to a count of 890 in 2015. As William Yardley, a reporter for the LA Times put it* -

'Yet even as many anxious Oklahomans now track seismic data on their smartphones and struggle to sleep through the long, rumbling nights, there has been one notable location where people rarely seemed rattled. That is here, in the state capital, where the oil industry holds so much sway that for decades drill rigs have extracted crude from directly beneath the Capitol building.'

[To view the statistics, go to http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sej-oklahoma-quakes-fracking-20160302-story.html ]

The famed Erin Brockovich is now deeply involved, and the Sierra Club is suing energy companies involved in fracking, but legal wheels grind slowly and many fear that it will all be too little too late. These numerous small quakes, especially in areas where there are already large faults, may lead to ever larger ones and eventually to a seriously damaging quake. Well, duh! I'm not a geologist, but that seems pretty elementary to me, even if we don't have statistics to prove it.

My sincerest hope is that the legislators, if not the energy companies themselves, will pay attention to the abundant messages being sent by these countless strange vibrations, before we end up with very big vibrations which no-one will be able to ignore. The Beach Boys once sang heartily and happily about good vibrations and excitations. Alas, I fear nobody will sing, or be happy, about these vibrations; and the excitations are liable to be much too exciting.

© May 2016

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

I Have a Dream, by Phillip Hoyle

I was asked to contact Colorado Public Radio for an interview—something related to the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr’s, “I Have a Dream” sermon. I heard that speech on television. I believe I watched it in Clay Center, Kansas. We moved there in 1962, the summer before I entered my sophomore year of high school. I loved the strongly rhetorical and emotional delivery of this handsome African American preacher. The move from an Army town with integrated schools to a small all-white county seat town made me race-conscious in a wholly new way. The presence of deep racial prejudice against coloreds in that rural setting seemed misplaced. These people seemed more prejudiced in their white society. They didn’t know the reality of working with, studying with, or playing with people of color. They didn’t have Negro friends or acquaintances. Dr. King’s call for an American vision of racial equality and justice rang true in my ears. I truly missed my African American class mates like Yolanda Dozier, Jay Self, Oscar Smith, Harlene Gilliam, and even Von Quinn. I missed packing groceries for the many African-American customers at the store. Like an ancient Hebrew prophet, King was calling the presumably Judeo-Christian America to repentance, to get right with God, to find justice by providing justice in every town from sea to shining sea. His voice rang true to biblical tradition. I was thrilled. A preacher was saying these things with great courage and creativity. He seemed a kind of hero for me.

I admired this man, agreed with his gospel, and had no perspective how this liberation movement would eventually spell freedom for me. Still, his voice alerted me to human potential and the need for social change in our country and towns. But the life of a teen, the day-to-day discoveries, the forging of a fledgling adult identity, the move towards jobs and careers intervened. I knew I had music, knew I had a religious motivation, but knew only one church that while it was not sectarian by intent, was often sectarian in practice. I dove deeply into its tides of education, ministry, work, and identity. Sadly like the county seat town, it too was mostly white, missed the richness of racial diversity and leadership. Still, king’s themes colored my reading, my concerns, my sense of myself, and kept me open to this larger and smaller vision of freedom. So now I am going to celebrate it on public radio. Is this a grand opportunity? It certainly presents a challenge for creativity, heart, ardor, and love not only for me but for America with its growing diversity and wilting idealism.

To the young I say listen to the creative, challenging, opening voice within. Never let go of its potential. Let it guide you down creative paths of participation in your personal and public life. Keep open to the way it can inform your decisions in the changing adult experiences related to age, relationships, and social change. Honor the voices of democracy, justice, and love. Recognize the responsibilities of freedom, the partial realization of advancement, the constant tendency not to share, and the ever-present fears. Build communities of loving support but not at the cost of forgetting the larger picture. Always the larger picture. You are in it. It is in you.


The interview brought together a young gay man and an old one (me). Hear it at www.cpr.org/news/audio/two-gay-men-two-different-generations


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.com

Help, by Will Stanton

I could use some help - right now. Actually, I could have used some help most of my life. Maybe we mere mortals are not supposed to know how to make our way through this confusing world and deal with all the unexpected trials and tribulations that befall us poor souls. Maybe we are supposed to just muck along unless someone, somehow, has been endowed with special talent and/or has mentors to assist along the way. I never really did. I have found the world generally confusing. I could have used some help, probably a lot.

Ironically, people with a little more awareness and circumspection find dealing with the world more troublesome than apparently more blasé people who are generally concerned primarily with money, food, sex, and the next ballgame. Frankly, those who appear most mindless often seem to be the happiest and content. Not me. I was blessed, or cursed, with ample awareness and, consequently am perhaps too aware of what really is going on in the world, and too often, what is behind it. That can make a person feel depressed and impotent. I really could use some help.

Occasionally, friends have attempted to help me. I'm not sure this has been particularly successful. I have one friend, Kathy C., who has an I.Q. of 160, is constantly doing research through books and on-line, thinks at the speed of light, and, consequently, is exceptionally aware of the real world and what is behind what happens. She has tried for years, on many websites, to inform and straighten out the thinking of a lot of intellectual Neanderthals. The trouble is, of course, that the majority of readers and responders are dumber than a bag of hammers and choose merely to become angry with her. They even have criticized her for being too intelligent and too well informed. Despite hate-filled responses, she keeps trying. I admire her, but her efforts to try to improve rational thinking appear to me to be fruitless. I have concluded that nothing short of a miracle or magic could make significant progress.

Perhaps, Kathy has engaged in magical thinking regarding me, for she had a Harry Potter magic wand sent to me. That was a surprise. I have had no improvements in either health or situation. Perhaps, that's because I haven't even given it a wave. I suppose that I am too much of a “Doubting Thomas,” for I have yet to attempt using it to improve the world, or just my own situation, for that matter. And, if that were not enough, some recent, mysterious benefactor had a Professor Dumbledore magic wand sent to me. Apparently, someone else has reached the same conclusion about me as has Kathy. No, I haven't waved that one around, either. It still sits in its wand-box. It would be nice if those two magic wands actually worked. I first, however, would have to be shown how to use them. I would need some help.

© 6 September 2016

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.

Piece O' Cake, by Ricky

Cake, puzzles, Spanish coins, Picasso paintings, and advice all come in pieces. Marie Antoinette gave the French a great piece of advice.

Marie is reported to have given this piece of advice during a dinner party to which the lower classes had not been invited but were attempting to crash the event in search of bread. (It is a little known fact, or perhaps the best kept secret prior to the British breaking the enigma code, that the so called "beatnik" movement actually began in France, because the "bread" the crowd was seeking was money not Colorado edibles.) The queen misunderstood their demands and when told there was no bread at the event just the fancy cake, she is alleged to have said, "No bread and butter!!! Then give them our fancy cakes to eat." She really wanted to say that the crowd should go home and eat Ratatouille, but her publicist suggested cake instead.

The king was not the sharpest tool in the shed but his publicist thought it would be a good Public Relations moment if he participated in the cake delivery. So, he went with the servants to deliver the cakes. When the king announced the queen had sent them cake to eat instead of bread and butter, the crowd was not amused and the king being mystified at their reaction asked the crowd, "What's wrong?" (Although, he probably said it in French.) When a spokesman for the beatniks explained in plain French what they meant by the word "bread", the king was amused and rushed back into the palace to tell Marie and all the aristocrats. When Marie heard the whole bread vs cake situation explained to her, she and the king saw the irony of the night’s events and began to laugh. Naturally, all the aristocrats present also began to laugh. The crowd outside the palace heard all the laughing and was still not amused. One could rightly conclude that the king, the queen, the aristocrats, and two publicists were all laughing their heads off that night.

Marie’s advice was actually good. If you have no bread, eat the donated cake of the wealthy. Only the failure to communicate the exact nature of the bread in question resulted in the unfortunate events which followed. I did learn a lesson from all that silliness. Marie’s advice became the mantra or perhaps "battle cry" I proclaim at the beginning of every meal when I eat out; "Life is short. Eat dessert first!"

© 14 March 2015

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

Families, by Ray S

A very long time ago I was the youngest in my immediate family. Somehow I have survived all of these years in spite of knowing “I must have been adopted” (sound familiar?) or the result of a moment of reckless passion. As you can guess already I knew I was the “unwanted child.” They had produced the magical Golden Boy seven years before I slipped into the scene.

Fortunately, the family reread the book covering the arrival of a baby, now about the Stork’s tardy gift. It was a refresher course to bone up on what they might have forgotten from the advent of the Son and heir.

Everyone soldiered on as best they could. Daddy continued to work and support his progeny. Golden Boy succeeded in defending his territory and ignored the new arrival. Looking back I believe he didn’t quite know how to handle the situation. Besides, he was only seven-plus and probably wouldn’t be able to read “How to Cope with an Unexpected Baby Brother.”

Mommy, having put up with all of the necessities and inconvenience of child bearing depending on how you spell baring, decided that if she was going to deliver another bundle of joy, the child would be named “Doris.” Unfortunately for Mommy and Doris, baby arrived with the plumbing she did not order.

No matter Baby soon learned how to dress his “Patsy Ann” doll in a wardrobe lovingly stitched by his mother. When old enough scissors were allowed and a whole collection of paper dolls appeared.

The die was cast and pansy was in bloom. Daddy did see to it that his second son knew how to recognize male anatomy, no matter how modest, from that of the little girl next door, who was busying herself and Baby Boy with their own anatomy lessons.

Sometime later, the boy graduated to being in boy’s knickers and then the first pair of long pants. The family had succeeded in establishing their second son’s gender identity to their satisfaction, and everyone lived happily ever after!

Little did they know, or did they?

© 5 September 2016

About the Author

The Solar System, by Pat Gourley

“If the Universe doesn’t care about us and if we’re an accident in a remote corner of the Universe, in some sense it makes us more precious. The meaning in our lives is provided by us; we provide our own meaning.” 

Lawrence M. Krauss

The last sentence of this quote, from the controversial physicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss, I think could be viewed as a synonymous description of the actualized queer person. We have had to, through our multitude of unique coming out paths, provide our own meaning. Many of us have started on our path of self-actualization feeling very isolated and alone wondering what is wrong with me. Most of us though eventually realize how precious we really are. We are the golden threads in the tapestry of humanity.

As modern astronomy has proven beyond a doubt our solar system is phenomenally insignificant in our own very insignificant galaxy. Best estimates from data provided by the Hubble Deep Space Telescope is that there are between 100 and 200 billion galaxies in the ever-expanding Universe. Our own galaxy the Milky Way is estimated to contain between 100 billion and 400 billion stars.

If there is a God, or sole initiator of this whole phenomenon, that entity surely must have a bit more on their mind than whom we, inhabiting the third rock from the sun in this miniscule solar system, are fucking. I mean really get a grip and begin to try and comprehend the mindboggling immensity of the Universe. It really implies an extremely exaggerated sense of our own importance to think the initiator of the Big Bang leading to the creation of 200 billion galaxies is preoccupied with our drama. If there were a hell this over the top human hubris alone should get us sent to hades for eternity.

I will admit that perhaps I have a very immature and un-evolved sense of the spiritual. I will concede there may exist an omnipotent source of direction running through the evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang to date, call it God if you want. Sorry but the comprehension of such an entity at this point in my life is way above my pay grade. It would require an amount of faith-based belief I find really unthinkable and quite frankly a lazy copout. Maybe I could be further along in actualizing the possible reality of this wonder and not having to rely on faith alone, if I spent more cushion-time but I don’t think that is going to happen either.

I actually am quite content thinking we really are the result of a bunch of lucky evolutionary “accidents” that have occurred since living things first appeared on the planet 3.8 billion years ago. When you look at all the countless evolutionary steps and cross roads traversed and we still made the cut it is really something. It is quite precious really.

I was at a very wonderful event recently when two dear male friends decided after 27 years of living together they should get married. Though the words marriage and God were spoken several times during the event it was actually billed on the program as a “Celebration of Love”. I think the institution of marriage was cooked up to control property and women and then their reproductive capacity. I do believe we queers are really bringing our own meaning to it all, to this age old and until recently heterosexual institution.

I was asked to participate by doing a reading or two lasting no more that a couple minutes. It did cross my mind that if there is anything to this God business my stepping into one of his churches might unleash a meteor strike ending the human race right then and there. That did not happen. I was able to read a poem by Walt Whitman and another by Rumi with no detectable dire consequences resulting.

So even if God doesn’t exist and the Universe doesn’t care a twit about us and we are just a happy evolutionary accident in an isolated solar system on the edge of an in significant galaxy it sure is still amazing. As gay people we also get to provide our own sense of meaning and that creative self-realization adds immensely to the human dance on this third rock from the sun.

© October 2016

 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.

My Happiest Day, by Louis Brown

Adventures of the Good Shepherd Fellowship

On previous occasions, I described several of my “happiest” days. This time I will describe what happened to me when I spent a weekend in Saugerties, New York, at the Catholic Convent of the Sisters of the Poor, with my gay religious group, the Good Shepherd Christian Fellowship. So, it will be my happiest 3 days. Our little group regularly met in the basement of the Unitarian Church of Flushing, in Flushing Queens New York City.

What made this a particularly happy occasion was that the Sisters of the Poor knew exactly who we were and agreed to let us have our religious retreat. The theme of our weekend was exploration of the future possibilities of gay positive Christianity. To clarify, though we were meeting in a Catholic convent, this was not a Catholic event. The Good Shepherd Christian Fellowship was my attempt to get gay and Lesbian people to meet the local Protestant clergy. The religious retreat weekend itself was a business exchange with the owners of the Sisters of the Poor convent.

Still when we showed up, a Catholic priest greeted us warmly and graciously. The person who led the retreat was an out of the closet Lesbian Presbyterian minister. I wish I could remember her name. She was from South Haven Presbyterian Church on Long Island.

The convent no longer had any resident nuns (sisters) as it used to have. They all grew old and passed on, but their convent was maintained beautifully. There was no such thing as a younger generation of wannabe nuns, or novices. We all got a good idea of how the Catholic Church treated these nuns. The housing was very comfortable. Each nun had her own room (rather than a “cell”). There was a large kitchen where they prepared their meals. The convent or nunnery was located on a beautiful ten-acre park on top of a small mountain overlooking the Hudson River. The whole setting was beautiful. I was even impressed when I heard the mission of the Sisters. They went into town and literally helped the poor and homeless in the local towns as opposed to leading a comfortable leisurely contemplative life at the convent.

The point is that, when most gay libbers react to churchdom, understandably they react with extreme hostility and mistrust. They become anticlerical atheists, etc. actually they react in a manner similar to that of my skeptical parents.

On the other hand, I am somewhat friendly to churchdom myself especially since our current political and educational establishment exclude people who think the way I do -- progressives. It is time to turn to the churches to get our progressive agenda realized. At least, so I like to fantasize.

Still, I did my bit to get gay men and Lesbian women in my local neighborhood to talk to the local liberal Protestant clergy. One Reformed Church of America minister led our service; William Cameron, led our service when our group asked him. He was embarrassed and seemed a little awkward. But he did do the job.

On another occasion, an Episcopal priest from the nearby hospital for terminal children agreed to lead our service, and did so two or three times, but this upset the Episcopal priest in charge of Saint John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the Unitarian Church. So the St. John’s priest led our services several times. He explained that the Episcopal priest broke some Episcopal Church rule when he led our services. Both of these Episcopal priests met and settled their dispute. Both were out of the closet gay men. Which proves we gay men have friends and allies inside these churches.

I think gay and Lesbian people should talk to the American Protestant clergy and ask them to give us status as an at-risk minority group, and the reformed churches should support our gay rights agenda. And they should cooperate in all attempts on educating the public on the evils of homophobia. Many reformed churches have said yes to this proposal. That is, the churches are giving us what we want and need.

For a few years before me, Dignity Queens, the gay Catholics, held services in the same basement of the Unitarian Church of Flushing. And I frequently attended these services. I tried to offer a Protestant alternative. It sort of worked but I did not get the help I needed for promotion of my ministry.

26 October 2016

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA's. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.