Keyhole, by Phillip Hoyle

These days I sometimes have trouble fitting the key into the keyhole. Luckily, since retirement, I carry only one rather ordinary key. The problem is not with our front door lock. No, it’s the specialized keys that cause me the greatest challenge, like those on the free lockers at the Denver Art Museum. The funny key doesn’t want to go in either way I try, upside or down. I’m sure it’s due to my rather clumsy ways and inaccurate perception of angles. But I persist and do eventually get the key in, retrieve my backpack and the refunded quarter as well.

But another meaning of keyhole intrigues me. I recall as a child hoping to peek through a keyhole and see something unusual. Could one solve a mystery with just one peek? I looked but never saw anything interesting. If I knew the room already, the view was too focused. If I didn’t know it, I had no idea what I was looking at. But these were mostly childhood games of imagination.

My fascination with exotic places, one fed by my constant reading, took me around the world in my mind, introduced me to new cultures, customs, and costumes. Of course such views were limited to keyhole glimpses. I wanted more. I kept reading. I had a few other experiences living in an army town, where I appreciated my schoolmates, quite a few who came from or had lived in other countries, ones who sometimes looked and dressed differently. I liked that; I liked them. I scoured National Geographic magazines whenever they were available. I found myself engaged rather than put off by difference.

But was I only deluded? Was I making keyhole peeks to see only what I thought was there? I’m sure in many ways the answer is yes. That seems to be the way things are. But I kept looking, reading, and saying ‘hi’ to the unusual. I liked life in Kansas but still kept looking around through keyholes and kept scanning the horizon.

Here there is a larger story. By here I mean in this very room where LGBTQA folk tell their stories. Telling Your Story gatherings provide keyhole glimpses into other people’s perspectives and lives. Along with the public libraries and local museums, I count our weekly storytelling my greatest Denver life gift. I like providing these glimpses, but mostly I love hearing them, each one an invitation to see a wider world.

Recently I sent one of the stories I had told this group to the writing critique group I am a part of. The varied responses surprised me. Of course, that group’s purpose is to figure out what the piece is about, advise the writer what the reader found effective, and to share questions raised by the story or some detail in it—in that order. I was surprised to find that questions about my actions (as well as my writing) came in the opening statements. Somehow my behaviors in midlife seemed so bad they had to be confronted from the beginning. I’ll not go into the content of that here, but I thought how different that was compared with this SAGE group’s reactions when I first read the story. The discussion in the critique group was lively. In it one participant suggested that perhaps her reaction came from not knowing how to write to an LGBT audience. As the talk continued, another exasperated person said, “I feel like I’ve become the Church Lady.”

I became acutely aware how different were the responses of the two groups. In saying these things I’m not critical of my critique group’s insights or of their rather visceral reactions. Of course, I have done things that have not been good. I just thought moral issues were differentiated from writing issues and separated from them. Maybe what they saw through the keyhole of that story surprised them. Of course I forgive them. They’re nice people and one of them is certainly as queer as I am.

I do believe that assumptions get in the way for some readers and listeners when the experiences described seem too different. Prejudice has a lot to do with that as does the keyhole effect of not seeing the larger picture. Glimpses can give only micro views.

But then I remember I’ve always liked the peculiar, had long hoped someday to say with Dorothy, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

© 16 July 2018

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