When I Identified, by Phillip Hoyle

In college I was studying to be a minister and a musician. I had been in preparation for both for years in a family deeply involved in the church’s work of education, administration, eldership, and music. In this last category Dad was the church organist and all of us kids sang in church and school choirs. In undergraduate years I studied Bible and theology and eventually added a major in sacred music. Choral and vocal music were my great passion. I also liked teaching although not preaching.

Identifying just where I would work in the church showed me how much I treasured the music and educational ministries. I worked hard in these areas for years directing choirs, developing music libraries, writing curriculum resources, organizing special events, supporting time-worn groups like Sunday School, teacher training, Bible studies, and the like. I organized drama programs, directed musicals, planned special services and events, especially around holidays. I excelled in and enjoyed such work. I also did pastoral work, for example, making hospital calls, visits to care homes, marrying couples, burying the dead, memorializing people who figured large in the congregation or completely unknown to me. I preached but never identified as a preacher.

In seminary I learned that the Master of Ministry degree was the last surviving graduate professional degree designated as ‘generalist’. Given my experiences in several churches before I attended seminary, that idea seemed an apt description. While I liked the wide variety of work it demanded, I found myself more and more drawn to the artistic parts of events. If a design called for crafts, my goal was to make them art projects with freedom. I thought that this was the best way to communicate with children something lasting and religious. I wanted the kids to learn things they couldn’t forget and learn skills as well as information. So I planned art projects and eventually wanted to do that work myself beginning with collage, graduating to mixed media, drawing, and eventually painting. I attended art workshops. I enjoyed art for myself as well as for my church related work.

In Albuquerque, Cecelia Daniels, a woman in the congregation, gave me a book telling me she wanted to teach it with me. I read the book but didn’t really like Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way with its workshop approach and New Age and sometimes magical idea. I knew that Cecelia had years of training in group process and sensitivity training. I wanted to learn from her more than I wanted to teach. The thirteen weeks of the course somewhat changed my self-understanding. It also facilitated changes in other participants. Cameron’s Artistic Recovery spoke to me. While I hated the affirmations Cameron insisted I use daily, I wrote them anyway, even the one: “I, Phillip Hoyle, am a brilliant and prolific artist.” I forced myself to affirm that idea daily for many years always thinking: I’m not so sure about brilliant or prolific. (I still write it occasionally and still get emotionally stopped.) I know the problem is that I was a musician who didn’t really think of himself as an artist, a writer who didn’t think of himself as an artist. I realized I was always an artist mustered the courage to identify myself as one.

Identification as an artist was just as much a challenge to me as identifying myself as bisexual.

OH, this story was about WHEN.

I realized I was in love with a man when I was 30 years old. That was 40 years ago. I realized I was an artist when I was around 40 years old. Of course there were hints years before related to both identities. I wonder: is coming out or coming in or coming to really all that difficult? I suspect so, AND I suspect there are more identities to be adopted in the years to come. I just hope I’ll be sentient enough, brash enough, and happy enough to make them.

© 25 June 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

Running Away, by Gillian

I thought about this in the sense of escaping, but we're going to write about escape in a very few weeks so I'll skip that idea.

So now what? I guess I'll just have to re-cover some old ground and pepper it with quotations to make it seem more interesting!

Writing or talking of my mad dash from the closet, I have often likened it to hurtling along on a runaway train over which I had little, if any, control. It was almost as if I had never actually made that conscious decision to come out, although of course I had, at some level. But it didn't feel like that. It simply felt as if some wild-west movie train with a big old cow-catcher on the front had scooped me up and run away with me. (As Kimberly McCreight says, in Reconstructing Amelia, 'Sometimes its hard to tell how fast the current's moving until you're headed over a waterfall.''') I had no objection, but I was just along for the ride until we got wherever we were going. Doug Cooper, in Outside In, asks, 'Am I running away or moving forward?' It's difficult to feel firmly that you are moving forward when you have very little vision of where you are going. Yet in a way, I did know. I knew I was going to be openly gay. What I did not know was what exactly that meant. But that was not truly having no destination; rather it was having no experience or knowledge of that destination. As Glenda Millard says, in A Small Free Kiss in the Dark, 'Running away was easy; not knowing what to do next was the hard part.'

As a child I never remember harboring thoughts of running away, or wanting to. On the other hand I was often accused of letting my imagination run away with me. Thinking back on that now, it sounds very like a somewhat passive form of running away; which, in turn, sounds typical of me - back to the cowcatcher and that runaway train. I seem to have a pattern of allowing things to happen to me rather than proactively forcing the pace.

And, as I continue thoughts along that vein, that seems still to be true. Now it is time constantly running away with me. I am not running away from or towards anything. Life is close to perfect right where I am. But alas time is not content to let me be. Time rushes headlong at me from the moment I put a foot on the floor in the morning. It grabs me up and rushes me through the day. I am by nature an early riser; nevertheless before I have even planned my day it is lunchtime and before I actually start anything it's suppertime which means it's almost bedtime. Life is one constant rush to keep up with itself.

Why does it do that when we are running out of time, anyway? Surely time should slow down in order to preserve as much as possible of what is left; but no, off it speeds in a rush towards the point where it, or at least our portion of it, will, inevitably, run out.

And on that cheery note I shall give up on this topic. But I want one erudite end quote; something that will anchor my ramblings with style. I don't even have to turn to The Web, I already have the perfect words stored midst the jumble of quotations in my head.

“How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?”

Dr. Suess

© March 2018

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.

When I Knew, by Nicholas

Don’t you get tired of being asked, well, when did you know? I don’t know. Or, I always knew. When did you know? 

You know how it goes. If I knew then what I know now would I have done what I did? Or would I have done it sooner? 

When I knew was when I knew enough to know that I didn’t want to know. 

When I knew was when I noticed that my eyes were drawn to seeing men and that women were just walking by.

When I knew was when I began to see those men when they weren’t around. 

When I knew was when I began to see those men when my eyes were closed. 

When I knew was when I was out with a date and she gazed longingly at me while I was thinking: I should go. 

When I knew was when I saw men ballet dancers doing beautiful things with their beautiful bodies. Swaying, leaping, turning, lunging.

When I knew was when I saw a picture in the newspaper of men mourning the passage of a referendum rescinding a civil rights ordinance in St. Paul, Minnesota. I wanted to be with them.

When I knew was when I said to myself: I am goddam sick of being alone.

When I knew was when I walked up to the booth for Gay Rights at the Ohio state fair and said, I’m with you.

When I knew was when I knew I wanted to love those men.

When I knew was when I knew I wanted to be loved by those men.

When I knew was when a friend, soon to be a boyfriend, held me in his arms and got me naked. I’ve been naked ever since.

When I knew was when I a stranger walked into a Dignity meeting and said: God, I’m home.

That’s when I knew

© 2 April 2018

About the Author

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

Rolling Thunder, by Gillian

My mother was peeling potatoes. I was standing beside her shelling peas. It was not a dark and stormy night, but it was a relatively dark and very stormy morning. As we prepared Sunday lunch the thunder crashed above us, echoing up and down the valley where we lived as it always did. My dad came into the kitchen, saying, as he always did when it thundered,

"By 'eck, 'ear that thunder rrrroll."

(I chose this topic because I wanted to be able to say that! It wasn't until I returned home after a year's absence that I realized how strong a Welsh accent my father had. Of course, in my own defense, he was a man of so few words that perhaps it was not so surprising that I had never noticed his accent. By 'eck, 'ear that thunder rrrroll was about as verbose as he ever got!)

Mum and Dad and I all loved thunder storms. But this time my mother got a bit carried away in her enthusiasm and, potato peeler still in hand, opened the outside door to get a better look. Well, my mother never was the most practical of people! Simply opening the door invited the lightning bolt right in. It hit the knife blade, burned across the floor from Mum's feet to the chimney corner, up the wall and it was gone. It happened so fast we might have thought we imagined it except for the black scorched trail it left behind. My mother felt nothing and, though speechless with surprise, was unhurt.

That little incident might, I suppose, have dampened my enthusiasm for thunder storms but it did not. Roaming around this country in our camper van for twenty years, Betsy and I have sat in many a campground, cozy inside our van, reveling in the thunder crashes and the lightning flashes, the rain streaming down the windows as the van rocked in the howling wind. We watched smugly as the poor unfortunate tent campers struggled, out in the pouring rain, to prevent their wildly flapping tents from taking flight and chased rolling camp-chairs through the trees. The most memorable that I recall was on a hilltop in Missouri from which there was a spectacular 360 degrees view. In any direction we looked, countless streaks of lightning ripped across the angry black sky, the lightning flashes lighting up the night all around us. It really was breathtaking.

I still love thunder storms, and still greet then eagerly, but must confess that in recent years they have tended to come, around here anyway, with accompanying hail storms which a do not welcome. They can be so damaging to so many things, not the least of which is one's bank account.

Whenever I hear a good clap of serious thunder, I immediately hear my dad's voice rejoicing.

"By 'eck, 'ear that thunder rrrroll!"

But sadly my love of the expression rolling thunder was dampened during the Vietnam War, when Operation Rolling Thunder consisted of a sustained aerial bombardment of North Vietnam lasting from 1965 to 1968. During that period it is estimated that we killed approximately 72,000 North Vietnamese civilians. Of course, I really had to dig to find those numbers. We rarely hear of actual human beings dying. We hear that during Operation Rolling Thunder we dropped 864,000 tons of bombs on the North, inflicting physical damage valued at $370 million. Nice clean unemotional impersonal statistics, proudly proclaimed under the inoffensive name Rolling Thunder.

Of course none of this began or ended with Vietnam. I am no military historian - nor do I want to be - but I think this practice of naming military operations began in World War Two for purposes of secrecy. And of course it involved many countries, not just the U.S. The Allies had operations under such harmless names as Primrose and Croquet, Stonewall and Teardrop. The Nazis had Wonderland, Rainbow, Reindeer and Buffalo. At least I can understand the need for secrecy, but today there is nothing secret about these operational names. Rather we shout them out for the world to hear, these harmless-sounding names. Desert Storm suggested nothing worse than a little blowing sand. Valiant Guardian, in Iraq, had something of the kindly uncle about it. Operation Crescent Wind in Afghanistan, an effort to bomb hell out of The Taliban, is suggestive of nothing more violent than a gentle parasail above the cliffs. If we called these Operations what they really are, they would boast names like Operation Spreading Terror or Operation Killing Anything That Moves. But we sanitize everything. We don't murder innocent civilians. Instead we have collateral damage. Miriam-Webster defines collateral as: secondary, subordinate, indirect. I'll bet it doesn't seem any of those things to those who become collateral damage.

Good Lord, how on earth did I get so far off track? I suggested, and then chose, the anodyne topic of Rolling Thunder in order to have a gentle trip down Memory Lane. But somewhere I took a wrong turn and ended up in The Land of Ranting and Raving.

Enough!

The End

© November 2017

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.

Eye of the Storm, by Phillip Hoyle

I must have entered into the relationship through the eye of the storm. Our connection was pacific, even inspiring at the beginning, but somehow the eye passed and I found myself caught up in a hurricane of problems.

The calm beauty of our first nights together featured a sexual exploration like I had never before experienced, the two of us touching, responding, initiating, enjoying a reciprocal openness and delight. That second morning when I had to leave early—well 3:00 a.m.—to feed my visiting family, he again said, in a childlike voice, “Don’t go.”

“I have to go, but the kids leave today. I’ll meet you after work; we’ll have the whole night together. I’ll fix you breakfast.”

“I want to fix you breakfast,” he insisted.

That third night turned out like I’d hoped, and we basked in one another’s presence, held onto each other, actually slept in his bed. And then I was introduced to his skill as a cook, that breakfast the first of many meals we shared in following months.

But within a few weeks I knew he was HIV positive, was in deep legal trouble facing a third degree sexual assault charge, had twice tried to kill himself, had serious financial problems, was just newly out to his parents, was getting medical attention through Denver Health, had recently been in the hospital, had decided he wanted to stay well, and wanted me to move in with him right away. I also found out he was college educated, creative, funny, sweet, and made my heart pound extra fast whenever he showed up—always late. I was hopelessly in love with this guy in a way I had never experienced before. He said he was in love with me as well.

The storm brought many trips to the hospital and clinic for tests, imaging appointments, surgical procedures, examinations of new symptoms, introductions of new medications, and more. Fortunately the intensity of these problems was matched by the intensity of our enthusiasm for one another. Our days provided new revelations of our pasts, experiments of intimacy, delight in giving ourselves to each other through conversation, touch, laughter, dance, and food. Our storm was not a fight but rather an accommodation to delights that we hoped would have a long future. But as the weeks went on the specter of failure kept trying to get through the door that had been left ajar in spite of our love. We watched the building intensity of the storm, the complications of treatments, the appearance of symptom after symptom, the confusion of diagnoses. We were both wearing down, not in our love or commitment, but in our imagination of a future. And there were other challenges: work, exhaustion, and fear. Fear was my largest challenge. I had lost too many people from my life in the prior six years: parents, my marriage, a good friend, and the too-recent death of another lover. My grief over that loss had not sufficiently subsided. Still I was not thinking of running away. We were tight Rafael and I. But I wished I weren’t going through all this again, especially when I had never had such feelings of love with another human being.

My lover’s parents lived in Mexico. They had little English; I had little Spanish. I had wanted to meet them before another hospitalization. That didn’t happen. I met them as my lover’s condition complicated, as his death neared. The storm ended then, at least the main part of it. Yet a storm lingers in me. Fifteen years later it still roars on occasion.

The ancient Etruscans believed that once grief visits it never goes away. I have many joys, and in my old age can list grief after grief. Now I work hard to welcome grief as a friend, even when my losses do not feel particularly friendly. I keep looking for the eyes in new storms I encounter and appreciate the ways their calm equips me to live with acceptance and supports my overall joy in life.

© 9 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

Running Away, by Pat Gourley

“I don’t make history. I am history”

Joan Baez

As with many quotes, I begin my pieces with this one is tangential. In fact, it is so tangential that I may not be able to twist it around to the topic but I liked it so much after reading it in a recent New York Times (NYT) interview with her I had to use it.

I suppose one could easily make “running away” a metaphor for staying in the closet and this may have been the case for me personally way back when. Perhaps a physical running away was what my moving to Denver in 1972 with a straight woman and three other closeted gay men was really all about. None of us on this sojourn to the Queen City of the Plains were “out” to any of the others but suspicions were running high. Give us a bit of a break though since the powerful ripples created by Stonewall had yet to make it in any big way to the middle part of America we were fleeing from.

Though I pretty much was over any running away from being queer by the mid-1970’s I have still managed to do my fair share of running away in other areas of my life. I could have for example jumped-in head first to Radical Fairie politics and I think probably have actually moved in with Harry Hay and John Burnside or at least hitched my wagon to that trip in a much more intense way than I did. Harry ever so subtly over the years was always encouraging me to do more implying that I was not living up to my queer potential.

Running away though may have its advantages at times. For me in 1980 falling in love with the man who would be my loving companion until his death in 1995 had many advantages. This choice of staying in Denver rather than picking up and moving to L.A. to be near and much more involved with Hay and the Radical Fairies worked out well. And let’s face it I think I made a much better nurse than I would have made a full-time Queer Activist even one in the orbit of the mercurial and prophetic Harry Hay.

I could go on about other areas where I have turned tail and headed for the hills but enough about me. The newspaper the Wichita Eagle first reported this past week the death in Wichita Kansas of Adrian Lamo at the age of 37. Yes, I will be quoting from the Wichita Eagle which will probably never happen again though remember the Koch Brothers are also from Wichita, with Koch Industries based there, so never say never.

Lamo was a very adept hacker. Most notably he hacked into the NYT and Microsoft among others in the early 2000’s and was convicted of computer fraud in 2004.

His greatest notoriety though came from turning Chelsea Manning into the Feds in 2010. Manning had shared with him that she had turned over to Wikileaks a large trove of classified documents pertaining to the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan including clear evidence of American war crimes.

Manning had reached out to Lamo as someone she thought she could trust admiring, I suppose, his brazen hacks into very powerful organizations. And perhaps and I am speculating here she felt she could trust someone with clear ties to the LGBTQ community. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors had in 1998 appointed Lamo to the City’s LGBTQQ Youth task forcefile://localhost/. https/::www.wired.com:story:adrian-lamo-has-passed-away-at-37:

Lamo testified against Manning at her trial in 2013 and she was subsequently sentenced to 35 years in federal prison. This was the harshest sentence ever for a whistleblower. Barack Obama though commuted her sentence in 2016. A full pardon with honors and recognition as a true patriot would have been more appropriate but we’ll take the reduced sentence.

Quoting a friend of Lamo’s, one Lorraine Murphy, from the Wichita Eagle piece of March 16th, 2018 she described him “as someone who bounced around a great deal… He was a believer in the geographic cure. Whatever goes wrong in your life, moving will make it better.” http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article205629184.html

The “geographic cure” is something synonymous I would say with “running away” and engaged in I suspect in a disproportionate manner historically by queer folk everywhere.

Lamo was quite open apparently about queer aspects of his life but he seems to have been a poor soul often running away from something. I certainly do not know enough about the man to speculate what sort of ghosts were chasing him. Unfortunately, he is now dead and Chelsea Manning is alive and thriving and running for elected office in Virginia. Maybe the better part of valor is to face things head-on and not pick up and run away.

And though she may think she is no longer making history Joan Baez has never as far as I can tell ever run away from anything and neither did Chelsea Manning. Both women are heroines I can try to emulate in my own life and invoke when the temptation to run away presents itself, as it certainly will again.

© March 2018

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.

Reading, by Gillian

I was probably lonely as a child. I had good friends at school but when school was out I had no nearby children to play with, and I had no siblings. But I don't recall ever feeling lonely as I was always accompanied by friends from books. (I originally wrote 'from fiction' but as The Bible was one of the few books available to me, I imagine some might take exception to including The Bible as fiction.)

I say few books were available not because of any failure on the part of my family to love books, but because paper was scarce in post-war Britain and so few books were published. There was a library in the local town but that was a long and infrequent bus ride away.

So my personal book collection contained four Winnie the Pooh books, published long before the war and once belonging to my mother, an old and very tattered family Bible, and a book called Mystery at Witchend by Malcolm Saville, a prolific author of children's books in Britain in the 1940's and '50's.

So I roamed the countryside accompanied sometimes by the roly poly Pooh and a bouncing Tigger, sometimes by all or some of the five children from Witchend who formed The Lone Pine Club and together had many harmless adventures and solved gentle crimes with never a hint of violence. Indeed the only violence I ever read about was in The Bible. But the Jesus who occasionally accompanied me was the gentle fatherly figure depicted in The Children's Pictorial Bible which we read in Sunday School. Because of one of the pictures in this book, my friend Jesus always had a lamb draped around his neck like a fat wooly scarf. Looking back I rather suspect that my child mind had confused the picture of Jesus with one of the shepherds greeting His birth, but never mind. As Jesus and I frequently walked through fields dotted with grazing sheep my vision was appropriate enough.

Fast forward a few decades. I am in my early forties and finally coming out to myself, and very shortly after, to others. So. I was homosexual. A lesbian. What did that mean? Obviously I knew the meaning of the words, the definition, but what did it mean? To me, to my life. Where did I go from here? I felt very alone. Who could I talk to about all this? My friends might be very supportive, but what could they tell me? No-one I knew would have any answers.

So of course I turned to books and headed for the library. This was before the advent of internet so I searched through the catalog card files, in their long narrow boxes, for the pertinent categories. Although I was 'out' to anyone who mattered, I must confess to peeking furtively over my shoulder as I searched the LESBIAN section, the word seeming about a foot high and glaringly obvious to all who passed by.

There was amazingly little available regarding lesbians at that time, fiction or non-fiction.

What little there was, was awful. I rushed home with the few books on the library shelf, avidly read them, and wondered why I had bothered. Beyond depressing, they were just plain frightening. If this was where I was headed, I was in serious trouble. The Well of Loneliness, by Radcliffe Hall, was my introduction to lesbian fiction; one of the most depressing books I have ever read. The title alone, if you know that is the road you are now taking, is enough to to make you rush back in the closet and throw away the key. This book has become something of 'classic' in the lesbian world, in the sense that most of us have read it, though not a 'classic' in a positive sense as any mention of it is greeted by groans. I don't recall now the titles of the other few books, but in all of them the lesbian character seemed destined for a life of abject misery, or suicide, or else they are saved by a return to heterosexuality. My reaction to this introduction to lesbian fiction was, essentially, what the hell have I done??

So, lacking new characters to jump from the pages and accompany me, I thought longingly of my childhood buddies. Somehow I didn't think they would be much help. Pooh Bear would just sink his chubby head further into his honey pot, Tigger and Kanga are too busy bouncing and hopping to listen. Eeyore would say, as always,

'It doesn't matter anyway.'

But it does. It matters very much.

Those kids from the heterogeneous, clean-scrubbed families of Witchend, would look ascanse at each other and say,

'Oh dear oh dear but this is awfully difficult,'

and probably run home to mother.

I, who do not identify as a Christian, actually did have a little chat with Jesus. And He actually helped. Asking myself the question what would Jesus do, I answered myself, with every confidence, that he would love me and accept me whoever and whatever I am.

Pretty soon, I discovered Beebo's bookstore in Louisville and discovered that there really were positive portrayals of fictional lesbians. Claimed as the first of these is Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, in which neither of the two women has a nervous breakdown, dies tragically, faces a lonely and desolate future, commits suicide, or returns to being with a male. But by then I no longer had need for fictitious playmates. Women at Beebo's had introduced me to the life-saving - or at least lesbian-saving - Boulder group TLC, The Lesbian Connection, which in turn introduced me to many wonderful women; real women, who in turn led me to my Beautiful Betsy.

With a real woman like that, who needs fiction?

© November 2017

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.

Get Over It, by Terry Dart

Kind of cranky sounding. But crankiness can be par for the course when one has gone past middle age. There have to be some perks to the added aches and pains of ageing.

Well, get over that we are older. Our appearance is no longer like the “unearned beauty” of the young. We move slowly, may drive more cautiously and more slowly.

We may not be hell bound to hurry everything we are doing, to rush hither and thither.

We may use such expressions as thither and thither, cool, or far out. We may want you to shut up during the movie. Or, we may talk during the movie. However that would be rogue behavior, since the rude-aged usually have died off before having had a chance to develop a sturdy, consistent rudeness.

Perhaps we elders have things we should “get over,” But at our ages we can forgive ourselves for putting that off.

This is quite brief; even briefer than usual for me. Too bad we aren’t discussing books we have read or poetry or sports or the importance of Mount Rushmore, or the Fourth of July, or current events, or snails, or sea shells, or favorite fonts.

I suppose I will just get over it.

© 2 July 2018

About the Author

I am an artist and writer after having spent the greater part of my career serving variously as a child care counselor, a special needs teacher, a mental health worker with teens and young adults, and a home health care giver for elderly and Alzheimer patients. Now that I am in my senior years I have returned to writing and art, which I have enjoyed throughout my life.

Losing Touch, by Gillian

I will, before long, I expect; I'm rapidly losing other senses. My hearing is not too bad, but I don't seem to smell the wet grass or the salty ocean with the strength I did as a child. Fresh strawberries and tomatoes right off the vine sure don't taste as good as they once did, and my eyesight is battling the effects of glaucoma, so I have little reason to expect my sense of touch not to deteriorate. My mother had terribly inadequate blood circulation, leading to frequent complaints of not being able to feel her hands and feet, or feel with them. She would put me to work peeling potatoes, slicing bread, shelling peas or folding the linens, because, she said, she could not feel what her fingers might be up to. After she cut herself twice and then dropped our best kitchen knife on the stone kitchen floor where it broke, she was only allowed anywhere near a knife on really hot days - rare events in my pre-global-climate-change England. I don't seem to have inherited that problem, but my Beautiful Betsy has exactly the same thing so before long I shall probably be called upon to perform all our household chores involving sharp utensils.

My dad lost touch. Sadly, it was not a problem with his fingers and toes but with his mind; his very being. Through dementia he lost touch with everyone and everything, including himself.

I first noticed some confusion on a visit home when he was in his early seventies - a little younger than I am now. I mentioned my concern to Mum but she shrugged it off with, well, Dear, I'm sure our minds aren't quite as sharp as they once were. But she exhibited none of it, I noticed, and in fact she never did and was sharp as a tack till the day she died. I, of course, was living in Colorado and only saw them once a year or so, though out of necessity my visits became more frequent and of greater duration as they aged. The next time I returned, after this particular trip, I was aghast at my father's mental deterioration. It was harrowing; heartbreaking.

He floated in and out, drifting from lesser to greater confusion and back again, all the time knowing he was losing touch. At one stage he held his wrist towards me, tapping at his watch - a much-valued possession. He gazed at it, then looked at me with tears and a look of such anguish in his eyes that I almost burst into tears myself, but of course I knew I must not.

'I can't remember,' he faltered.

'What is this? How do I make it work? What does it do?'

'Oh .. um ... nothing much ...'

I ran my fingers gently over it. I had to put some cheer in my voice.

'It sure is a beautiful thing, isn't it? I tried, desperately.

'It is,' he agreed. And smiled.

Not many visits later I returned to see him safely settled into a memory care facility. By then it was easier on all of us. He no longer drifted in and out of differing cognitions. He had no idea who I was or who Mum was or who he was. He no longer struggled with what his watch was for.

He seemed remarkably at peace, so Mum and I were able to find peace for ourselves.

Right now, I am losing touch myself, though not, thank you God, in the way my dad did; at least not yet. Rather, I make a conscious effort to lose touch. I can only inhabit this current socio-political reality for a limited amount of time. I simply have to escape. If Agent Orange can inhabit a reality that is all of his own making, then surely, I can escape to my own alternate reality on occasion? I have a collection of home-made VCR tapes, mostly of ancient Brit sitcoms. Some of these shows are really pretty bad, but in my alternate reality the worse they are the better I enjoy them. So, most evenings I head for the basement TV, descending to my alternate reality as I say to Betsy. Though to be honest even bad Brit sitcoms reach a higher standard than this current American reality show in which we find ourselves, so in fact I am rising up to my alternate reality.

Margaret Atwood says -

'You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.'

Sorry, Margaret, I'm a fan of yours but I tried it and I didn't like it. I reserve the right to lose touch.

© February 2018

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.

The Effects of Side Effects, by Nicholas

I went to see my doctor the other day. In the course of our visit, I told him that I did not like a medication he put me on a year ago. The medicine seems to work OK in helping me keep my blood pressure at acceptable levels. But I told him I did not care for some of the side effects and I wondered if there was something else that didn’t have those side effects. There are, after all, a million blood pressure meds available.

Yes, of course, he said, here is something else you can take and handed me a new prescription. Great, I thought. I can get rid of those annoying problems. When I got the script filled, the pharmacist asked me if I’d used this med before. I explained to him that this was new to me to avoid the side effects of another med. Yes, he said, it will not give you those problems, but it will cause other side effects, like slowing your heart rate and you might get tired more easily.

But I get tired already, I thought. I don’t need a medication to enhance that. I went home and got on the computer and started Googling this med to see what else it might do that I should be warned about. Up popped a long list of side effects from fatigue to constipation to sleeplessness and about 20 other things I don’t really need help with. I stopped at “in rare cases, may cause an urge to suicide.” So, I guess I’ll stay away from railroad crossings and high bridges.

I sighed. It seemed I was just swapping one unpleasantry for another unpleasantry.

Why is it that medications produce only negative side effects? I want medication with positive side effects. Like these.

Imagine these warnings as part of the requirement for truth in labeling. This medication:

1. May cause a sunny disposition.

2. May enable you to laugh more—even at jokes that aren’t actually that funny.

3. Will enhance the taste of chocolate, especially with red wine, even the cheap stuff from Trader Joe’s.

4. Warning about operating a vehicle: When starting this medication, get in your car and drive. Go as far as you want.

5. Can cause a rash of good feeling toward others.

6. Can cause an itch to travel to exotic places where people wear less clothing.

7. Can make you laugh. If laughing lasts more than four hours, seek medical treatment immediately.

8. May stimulate an urge to listen to old Joan Baez records. Stop taking immediately if listening to Joan Baez for more than four hours.

9. Call your doctor if you notice a funny story to tell about your dog or cat.

10. In rare cases, can improve your tennis serve.

11. Can diminish your fear of Republicans.

12. Do take if you are pregnant, planning to become pregnant, or otherwise will be around children of any age.

13. May cause constipation—in people you don’t like.

14. May cause you to fall in love with the next person you see. Do not administer more than six doses in a 24-hour period.

15. May increase your need to eat banana cream pie.

16. May increase agility on the dance floor.

17. May decrease your urge to read a newspaper or watch the news on TV.

In rare cases, some users of this medication have reported that it actually worked. So, don’t go killing yourself.

© 22 April 2018


About the Author

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

Bumper Stickers, by Betsy

So, why do people put stickers on their bumpers? The reasons probably vary from person to person. In my opinion most do it for identity reasons. They want the rest of the world to know who they are. Rather than putting a sticker on their chest or bum they put it on their bumper. After all, signs are specifically made for car bumpers and are readily available for purchase or for making a donation or showing support.

Another reason I think some people sport bumper stickers is that they think it will help to bring about that which they are promoting For example, the election of a particular candidate, or a more peaceful society (War is Not the Answer, Life is Short, Pray Hard, Close Guantanamo, better gun control, etc. ) You name it, there is a bumper sticker for just about any cause. But again, I think a cause soon becomes a part of one’s identity. And if you have a bumper sticker promoting your cause, you better stick with it because it ain’t comin’ off any time soon

Traveling in the northwest many years ago I saw this one: an image of an erupting volcano inside a circle with a line through it. I wondered who put this out. Could there be a movement starting dedicated to stopping volcanoes from erupting? Another one I saw in our travels also on the west coast somewhere. This one is even better than the one that addresses the volcano problem: STOP PLATE TECTONICS. That one was hysterical. I assume the people driving those vehicles want to be funny. I don’t suppose they actually think they can stop........hmmm, I wonder. No, surely they don’t think they can................?? Now wouldn’t that be the ultimate in arrogance. I think they just have a good sense of humor.

Personally, I don’t like bumper stickers because they are impossible to take off the bumper once you put it on. There are solvents that will take off the residual adhesive. The down side is they also remove the paint. So I think twice before sticking the thing on there. One day you feel strongly about a cause. The next day you change your mind about whatever you are promoting. Or let’s say you want to change your image. It’s very hard to get rid of the old labels be they in people’s minds and perceptions or on your bumper. I would like some of the adhesive that is used to stick on bumper stickers; that is, I would like to have a supply of it at home. It’s stronger and longer lasting than super glue.

I guess the lesson of the bumper sticker is: be sure who you want to be or at least who you want to appear to be before you take on a label.

© 5 Jan 2015

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

The Truth Is, by Phillip Hoyle

Sometimes we actually search for the truth. Sometimes we think we have found it. Sometimes we are sure it is eluding us. Sometimes we may confess we know nothing of the truth.

I’m sure I went to college to find out the truth. After working a few years, I went on to graduate school because I needed a change in my career. I went on to graduate seminary because in graduate school I discovered I’d rather work in churches than teach in a college. Churches provided greater opportunity for variety. That’s the truth; I valued variety over depth. Still, I got to teach, to study, to use professional time for research, to write, to make music, to encourage people. I was not interested to present any capital T Truth in sermons that people would try hard to believe. Rather, I sought to challenge people in their own best interest to think, to consider, and to commit themselves to a way of life guided by the wisdom of the ages as understood through a modern take on the worlds of reality and belief. To me that seemed close enough to the truth.

My take on ethics and morality was somehow personal and took into view the wisdom of my teachers beginning with the Bible, a positive view of the human body, an appreciation of diversity in human experience and values, a commitment to democracy, and a fascination with new ideas and consequences. The truth is that my commitments suited my ministry but did not make me an especially successful minister. Luckily, I got to work in larger congregations where I could pursue my greater interests.

So now some non-truth sermonic thoughts:

The Bible has no word for “The Truth.” It does like when people are “true”, but that has to do with how they act toward other people, not their adherence to some kind of doctrine. There are two important concepts, though, that have to be accounted for. First is a metaphor, “the word of God”, second an expression, “the apostolic tradition”. The word of God is the common religious territory of Jewish and Christian concern. It was spoken and eventually written. The writings were in Hebrew (gathered over several hundred years), Koine Greek (telling stories and advice that originated in Aramaic of the first century Common Era) and hopefully all retranslated into many newer languages by reliable witnesses. Christianity, in response to the demands of the non-Christian Emperor Constantine had to agree on their beliefs so they could be certified by the Roman Empire. Writing a creed had some benefit; it stopped some of the persecution from the outside. Sadly it also created the ability for Christians to begin persecuting one another over doctrinal matters, a practice that has not subsided since the third century Common Era. In all, orthodoxy has become a sad song for the church to sing. All the beautiful chants and motets, cantatas and oratorios, organs in chapels, churches, and cathedrals, all the sacred classical and popular instruments of Christians across the world over cannot create enough beauty to atone for the evil Christians have wreaked upon themselves and too often upon the rest of the world. And that’s the truth, but not the only truth.

Of course religions also create a lot of love, benevolence, and community as their members emulate the loving acts of the divine, when they live into the spirit rather than the law of their order. That also is the truth in the view of this sometime preacher. I choose to operate these days as a Christian, no matter what any other Christian may think of my life, behaviors, and beliefs. I chose to follow the simple-to-say although difficult-to-live ethic of Jesus, my religious teacher, who said: “Act toward others as you would have them act toward you. Love your enemies. Do good to those who would despitefully use you. Turn the other cheek. Forgive as you would like to be forgiven. As you have acted towards the simplest, neediest, helpless, unimportant, or despicable people, you have done it to me.” This kind of dynamism could change the world, but so far it has not done so. Few enough have even tried to follow such wisdom. And that’s the truth.

And this is the end of my little preach. Amen.

© 23 April 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

Epiphanies and Little Things Mean a Lot, by Ricky

Epiphanies are generally associated with religious experiences, but they can occur over nearly any subject, topic, or event. It is not an important distinction whether or not the Divine brings on that flash of insight, or our subconscious mind finally “connects-all-the-dots.” That is to say, the distinction may be important to someone’s world-view and not to someone else’s. The point here is that nearly everyone has experienced an epiphany or flash of insight at some time in their life, from whatever cause.

I once thought that epiphanies were all major events or flashes of insight which would lead a person to change their entire future life, as when Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus or when the Founding Fathers banded together to form our nation. I have had my share of major epiphanies from life changing to mundane during my time on earth. The most recent I would call a major one, but it only came to me at this point in my life when it is nearly too late to recover from neglecting the whole point, lesson, or message of the epiphany. The major flash of insight, revelation, or brain-connecting-the-dots event was how the little things mean a lot more than we generally believe – until later in life when their influence or impact becomes crystal clear.

In the past couple of weeks, I had my epiphany of the little things in my life that had major impacts over time and affect me until today and beyond. This epiphany was not possible for me to have, understand, and believe until I reached the age where it all makes sense due to hindsight.

The first one I remember is when I received that major spanking when I was 4 or 5 of which I have written about before. That was the time my father spanked me for “playing with my penis” instead of being “disobedient” for not getting dressed. A small mistake on his part, just a little thing, but the result had a tremendous impact on my future. I learned from that experience to keep secrets about anything, but especially penis and nudity related. I don't fault my parents for this over reaction. They had no idea I was mildly ADD and easily distracted, which was why I wasn't getting dressed in the first place. At that age, if not before, most kids explore their bodies and that spanking was an over reaction to natural and innocent curiosity and not precocious sexual lust.

The next small thing was being sent to live with my grandparents while my parents went through the divorce process totally unknown to me. Now my feelings at the time were excited when I first went, but at the end of the first summer, I was ready to go home. Somehow, my mother talked me into staying to go to school there. That did not make me happy, but I liked the Cambridge public school better than the Hawthorne Christian School I had been attending in California. The problem occurred when 1½ years later my father arrived during the last week of Christmas vacation. His mistake was to wait until the night before he left before telling me about the divorce. He should have told me immediately when he arrived, so we could grieve together. It was a little thing, but with major consequences. As a result, for the next 53 years I was emotionally incomplete as my brain shut off all negative physical sensations and feelings regarding separations and loss in order to stop my physical and mental pain.

Other little epiphanies I have experienced are not really life changing but more like signposts along the way indicating the right road or providing guidance on current situations. An example of one of these types is when visiting the hospital, the daughter of the man who was ill was talking to me and another couple in the room. Suddenly, I “knew” that she was emotionally charged and needed to vent. So, I held out my arms and she “fell” into them and cried on my shoulder while I hugged her. It was just a small thing, but I remember it as a “it-made-me-happy to comfort-another” thing.

Life is not normally made up of major epiphanies, unless one is a legitimate prophet of the Divine or otherwise visionary. Rather, life is composed of little ordinary events, which can have minor or great impact on our futures. More examples are “Look mommy, I can read this”; “The sunset is beautiful”; “Daddy likes to take me bowling”; “Mommy loves the cards I send her”; “My parents came to watch all my games”; Or “I’m not rich, but I live better than most of the world’s population.”

So, my late in life epiphany is that all the small things in my life taken as a whole from the perspective of senior status, all point to one conclusion, I am loved. Loved by many people and most importantly loved by the Divine. It is still not too late to spread some of that love around to those who really need to feel it. Who knows, maybe my small random acts of kindness will lead to someone else’s epiphany.

© August 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

Utopia, by Pat Gourley

The first thing that comes to my mind with the word Utopia is the Chinese café in San Francisco’s Chinatown located at 139 Waverly Place aptly named the Utopia Café. I stumbled on this sometime in the early 1990’s I believe though I could not find a date when it was first opened as a café despite a rather extensive Google search. I am quite certain though that I was there at least once with my partner David who died in 1995 and many times since. Any trip to OZ, and there have been many, almost always entails a trip to this eatery.

David and I may have happened on Waverly Alley trying to escape the crowds on Grant Street the main tourist drag through Chinatown. We were probably cruising through Chinatown one day killing a few hours before we headed south in our rental car for a Grateful Dead show down the peninsula in Mountainview at the Shoreline amphitheater.

Several of Chinatown’s most interesting alleys are just to the west of Grant, between Stockton and Grant. Or perhaps we ended up in Waverly Alley following a tip gleaned from Amy Tan’s wonderful novel The Joy Luck Club that was published in 1989.

The Joy Luck Club is the story of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their four American born daughters and their often-complex relationships entailing the dynamic push and pull between old world China and west coast America. The mothers formed their group and called themselves the Joy Luck Club in 1949 and began meeting at the First Chinese Baptist Church located at 15 Waverly Alley. They obviously met for camaraderie and emotional support but also for conversation, to eat good food and play Mahjong. All activities relished by concerned immigrant mothers raising daughters in post WWII California.

A simplistic description of Mahjong would be to think of dominoes and that would not be the pizza. Playing for money was often involved. Many of us Sage folk may know what dominoes are all about and may have actually played. My father had a set and I think they were made of bone and not Ivory, at least I hope that was the case. Though growing up in conservative rural Indiana in the 1950’s concern for African elephants or artic walrus would never have crossed my mind.

Mahjong was also popular particularly post World War II among Jewish American women. Both Jewish and Chinese women were seen as using the game as a vehicle for bonding and community building. Similar I suppose to men playing poker but without I assume the beer and cigars and I’ll bet the food was considerably better than you would find at most card games.

When walking up from the south on Waverly Alley on one’s way to the Utopia Café you will pass the Tin How Temple. It is the oldest Taoist temple in San Francisco. It is located 3 flights up from the street. The temple provides a sensory burst of stimulation in the form of many colorful displays of tribute to Mazu the Chinese Goddess of Heaven all enveloped in shrouds of pungent incense. On the several visits I have made to the shrine it seems to most often be tended by elderly Chinese women who smile pleasantly especially when you drop a dollar or two into the donation box, with no words spoken. They do seem though to exude the three treasures of Taoism: compassion, frugality and humility.

It took me several trips up Waverly over the years to correctly identify the clicking sound I would hear often in conjunction with animated Chinese dialects I certainly could not identify. It turns out the clicking sound, often emanating from open basement doors, was the sound of clicking Mahjong tiles.

On my most recent trip to San Francisco, the last two weeks of February, I again made my pilgrimage to the Utopia Café; sadly no clicking Mahjong tiles were heard. It seems to have changed hands and undergone a modest remodel in the last year or so but the menu changes, primarily to a variety of noodle dishes, did not disappoint. Per usual I was the only non-Chinese person in the restaurant and had to wait a bit for a table to open. Shortly after being seated at the two-person table a young handsome Asian man was seated across from me. Other than quiet nods we did not speak throughout the meal. He actually never looked up from his phone except very briefly even when scooping up steaming noodles. As he was getting ready to leave, having eaten much faster than I and being more adept at chop sticks and spoon I noticed a Bronco decal a on the back of his phone. I was left to ponder whether or not he was from Denver and maybe visiting family. However seeing him in the Utopia Café was further validation that this was a restaurant worthy of even out of town Chinese clientele.

Though it would be somewhat over the top to describe this modest café and its simple fare as ideal perfection it has on several occasions come pretty darn close. A warm bowl of noodles nestled in a tasty broth and topped with greens served with hot jasmine tea on a cold rainy San Francisco winter day sounds pretty Utopian to me.

© March 2018

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.

Ah, springtime! by Nicholas

I love winter. I love putting the gardens to bed before the freeze sets in. I like the bracing cold and bundling up with scarves and gloves. I love a snowy night huddling up under a blanket to read. I love seeing the snow in the trees. I like the heightened sense of distinction of warm shelter inside and cold outside. I even like the darkness and sleeping in.

But come April, whether the winter has been heavy or light or, like this year, absent, I am ready to throw off all that and welcome the first signs of spring. Whether or not there was much of a freeze, there is always a warm thaw. It feels so good to emerge into the sunshine of a warm day. Each morning gets lighter a little earlier and each evening the light stays a little longer. Soon, I will be awakened around dawn by the birds singing to let the whole neighborhood know that they’re here looking for love in the springtime.
It’s wonderful to see the return of colors in the first blooms—the yellow forsythia always announces the coming of spring in my yard by early March. Then comes the blue of the crocus, the daffodils, the red, yellow, and orange tulips, the white crabapple and, most glorious of all, the purple/magenta of the redbud trees. Already the bees are showing up looking for food in the early blooms.

Because seasons transition gradually and at their own pace, the spring colors can find themselves wearing a topping of winter white. Spring snow has its own beauty—at least when it is not crushing the new flowers with its weight. The other morning, the yellow forsythia seemed even brighter with a white edge on the blooms.

Now it feels great to be outside without battling the elements. It is time to get outside. Time for no jacket and scarf. Of course, other elements present problems—like wind. One day I got out for a bike ride—out from my basement spinning—and was lashed with gusts of wind. Felt good to get outside but my eyes were smarting from the wind and dust.

I am amazed at how quickly the dead brown grass turned a brilliant green. Just a little moisture from snow and rain is all it took.

Jamie and I just finished aerating the little bit of lawn we have— most of our yard is planted in shrubs and perennials and not grass. Next, I will begin to turn over the garden plot to get it ready for planting.

Spring is when I rediscover my garden. Start pulling weeds— weeds always seem to get a jump start on all other plants. I start to uncover the garden from its winter mulch or just junk accumulated or blown into place by the winter wind. I see what has survived and what needs help. The rosemary bush seems to have survived another winter although it needs a good pruning of the winter kill branches. The sage is sprouting new leaves and the tarragon is starting to grow again. Best of all, the arugula and the chives can be picked for delicious spring salads. We are already eating from our backyard. And of course, I start to envision where the new garden will be planted so I will have summer tomatoes and squash and basil and eggplant.

By June, I will be looking forward to the dry heat and the easy living of summer. And all the fresh fruits and vegetables. And then I will look forward again to the cool relief of autumn which will lead again into the cold of winter and the return indoors. But now it is spring and time to watch the earth come back to life.

© 15 April 2018 

About the Author

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

Losing Touch, by Pat Gourley

I suspect when it comes to losing touch sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes not. Facebook for example seems to be a very powerful tool for reconnecting and staying in touch with folks and not just old school friends but often extended family members. I have used social media to reconnect with long lost friends and relatives and I would probably not remember even my own birthday without a Facebook notification.

For me this reconnecting with especially cousins I have lost touch with has at times been very interesting. I soon realized based on some of their posts that a few of them are bat-shit crazy. In part this seems very possibly related to the fact that they never got the hell out of rural Indiana. Though I rarely post anything to Facebook it has been for the most part fun to reconnect with relatives even the ones who I deeply suspect are Trump supporters. What is the old saying? “Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.” I am not saying any of my relatives are enemies but a few of them are I am sure not on any gay wedding guest lists.

Actually not wanting to offend any of my more conservative friends and relatives does act as good censoring barrier as to what little I do post on Facebook. For example I thought better of posting one of the better signs from the recent Women’s March here in Denver. It was a photo of a sign that read: “I am more pissed off than a Russian hooker.” That is a sentiment I am totally in agreement with but one that would not have gone over too well with my southern Indiana cousins I suspect.

The Internet, Facebook and Instagram all seem to be conspiring to keep us from losing touch whether we want that to be the case or not. Think for a minute about what Facebook knows about you simply based on their lists of “suggested” friends or ‘tagging” someone you may know and suggesting you should really become friends with all their friends ASAP. Remember when it might have taken years of getting to know someone before calling him or her a friend and now that status in your life is simply a click of your index finger away.

A recent example of various unsolicited entities being aware of my business in a rather eerie way was my online search for a new garbage disposal. I had searched through Google for a particular brand of disposal and in a matter of hours an ad for this same item had appeared in my Facebook feed.

It probably does not come as a surprise to many of you that when cleaning house or doing dishes I will go to You Tube for a music video by the Grateful Dead or the current incarnation Dead and Company. This has resulted in my Facebook feed again being clogged with many ads for the latest Dead merchandise and trust me it is endless. And just because of clicking or liking one article about one band I really don’t need to know what every jam band on the face of the earth is up to.

Though I think there are many reasons we should be concerned about the deep state, i.e. FBI, NSA and CIA being the ones we know most about, it really is corporate America that is in our business a thousand ways to hell every single minute of every hour of the day. It would be nice to research garbage disposals or listen on line to the umpteenth version of Dark Star without it resulting in an obnoxious marketing barrage.

So this rant on how everyone on earth is really always in touch these days, and I haven’t even gotten to our cell phones, could go on much longer but let me close with a concern I have. Are we really just lowering the bar as to what constitutes staying in touch in a meaningful manner and debasing many of our relationships with just the latest emoji?

© February 2018

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.

You Don't Want to Go There, by Louis Brown

You don’t want to go there: The Dominican Republic

Though it is true Dominican men are in general very appealing to look at, so are Sicilian and Italian men. One of the reasons I originally went to the Dominican Republic was to find out how third world people survive. I have since learned that, although the Dominican Republic is very poor, it is not the poorest of the third world nations. The first trip I took back in the early 1990’s was with my union, Local 371 of the NYC Human Resources Administration.

The second time I went there in 1995 on my own I met Leonardo Rojas. He introduced me to his family. His mother, father, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers lived on a small dirt farm about 40 miles north of Juan Dolio which is on the south shore of the Dominican Republic. Juan Dolio is about 4 miles east of Boca Chica. I also observed a few other farms of various local families.

In our neighborhood in Wheat Ridge and Lakewood, many home-owners have tool sheds in their backyards. In the area of the Dominican Republic that I visited that was what one called a house, a casa. Given the occasional hurricane, and the year-round heat of the climate, I realized that is a more sensible alternative to making a home a larger structure that would eventually probably get blown away anyway is to live in a tool shed, a casa. On the Rojas farm there was no electricity or running water, but they did have a water pump with an underground spring beneath. And an out-house. There was a nice population of chickens, ducks, hogs, goats, cows and even a pony. There were about three casas.

Also, when I went the second time, I tried to relocate the hotel I originally stayed at, and a policeman who remembered it told me a hurricane had blown it away.

When Leonardo drove me about in the areas north of Juan Dolio, he told me that large stretches of land had no police which was why he could drive me about without his having a driver’s license. His family’s farm was located in one of these police-free zones.

The third time I went, I paired off with Edwin Velez at the Plaza Real Resort, again in Juan Dolio. I met his father who used to drive me around San Pedro de Macoris east of Juan Dolio especially when I needed to go shopping at Jumbo’s, the thoroughly modern Supermarket, located in that town. I was still also seeing Leonardo Rojas during my 3rd visit, and I once went with him when I rented a car to go to Jumbo’s. I told him he could do shopping for his family, and I observed what the favorite culinary treat for his family would be, and it was octopus tentacles. Can you imagine?

Also, when I was at Jumbo’s with Leonardo, I noticed a blond American doing shopping with a very beautiful Dominican man about 22 years old. I said to myself, “Gee, a gay American with enough money to move to the DR, and get himself a good-looking live-in escort, who probably was also his housekeeper”. The Dominican companion was very well dressed. At least for now I bet the blond man was happy.

The local economy for what it was, consisted of palatial casinos and hotels surrounded by luxuriant palm gardens. If and when you have to go to the bank, do not be surprised to see guards armed with automatic rifles. That was a little scary.

The Republica Dominicana is almost a paradise, a utopia, but “You don’t want to go there,” because the locals have become slighted jaded, and they have learned that the easiest way to realize cash is to con tourists. Mexico has the same problem.

About twenty-five years before my forays into the Republica Dominicana, I had a fixation on Italian men. I kept my eyes open and noticed a lot of beautiful Italian men. On my trip to Europe, I visited Rome. The policemen there are called sbirri. Men just do not get any better-looking. The sbirri were tall, dark-skinned, and mysterious in their long-caped black uniforms. My trip to Europe was mostly sponsored by Queens College, my undergraduate alma mater.

When I returned to Queens College, I took an Italian language course, and the instructor was on loan from Rome or Naples. Signore Genovese. He was amazingly beautiful and wore custom-tailored $2,000 silk suits and perfect expensive Italian shoes. Even the heterosexual men in his class took notice. The girls all fell in love with him. I fell in love with him, sort of. His skin was a dark olive hue, and I remember that, when I was looking at him, I said to myself that he was a beautiful person of color, that is to say, the puritanical racist in me said he was a person of color. We all have these irrational fears and prejudices that have been instilled in us. Of course, scientifically he was a Caucasian.

The liberal in me now says I have just engaged in a sort of evaluating people by their looks and their race, which is a sort of racial stereotyping. I should not want to go there. Still I saw what I saw.

© 30 April 2018

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.