The Women in My Life, by Lewis

I.  TRUDY

I think I am on safe ground in saying that I am likely the serendipitous product of the unlikely coupling of a lesbian with a man who never seems to have had a prurient thought in his lifetime.

I wrote extensively about my mother back on December 2nd of last year.  Back then, I did not delve into the circumstantial evidence for my mother's lesbianism.  I will wade into that somewhat sticky thicket today, however, as it is the earliest historical instance of the almost fantastical history of the women in my experience.

Let us turn the imaginary clock back to May 15th, 1939.  The scene is Pratt, Kansas, a place scarcely touched by the Renaissance, let alone the Enlightenment.  Married to Bernard for 12-years with children, B.J., aged 10, and Joyce, aged 8, Mother filed for divorce on the grounds of "extreme cruelty".  The Divorce Agreement goes on to claim that "unfortunate differences and disputes have arisen between the parties and they have separated with the intention of living separate and apart from each other during the remainder of their natural life [sic]".

The only complaints Mother ever expressed to me about Bernard were that he was an alcoholic and once came onto their porch distraught and tearfully imploring her to take him back.  She berated his lack of manliness.  My half-sister and -brother, who continued to see their father until his death, told me that he was not an alcoholic.

Here's where the Divorce Agreement gets bizarre:  "There have been two children born of this marriage…They are now living with the husband and he is to have the care and custody of said children in the future.  In this connection the said husband agrees to be responsible for the support and maintenance of said children.  It is further agreed that the wife shall be permitted to see and visit said children and said children are to be allowed to see and visit with her.

"It is further understood and agreed that the husband and wife, since their marriage, have accumulated but little real and personal property...and they have some personal property, including an automobile.  All of said property is to belong to the husband, except any items of personal property belonging to the wife."

Then, comes this little tidbit:  "...[T]he said wife does hereby release and discharge the said husband from all obligations of support and from all claims and duties arising out of their marital relations."

Within a year-and-a-half, my mother had married again, this time to my father.  It was his first marriage.  I'm not certain of the date of their first meeting, but I do know where it took place.  Dad had an office on the second floor of the Sears department store in downtown Pratt where my mother and another woman operated a beauty parlor.  At some point in this interval between "Hello" and "I do", Mom's business partner unceremoniously departed for California.  My suspicion is that Mom got caught in a gay tryst and surrendered all rights to parentage and property to silence Bernard.  That would also explain the sudden departure of mom's business partner for the west coast.

Since I have covered some of this ground before, I will not repeat myself.  Suffice it to say that for as long as I can remember, Mom and Dad slept in twin beds.  From the time I was six, Dad dressed in another room.  I never remember seeing them kissing or hugging or showing any form of physical affection during their 49-year marriage.  Was Mom gay?  Dad?  Both?  Neither?  Perhaps they were perfectly suited marital partners--each as cover for the other at a time when being gay was strictly verboten.  I'll probably never know for certain. 

II.  JOYCE

Joyce was Mom's second child by her first husband, Bernard.  I have mentioned her before in one of these stories as the young woman who gave me such a thrill when she stayed overnight in my bed when I was about 3 or 4 years old.  She was truly beautiful and a dear, sweet person.  I adored her and so did my mother.

As long as I can remember, Joyce was married to Moe.  Moe was an engineer on the railroad.  They lived in Pratt.  They had two children, a boy, Damon, followed a couple years later by a girl, DeeAnn.  I was an uncle at the age of 9.  When they came to visit, Mom and Joyce would go shopping and I would play with my niece and nephew.  We all got along famously.

When she was 55, Joyce was afflicted with pancreatic cancer and soon died.  It was a terrible blow to the family, and my mother in particular.  I will treasure her memory forever.

III.  SANDY SUE

Before I started school, my best friend was Sandy Sue.  She lived in a corner house at the far end of the block.  She had a basement where we could play hide-and-seek.  Sometimes, when other kids were around, we would play spin-the-bottle.  On one occasion, Sandy Sue and I were in the basement playing with matches.  Somehow--I'm pretty certain I had a roll to play--a wastebasket was set on fire.  The flames shot up as high as my head.  We both panicked.   Sandy's mother must have heard something or smelled smoke because she came running down the stairs and put out the fire.  I was sent home, now as a persona non grata. 

IV.  JUDY

When I was half-way through kindergarten, my parents moved into a small ranch house with three bedrooms so my maternal Granddad could live with us and Dad could have an office at home.  On moving day, I was standing in the front yard taking in the new surroundings when I heard a voice approaching from behind.   It was Judy.  She was what they used to call a tomboy.  She grew up with three older brothers and liked to do things that boys like to do.  Although I was pretty shy, we became the best of friends.

I should have known by then that playing in basements invited risky behaviors.  When we were about 10--Judy was 12 days younger than I--we were playing hide-and-seek in her basement when she said, "Let's play doctor!"

"How do you play 'doctor'?", I naively queried.

"Well, I'll be the doctor first and you'll be the patient, then we'll switch", she replied.  "You'll start by taking off your clothes."

"Oh, no,” I blurted out.

"Don't worry.  I do it with my brother and he doesn't mind."

"If you insist, I'm leaving."

"OK, I won't insist," she said.

I've often wondered whether, had I not been so unaccustomed to being naked in the presence of others or had I not been an inchoate gay boy, might I have responded differently to Judy's entreaty.

When we were 5th graders, Judy and her family moved to Wichita.  Much later, on a visit when we were 19, she proposed to me.  By that time, I understood why "playing doctor" with her had not aroused my curiosity.  I told her "No", once again.  By that time, her family was living in Evergreen, CO, and I saw her only infrequently.  She married, then divorced, then married again and is now living in Arvada.  We are still friends though no longer close.

V.  JANET

After graduating from the University of Kansas with a Mechanical Engineering degree in January of 1970, I took a job with Ford in Dearborn, MI.  For the first time in my life, I had neither school nor friends to keep me busy.  I had lots of time to think about who I was and where my life was going.  I decided to get some professional counseling.  After many visits, I told my psychologist that I was sexually attracted to men.  His advice was to tell me that I would be happy if I simply found the right woman.  Within less than a year, I had met a woman and we started dating.  I was very uncomfortable and must have telegraphed my discomfort.  It only lasted a couple of months. 

Soon, I was feeling secure enough in my orientation that I wanted to come out to my parents back in Kansas.  I told my therapist that I was thinking of writing them a "coming out" letter.  He said that would be a terrible mistake, so I didn't.

About six months later I went to a Christmas party attended by clients of my therapist's two group sessions.  I struck up a conversation with a young woman who was a member of the other group or, should I say, she struck up a conversation with me.  Her name was Janet and we talked for two hours.  Like Judy, she was extroverted, very down-to-earth, and knew her own mind.  Not liking to linger at parties, I politely excused myself, said my "goodbyes" and left.  As I was getting into my car, a man known to both Janet and me came rushing out of the house with a note in his hand.  It was Janet's phone number.

Well, I did call her a few days later.  We had many interests in common and began to see each other regularly.  I even told her of my interest in men.  Janet had been "around the block", shall I say, sexually, having once been a member of the Sexual Freedom League, an organization formed in 1963 in New York City which, to quote Wikipedia, "existed to promote and conduct sexual activity among its members and to agitate for political reform, especially for the repeal of laws against abortion and censorship, and had many female leaders".  The fact that Janet had been raised in a Polish Catholic family but had rejected the Church while still in college for its sexism, only made her more attractive to me.

Within three months or so, we were having sex regularly.  I can remember driving to work from her apartment after spending the night wondering if my co-workers could detect the odor of our coupling. 

We were about to have sex in my bedroom on one day that July of 1972 when Janet asked me if I was still attracted to men.  I answered truthfully, "Yes".  She then wanted to know if I was still committed to marital monogamy, a subject we had discussed at length.  I answered in the affirmative.  She was happy with that. 

We married that fall in the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockford, IL.  The minister had been at the Detroit UU Church when we first met.  Her family came from Michigan, mine from Minnesota and Kansas, so the location was a good compromise. 

That night, there was no latex involved in our love-making.  By Thanksgiving, Janet began spotting.  Something was wrong.  I have already told this story, so I'll spare you now, except to say that we lost that child.  Eventually, luck being with us, we had two children, a girl and a boy.

I was absolutely true to my word and remained faithful to Janet throughout the 26 years of our marriage, as she was to me.  Oh, I had a rich fantasy life and that kept me going, so to speak.  We both had careers, she as an elementary school teacher and I as an automotive engineer.  Neither of us lived to work, however, and no housework nor child care activity was beneath either of our dignities.

As time went on, however, I found it increasingly difficult to sublimate my gay inner persona.  I began to focus more and more at home on my hobby, thinking that merely being "present" was parenting enough.  It wasn't, though it took me many years to figure that out--at a cost of much pain to my kids.  I won't dwell on this now.  That will be the subject for another Monday afternoon.

Let it suffice to say that Janet and I are still friends to this day, despite divorcing in 1999.  Janet stated emphatically that she would never remarry and she has held true to that conviction.  She lives close enough to both kids to see them regularly.  She spends her time playing clarinet in three community bands, taking watercolor classes, and visiting friends.  She has a number of serious health issues and is scheduled for hip replacement surgery in December.

For a quarter century, we were as close as any man and woman I have ever known.  She brought me blessings by the bucketful.  I couldn't have asked for a more loving companion and partner. 

LAURA/CALIX

I have already written about Laura's difficult delivery using forceps on her head while the doctor pulled the delivery table, a nurse, and me across the delivery room floor.  I also told about the first time I held her in my arms when she was less than a day old, removing the hospital gown I had been given only to find a blob of baby poop on my dress shirt.  Yes, it was very early in my daughter's life that I knew who was calling the shots.

Calix was not the name Janet and I gave her at birth.  That was "Laura".  "Calix" is the name our daughter assumed when she became an adult.  Other than both consisting of five letters, the second of which is 'a', the two names could hardly sound more different.  It was just another milestone on her journey toward becoming her own person.

Is it a rule of parenting that, if one of your children is neat, punctual, compliant, unassuming and shy, the other will be passive-aggressive, messy, contrary, and stubborn?  If so, how much of that is rebellion, how much life experience, and how much luck-of-the-draw?

In 1980, Janet and I, with our daughter about to enter kindergarten, moved from Detroit to the tony suburb of Grosse Pointe Farms, where Janet taught 4th grade.  For the 7-1/2 years we lived in the big city, we had not had so much as a lawn sprinkler stolen, although it had been slightly unnerving to watch the tree limbs drop to the ground as the next-door neighbors and their friends fired their guns into the sky on New Years' Eve.

Five months after moving in, Janet and I attended a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert.  The baby-sitter we had hired--and her parents--were known to Janet through her teaching.  The girl was 13 but kind of new to baby-sitting, certainly new to us.  After the concert, we had been invited to the home of one of Janet's fellow teachers for coffee.  Driving home around 12:30 AM, we could see from a couple of blocks away flashing red lights in the vicinity of our house.  As we pulled into the drive, the side door opened and a plainclothes policeman approached the car.  He ushered us inside.  There had been some trouble.

Earlier in the evening, a woman known only superficially to Janet had been in the emergency waiting room of a local hospital with a couple of friends.  They were trying to get her committed for psychiatric care but needed the signature of a second doctor because it was without the patient's consent.  At some point, the distraught woman had simply walked out of the hospital and took off on foot in the direction of our house.  She had gone nearly two miles when a neighbor noticed her in the middle of the street, shedding clothes as she went.  The neighbor called the police.  We had left the side porch light on.  Whether that was what attracted the woman to our house or not, I don't know.  She walked up to the side door naked from the waist up and rang the bell.  I'm sure she was verbalizing, as well.

When the baby-sitter saw her, she turned back and ran to the kitchen, where there was a phone.  She called her home.  Her dad answered.  Meanwhile, the woman broke a small window glass in the side door and let herself in.  She walked up to the sitter and began running her fingers through the girl's hair, upon which the babysitter dropped the phone and ran out the door.  At this point, the woman began rummaging through the kitchen drawers, looking for something to use as a weapon.  All she found, luckily, was a pair of vegetable shears.  She set out looking for a victim. 

The babysitter ran screaming toward a couple across the street walking their dog.  She tried to tell them which house she had come from but, in her panic and unfamiliarity, wasn't sure.  At just this moment, a cop car came down the street in response to the phone call reporting that a woman was taking off her clothes and dropping them on the street.

The distraught woman walked right past the bedroom where our two-year-old son was sleeping to the far end of the ranch house and into Laura's bedroom.  Waking her, she knelt over her and began to make mostly superficial stab wounds over Laura's face, torso, and near her vagina.  The most serious of the wounds penetrated Laura's lower lip.

When the police entered the house, they saw the woman wielding the scissors while repeating, "I have to kill the children".  It took three officers to wrestle the woman to the floor and put her coat back on to take her away.

Laura was not seriously hurt physically.  All of the wounds healed on their own except for the one to the lip, which required a stitch or two.  At the commitment hearing for the woman, I sat just in front of her husband, who whispered to me that all women are just a hair away from mental instability once a month anyway.  She was committed to a mental hospital for 90 days, after which she was released to the care of her loving husband.

Janet and I sought counseling for Laura immediately.  Some of the advice we got was less than useful, though we did not realize it right away.  I'm sure some of it did more harm than good, including setting up a point system to reward good behavior and punish bad.  Laura had always been late for everything, slow to dress, having to be coaxed to get ready for school, on and on.  She started sucking her thumb and continued doing it into high school.  It caused her mother and me no end of frustration.

In high school, Laura befriended a girl who also was an outsider.  Their relationship was so close that other kids thought they were lesbians.  Our son, Nolan, two years younger, was teased about that when he started high school.  In their senior year, Laura and the other girl had a falling out.  The other girl brought a knife to school and threatened Laura with it.  Laura became depressed.  She was hospitalized and diagnosed with PTSD, probably from the incident when she was four.

Calix was a talented poet and artist.  She went on to college hoping to teach philosophy but ran into a brick wall when it came to writing term papers.  She not only had PTSD but also ADD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  At age 38, she is still a year away from a bachelor's degree and works for $9 an hour at a clothes cleaning establishment.

Four years ago, she married the love of her life, Scott.  He works at Walgreen's as a clerk though he holds an MBA which he earned online.  Together, they made $25K last year and have, between them, over $70K in college loan debt.  They are living almost from hand-to-mouth and their future is far from bright.   They seem happy, though they cannot afford to have the child they so much desire, and I am happy for them.  It's nothing like the life Janet and I wanted for her but it will have to do.

EPILOGUE

There is another woman who has played a critical role in my life.  She was my son's girlfriend back in 2008.  Her name was Jasmine.  Nolan has a penchant for dating women with exotic names--Alethea, Jasmine, and Destiny among them.

One night in late February of 2008, Jasmine came to confront Nolan in his apartment after he had sought to break off the relationship.  Jasmine picked up a knife and stabbed Nolan in the throat, just missing his carotid artery by 2 mm.  He ran down the stairs and into the attached garage.  He got into his car and pressed the garage door opener.  Jasmine followed him to the garage and used the button near the inside door to close the garage door again.  She still clutched the knife.  Nolan got out of the car, ducked under the closing door and ran from neighbor to neighbor, barefoot, pajama-clad and bleeding in the snow, seeking help.  After several rebuffs, an elderly woman let him in.  Jasmine was tried and went to jail for four months following a plea bargain, despite evidence that she had used Nolan's computer to research the anatomy of the human neck, including the location of the critical artery.

I believe I am truly unique in the fact that both of my children were at one point in their lives stabbed by emotionally distraught, if not downright loony, women.  I think that gives me a somewhat unique perspective although I have no idea as to what.

© 24 Nov 2012 

About the Author 

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn't getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband's home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

Role With the Flow: The Women in My Life, by Betsy

Aspiring to be one’s own person is noble indeed.  No one would doubt that.  But in my experience growing up female in America in the mid twentieth century this ideal was indeed elusive and impalpable to many girls.

As a youngster my mother was my major role model.  Other female role models were my grandmothers, an aunt, and to a lesser extent some teachers. I consider these role models to be the most important in shaping my adult persona because it was from these women that I learned who I was meant to be--or should I say who I was supposed to be.  Put another way, I learned how I was supposed to behave and, more importantly, how to perceive myself going into adulthood. The women were also the mirror for me which reflected who I was and who I was to become.

These role models I mention were good people.  They strove to take good care of their families; that is, to be good wives and mothers. They were honest and loving.  The roles, however, were clearly defined.  A woman’s role was to NOT be in charge.  In fact it appeared that a woman in that day in this culture was not even in charge of her own life.

As a youngster growing up the message I got was loud and clear: your happiness and your future welfare requires, first, that you get a husband and the degree of that happiness and welfare depends on who the man is that you marry.   A woman’s identity, her sense of who she is, is intrinsic in what is reflected back to her from the people close to her--especially her husband. I have recently come to realize that many females of my generation have struggled with their true identity; they have struggled to “be their own person.”

At the same time, my growing up experience followed a period of time known as the Progressive Era, the early decades of the 20th century, which saw the beginnings of huge changes in the roles of women.  My grandmothers and my mother saw some very obvious changes such as shorter skirts and short hair, and some movement toward political equality. Women were no longer expected to be frail and demure and confined to their parlors or their kitchens.  Spurred on by the necessities brought about by two world wars, women entered the work force and were allowed to enter professions heretofore open only to men.  By mid-century women, especially of the middle class and the Western World had completely redefined their roles in almost every sphere of culture.

These were huge changes.  Yet they were mostly all outward superficial changes.  I still received the message from my female role models that if I did not marry, I would end up unhappy, unfulfilled, and lonely. In other words, I, by myself, could not create my own persona. I had to depend on others to do that. Most females I knew received the same message. But for some of us that image of just who we were and who we were to become did not fit. Many of us had to try it on before learning that it did not fit.  I suppose this is one reason that so many lesbian woman of my generation were married and had families and were middle aged before recognizing their own sexual orientation and their true identity. This and the awareness that came along with the gay rights movement helped us along.

Even today’s women struggle for power. Many men are threatened by women who have more power than they. Not all men, but some, feel emasculated by women who have more control and become more powerful than they at home or in the work place. Is this a natural happening or is it learned?  The evidence, to me, shows that it is learned since not all men have this insecurity.  (I sincerely doubt that any man in this room falls into that insecurity category.) Again in many cases I suppose it depends on the role models they followed.  I contend that the woman role models in my life were married to men who did not have this insecurity.  They were not controlling and overbearing at least insofar as my memory and my experience allows me to make the judgement.

The women in my life, my mother and my grandmothers, were products of their culture and reflected that.  At the same time they were progressive and welcomed the changes and disappearance of the restrictions that kept them from expressing themselves earlier. Perhaps their progressive attitudes contributed to my ability to come out later in life.

As it turns out neither of my parents ever learned who I really was. They both died before I came out. To me this is a sad fact.  However, only mothers and grandmothers who outlive their daughters ever learn who these daughters FINALLY become.

We are constantly changing hopefully growing and progressing.  If we make it into old age of course our role models are not there to see how we finally turn out.  But it is for certain that the spirit of the women in my life has been traveling with me every step of the way and will continue to the end.

© 24 Nov 2014 

About the Author 

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change).  She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren.  Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

The Women in My Life by Pat Gourley

I have written many times over the years in this group about men and women who have influenced me. The men of course include Harry Hay and Jerry Garcia to say nothing of really countless gay brothers. In hindsight and this is actually current to this day it is the women in my life who have imparted the modicum of wisdom I have today.
It all started with my mother of course and her relentless unconditional positive regard. I was the oldest male in a modest-sized Irish Catholic family (6 kids only!) and therefore could really do no wrong. The closest I ever came to being reprimanded by her was the frequent Zen injunction to please go sit down and be quiet. Oh, and there is the one time I split my brother Brian’s head open with a rock. We had been throwing dirt clods at each other, something farm boys did frequently, and I apparently hurled one my brother’s way that also had a rock in it. That resulted in the only corporal punishment I ever received from either parent and involved a couple whacks on the butt with her shoe.
I also fondly remember two of my several aunts, Dorothy and Alice. These women taught me the fine art of cooking and the joy of gardening and eating fresh vegetables. Lessons that continue to serve me well decades later.

I have wondered on occasion whether or not my mom may have had lesbian tendencies. She did join the WAC’s, as a nurse, in World War II stationed in Hawaii, was an ace softball pitcher; never fond of cooking or housework and always eager to drive large farm machinery. Perhaps it was lucky for me that I was born pre-gay-lib in 1949. The night I was conceived LGBT identities were really not even a twinkle in any one’s eye outside of a few urban coastal enclaves. Options for most Catholic women who might have been gay in the 1940’s were largely limited to the convent or marriage preferably with as many babies as you could pop out. Of the many, many compliments I can pay my mother that she might have had dyke tendencies is right there at the top – loved you mom!

The next woman to come along who had a very profound effect on my development was Sister Alberta Marie my government/civics teacher in the last two years of high school. I owe this woman a great debt of gratitude on so many fronts but most particularly I learned to never be afraid to question authority. I was able to reconnect with her in June of 2013 in New York City where she has lived for decades and worked as an immigration lawyer. To her immense credit she was tossed out of the convent shortly after I graduated high school with a long list of offenses per the local bishop. The final straw I think was bringing renowned Jesuit anti-Vietnam War activist, Daniel Berrigan, to speak to the school’s Peace Club at Marion Central, which she was instrumental in founding.

Next came a group of women who lived communally with us in Champaign-Urbana from 1967-1972. Several of these powerful women helped to shape my budding radical politics and began to impart a feminist analysis to my worldview. One in particular was a frequent LSD tripping companion. We would drive out to a local forest preserve and then take, in those days usually, a hit of something called windowpane and spend the day having religious and spiritual experiences with the local flora and fauna. To this day I think those trips were as close as I have come, despite many, many hours on the cushion and in retreat, to realizing the non-dual nature of it all. It really is all just one taste and one’s personal taste of it often fleeting.

Next up were a group of nurses again all women who I worked with at the inpatient psychiatric unit at then Denver General Hospital. A few months after arriving in Denver in late 1972 I was working on the Psychiatric Unit with a cadre of very strong nurses who I admired greatly and encouraged me to pursue my own career in nursing and that dance continues to this day. They were a feisty bunch who never afraid to put uppity physicians in their place and were totally instrumental in shaping my life-long philosophy of nursing.
By the mid-1970’s I was becoming involved in the Gay Community Center on Lafayette Street and being introduced to several potent women best described as radical lesbian feminists at the time. These women helped me through occasional and well-deserved criticism to hone my own political persona into one more effective and definitely more honest. A shout of thanks to Carol, Tea, Britt, Karen, Janet, Katherine, Donna and many others who helped immensely broaden my perception of what it was to be “queer-other” and helping to create a fertile ground that definitely aided in my latching onto Harry Hay and the Radical Fairies. Many of these same women were also instrumental in getting what turned out to be very successful AIDS efforts off the ground here locally.

By the late 1980’s I was exploring spirituality a bit differently, leaving the pagan/wiccan traditions behind and moving to the cushion and re-invoking my mother’s frequent injunction to sit still and be quiet. In the early 1990’s I became involved with a local chapter of the Kwan Um School of Zen. The guiding teacher, based in Rhode Island but a frequent visitor to our Sangha, was a women named Bobbi who had a day job as a hospice nurse and oh by the way she is a lesbian. Another potent mix of female energy I owe a great debt to.
In writing this piece more and more women have come to mind who were and are great friends and persons who had significant impacts on me. I’ll stop though in the spirit of brevity. It is quite frightening really for me to try and even think where I would be today professionally, culturally, psychologically, socially and spiritually without so many dynamic women influencing me along the path.

Sadly as I finish this piece I just received an email about the death of straight woman ally who I had gotten to know well in the 1980’s through her tireless volunteer efforts with the Colorado AIDS Project being on the original CAP Board of Directors. Straight allies in those dark days were very brave and cherished souls. Jill got to spend Thanksgiving with family around her bed before succumbing to a four-year battle with cancer.

Women – can’t live without ‘em!

© November 2014

About the Author

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

The Women in My Life by Ray S

Contrary to some, not all, there still exists the opinion on the part of some sociologists, psychologists, and worst of all the public citizenry that the shared lot in this life is the fault of the mother.

Not wishing to be branded a misogynist, God forbid I hasten to rise to the defense of all of the innocent, or otherwise, mothers that have brought forth a world of heterosexual beings and very special homosexual beings. Get serious, those fare ladies didn’t have the slightest idea of how that 3 minutes or 3 seconds of passion would turn out. Nowadays medical science has taken the surprise out of all that labor during childbirth and the proud parents know ahead of time whether it will be a son and heir to carry on the family name, or a Madam Currie’ or Lady Ga Ga. So what does this preamble have to do with our subject today? Guess!

As an aftermath of my own coming out party, oh I don’t mean that October day some 80+ years ago, it dawned on me that in spite of my life long fondness for boys, consciously or sub-consciously, most of my best friends have been women, or girls when we were very young.

Sure, I yearned to be like and envied the guys I’ve grown up with--seeing them as role models I could never be--but it was then and is now that the women in my life that have made me what I am, well sort of.

I had planned to submit a list of all of my very own women’s names, but have run out of time and besides you all have your own special names in mind. So suffice it to say, “Where would we be without some special female of the species?” And that is meant literally as well as emotionally.

© 11/24/14

About the Author