A Meaningful Vacation, by Gillian

I started out trawling through wonderful memories of countless vacations, seeking out a really meaningful one, but quickly realized that every one of them, from months-long volunteer 'vacations' to single day trips, have all been very meaningful to me. If they were not, why would I take them? Why not simply stay home?

I have a passionate love of learning, and that is the primary reason vacations are inevitably meaningful to me; they are great opportunities to learn new things. I learn about people and places, wildlife and geology, languages and the arts, and frequently I learn a little more about my beautiful Betsy, and last but certainly not least, about myself.

I have never been a fearful person, but travel has taught me that a little caution is a good thing.  

In places which pick-pockets and purse-snatchers may frequent, I wear a well-hidden money belt. I try never to be in suspect neighborhoods alone and especially after dark. When, on occasion, I have ended up in such a situation I walk quickly and purposefully, attempting to look perfectly relaxed and as if I know exactly where I am going. Betsy and I did that in Cape Town one night, arriving unmolested at our hotel, as I did in San Paulo and St. Petersburg and, I must admit, once when I was lost in a very dubious part of Miami.

Betsy and I travelled all over this country in our camper van and I don't recall one single time we felt threatened in any way; two old women camping on their own. But we always practiced a little elementary safety. We kept the van doors locked while we slept. We always camped, as we faithfully promised loved ones we would, in designated campgrounds, though there were several occasions when we happened to be the only people actually camping there. National Forest campgrounds, in particular, are often remote and with no other occupants, and often in a location without cellphone service. But no-one ever bothered us.

Driving long trips across the country we learned to keep a very careful watch on the weather, and not to ignore those black skies ahead. We were under tornado warnings a few times, and learned that there is no shame in running for the closest hotel, and making sure they have a storm shelter before handing over the credit card.

So just this one aspect of travel has taught me not to be so stubborn; to be more flexible. If circumstances dictate a hotel room rather than the planned camp site, just enjoy that clean hot shower. Occasionally the camping spot we had been heading towards for five hundred miles didn't feel good to one or both of us when we got there. Sometimes this was for no apparent, recognizable, reason. It just didn't feel good. So we would go on. We both always listened to those inner whispers, no matter how unexpected or nonsensical they seemed, or how inconvenient the result.

I believe that vacations of all kinds have improved my character in many ways and much more effectively than all the self-help books ever written could have done.

I will bore you all with further details of these character enhancements another time.

© 25 Apr 2016 

About the Author 

 I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.

The Big Bang, by Phillip Hoyle

I don’t easily relate to the expression “The Big Bang” because it sounds too much like a public relations title for a military campaign, religious movement, or rock group. It lacks the respect that my theistic background would deem necessary for anyone’s cosmological explanation. Ironically, the idea was first conceived by the Belgian Roman Catholic priest and scientist Georges Lemaître. Other scientists kept working with the idea that eventually was called the Big Bang by some distant relative of mine, Fred Hoyle, for a 1949 BBC radio show on cosmology. The theory was denounced by most American fundamentalists as atheistic. Eventually Roman Catholic and protestant proponents of a variety of creative evolution approaches offered more sanely conciliatory ways to view the Big Bang idea. There’s much more to it, but I’m not here to philosophize; rather I’m here to tell a story—the story of my own Big Bang.

In contrast to the Big Bang of science, mine did not begin at birth (although my mother may have had a conservative view of my life as beginning at coitus). My big bang took place in a San Antonio motel room when I was thirty-two years old. That night I for the first time got posteriorly assaulted. But do not mistake my use of the verb assaulted. I wanted it to happen.

My primordial homosexual atom showed itself present a long time earlier, if not as early as my mom’s experience, certainly when I began to respond to men as a sexual, emotional, and relational necessity. My awareness began to take form when running around with my childhood best friend and learning to kiss with my male teenage lover. It matured when I experienced what I supposed were extraordinary attractions to men in my young adult years, feelings that went far beyond the pangs of sexual desire toward some fuller kind of love like that described in a poem of the biblical hero David who at the death of his adult friend Jonathan lamented, “your love to me was wonderful/passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26 NRSV). I had a quite fulfilling life with my wife and kids, but still I knew I was missing more, a missing that felt fundamentally important.

That night in the motel I came to understand something more I needed. That night I had kisses and the open male-to-male sex I wanted with an adult. The man, a really bright, educated minister and a passionately expressive lover introduced me to the complications of gay life I had read about and was in that motel experiencing. I was thrilled and fascinated. Apparently it was something different for him as well—not the sex of it—for he had lived in New York City as a young man and I’m sure there he learned or at least practiced up on the ways of gay sex. He had settled into a straight life with gay sex on the side. But the night of my Big Bang he also experienced something extraordinary that prompted him to say, “I think I could fall in love with you.”

Like in the scientific theory, the bang set off an unending series of results. I was quite taken by him, especially when he followed up later with a contact to see how I was doing. His care seemed more than pastoral. I would fantasize much more from our connection but in a couple of subsequent phone calls I heard in his voice the workings of guilt feelings. At that point I cut off our potential affair. I wasn’t going to mess up my marriage and developing career to run around with a guilt-mongering and perhaps paranoid person even if he was male and sexy and smart. Besides I already had a man I loved and who loved me although we didn’t have sex.

The Big Bang opened me to a world of gay complication, something both like and unlike the Eden preached by heterosexual-championing, marriage-normalizing clergy and Sunday school teachers, to say nothing of American culture and law. It taught me that all life occurs in an expanding universe that is potentially as treacherous as it can be satisfying. That universe continues to move me into much more life and imagination. I don’t say this as a slogan, but it has been a never-ending process of expansion since my big bang night. That expansion is the truth I continue to live.

© 22 July 2014 

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 

Strange Vibrations, by Ray S

Muse, where are you now? I couldn’t sleep last night when we were in bed together because you refused to be still. Now you want to play hard to get.

Quickly like the dawn of a new day my tardy Muse returns upon our decision to go to the basement storage locker in search of some long forgotten item that has suddenly become indispensable.

Muse distracted me from my mission by a strange change in the atmosphere of the room. No, lights didn’t dim, floors and walls didn’t creak, and there certainly were no vibrations. Nothing so spooky and corny, just a compulsion to look into some old boxes filled with three generations of family memorabilia, treasures and trash. Some best left to rest in dusty peace, but the decision to dispatch some of it, as always it is, is more convenient to ignore the stuff—out of sight out of mind.

A high school diploma, class of 1943—the prize from surviving four traumatic years at four different high schools.

A 100-year-old, or so it seems, photo album with many faded sepia photos labeled by my mother identifying people I never knew.

A picture of my father with some of his army buddies at camp, pre-World War One. Looking closely, I could hardly recognize this pretty young boy, but it was reassuring to have met this man in his early days.

Then a letter addressed to my mother from a dear friend expressing her condolences when learning of my parents’ divorce. It was an intrusion on my part to have read the letter to its conclusion, especially when the friend indicated that the woman my father later married had been a mutual acquaintance of all of the parties. Sometimes you learn more than you needed to, but it did answer some questions and left more to remain unanswered—which is just as well.

Reminiscent of this bit of drama, up from the depths of another musty file of memories came the vibrations of the summer two weeks that conveniently located me at YMCA camp, circa 1939. Oblivious of nothing more important than trying to avoid getting knocked down with a mouth full of Lake Michigan sand while playing King of the Hill, my parents took the opportunity to drive up to camp for an unannounced visit whereupon they broke the news of their decision to divorce. And this was the beginning of my new life as a kid raised only by his mother and without the presence of a father to show him how to be a man or something other than the pansy they were blessed with.

Hindsight being the disaster that it is, the vibrations of all these many years have had their good vibes too. After Uncle Sam’s contribution to my higher education, the ensuing attempt at a good middle class married life with a wonderful wife and family, followed by my very own debutante coming out part and joining the real GLBTQ world, the boxes can continue to mustier or be more musty until little old Muse and I make another trip to the strange and scary land of TMI [Too Much Information - ed.].

So much for the strange vibrations that result in too much navel gazing and self-indulgence; it wasn’t fun while it lasted.

Fini.

© 23 May 2016 

About the Author 

Vibrations of Time, by Carlos

A ghost abides in my house, although the word ghost is hardly the appropriate word to use, for I think both he and I prefer to use the word spirit. He is an inconspicuous energy that lingers around me like the aroma of mint tea on a frosty day or the taste of orange blossom honey on a warm croissant. I have only seen him once, a snippet of a shadow that appeared in my periphery vision and was gone like a summer beam of light. I was working in the garden and happened to look up at small window above the staircase, catching him as he spied down on me. He is a fine-featured, tall gentleman dressed in what looks like an Edwardian morning coat and silk ascot. And although I dismissed him as an overactive imagination borne perhaps from too many hours under the summer sun or from the expectation that a spirit should after all reside in a Victorian home, I have never, until now, spoken of him. I’ve given him the name John, and he seems most content that I should name him so.

This is not to say that John has always been a quiet energy, satisfied to waft through the air like the first sublime notes of Karl Jenkins’ Benedictus. When I first moved into our 1888 Queen Anne, she looked like a dollhouse that had been touched inappropriately by too many who had taken from her, but never loved her unconditionally. The windows were broken, and the rooms frigid. Her fine details were gone, ripped out and sold or simply discarded and replaced by the more modern contrivances of evolving tastes. As for her garden, only two century-old maples and two weathered apple trees remained, no doubt, an attempt by early homesteaders to tame the wild grasslands of a former time. Nevertheless, our attraction to each other was instantaneous, like two would-be lovers who meet on a quiet dance floor and see each other’s souls through the haze and shadowy darkness. Putting an offer, and finalizing the closing, within weeks our destinies were linked. On my first day in my proud, but sad, house, I sat on the floor and envisioned hopes and promises yet to be birthed. I sat in terror, pondering whether I would be worthy enough to respect her and restore her faded self-esteem. Upon moving in, I immediately hanged my treasured cuckoo clock upon a wall, taking great joy in calibrating the weights every week to enjoy the automaton’s hourly call. It became a symbol of my own nesting.

Often the vibrations between house and me were at odds and tenuous, much like a newly wedded couple in an arranged marriage. She was suspicious of my intentions; I remained dubious as to whether I could do right by her, whether I could be faithful to just one. The energy within the house was impudent, challenging me as though to undermine me and determine my reaction.  After the water pipes froze and water fountained throughout the first floor one frigid winter night, I repaired the damage and remained, proving to both us that I was not about to retreat in spite of our apprehensions. As I cleaned from the deluge and pulled up nasty, old carpeting, I connected with the past, discovering sheaves of 1920’s vintage newspapers, now soaked, that had been laid down by a former tenant to insulate the floors. Later, she tested my vows as when during a small dinner party, I shame-faced discovered I had served gritty sand in our soup bowls. Thinking I had been guilty of not washing the vegetables, I, to my dismay, ladled out a chunk of horsehair plaster from the ceiling that had unexpectedly fallen into the kettle. It was not long after that that John’s presences made itself known. One night something touched my toe as I lay in bed. I spent a few sleepless hours in a frigid room, not sure whether I was more frustrated with the blustery winds that tumbled and shrieked through the dark hallways or the unwarranted caress from the unknown. When I demolished the upstairs walls, since they were but cheap cardboard sheathing unceremoniously nailed down between rows of wood furring strips, giving the rooms a prison-like aura, John was angry, perhaps because he thought that like others before me, my intentions were to dismantle his world even further. I heard him stomping angrily upstairs with fury, convincing me I was about to be pummeled by a would-be intruder. However, when I ran upstairs to investigate, the sound ceased; he had retreated. Over the ensuing years, the energy in the house gradually changed to a live-and-let-live ambiance as I jacked up foundations, replaced floors and windows, brought the plumbing and electricity up to code, and strengthened the bones of the house. Eventually, chandeliers and fretwork, stained glass and tile, roses and violets and sweet woodruff gardens graced my home, mirroring her former self and solidifying my intentions to honor a promise made when I was young and naive. Years earlier, I had concluded that John did not care for the raucous sounds of my cuckoo clock since as long as the clock chimed, his presence lingered nearby; thus, I decided to put the clock in storage.  I suspect that in doing so, I finally banished him, for the energy in the house became peaceful and sedate, a true nest of repose. Yet, in truth, I missed his child-like antics, his protective aura that pushed away suitors who were not good enough for me, but welcomed those bathed in an evanescent light. Today, although he never reveals his presence and rarely leaves a calling card of his ethereal essence, I know he is still as close as my heart. Ever vigilant and circumspect, I know he watches protectively over the house, over my now husband and me. We felt his presence reaching out the night our Jonathan died as though reminding us that death is a return back home, with a promise of reuniting. I feel his presence as he keeps guard over me in the garden, trying to coax another poppy or hollyhock to reveal the scarlet garment encased within her burgeoning bud. I feel his presence when I am afraid of death and tired of living. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I walk downstairs and meditate, and although always unobtrusive, he waits nearby, shielding me from evil. Because I’ve come to understand his intentions as being altruistic and benign, I’ve decided to unpack the cuckoo clock and restore its warbling mechanic bird.  It is time to let him know he is not banished; it is time to restore him to his rightful place in our home.

Our home remains a work- in-progress, as well as a financial behemoth. More important, however, it is a haven, a reminder that past sunbeams continue to blaze and undulating rhythms continue to resonate, reminding me that I am but a traveler temporarily away from home. I rejoice that time’s vibrations echo in my life; I acknowledge energy’s immortality. I suspect that when I finally awaken from my slumber, John, whether he is real or simply an abstract, metaphysical self-deception, will serve as a reminder of the bewildering ripples of time. Thus, I conclude that oscillations of time and space ultimately act like concentric circles radiating from their source, the effect expanding outward until equilibrium is again restored.

© 23 May 2016 (Denver) 

About the Author 

Cervantes wrote, “I know who I am and who I may choose to be.”  In spite of my constant quest to live up to this proposition, I often falter.  I am a man who has been defined as sensitive, intuitive, and altruistic, but I have also been defined as being too shy, too retrospective, too pragmatic.  Something I know to be true. I am a survivor, a contradictory balance of a realist and a dreamer, and on occasions, quite charming.  Nevertheless, I often ask Spirit to keep His arms around my shoulder and His hand over my mouth.  My heroes range from Henry David Thoreau to Sheldon Cooper, and I always have time to watch Big Bang Theory or Under the Tuscan Sun.  I am a pragmatic romantic and a consummate lover of ideas and words, nature and time.  My beloved husband and our three rambunctious cocker spaniels are the souls that populate my heart. I could spend the rest of my life restoring our Victorian home, planting tomatoes, and lying under coconut palms on tropical sands.  I believe in Spirit, and have zero tolerance for irresponsibility, victim’s mentalities, political and religious orthodoxy, and intentional cruelty.  I am always on the look-out for friends, people who find that life just doesn’t get any better than breaking bread together and finding humor in the world around us.

The Females in My Life, by Ricky

Like everyone else on this planet, the first woman in my life was my mother.  Mom was the care giver when I was young, but she was also the rat-fink of my life.  She would always tell my father of my daily misdeeds and he was the disciplinarian in the family.  During that time period, discipline consisted of not too gentle spankings, so I learned to fear both of them.  Mom was also the one who came to Minnesota, while I was living with my grandparents, to be a bridesmaid for her sister and then did not take me back to California when she left Minnesota after the wedding.  I think I subconsciously resent her even to this day for leaving me and for being a rat-fink.

The second woman was my father's mother.  After I was born she came to live with us for about one year.  I don't remember that time period much and as I grew up, I did not see her very often.  The next female in my life was my beloved Bonnie, a black and white collie, who became the best baby sitter a two-year old toddler could not escape; that is until I learned to take her with me when I left the yard.  Sadly, she got distemper and passed before her first birthday.  I don't remember if I grieved for her very much.  I only now remember her from old photographs and the stories my parents told me over time.

Next was a girl in my Kindergarten class at the Hawthorn Christian School in Hawthorn, California.  Her name was Sandra Flora.  She was like a girlfriend to me, or more precisely, I was a boyfriend to her.  With long curly hair and the full dress that little girls wore at that time, she looked like a young Shirley Temple.  I carried her Kindergarten school photo in my wallet well into my 40's when I finally lost it.

The next woman in my life would be my mother's mother.  I lived with her and my grandfather for two years on a farm in central Minnesota from the age of 8 until two-weeks before I turned 10.  She was a reasonable surrogate mother but at 9-years of age, I ended up with a mild ‟school boy crush” on my 4^th grade teacher, Mrs. Knoll.  She was a very young beautiful lady and in her second year as a teacher.  The crush was mild because she was married so I knew I had no chance and I was not quite into full blown puberty.  My 3^rd grade teacher, Mrs. Sorensen, was a good but matronly teacher and thus of no interest to me.

Back on the farm, my aunt Darlene, my mother's younger and only sister, would visit occasionally with her husband.  When I was 8, I was a ring-bearer (like Bilbo and Frodo) at her wedding.  My younger cousin, Pamela Anderson, was the flower-girl.  There was one other female on the farm that I had a platonic relationship with, at least on my part.  Her name was Peanuts and she was a Guernsey cow.  Her stall was the first one as I would enter the barn and so she became my favorite, almost like a pet.

One week before I turned 10, my mother and new step-father came to Minnesota to pick me up and take me back to California.  They also introduced me to the next female to enter my life, my little baby sister, Gale.  For the next 9 years she and her twin brother and I had a close family relationship.  They were the kids and I was the babysitter.  Not too much personal time for me, but we did have some amount of fun growing up until I went away to college and then the military.  She still lives at our ‟home town” of South Lake Tahoe.

The next female was never alive in the literal sense but she really was a lady.  She was the Skipalong, my step-father's 39 foot cabin cruiser he used as a tour-boat on Lake Tahoe during 1957 and '58.  I was his deckhand in 1958 and I really loved the ‟job” and the boat.  All I had was that one summer with her as the next summer, at the beginning of the season, she sank at a pier while her engine was being overhauled and was sold for salvage.  I still miss her even today as that summer was perhaps the happiest of my childhood.

She had a colorful career.  It is believed she was built in the 1920's in Morris Heights, New York by the Consolidated Shipbuilding Corporation.  She was originally 36 feet long but upon arrival in San Francisco she was modified to 39 feet long and a ‟lookout cockpit” was added to the bow as she began service as a rum runner during Prohibition.

In the Fall of 1958, after that wonderful summer, I developed another school boy crush.  This time it was during full blown puberty and on my unmarried, first year 5^th grade teacher, Miss Herbert.  She was beautiful, young, and had a wonderful personality.  I was in LOVE!  Then she got married over Christmas vacation.  I was devastated.  It appeared to me that I would never get the women I loved, which due to the age differences, is probably a good thing.

The next female arrived at our house on Red Lake Road, in South Lake Tahoe when I was 12.  She was ¾ Oriental Poodle and ¼ Pomeranian—a little, black, shaggy, and “yippy” lap dog.  She bonded to me the first night in our house and became the first female I slept with for the next 9-years.  I was monogamous but she was a very prolific bitch. No! I was not the father of her litters.

After I joined the Air Force, I met my first girlfriend as an adult.  She was the best friend of the woman I would marry 5-years later.  During the intervening years, I also met the woman who taught me about making out and foreplay.  Then there was the woman who took my virginity.  Actually, I guess it was a mutual thing as she did not have to twist my arm to get it.

Then I married Deborah and we enjoyed 27-years and 9-months together before she passed from complications of breast cancer.  During those years, the final women in my life were born to us—our three daughters, one of which made me a grandfather with her 2-daughters.

So those are the women and other females in my life.  I chose not to tell about my two female cats, so be thankful for small favors.

© 23 November 2014  

About the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live 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 9-11-2001 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.

Hallowe'en Dinner by Betsy

I was only trying to be a good mother. Back in the 1960‘and 70’s liver was considered to be the best, most nutritious food available. No other food had all the goodness of beef or calves’ liver. That is, nutritionally it was the best, aesthetically, well, pretty awful, in my opinion.

During that time I was very conscientious about giving my young children the best in nutrition. The only question about liver was how to get them to eat it. I, myself, had a hard time, indeed, getting the slightest morsel down. The texture and the taste, I thought and still think, are rather repulsive. But a good mother feeds her children well. So I determined that once a year, at least, liver would be served at the dinner table and consumed by all--even if it were to be a very small amount. But how to get them to eat it. What was a mother to do.

Hallowe’en offered the perfect situation. The children typically would do their trick or treating as soon as they had finished their dinner. Well, you know the rest. “You may go trick or treating after you have finished your liver,” said I to the three sweet, little, adorable faces with blinking eyes looking at me in anticipation of the excitement of going out with their friends for Hallowe’en fun. Ooow!! That was hard. Was that cruel, or what. Oh well, I wouldn’t make them eat much. Even just a couple of bites! After all, it’s for their own good. That’s why I’m doing this, isn’t it. Isn’t that what any good mother would do?

Interesting that when my daughters, now old enough to be young grandmothers, recently reminded me of these Hallowe’en dinners of many years ago, I replied innocently, “I don’t remember any of that!. Are you sure that really happened? You know, I wouldn’t touch the stuff even if I wanted to. It’s full of cholesterol and toxins!”

The reality is that I do remember, now that my memory has been tweaked. And, yes, this did happen, but I think only once or maybe twice at most, not the many, many hallowe’en dinners that they remember. 

At the time those liver dinners on Hallowe’en were not so funny to any of us. Eating liver was serious business. Now we know better. Now 45 years later, every Hallowe’en, we get lots of laughs remembering the liver dinner--or was it dinners? I get teased a lot about this. I guess my kids grew up and came to understand what it’s like to be a parent wanting to do the right thing for their kids. 

But as I look back on it now, I realize I have mellowed a lot. I don’t think I would make my kids do that now, especially on Hallowe’en. Every once in a while, in spite of the laughs, a vague, nagging feeling from deep inside emerges and suggests that maybe that was kind of mean--making them eat liver. But, then, didn’t someone say that Hallowe’en has its dark side.

© 31 Oct 2011 

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.

Getting Caught by Lewis

As a boy, I was not afraid of heights. By the age of four, I was jumping off the roof of the garage. I could climb almost anything. My mother—never too watchful—soon learned to find me not by looking “around” but by looking “up”.

Our house was a one-story bungalow. Next door lived an elderly widow whose house towered over ours. One day, I was playing outside, between our houses, and I heard a strange and frightening cry from an upstairs window. I could see her face. She appeared to be talking to me. She hadn’t done that before. What did she want, if anything? How could I help? She appeared OK to me. I walked away. She scared me. I had never known my grandmothers.

Soon, I learned, to my horror, that she had been doing laundry and caught her hand in the rollers of her Maytag dryer. I wasn’t punished; she was the one who “got caught”. But I sure learned something about the hazards of daily living and the need to be more responsive.

Around that time—the years have grown somewhat fungible with their passage—I noticed that a very long ladder had been placed against the side of her house. It reached all the way from the ground to her roof at the exact location of her brick chimney, from which, I was certain, an excellent panorama of our entire neighborhood could be enjoyed.

The opportunity was a prime example of what in the liability law profession is known as an “attractive nuisance”—especially for a boy who loves to climb.

So, I climbed, hand-over-hand, to the rain gutter 25 feet or so above the sidewalk upon which rested the ladder. The roof was fairly steep but negotiable, so I soon found myself perched on top of her chimney thoroughly enjoying the spectacular view.

Before long, my reverie was shattered by my mother’s voice somewhat exasperatedly calling out my name in a context that suggested some kind of a response was in order. She clearly did not see me. I waited until I thought she might have the police out looking for me.

“Up here, Mom,” I said, hoping-against-hope that she would be impressed.

“Lewis, you get down here this instant!”

Mother had made similar demands in the past but I was pretty sure this time she didn’t mean to be taken literally.

Anyone who climbs at all knows that climbing down is far scarier and more risky than climbing up, if for no other reason than you’re looking at hard objects rather than clouds and the sky. Nevertheless, I managed to make it safely down to the ground without so much as a scratch. I imagined my mother rushing over to me, sweeping me up in her grateful arms and showering my cheeks with kisses, as I’m sure I had seen done in Lassie Come Home. Instead, I got a firm thumb and forefinger on either side of my right ear lobe and a brusque shepherding through our side door and into the kitchen, where my mother posed to me the type of question designed to instill shame and guilt in the heart of a 4-year-old, naïve, novitiate Christian.

“What would you do if you had a little boy who pulled a stunt like that?”

Now, I immediately recognized her query as a “trick question”, the answer to which might very well seal my fate. Rejecting rejoinders such as “give him a spanking”, “ground him”, or “send him to bed without his dinner”, I happened upon a response that might just turn a lemon into lemonade.

“I guess I would simply ask God to watch out for him.”

I never knew whether she actually did make such an appeal. I just knew that I had had a very close brush with disaster. I also learned that religion can easily be used to manipulate.

© 4 Feb 2013

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.

Mom by Gillian

Most of us are, of course, via nature and nurture, to a lesser or greater degree a product of our parents. I can easily identify many things; good, bad, and ugly, that I got from mine. On the whole, though, I think what a received from my dad was of a simpler, less complex nature, than the traits I received from Mom.  My father was essentially an uncomplicated man. My mother was not an uncomplicated woman, although she put on a good act. Probably most people who knew her, especially the many children she taught and their parents, found her to be a warm, patient, conscientious, motherly woman with a good sense of humor. She was all those things; but a whole lot more that she never presented to the world, or to me, though eventually I caught at least an occasional glimpse of what went on below that smooth veneer.

So it’s little surprise that for the first forty-odd years of my life I found it relatively easy to hide the real, gay, me, from the world and to a huge extent from myself, and play a very convincing part. I learned those skills from Mom. Not that my mother was a lesbian, at least as far as I can ever know, though in fact how can I ever know? I can’t, but I just don’t sense it, and I believe I would. Her issue was her son and daughter who both died before I was born. She never once talked about it; not to me nor to anyone as far as I know. She buried her tragedy deep and set about developing a shell, never to be broken.

At least I eventually broke free of mine. My mother never did. I learned the truth from my aunt. OK Mum, (which is what I actually called her, not the more American Mom) you didn’t tell me your secret and I didn’t tell you mine. Na na na na naaa na!

So I guess that leaves us even in our dysfunction.

I always felt that there was something. Something missing. I can’t really express what I felt, or why, it was simply a child’s intuition. And now, after all these years, I wonder if a mother’s intuition told Mum that there was something, something indefinable, missing in me, in who I was, and in my communication with her.

Somehow, despite our chaotic psyches, Mum and I were close and I always knew I was loved unconditionally, by both her and my dad. They both also had a great sense of humor. Mum loved to giggle. I loved to make her giggle. It was all part of the very complex hidden relationship in which I knew it was up to me to heal her wounds, though I only knew of them subliminally, and make her happy. It was up to me to make her laugh. So in this way she helped me develop my own humor and we laughed a lot together. My dad’s humor was completely different from Mum’s, and I am fortunate enough to have a wonderful mixture of both, but he would look on fondly in puzzled silence while Mum and I giggled helplessly over something in which he could find little humor.

Mum was, as were many people but especially women, I think, back then, very concerned with appearances. I don’t know if any of you ever watched Keeping Up Appearances on PBS, but the show always reminds me of my mother, although she was a much nicer person that Hyacinth Bucket! Mum had a bad case of don’t do it in the street and scare the horses. I could wear that tattered old sweater I loved so much in the house, but I couldn’t venture outside in it, and if there was a knock on the door, I had to bolt upstairs and hide or change clothes before I came back down. My dad didn’t have to wear his tie in the house but had to put it on in a rush if anyone came to visit, and he had to wear it outside even if he was gardening. Someone might see him without it! I, on the other hand, don’t give a tinker’s curse about what anyone thinks of the way I dress, or come to that the way I live, or anything about me. That, I think, is greatly a generational thing, but in my bones I feel that a lot of it is purely a reaction to Mum’s obsession with what will people think? On the other hand, of course, it did take me the first half of my life to come out of that bloody closet, so I cannot have been as freewheeling as I’d like to believe.

My mother’s other obsession was with her weight. She did seem to gain weight easily, though she never ate very much and only drank once a year, on Christmas Eve. It was always some kind of home-made wine: pretty strong stuff. After a couple of glasses she was bright red in the face and invariably stated in rather slurred words, how strange it was that although she only drank once a year, it never had any effect on her! Oh Mum, ever in denial! She was never obese, just pleasingly plump in a motherly kind of way.

But my dad and I could never convince her of that. These days I think it’s much easier to get a good feel for just how overweight, fat, or obese, you are, and how you look. With endless photographs of ourselves easily available we can compare ourselves with others only too often. In the days of only occasional snapshots, my mother constantly needed assurance.

“Oh dear!” Mum would exclaim, eyeing a woman of roughly her age bulging out of her clothes, “I’m not as fat as that am I?”

Well that was an easy answer in the negative, whatever the truth. But worse, she would sometimes ask that classic unanswerable question, “I’m not as fat as I used to be, am I?”

Just try to get that answer right!

I struggle to stay well clear of denial, because Mum relied so heavily on it. She would cry, not shedding a quiet tear but sobbing uncontrollably, over things with no direct relation to her; miners dying down coal pits, a race horse with a broken leg having to be shot, the death of King George V1. A therapist friend explained to me, many years later, that this was a classic example of transferred grief, my mother being way too terrified of facing her own grief, while needing to release it in some other way.

Poor Mum. She lived in the wrong time and the wrong place. Her children died in 1940 in a war torn Britain where people died every day and you just sucked it up and soldiered on. These days she would have had the benefit of therapy and support groups and various spiritual teachings to ease her way. Of course you never recover from the death of one child let alone two, but she would have had a lot of help in dealing with her heartbreak.

On rare occasions I catch myself glancing uneasily at an overweight woman and wondering if I am in fact more or less fat than she is.  I panic. Oh God, I’m becoming my mother! Eckhart Tolle and I try to keep me grounded in reality and dealing with my own self, leaving Mum to rest in peace. I am what I am and whether all or any of it comes from Mum and Dad hardly matters.  I recently accepted that my struggle to keep the weight off is little to do with heredity and a whole lot more about beer.

© Dec 2013

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Intoxicating Water by Carlos

The streets and alleyways behind the public market in Juarez resembled a labyrinth of third-world sensibilities. Shopkeepers sat on rickety crate boxes announcing their wares to pedestrians and bicyclists on the narrow streets, some of them hoarse due to the sing-song bellowing; others nonchalantly people-watching as though in quiet judgment. Many of the storefronts intrigued me, not necessarily because of the merchandise erratically displayed behind the small enclosures, but because of the world of magical realism that percolated around me. Whereas one shopkeeper offered sweet sugar-cured yams or pineapples on which honeybees danced, another displayed little pyramids of toasted sesame seeds, pistachio green pumpkin seeds, or maroon hibiscus flowers, all necessary ingredients to enrich the Mexican palate. Across the street, the heady aroma of cured leather wafted through the shoemaker’s shop while next to him hand-turned ochre cooking vessels, plates, and pitchers waited like soldiers at military parade rest awaiting customers. I felt comfortable walking the streets around the marketplace next to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe with its twin towers puncturing the fabric of heaven. After all, my grandmother lived only blocks from the market and the streets were idealized vignettes of typical life south of the border. I felt I was journeying out into arenas revolving with a maddening pace with life, akin to a twirling cup-and-saucer ride at a here-today-gone-tomorrow carnival attraction. My own life in Texas, across the border from Juarez, was idyllic enough. The Texas downtown area was conventional, broad streets, stately stuccoed homes, broad stretches of mulberry-shaded parks in which to play, and the convenience of well-stocked but staid, gray businesses. However, my world was transformed upon crossing the border of sleepy, lazy life of El Paso and journeying into a frenetic roller coaster ride of Juarez. There the mariachi bands played shoe-stomping jarabes and tapatios. There the enticing aromas of chile-infused roast pork and Mennonite cheese stuffed enchiladas simmering in pans and griddles from little out-of the-way stalls on the streets perfumed the air. There the house colors, bougainvillea pink and turquoise, Buddhist robe saffron and apricot, made life in El Paso seem staid in comparison. It was on one of my jaunts into my ancestral homeland that I learned the most important lesson of my life.

Being a natural explorer, I turned into a small winding side street that I had never scouted. The shadows lengthened before me. Pools of stagnant water collected and eddied down the street. I noted mounds of uncollected garbage strewn throughout, garbage on which flies twirled as though to a rhythm only they heard. The air was rancid with decay. In spite of the spectral scene punctuated by the shafts of light broken by the intermittent dance of dust devils, I plodded on. After all, the sky above was still blue and the earth beneath was still firm to my footing. I carried a large plastic cup of icy horchata, a cinnamon-infused rice beverage that I had purchased from an itinerant water merchant only moments before. The only sound I heard was the music of the marketplace dissipating in the distance, the discordant drone of the flies, and the sloshing of ice against my cup. The thought of turning back crossed my mind, as the brick-paved streets gave way to hard-packed clay and the crowds of only moments earlier flew off into the shadows. However, I was young and immune, an explorer out on a hero’s journey, canvassing the world etched before me. Unexpectedly, to my left, I noticed a mound of garbage move as though it had taken a life of its own. I heard the rattling of newspapers and cardboard boxes, sounds made by the displacement of something within the pile. Intrigued, I stood transfixed, that is, until I saw a leathery skeletal hand emerge from the pitiful pile. Momentarily, I saw her face, an old woman enveloped in a black tattered rebozo, and as she lowered the folds of the rebozo, I saw her face, desiccated and worn by a lifetime of depravation. Her toothless mouth opened as she hoarsely whispered to me, her hands beseeching me in supplication, “Mijo, tengo sed. Dame que tomar….” “My son, I am thirsty. Give me drink.” Out of revulsion, out of fear, and out of the funereal disquiet that permeated the scene, I ran away from the woman, only looking back to make sure the cadaverous specter in her rotting shrouds had not pursued me. And though I soon reached the safe side streets of the nearby marketplace, the woman did, in fact, pursue me, haunting me and forever altering the direction that my life would take.

I have been blessed with many people who have loved me unconditionally, with many mentors and insights that taught me to be a faithful believer. I have been enriched with untold life experiences, ranging from the ecstasy of being held in the arms of men who breathed in syncopation with my soul, to the agony of a heart fractured by the skillful cleaving of a diamond-cutting saw, yet none has ever managed to reveal as much of life as one shadow creature in a shadow city, a thirsty soul who asked but for a drink, a drink that I denied her. Maimonides has written “The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.” The words sting me to the core although I’ve managed to assuage my sin. Even before I saw a good shepherd reach out with compassion toward one disfigured by Neurofibromatosis, even before he reminded me to wash the feet of the prisoner, I recognized I had erred when I allowed my fear to circumvent my actions. I erred when I dared not look into her eyes; I erred when I dared not touch her head. Nevertheless, I’ve forgiven myself for my lack of judgment. After all, I recognize that standing before the portal of the underworld has the power to lead to my transfiguration.

An incident when I was eight-years-old compelled me to recognize that reality is outside of the realm of my experience; life consists of fleeting moments of potential reawakening. It took an old woman, thrown away by a world ill equipped to satiate her thirst for me to acknowledge the hallow victory of living without awareness. Although I never returned to the winding streets that led me to this woman, not a day goes by when I don’t see and recognize her, specifically in the LGBT community. I see her in the eyes of those members of our community who have been envenomed by the toxins spewed out by bigots and homophobes, all in the name of holier-than-thou morality. I see her, in the desperate looks of gay men throughout central Africa and the Middle East contemplating suicide rather than face societal reprisal. I see her in the discarded LGBT youth banished by their conditionally accepting families. I myself have known that thirst and humiliation; I recognize in myself the quiet desperation of rejection and ostracism that I have spent a lifetime releasing as I learned to heal myself. At those moments, I acknowledge a wake-up call from a woman living at the edge of a garden. At such times I honor she who once offered me redemption and promise myself that she will never again thirst.

© 30 Apr 2014

About the Author 

Cervantes wrote, “I know who I am and who I may choose to be.” In spite of my constant quest to live up to this proposition, I often falter. I am a man who has been defined as sensitive, intuitive, and altruistic, but I have also been defined as being too shy, too retrospective, too pragmatic. Something I know to be true. I am a survivor, a contradictory balance of a realist and a dreamer, and on occasions, quite charming. Nevertheless, I often ask Spirit to keep His arms around my shoulder and His hand over my mouth. My heroes range from Henry David Thoreau to Sheldon Cooper, and I always have time to watch Big Bang Theory or Under the Tuscan Sun. I am a pragmatic romantic and a consummate lover of ideas and words, nature and time. My beloved husband and our three rambunctious cocker spaniels are the souls that populate my heart. I could spend the rest of my life restoring our Victorian home, planting tomatoes, and lying under coconut palms on tropical sands. I believe in Spirit, and have zero tolerance for irresponsibility, victim’s mentalities, political and religious orthodoxy, and intentional cruelty. I am always on the look-out for friends, people who find that life just doesn’t get any better than breaking bread together and finding humor in the world around us.

Getting Caught by Ricky

          From June of 1956 to June 1958 I was living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota.  I was eight and nine years old at the time.  On Saturdays, after the morning chores were completed, grandpa always drove us into Cambridge, in their 1949 Kaiser Deluxe Sedan.

He and grandma would run their individual errands as my uncle and I eventually ended up at the drug store to spend our allowances.  My weekly allowance of $1.00 allowed me to purchase a model airplane kit and a Cherry Cola from the drug store’s “soda jerk.”

          In the beginning, I could buy each weekend a model airplane and a comic book for 98-cents, including the tax.  The comic book was only a dime.  As time passed, the comic book price increased to 12-cents and I could not buy both for $1.00 so I began to buy more comic books and the Cherry Cola.  My grandma said I had to save the left over money so I could still buy a model and drink or model and comic book, if I had saved enough left over allowance.  I really didn’t like that plan, but I did not have a choice between alternatives.

          Thus, for two years I developed a strong attachment to reading and building my model airplanes.  Now jump forward to when I lived with my mother, stepfather, stepbrother, and my twin half-brother/sister at South Lake Tahoe.  The year is 1960.  I am 12 and we live in our second rented home on Birch Street.

3745 Birch Street, So. Lake Tahoe, CA

          The house is a two-story edifice of what I call a rather rustic design and matching interior.  Our allowed part of the upstairs is about one-third of the total area available.  Crammed into that small space were two cribs, end-to-end, and a set of bunk beds.  Back at the first rented house, I had the bottom bunk as my then fifteen year old step-brother, Eugene (Gene for short), insisted on the top bunk.  In this second house, at seventeen Gene was literally tired of climbing into bed and so claimed the bottom bunk.  The twelve-year old man that I was enjoyed climbing into my top bunk.

          The roof sloped steeply but not quite as steep as an “A-frame” constructed house.  This resulted in a shortage of space near the upstairs walls that were actually the sloping roof.  Nonetheless, Gene and I made two small “cubby holes” among the “rafters” for each of us to use as a study and personal area.  It was a tight fit for Gene, being bigger than I am.  I was considerably smaller but it was a tight fit for me also.

          Gene and I got along well.  We never fought, wrestled, or were loudly argumentative with each other.  I suspect that was mostly because he was so much bigger and intimidated me by his size and status of being in high school.  We each were very protective of our study areas and did not like the other to enter or touch anything in our areas.

          Our parents did not bring home cookies very often, but when they did the package contained about 40 or 50 of them.  Gene and I learned early on that the cookies (or other treats) would disappear quickly.  Therefore, to ensure we both got an equal share, when the cookies arrived home, mother would watch us divide them up between us.  She always held some back.  Gene and I took our cookies and “hid” them in our study areas so we could not steal each other’s treasure.

          One day, being the immature man that I was then, I ate my last stashed cookie but still craved more.  Since Gene was not home, I searched his study area and found his cookie stash.  I didn’t think he would miss one or two and that’s how many I ate of his.  I did it again a couple of days later and he noticed.  The next time our stashes were refilled, he raided mine and of course, I retaliated once too often.

          I came home from school one day and found that Gene had broken a part off two of my model airplanes.  I bought these same model airplanes with my precious left over allowance money back on the farm in Minnesota.  As such, they were important to me.  I thought that breaking my airplanes was going too far.  I mean I didn’t break anything of his—I just ate his cookies.  I quickly escalated the “war.”

          I loved model airplanes.  Gene loved his paint-by-numbers kits.  I took four of his small paint bottles and began to throw them out the upstairs window onto a pile of chunks of broken concrete on the vacant lot next door.  My step-father was home but I believed him to be inside doing something.  I was wrong.  He came in from outside and called to me asking if I was throwing anything out the window.  I lied and said I was not.

          He went back outside and I watched from the window as he began looking around the vacant lot but didn’t seem to find anything and left the area.  Apparently, he either remembered what it is like to be 12 and questioned by his father, or somehow he knew I was lying and was waiting for me to throw something again.  In any case, I still had two little paint bottles to throw so I did.  This time he called me down to him and asked what I threw out the window.

          At that statement, my guts and butt suddenly developed a serious case of major “pucker factor.”  I did not lie again.  I told him what I threw and when he asked why, I explained that Gene broke my models.  I was afraid he would spank me or do something similar but worse.  He didn’t.  He only told me not to lie to him again.  I never did and never needed to either.  I do not remember if I told him the whole truth though.  I am fairly sure I did not tell him I started the “war” by eating Gene’s cookies.  If I had, things might have turned out different for me.

© 4 February 2013

About the Author 

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

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

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

My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.