One Summer Afternoon By Ray S

“What are you doing, father?” It isn’t quite summer, but almost. And this afternoon the question was voiced by one of a couple of gay revelers passing by as I waited for the next #10 bus.

“Waiting,” I replied and then quickly added, “for the next bus.” Then it struck me, the title by which I had been addressed and then my prompt reply.

First, I am a father and today is the national holiday honoring fathers. Just coincidently Denver’s Gay Pride Sunday. There certainly are statistics establishing how many gay fathers there are. Guess this is our special day as well. One never knows who will turn up a father; do you?

Second, I thought after the boys passed by that the word “waiting” looms either ominously or in joyful anticipation for all of us, and in my case—for what or whatever the future may hold.

Besides the initial carnival character of the setting at Civic Center and then the Pride Parade, I was aware of the general ages of the celebrants. Don’t gay men grow beyond downy-faced Peter Pans that will never grow up or full-blown bronzed Adonis’s with such an abundance of self-confidence and arrogance? This question was haunting and even more so after countless hours of observing the beautiful, bizarre, minimally-attired populous. Was this whole charade dedicated to the Fountain of Youth and the exciting discovery of carnality? Here is a parody of the song. "Old Soldiers never die," etc. that goes “Old Trolls never die, they just fly away.” Is there nothing to look forward to besides a good book, getting fat from countless dinner parties, recounting lost opportunities with other disappointed brethren, indulging in the occasional gay porn DVD in the lone comfort of your bed, and on and on, so be it?

Then like the first blush of the sunrise my eyes were opened wonderfully to the real world of beautiful, crazy, happy, gay attendees of this huge street party celebrating many other positive aspects of the right to be who we are and equal to all the rest of the seemingly God’s chosen.

The exterior physicality has a way of transforming. The ultimate result is the chance for a real inner beauty to emerge, if it hasn’t been there already . The value of friendship, companionship and love beyond the flesh core. The truly life-sustaining elements of all GLBT relationships. And of course human nature will see to the sometimes overarching flesh thing.

Waiting one summer afternoon. Well just relax, breathe deeply, look around you, see the beauty and love in all of us, and eventually that bus will come.

© 19 June 2013

About the Author

  

Casual Sex by Phillip Hoyle

Sex has never felt casual to me. Some have suggested that because of this I am not really gay, like the drag queen who claimed to my ex-wife that I wasn’t gay because when I had his beautiful body on my massage table I didn’t have sex with him. He echoed the complaint of much of the gay liberation movement that grew up during the time of free love and open relationships. The early gay movement presented these opening salvos of value to gain attention in order to gain civil rights for yet another segment of American people. They championed free-love among other rights. Still, even the most cursory look at “out” GLBTs reveals a much more complicated world of relationships, sexual practices, and preferences.

I really have no problem with the idea of casual sex. It’s fine with me although I have never been truly casual. When I came to Denver to live, I had sixteen different partners in my first sixteen months. The meetings began as casual pick-ups in bars. “Let’s have sex,” one smiling man at Charlies night club suggested. I agreed, and off we went to my apartment. The casual got a little more complicated when we negotiated what to do. It turned out we both wanted to do the same thing to one another but eventually found a mutually agreeable compromise and the once-again-casual fun began. Afterwards we talked about our backgrounds and found similar experiences, and in the exchange he emerged as a complex person, as much as I. Casually or otherwise, I liked him, his body, his openness, his personality. The several times we got together were great fun with vigorous sex, but I felt responsibility towards him and myself. Sex has always been like that for me. I feel like Johnny Carson, who said the reason he had so many divorces was that when he had sex with a woman, he thought he was supposed to marry her. When with men I don’t think in terms of marriage, but I may as well. If I’m casual in the initial act, I’m not casual in the aftermath when a real person emerges. Perhaps I was too long married, too long a pastor in churches. I just can’t maintain interest to an unattached sex organ.

Casual sex is probably the wrong expression for what I have observed in bars. There are forms for seeking to get laid that include pick up lines, banter, back-and-forth exchanges of glances, words, drinks, dances, kisses, and sometimes introductions. Even getting casual sex relies on long-established rules of communication. It’s rare to find it any other way since communications have to be understandable. 

I seek mental and emotional accord as well as sex. I want real, lively people in my life. I’m just that way. So… I’m a certain kind of gay person. I love sex but always lean towards complex relationships with complex personalities. That’s how it is for me: not too casual.

While I protest my interest in casual sex, I freely admit I have had sex outside of a committed relationship. I had sex in addition to a committed marriage, and in these variances I am not alone. In general, men seem happy to engage in casual sex even though there are social strictures against it. They do so in war; they do it when away on trips; they do it at home even with the possibility of getting caught and charged. The care of children and their mothers is a societal concern that has tended to limit the number of wives and keep men in control. In addition, control of family lineage and the distribution of wealth have long been preoccupations among the powerful. Societies don’t want to get out of control just because their men have too much testosterone, so they have developed standards of faithfulness within human marriages.

Men having sex with men don’t have to worry about pregnancies, so when Gay liberation became an issue, gay’s fought for sexual freedom as well. Gay men felt free of relational obligations until the discovery of the deadly STD HIV, then the co-infections such as hepatitis C, and then the re-emergence of syphilis. Then gay men had to calm down, refocus their attention, be less casual about it all, but they still wanted to suck it, still wanted to stick it, and still wanted to feel it buried deep inside and often with lots of different people. They (we) wanted the fucking intensity, and the rubber made it possible.

The accusations I have heard that I was not really gay, seem to point to an established form of free love, meaning casual sex within gay meanings. I am even more casual. No. I’m not. Nor am I particularly hung up. I want sex within friendship’s larger possibilities. I’m not interested to simply play out someone else’s fantasies. I want to relate at some more complex level. So I think in terms of sexualized friendships, something more akin to fuck buddies with the emphasis placed on buddies. This institution provides more than sexual release. As a form of friendship, it bows somewhat to the terms of contractual relationship. It certainly is more complex than John Richey’s young protagonist in the novel Numbers, much less goal-oriented than his adding notches to his whatever or adding variety to his numbering. It moves away from such quantitative goals to supplement them with a quality experience that I believe can only come with repeat performance. At least that’s my fantasy.

The current interest in establishing gay marriages by law seems to move the emphasis away from casual sex, but we must also remember that men who have been married to women all their adult lives still want and often get casual sex. The same surely will be true with gay men who seek formal, structured relationships, yet they seem willing to do so for financial, personal, control, romantic, or other reasons. Also they want it as a civil right and surely will win in this confrontation with general society.

© 17 February 2011

About the Author 

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

What is the Real Spirit of Stonewall? by Pat Gourley

Stonewall Inn (Then)

Stonewall Inn 2012

White statues in park across
 from the Stonewall Inn

“Despite his enduring commitment to gay rights and lifelong dedication to queer scholarship, Duberman is deeply disappointed in the contemporary LGBT movement, noting that for the last 20 years it has been focused on marriage equality and repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. In Duberman’s view, the gay agenda is grossly myopic and its goals of assimilation counter the spirit of Stonewall and Gay Liberation, which sought to affirm, rather than obscure gay differences.”

http://slanthere.com

The above quote referenced from the online entity The Slant is from an interview done recently with Martin Duberman. Duberman for those perhaps unfamiliar with the name is a queer, radical activist with a very long and impressive academic background and the author of numerous books and countless articles. He is on faculty as a professor of history emeritus at the City University of New York. The interview was published online June 5th, 2013 and is commemorating the 44th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. His most recent book is titled The Marin Duberman Reader.

In reading the Duberman interview I found myself hearing similar ideas I was frequently exposed to in the late 1970’s as a result of my budding relationship with Harry Hay, life long gay activist and founder of the Mattachine Society in 1950 and very instrumental in birthing the Radical Fairie movement. It was through contacts at the Gay Community Center of Colorado in 1978 that I was able to connect with Harry and his partner John Burnside who were living in northern New Mexico at that time.

An activity I was involved in during the spring of 1979, through The Center for the week of activities commemorating the Stonewall Riots, was the 3rd annual Lesbian/ Gay Symposium held the Saturday before the Sunday March. We were still marching back then rather than having a pride parade or at least still hotly debating whether it should be a “March or a Parade”.

The symposiums were part of Pride Week activities starting in 1977 and continuing into the early 1980’s working with the support of the Center. They consisted of a single daylong program of workshops. Presentations and discussions were of topical interest to the LGBT community and often fairly broad in scope. Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell was of course not even on the distant horizon yet and marriage equality not even a figment of anyone’s imagination. For many early LGBT activists participation in the military was not consider a desirable pursuit for anyone gay or straight, and marriage was thought to be a rather unsuccessful heterosexual construct meant to primarily control women and property, definitely not something to strive to emulate.

Since I had gotten to know Hay and his loving companion John Burnside in the previous year the awareness of his rich queer activist history led me to pursue him as a keynote speaker at the 1979 Symposium. They were at that time both heavily involved in the planning for the first Radical Fairie gathering that was to take place in the Arizona desert outside Tucson later in the summer. In personal correspondence dated 6-11-79 in typical Hay fashion he agreed to come up for the event. Written letters in 1979 were a viable and frequently used manner of communication and Harry was a master at writing long letters. Regarding my request that he and John be keynote speakers he wrote: “…being ‘keynote people’ scares us. We love to rap with people but we don’t take kindly to the old hetero-imitating formalisms of speeches or addresses.”

Though I have many pages of personal correspondence with Harry in particular I unfortunately never saved my responses back to him. I apparently responded that that would be fine and they came to Denver for that Lesbian and Gay Pride weekend of 1979 and participated in several workshops at the Symposium. He spoke briefly at the rally at the end of the Pride march that Sunday in Civic Center. Harry with bullhorn graces the cover of the July 6, 1979 issue (Vol. IV, #7) Of Out Front Magazine. I do not remember any of his remarks at the rally but the theme of the march that year was “We Are Family” so I suspect he spoke to that.

Much of Hay’s thought on queers at the time focused on the three questions originally raised by the Mattachine society; who are we, where do we come from and what are we for? If we were to be pursuing these questions in earnest at the time, and they are still quite relevant today, assimilation into the larger hetero society with marriage equality and open military service were unlikely to facilitate that exploration.

In the Duberman piece referenced earlier he describes the current “gay agenda” focus on marriage and the military as very myopic and Hay would certainly agree. In fact I heard Harry dismiss both as sadly hetero-imitative and nothing we should be serious about pursuing if we were intent on getting to the root of our difference and bringing our unique gifts and contributions to the larger human banquet.

When Duberman was asked specifically about the influence of queer culture on mainstream America he responded in part: “So far, I don’t think the effect of mainstream culture has been significant, and I think that’s the fault of both the gay movement and the mainstream, which is willing to accept and tolerate us to the extent that we act like good middle class white people”.

If I can be so bold I would say that both Hay and Duberman firmly believe that our real strength comes from being “outsiders”. Perhaps the potential for at least some of the change humanity desperately needs at this juncture can come from queer folk and that will only come about if we relish and explore our differences as possible keys to viable solutions to our immense problems today. Not to throw too much of a burden on us but we really do need to be in the vanguard of a radical restructuring of the entire social order or we are pretty much screwed both as a species and a viable planet.

How wonderful if every June we could renew out commitment to being “other” and recommit to using our unique worldviews to tackling some of the greatest issues we will face in the coming year.

© 30 June 2013

 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 Strangest Person I Ever Met by Nicholas

One day she walked into my office and sort of collapsed down into a chair and said, with a mixture of patient weariness and eager anticipation, “I just can’t wait till I get my tits.”

Rebecca (not her real name) was a volunteer at the GLBT Community Center where I worked and she frequently tossed off quips about where she was in her transition.

“You’ll get them,” I assured her, “and they will be beautiful.” Like, what do I know about boobs, I thought.

I really didn’t think it very strange that Rebecca would announce to me such a private anatomical detail. We were always chatting about something at The Center. This was just real life the way real people lived it. No more “strange” than if she’d said, “I need to buy a new car.” Though a good deal more personal. But then one cannot transition in private so why be secretive about the process.

That was her attitude and I was always impressed by Rebecca’s ability to be open and light hearted about her life and its changes when so many others seemed to carry theirs around like a heavy stone on their backs. Rebecca seemed not only determined to make her life her way but to enjoy it along the way.

I didn’t find that so strange—actually, more admirable than strange. But it occurred to me that there are people in this world whose eyes would have bugged out at a statement that, to them, would have been as strange as if saying she was from Mars.

I don’t really know strange people. At least I don’t think so. I once knew a guy whom I would call strange, as in weird. I assume he’s long dead since he looked like a walking corpse when I knew him in San Francisco in 1969—where knowing strange people was a daily occurrence. Frank lived in the flat below me and his full time and sole occupation seemed to be smoking pot and doing probably any other drug he could find in the dark confines of his room. One day he emerged into the sunlight and showed the most sallow and droopy skin I’d ever seen on a body still alive. Now, that’s strange, I thought, and not very appealing. I stayed away and always have from “strange people.” Weirdoes just don’t interest me.

But then some people would say that my life is pretty strange and full of weirdoes—faggots, dykes, radicals, mystics, people of integrity and ethics, animal lovers, even. I know a woman who once took a squirrel she’d hit with her car to a vet to try to save it. Now, that’s strange. I’d never do that.

One of my best friends is beyond the beyond, as the Irish say. He’s intersex. Now, we’re totally outside the binary, as he puts it. Pronouns don’t even apply here though, since you have to check one box or the other, David has always identified as male. With intersex people we have not just men, women and those transitioning, but suddenly the biological permutations are near endless. He used to have tits but lost them when forced into more male-inducing hormone treatments as an adolescent. He tells me he misses his tits and the fine soft skin he once had. He’s taught me a lot.

So, no, I don’t like “strange.” But in a way I require some strangeness in my friends. Strangeness is, after all, a very subjective judgment. What some call strange, I call interesting, unique, human, being alive, maybe even fun. Life is strange enough all by itself. And if you’re not even a wee bit strange, you need to fix that. Take a flight on the astral plane, listen to those voices in your head, drop everything and go on a meditation retreat, paint your toe nails purple, sit down and read a book. You know, weird stuff.

To some people, I suppose, I might be the strangest person they’ve ever met.

© 22 July 2012

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.

Details by Michael King

Last night we were on our way to a party. On the way we wanted to go to a hardware store to pick up several items. When we looked up the address I thought it was only a few blocks from the Home Depot on Colorado Boulevard.

Leaving the parking lot, I told Merlyn to turn left. He couldn’t understand why when he knew that we needed to go north, not south. When he mentioned Colfax, I asked what Colfax had to do with anything? He said that where we are supposed to go would be only a couple of blocks off Colfax. I realized that I was thinking the address was on South Madison. It never dawned on me that we were over two miles south of our destination because I was only familiar with Madison Street near where I used to work and didn’t consider that it runs all the way through the Denver Metro area far south and far north.

This is an example of not paying attention to the details. We didn’t need to have gone the five or so miles extra just to get things from a hardware store. Merlyn thinks I know what I’m doing and sometimes I blow it. On the other hand sometimes I let him know that he needs to go right rather than left or vice-versa. It works out eventually and neither of us gets overly excited as we accept each other’s occasional imperfections and we let tolerance take over.

To begin to list all the times I don’t pay attention to details would totally destroy the image of always being perfect in my wonderful world of rose colored glasses and fuchsia accents. On the other hand I do get to give little touches of fun and perhaps a little uplift when I add a few details to enhance a plate of food, a conversation or maybe the way I give someone a special hug.

The details can give each day a little more meaning and joy, or if we let them a little disappointment. I try to avoid the latter. So I can now be the silly person that I sometimes like to be. The question is; are the details dehead, delegs. debelly, dearms, defingers or detoes the ones that are debest?

© 9 December 2012

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities," Telling your Story"," Men's Coffee" and the "Open Art Studio". I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

One Monday Afternoon by Merlyn

I like to go on vacation the week after Labor Day; the kids are back in school and most of the places we liked to go to would still be open without all the people. We moved into a new place three years earlier and had been busy repairing and remodeled our new home. The only thing left to do was update the laundry room. I had redone the pumping, wiring and replaced the flooring. The only thing left to do on Monday was put the new washer and dryer in place. Load the old ones in the trailer and take them to be recycled. Then get out of town. The weather was supposed to be nice in southern Nevada and Arizona so we were planning on heading that way.

We were still in bed sleeping when the phone started ringing; my girlfriend’s son called to tell to turn on the TV, a plane had crashed into the world trade center. We were lying in bed watching the news when the second tower was hit.

I had been reading stories on line about possible terrorist attacks against us but I had dismissed them.

We spend the morning watching the TV and finishing the laundry room. The news was reporting that all of the planes that were flying were ordered to land at the nearest airport. I had the computer on a site that showed all of the planes in the air anywhere in the country, within an hour there were only a few planes left as one by one they landed and the sky was empty.

Around noon I went outside and was loading the old washer and dryer on the trailer when I realized how quiet everything was. We lived about a mile from the flight path to PDX airport and could always see and hear planes going over. I looked at the sky and realized our country would never be the same.

I went back inside and we watched the TV as we ate lunch and talked about what might happen next. Since no one knew what was going to happen we decided we did not want to be 1000 + miles from home and not be able to get back if the attacks continued.

We spent a week on the Oregon coast and spent the rest of our vacation just hanging around home.

After twenty years we never made a big trip together again after September 11, 2001

P.S. After I finished this story I was thinking about it and realized 911 was on a Tuesday. We were planning on leaving on Monday but the washer was not available to be picked up until Monday afternoon.

© 5 March 2013 

About the Author

I'm a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

MCCR, Dignity, Integrity and the Radical Fairies by Louis

Personally, I am what you would call semi-religious. In this essay I talk a lot about “I, I, I, me, me, me” not for the sake of an ego trip but to use myself as a typical gay American trying to find his spiritual niche, a pilgrim. I think religion should be a part of one’s life. We know, however, all too well, that the churches we have been dealing with as we were growing up were mostly intolerant bastions of homophobia.

Many religious gay people grew up in a church they thought was a sanctuary. A sanctuary is supposed to be a safe place. If the identity of the gay religious people was revealed, they were often asked to leave; in many instances, the “sanctuary” was not safe at all, au contraire, it was dangerous and hostile. As a result, the vast majority of gay people have become atheists, agnostics or humanists, and they have a low opinion of churchdom. My parents felt that religion was a mental sickness. So many wars in the past have been fought over differences in religious dogma. They thought religiosity = hateful intolerance and narrow-mindedness. And religious people just love judging their neighbors. They claim to worship God but they really worship the almighty dollar and social climbing.

I thought many religious people have these faults, but just as many do not. So, I went shopping for a church. Many churches nowadays tolerate gay parishioners. MCC offers an even better theology in which we celebrate our sexual orientation in a joyous Christian service. It is completely gay and Lesbian positive and completely Christian. Jim Burns is the pastor of MCC Denver. He is exactly what is needed. About 30 years ago, an MCC minister said that real liberation and empowerment of our community will come from our spiritual understanding of the divine nature of our sexual orientation, of our status as God’s children with all the rights and privileges that derive there from. I feel comfortable with that assessment.

Integrity is the gay “caucus” of the Episcopal Church which claims it has a positive view on gay rights, which is true. Integrity nowadays assists gays looking for a church to choose an accepting Episcopal church as opposed to a homophobic congregation, of which there are still many unfortunately.

In New York City, however, Integrity has a history of putting on beautiful services of its own with the emphasis on pomp and circumstance and beautiful organ and classical orchestral music. If nothing else, an Integrity service was a grandiose cultural event. Their services were held at St. Martin in the Fields in the West Village. It was run by Lesbian and gay people. It was Episcopal but quite independent.

After a while, the NYC Episcopal Church said they did not see any need for Integrity unless it became a funded ministry of the Episcopal Church. The leader of Integrity at the time, Nick Dowen, appropriately declined the offer of funding. One of the later presidents of Integrity agreed that Integrity was unnecessary. Her name was Sandy, a black Lesbian who said she felt perfectly comfortable as a parishioner of St. Paul’s Apostles Church, which she attends regularly with her partner. St. Paul’s Apostle’s church is located a block away from Penn Station. I did not agree with Sandy. Now all Integrity does is guide Lesbian and gay pilgrims to friendlier churches. I noticed that Integrity Denver has the same policy of guiding and advising only, no actual leadership rôle. I was disappointed with the way the old New York City Integrity ended.

I am sure that the Episcopal Church’s claim that it does accept Lesbian and gay parishioners is 90% true, but, without Integrity offering something special to the wider gay community, I lost interest in the Episcopal church.

Back in the 70’s I went to one Lutheran Church in Queens and spoke with the pastor after the service; he was very homophobic. I went to another Lutheran Church where a more liberal pastor said they welcomed gay and Lesbian people. The better choice yet was the United Church of Christ that combines its claim of accepting Lesbian and gay people with a rather aggressive ministry of advocating for our rights.

MCC fulfills my Protestant side, but I am also part Catholic. I thought in error that the Episcopal Church with Integrity as intermediary might be the answer. It wasn’t. So what about Dignity? As sympathetic as I am to their mission or should I say “mission impossible” of reintegrating Lesbian and gay people into the Roman Catholic Church, despite my Catholic side, I do not feel the need to join the RCC.

I want a gay and Lesbian positive congregation that worships with a Catholic inspiration, but I still have not found one.

      Q. “Do you believe in God?”
      A. “Yes, but I do not believe in organized religion.”

A lot of people feel comfortable with this position. I think what this really means is that, though I am a believer, the established churches are for the most part so reactionary, mindless and hateful, they repel me. The adversaries have big well-financed religious organizations that protect an evil status quo. I have nothing; I have no church that is geared to promote my interests including my spiritual well-being.

Lesbian and gay people have been victimized more than most by an evil status quo church. I do not, however, think that this revulsion of traditional churches is universal. The Unitarian Universalist Church is a beacon of enlightenment. Perhaps the gay pilgrim could join a UU congregation and fight the fight for gay rights in an American organized religious setting.

A radical alternative for the Lesgay pilgrim could be the Radical Faeries. According to Wikipedia:

The Faeries trace their name to the 1979 Spiritual Conference for Radical Fairies.[note 1] The conference, organized by Harry Hay and his lover John Burnside, along with Los Angeles activist Don Kilhefner and Jungian therapist Mitch Walker, was held over the Labor Day weekend in Benson, Arizona and attracted over two hundred participants. From this, participants started holding more multi-day events called "gatherings". In keeping with hippie, neopagan, and eco-feminist trends of the time, gatherings were held out-of-doors in natural settings.[6] To this end, distinct Radical Faerie communities have created sanctuaries that are "close to the land".[7]

The Radical Faeries recognize that, in the context of an earth-oriented spirituality, such as the religion of Native Americans, gay people were never marginalized but were accepted members of the Tribe. Radical Faeries also promote the idea that earth-oriented spirituality should be based on our common sexual orientation. This leads to empowerment and liberation of our community. I think the Radical Faeries make a very convincing case for a new spirituality.

© 25 June 2013 

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.

The Swim by Gillian

I have never been one to be really “in the swim of things,” an expression much used by my mother but not heard so much today. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms defines it as “actively participating, in the thick of things,” and explains it’s origin from the term “swim” used in the 1800’s to mean a large number of fish in one area.

No, I have not for the most part been one of those many, but more one aside. Perhaps it was to some extent an inevitable result of being an only child, learning of necessity to be perfectly content with my own company, but it was also the result of other circumstances.

When I was about four my parents and I moved to a remote farming area on the border of England and Wales, to live with and look after my paternal grandparents of whom I have already told you quite a lot in various stories. This part of the world had a dialect all its own, so that set me apart from everyone else from the start. When I began school I learned, as children swiftly do, to adopt the right words and phrases, to talk like the other kids, and fit in well enough, but was never really “in the swim.”

Besides, they were all farm kids and I was the teacher’s brat, so that left an inevitable space between us. Furthermore, in remote areas like this, people were only just beginning to travel outside their immediate surroundings and so for many generations had been intermarrying.

It seemed as if every one of my friends was related to all the others whereas I had no family in the area except my immediate one of parents and grandparents.

It was not that I was lonely or unhappy, just not “in the swim.”

Then, of course, as I grew older that subconscious subliminal gay thing was always there.

Even though I didn’t even recognize it consciously, let alone do anything about it, it definitely kept me out of that “swim!”

And now I have recognized it, and done something about it, and am completely “out,” I still wouldn’t say I’m firmly “in the swim of things” as far as gay culture, whatever that is, goes. Yes, I suppose being with a same-sex partner in a committed relationship for twenty-five years does put me solidly within the “gay” circle, but I don’t find myself “in the swim” of gay culture.

Sure, I’ve read some gay books and seen some gay movies, and would probably do more of both if there were more really good ones. I’ve done my fair share of dancing and lesbian bars but once I found my beautiful Betsy those rather lost their appeal.

I am here, a participant in this wonderful group, which I acknowledge as one of the best things to have come along in my life, so clearly I do participate in gay things with gay people,

But in general I have to say that I don’t feel participation in gay culture to be a big part of my life.

No, not in the swim!

Or am I? Surely being completely at peace with whom and what you are is just about as much “in the swim” as a person could ever be.

© Sept. 10th 2012

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.

Captured by Carlos

Captured, caught, entrapped, ensnared...all of these words have negative connotations, and of course, depending on the circumstances, the revelation of oneself to the world can have devastating effects, whether tangible or perceived. I still grimace when a few classmates in high school branded me a maricon, a joto, a mariposa since I could not catch a football or hit a ball with any finesse. After having my identity questioned, I discerned that I had choices to make. Later in life, I was again a casualty when I gave my heart prematurely to men who had no interest or inclination in nurturing it once the adrenaline rush dissipated. Again, I had choices to make. More recently, I found myself under the sword of Damocles when a professional informed me of possibilities of prostate cancer. Being terrified, I forfeited my power. And again I had choices to make. Looking back retrospectively, I’ve recognized that a challenge can, in fact, be an opportunity. Nevertheless, I’ve also concluded that no pain can ever compensate for the outcome.

In my childhood, I valued the identity instilled upon me by my nuclear family. My family never questioned why I preferred to play with my sister’s Easy Bake oven rather than with a baseball glove. My family encouraged me to love poetry rather than to critique it as being too sensitive, too different, too enticing for a little boy. I embraced books over athletics, gentleness over boldness. My parents never counseled me against watching in awe as Loretta Young, bedecked in resplendent gowns of silk and chiffon, sashayed across the screen on our Zenith television. I came to admire her demeanor, her identity, secretly of course, for I suspect that by that time I had learned the rules of playing hide and seek.

Little did I realize that once I stepped outside of my family’s threshold and into the world, my halcyon days would come to an end. The day would dawn when I would be caught red-handed, judged, and summarily sentenced for crimes against nature. When I entered the arena, that stage became gladiatorial combat, victory going to he who could assert his alpha male supremacy over others. Maybe that is why so many cultures have a strong belief in warding off the evil eye with amulets and totems, an attempt to maintain one’s sanctity and humanity in a world that so often hovers between heaven and hell. My entry into the world was fraught with insecurity and pain. Others recognized that I was queer even before I knew it. In order to satiate their own insecurities, bullies needed scapegoats to justify their own failures. Thus, they flung poisonous arrows in my direction. I was pommeled into a terrifying world of youthful competition, of constantly measuring myself against the others around me. I learned to live life in quiet desperation like so many other little boys and girls who drown in anonymity.

Later, when I decided to embrace my, dare I say, God-bestowed identity, and quest after being enfolded in manly arms, it didn’t take long for me to realize that my quest for love would not come easily. I offered too much too early to the advances of a handsome face or mellifluous words spoken in a moment of desire. I had naively expected to find redemption from a fellow inmate; instead I internalized self-induced doubt and condemnation. And the fissure grew into a fracture as I catapulted deeper into the abyss.

More recently, a urologist informed me, in her all-too-professional demeanor, that my unexpected inability to hold my bladder might, in fact, signal a developing cancer. I accepted her prognosis as thoughts of loss of control, youth, and mortality shrouded me like a cosmic black hole capturing light. After all, I was the organism being scrutinized through her lens. Thus, like many of us, I was caught time and time again and condemned to journey into the headwaters of self-loathing and misappraisal.

Many people, especially New Age types, have adopted a pseudo-belief borne from a Taoist perspective that opportunity and danger go hand-in-hand. It’s so convenient to conclude that a crisis can result in an opportunity. I recognize that this feel-good attitude toward struggle may help assuage some of the trauma of dealing with any pain. I recognize that through alchemy, fire does, in fact, transform brittle iron into solid steel. However, I am a living, breathing human being imbued with memories as well as a heart and soul that can be shattered like a fragile Swarovski crystal. More often than not, in extricating the barbs that penetrated my flesh, pieces of me were gouged out. To my credit, in spite of the taunts of my peers in my youth, I overcame. I even learned that it’s perfectly okay for macho men to play with dolls and to treasure poetry. In spite of the men who cast stones at my glass house, I never became jaded in my pursuit for love, and in time unearthed the Lesotho Diamond, the man-of-men whose heart beats in unity with mine. And in spite of an initial terrifying medical prognosis, I learned that sometimes cancer is nothing more than kidney stones. In spite of my having been ensnared, I eventually learned to embrace the man in me, a skeptic but a believer, fractured but whole.

It hurts as the flames devour essence. Picking up the pieces from the ashes is metaphorically like collecting shards of sulfur from fire-belching volcanoes. Of course, I recognize that life by nature can be a journey fraught with suffering. Of course, I realize that tragedy is only tragedy when one gives in to it. Nevertheless, realistically and unapologetically, I still long for a world in which its citizens recognize holistically that we are truly the stewards of each other’s souls. A poet writes, “Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints in our hearts and we are never the same.” The poem implies that our getting caught can be blissful, a journey to Nirvana. Unfortunately, it also suggests that sometimes getting caught leaves lesions that burn acrimoniously. However, it behooves me to recognize that in this world, it is to my advantage to recognize that there are some things we cannot change, but with courage there are many we can as long as we know the difference (Serenity Prayer).
                                            

© Denver 2/3/13 

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.

Depravity by Betsy

We have heard (from others) that  common usage of the word depravity refers to morally corrupt behavior; even though it  be behavior  as viewed by some offended individuals who choose to judge. Do we queers have a monopoly on depravity?  I don’t think so.  If we are referring to morally corrupt behavior regardless of who is doing the judging, and if we take the concept a step further, I suggest that a state of collective depravity exists throughout the land.

Consider the lack of compassion present in our world today.   Take the US for example, which in recent memory actually was the wealthiest nation on earth.  There is enough wealth in this country to go around.  Yet, in this land of plenty today many people are suffering.  It is estimated that one out of 5 children lives in poverty and 1/2 million children are homeless. Today the bottom 50% of Americans control just 2.5% of the entire nation’s wealth. 

It seems that some--not all, but some--who have wealth feel compelled to promote a system of government whereby that wealth stays in the hands of the wealthy only.  What is that if not moral corruption, that is, depravity--call it group depravity.  Those who have not are on their own, must fend for themselves, and in the end must always be struggling and must stay in their current level of income or their current level of deprivation so that a few may have more than anyone ever needs, more than they even know they have.   There is a fear on the part of some that, if the government mandates that we take care of those in need, the wealth will become so diluted that NO ONE will be wealthy.   In my opinion those people have lost sight of the real meaning of the concept of wealth; namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and they have lost their compassion.  The result is rampant depravity.  That’s right!  Moral corruption is alive and well in the U.S. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours is the order of the day for many--not all--of our law makers and other leaders. It is no secret that there often are millions even billions of dollars involved in those back scratching deals.  It seems that some of our leaders have lost sight of what’s good for the country; or, their vision has become skewed.

So let’s look at wealth as something other than millions or billions of dollars.  Life is full of riches.  Let me name just a few: loved ones, family, friends, a quiet walk in the woods, a brilliant, glorious sunset or sunrise, the mountains, a beautiful work of art, the list goes on and on endlessly.  One can enjoy all of these riches. EVERYONE can enjoy all or at least some of these riches IF, and only if, they know that their basic needs will be met--food on the table, a roof over their head, basic health care, education.  The resources exist for those needs to be met for everyone in this country.  But our societal depravity is a block against even considering reaching this Utopian concept.  Societally and governmentally our collective eyes are closed even to the concept.

What really is the fear when it comes to promoting a better distribution of wealth?   Loss of power over others?  Maybe.  One needs only to take a fleeting glance at history to discover that, the wealthy taking more and more power leads to revolution.  In the end the people have the power.  Power to the people. Isn’t that what our Democracy is supposed to be about? And I thought we gave up the notion of Social Darwinism --survival of the fittest--over a century ago.  Yet, in spite of all this, we seem to be going in the wrong direction. 

Those who have a fear of spreading the resources around so that everyone has his or her basic needs met--those who have that fear, in my opinion, are entirely focused on their fear.  The result is rampant greed.  Perhaps it’s time for all people to look into our individual and collective hearts and focus on what we see there, or figure out what is absent there.  It seems to me that compassion and a basic love and respect for humanity is missing in some individuals, but certainly in the collective psyche--I believe that these qualities, that is, compassion and love, exist in all human beings.  But so does depravity.

Can we not create a system to make it possible for all people to meet their basic needs on their own as most people want to do; and for those unable to do so share the resources so that they are cared for as well?   And yes, some who are fortunate, enterprising, smarter, harder working, or just plain lucky can have more than others and enjoy their wealth, but not to the point that those with less are wiped out?  I do believe that, globally, humankind can find a way to do this.  I certainly hope so.  Am I an optimist, or what?  Oh well, better an optimist than being totally lost to depravity.

© 5 December 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.

The Essence of GLBTSQAHZICAEUC? by Will Stanton

I’m baffled.

“Essence: the quality of a thing that gives it its identity.”  “The Essence” sounds singular to me, one essence; but “GLBTSQAHZICAEUC?” sounds like a lot of different kinds of people.  So, how can there be one essence?  I imagine  that we can argue logically that there is an essence supposedly common to all human beings, but I doubt that the person who suggested this “GLBTQ”-topic meant all of humanity.  Somehow, he meant to speak to a singularity applied to people of various orientations or persuasions.

Over the years, I have had time for rational evaluation of human sexual orientation, and long ago I came to the well supported conclusion that there are no true categories.  Sexuality is fluid and covers a wide spectrum.  Orientals such as East Indians have known that for centuries.  I’m not sure that all members of Western psychological professions have managed to come to that realization.  For the longest time in the West, professionals were convinced that human sexuality is binary, male and female; and any deviation from those two categories was supposedly abnormal.  Awareness to the contrary and consequential studies in this area have been belated, although there has been an increase in research that has revealed much information, assuming that people are truly interested in learning about it.

Contrary to my undergraduate studies during the Dark Ages of psychological debate, when, for example, one of my professors denied the slightest influence of genetics upon how one thinks, feels, and behaves, we now are obtaining through modern research-methods an astonishing quantity of information confirming and, to some extent, explaining genetic influences upon human development.

Despite these scientific revelations, some people still engage in a false debate of “nature vs. nurture,” that is, is a person the result solely from how he was born or what he learns?  The premise of the argument is false. Instead, humans are the result of nature with nurture.   The myriad of factors forming an individual’s personality and sexuality seem too complex to speak of one essence.

Considering physical development alone, researches have discovered that there are at least one hundred genetic influences in the womb that contribute to more than thirty physical intersex states.  We now know also that genetic influences upon brain and  endocrine system development have a discernable impact upon how one feels and thinks.

So, how to approach this topic?  I suggest that “GLBTQ” is too limiting, just too few choices to place all gay-ish people into one of those categories.  And with this topic, what was meant by “essence?”  I can image that, in the 1970s and 80s, “The essence” could refer to patchouli.  I sure smelled allot of that essence when I was around gay people during  that time.

Let’s start by looking at some of these lettered designations.  I suppose to be an “L” one must be female, or at least some semblance of female.  Then there is “B” for  “bisexual.”  That sounds biological to me.  Do people mean instead that a person is an “A,” ambisexual, like a baseball switch-hitter?   If that person claims to be straight but has gay encounters on the side, is that person “heteroflexible?”

Then there is T for “transgender.”  That term is imprecise and does not clarify which way the person was reassigned.  Also, it certainly does not refer to that minority of “Ts” who changed and then attempted to change back again.  I know of some cases like that and also have talked with one such person.  Would that person be a “TT?” 

How about an “S?”  I’m particularly baffled by those thousands of young guys and  teenage boys who inexplicably have a compulsion to take massive doses of female hormones yet have no intention of ever surgically completing a full transition.  They develop large breasts, wide hips, and round butts, but they still possess their original equipment.  Some even prefer to be the dominate partners in sex.  A whole new term has been created to refer to this group, “shemales.”  So, I guess we need an “S” for them.  Robin Williams refers to this hybrid of many sexual parts as “The Swiss army-knife of sex.”  If you like Robin’s term, “S”  would work for that, too.

Now for “Q.” I hope that no activist who has become habituated to using the term ”queer,” chooses to be offended by my questioning its use.  What in the world qualifies someone to be “queer?”  Could that term be referring to Dennis Rodman?  Does an overabundance of tattoos and piercings make a person look queer?  Is Dennis’ palling around with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un queer behavior?  Or, what about the reclusive, elderly woman who has seventy-five cats inside her smelly house?  Could she be queer?  I can not imagine encountering a person in the figure of a president, a general, or an astronaut, and calling him or her “queer” simply for having a same-sex partner.

Do we require an “H” for hermaphrodites?   True hermaphrodites are extremely rare.  More frequently, some varying level of physiologically intersex state is found.  I think we need a letter “I,” too.  Some such individuals choose, or have been persuaded to choose, “apparent-male” or “apparent-female” and have surgery to approximate the appearance.  Contrary to that choice, I took notice of a young Harvard student who was intersex.  People demanded to know whether the surgical choice would be “male” or “female,”  The reply was, “Neither.  I am who I am.”  That impressed me.

What factors contribute to a person being asexual?  Is it personality?  Something physical?  Lack of opportunity?  Old age?  Do we have to come up with another “A” for this person?  Or maybe we need a “Z” for “Zero” to prevent confusion with the other “A.”

For several hundred years throughout Europe and beyond, there was a pervasive custom of emasculating thousands of prepubescent boys so that they could preserve their soprano voices yet benefit from the extraordinary physical development unique to those individuals as adults.  Many of them continued to have sex with females, many with males, and some with both.  There even is a small minority of males right here in the U.S. who choose the procedure simply for psycho-sexual reasons.  Creepy, but true.  Upon what personality traits would we base categorization?  How should we call  them?  “Gay?”  “Straight?”  “C” for “castrato?”

What if everything is lopped off a male as has been done for centuries with East-Indian hijras?   It is estimated that there are approximately two-and-a-half million hijras in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore, and elsewhere even today.  They dress like women, but they are neither women nor men.  Should we come up with an “E” for “eunuch?”

There probably are several more letters that we could come up with, but let me suggest just two more.  How about “U” for “uninterested,” someone who is not truly asexual but, for various other reasons, just does not give a damn about sex anymore?  Maybe some guy was just divorced for the fifth time and has given up on women (or men), especially now that he has moved out of the house and is living in a tent.

And last but not least, how about “C?” for “confused?”  In other words, “Just what in the heck am I?”  I bet there are allot of people out there who simply are confused.

Well, I may not be a confused “C?”, but I am baffled.   I just don’t know what to make of  GLBTSQAHZICAEUC?.  Are we now obliged to come up with separate restrooms?

© 20 April 2013   

About the Author 

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.