The Accident by Phillip Hoyle

There isn’t just one accident in my story—the story of my life. I’ve already told about tearing a ligament in my foot from my rushing down too many stairs and then falling one evening when going to retrieve a choir folder from my car. I’ve already told about my accidentally plunging over a waterfall in the Black River of New Mexico and the dislocation of my knee in that unfortunate adventure. I’ve already told of other accidents that occurred when I was pushing myself beyond my body’s strength or was involved in some kind of sport for which I was ill prepared. I’ve told about my father’s and mother’s terrifying automobile accident that killed him and left her bedfast for years. Perhaps I failed to write about falling on my head from the hideout in the top of the garage and landing on the concrete. That accident could probably account for any number of oddities in my mental functioning. No wonder I’ve overlooked it.

I wonder what risk assessment experts would make of my accidental life? What would they write up due to my lack of physical coordination, my number of nicks, cuts and bruises? What would they say of my tendency to stub my toes and even fall headlong to the ground when walking through the neighborhood? What scores would they assess over my dislocated knees, my extreme nearsightedness, my advanced astigmatism, my increasing hearing loss. Now a number of the conditions I’ve listed are due to my advanced age, but surely they would note that most of them have been with me throughout my life: my stumbling bumbling awkwardness, my tendency to fall. They may accuse me in this story of exaggerating my disabilities as if I want the government to give me coverage I could never qualify for on the open insurance market, but that is not so. I simply am prone to walk a teetering edge even where there’s no edge and seem to be losing my balance on the flattest of walkways.

I have other risky stories. I’m sure I’ve told you in so many ways about that accident of birth that could be described as being born with a homosexual proclivity. I’ve never regretted that accident or whatever it was. Certainly it would be judged better than being a natural born criminal. So if in this proclivity I am an accident waiting to happen, could it be that risk assessment researchers would say the same thing of my proclivity to feel too deeply in my friendships with other boys in my childhood? And more about similar feelings with men in my adulthood? In these stories their objections are not that I’d so much hurt my body with scrapes and broken bones, but that I’d become unacceptable, unable to get or keep a job, unable to fit in with the majority of the nation’s population. “It’s too risky,” they’d declare. “We won’t cover you.”

My, oh my. God forbid that I might stumble and fall into the open arms of a man who would love me. What an accident to hope for.

© December 2013

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

A Circle of Loving Companions by Pat Gourley

Harry Hay is best known for founding the Mattachine Society in 1950 an organization certainly seminal as far as the modern gay movement is concerned. He is also fairly well known for helping create the Radical Fairies in an attempt to redirect what he felt was the disheartening slide of the Queer movement into dreary assimilation. Hmm, I wonder how that worked out?

The Radical Fairies had a definite spiritual bent and cultivated a rejection of straight culture. As I have written here on other occasions I feel it was the devastation of AIDS and the resulting preoccupation with survival and death for so many and in so many insidious ways that took the gas out of the Radical Fairie movement. That though is not to deny that Radical Fairies are not still vibrantly around today here and there.

Another less well-known effort of Harry’s was the formation in 1965 of a queer collective that he called a “Circle of Loving Companions” an entity lasting for decades. I’ll quote a brief description of this group from Stuart Timmon’s biography of Hay called The Trouble with Harry Hay (1990): “ The Circle was often politically active, and Harry stressed the name symbolized how all gay relationships could be conducted on the Whitmanesque ideal of the inclusive love of comrades. The Circle’s membership specifications were based on affinity…”

I first became aware of the name by way of written correspondence I had with Harry and his loving companion John Burnside in the late 1970’s. The phrase “Circle of Loving Companions” was frequently the letterhead on his written correspondence to me in those days and was also stamped on the outside of envelopes as part of the return address. I still do prefer “loving companion” as a descriptor of intimate queer relationships that sits with me much better than partner, lover, significant other or the current rage “husband”.

If I didn’t at the time I should have realized that I was a part of a genuine Circle of Loving Companions that was formed here in Denver out of the intoxicating crucible that was gay liberation the 1970’s. Viable remnants of this Circle remain in my life today but significantly depleted over the years, primarily by AIDS.

I met the most significant loving companion I have ever had in the fall of 1980 shortly after the second Radical Fairie Gathering here in Colorado in August of that year and a few short weeks after returning from my father’s funeral back in Illinois. David was at the time the Methodist minister in Aspen Colorado and was a close friend with one of the roommates I had in our house up in Five Points. He was visiting this friend and staying at our house when we were first introduced. We actually had a bit of a courtship consisting of a couple of dates before we fucked, something extremely rare in the gay male world of 1980. Over the ensuing months though I realized that I did have a deep affinity for this person and he soon left his church in Aspen and moved into the house on north Downing

Street that was sort of the Radical Fairie vortex for Denver at the time. He must have felt a real affinity for me to make such a bold change.

In hindsight I think it best to have a primary loving companion when one is part of a Circle of Loving Companions and David certainly filled that role for me. Our affinity only deepened over the next fifteen years until his death from AIDS in 1995. The nineteenth anniversary of his death is this week on Wednesday the 17th, 2014.

Since his death I have been involved in one other long-term relationship. I guess you can call 11 years a long-term relationship and though it had its moments there didn’t seem to have the same sustained ‘affinity’ in so many ways I had with David. This second long term partner did not seem to fit as well into my circle of friends and this to me is something that any current partner I might fall in love with would need to accommodate. Something to keep in mind is introducing any prospective partner to your circle of companions sort of like straight folks do with each other’s biological families.

So I guess any new partner would need to be a bit of a collectivist and tolerate the coming and goings of my circle and I would certainly need to be accommodating of his companions. I also would insist on dependability. You need to always be there for me and me for you. Sex at this stage of the dance is quite peripheral to the whole enchilada and though mutual orgasms occasionally that involve seeing Jesus would be nice they are definitely not required.

As mentioned above my circle of loving companions is much depleted from what it was 35 years ago but still limping along. It has though it seems gotten much more difficult to add new members. If anyone is feeling an ‘affinity’ and is interested in interviewing for a position in the Circle we could meet over coffee.

© September 2014

About the Author

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

A Civilized Way to Travel by Nicholas

One day Jamie and I drove out from San Francisco to the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento where we rode a very, very slow vintage train that was about 200 years old, maybe older. As the train circled its little course of 2 miles of track, the conductor tour guide filled us in on the details of what was for its time an engineering marvel. He boasted that this steam engine could achieve speeds of up to 35 miles an hour—about the average speed of Amtrak today—and people feared for their lives in getting into a contraption that could move that fast. I chimed in that I’d just been to France and travelled on the TGV at a smooth 186 miles an hour from Paris to Lyon. His eyes glazed over as if to say, so what—this one, whose horn actually went toot-toot, was a real train.

I like riding trains, especially if they’re not in a museum but are actually taking me somewhere. I am not a train buff; I’m a train traveler. I don’t care how many wheels a train car has as long as they are moving. The faster the better.

One of my all-time favorite train rides was the Eurostar high speed train from Brussels to London, the Chunnel train that reduces crossing the English Channel from hours to minutes. It flies. The train seemed to float with hardly a sense of moving. But when I looked out the window at the landscape, I saw only a green blur flash by. Then sudden darkness as it entered the tunnel and 20 minutes later I was in England, where thanks to old Maggie Thatcher, trains have to slow down (to maybe 100 miles an hour). Britain’s once pre-eminent rail system has suffered from underfunding for decades now, leaving the UK behind other nations in rail development (though still way ahead of the US).

Traveling once from Venice to Rome, I was on a train that would have taken off airborne if it’d had wings. In fact, it was a little frightening as the train rocked on the rails like maybe the driver was pushing the limits to make up some time on the schedule. Train schedules are taken seriously in Europe. In Norway, Jamie and I were returning to Oslo from the fjords on the west coast and the conductor apologized in three languages for the train arriving three minutes late due to some track work on the line. A six to ten hour delay on Amtrak is not unusual and no apologies are ever offered.

Train travel is comfortable, sleek and sophisticated. Compared to airplanes, trains are spacious. You can really relax, sit back, read, watch the scenery—all things that few people really care to do these days. Even at 200 miles an hour, trains are too slow for many.

But for me, train travel is living out a dream. It’s fun. It harkens back to an era when travel had some glamour and travelers didn’t go about in their pajamas and flip-flops. Train stations are much more interesting than airports and far less regulated. I’ve never had to remove an article of clothing to board a train. There’s no point to hijacking a train; it’s still going to the same place.

I feel free on a train. I can get up and walk around at anytime. I can go get something to eat. Instead of a tiny bag of peanuts, I can have a full course luxury dinner. One time I was traveling out of Italy to France heading to Paris at a time before euros were the standard currency. Changing Italian lira to French francs would get me almost nothing so I spent my remaining lira on a fabulous plate of beef stroganoff in an elegant dining car before we crossed the border.

Unfortunately I live in the US, where Amtrak trains rarely attain the speeds or offer the comfort that American passenger trains had in 1930—in fact, they’re slower.

But I still recommend travel on Amtrak which despite all its flaws from a disregard for schedules to lousy food, is still a great way to travel. Of course, it has to be pointed out that Amtrak’s cross-country lines run at the mercy of freight haulers who own the tracks and care little about maintenance and derailments. From Denver, the California Zephyr glides through the Rockies, then speeds across the Nevada desert, and finally goes through the gorgeous Sierra Nevada. It’s worth the headaches. Just be sure to bring extra food.

© 25 August 2014 

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.

Mushrooms by Lewis

I do not eat mushrooms. One of my pet peeves is that they are often very hard to pick out of foods that contain them. Fortunately, they have a rather mild flavor, so if I happen to eat part of one, I barely notice. I also find them interesting to look at in the wild. There's something about them that is very sensual. When looked at in cross-section, the shape is highly suggestive of parts of both the male and female sexual anatomy.

Unfortunately, that is about the extent of my ability to write about the mushroom without resorting to Wikipedia. Having done so, I would like to augment this written exercise with a few more observations:

* Mushrooms are a fungus, like yeasts and molds. Of course, we know that yeast causes infections in women and mold can make a mess of your drywall.

* We also know that some mushrooms are toxic and others are psychoactive.

* Still others have medicinal properties or can be used to dye clothing.

In short, there are many reasons to be wary of mushrooms, at least, if you're picking them yourself. You need to know what you're doing. In my view, eating mushrooms is something like having unprotected sex, except not as pleasurable.

© June 2014

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.

Anger by Gillian

I know a number of women, and perhaps a few less men, who are nothing more than tightly-wound little balls of anger. They are wrapped so tight that if something loosened just one strand, I feel that they would completely unravel. Most of us are not so extreme, but I think many of us have at least some anger inside us, and we don’t know what to do with it; perhaps don’t even understand what it is about. Perhaps we fear it.

I used to think that men actually handle anger better than women. Now I have come to believe that none of us deal well with it. Men perhaps respond to it in a simpler, less complex way, than many women, but not better. There can be nothing more irritating than that rather too-frequently used ploy of an angry woman, essentially declaring, yes, I am upset, and I’m not going to explain WHY because you should KNOW why. Yes, certainly, irritating. But if the net result of a man’s anger is going on a shooting spree then that can hardly be deemed to be a better outcome. And many of us have read the recent article pointing out that in the last 33 years there have been 71 mass murders in this country and 70 of them had one thing in common; they were committed by men. I’d call that a clear case for improved anger-management.

Aristotle expressed very well our difficulties with anger, and I would say little has changed over more than two millennia.

“Anyone can be angry - that is so easy. But to become angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right reason, and in the right way - that is not so easy.”

Huh! Easy for him to say!

Earlier in my lifetime, and I suspect many women have this problem, I didn’t even recognize my anger for what it was; and if you are unable to know something for what it is, you most certainly cannot deal effectively with it. I would cry when what I really felt was anger. I would feel depressed or sad when really I was angry. When I did feel anger, I inevitably lost my temper. That really scared me. Well, I guess we all hope that as we struggle with many things over a lifetime we also learn to deal more effectively with ourselves and our emotions.

Through hard work I am strengthening my spiritual self, which in turn helps with my emotional self. I have also found that occasionally spilling my messy guts in Story Time has helped me understand myself more clearly. I have come to accept anger when it chooses to visit itself upon me; not to let it disguise itself as something other, and to understand its cause. I can truly say that I rarely feel anger these days, and when occasionally I do, it tends less to be personal than collective. My favorite spiritual guide, Eckhart Tolle, refers to it as the collective pain body versus the individual one.

I’m not a great Bible quoter though I sincerely believe that if we followed Christ’s teachings the world would be a better place. And, yes, I have frequently been heard to say that although I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, and don’t call myself a Christian, I am, in the way I conduct my life, a far better one than oh so many who scream their Christianity from the rooftops. But clearly I’m digressing again.

Anyone sensing a wee little bit of ANGER? Yes, I do have collective pain body anger at the evil such faux-Christians perpetrate. Not on me personally, or at least only indirectly, but on so many other innocent souls.

Jesus said, and I paraphrase because there are many differing versions,

“What you do to the least of these, you do also unto me.”

And isn’t that what the collective pain body is all about?

I feel great anger at the evil being created in Uganda by American, so-called Christian, homophobes. As a fellow homosexual you do it also unto me. I feel rage at the abduction and clearly dreadful fate of Nigerian girls; and, sadly, so many more before them and doubtless to follow after them. Just being female, I am violated along with them.

I detest the hatred of Obama, which I believe to be in great part racially motivated, but it doesn’t awaken my collective pain body; I am Caucasian. On the other hand, I dread Hillary Clinton running again for President. The vitriol against her will be every bit as hate filled as that against Obama, but I am her age, and white, and female. It will all be directed at ME and all those like me; all the women who over the years have been vilified because they tried to enter male territory.

They suffered from some delusion that they were equal!

Nearing the end of my ramblings, I took a break to watch BBC news which turned out to be all about the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings.

Yup, you guessed it! Up popped that collective pain body, and along with it the anger.

No-one really knows how many died in WW11 but even the most conservative estimate is 50 million. 50 MILLION!

Oh, I do believe that that one was what they call a “just war,” Even the pacifist Quakers accept that if you are attacked you must defend yourself. But when will it ever end?

The newscast showed some very low-key Germans placing wreath’s on German graves at Normandy. One said, to the TV interviewer,

“At least Germany has not been involved in any war for many years now. We did learn something.”

A child of that terrible war, up leapt my collective pain body.

Why hadn’t we, the U.S., my adopted county, nor, to a great extent Britain, my native land, learned this lesson?

OK. OK. I still seem to have plenty of anger.

But at least I see it for what it is, and for the most part understand why it is.

And it no longer carries me away.

I don’t fight it: I feel it and let it go.

No, of course I don’t deal perfectly with anger, but at least I am no longer terrified of it.

© June, 2014

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.

The Big Bang, by EyM

“I Can’t Help it, I’ve Got to Have You.” Often the only logic involved in human urges is the bio - logic. That’s not all bad. But in our inspired reactions we drape ourselves in all the culturally over loaded accouterments of urges. We acquiesce and make it ever so much more ooy, gooey with love songs, soaring music, new hair dos, extra make up, 3 sprays of perfume and so on. Expectations rise to the sky. Up and up they grow. Expectations go far beyond what any real person could ever live up to.

“It’s All Over, I’ve Got to Have You.” Oh what a thrill, THE BIG BANG, it’s the answer to all I ever wanted. I’ve never felt this way before. This is really the real it.

Until, KABOOM! Itty Bitty little twinklings of our crush, based on absolutely nothing true, gather like chopped up Christmas tinsel swept into a weary old dust pan. There it is our dream come true, match made in heaven, all piled up and ever so dull in the dust of truth.

What do we do? Learn? Oh why do that? Instead we listen to sob story music, indulge in the: oh so blues. We take on layers and layers of misery, and oh so lonely…ness. On we go, on and on we go, weeeeee go… till once again….

Onto a friendly glance, the perfect chin, some pretty eyes, the sweetest smile, or a oh so like me, we slap securely like a strong refrigerator magnet, … the soaring music, the poignant words. Up they go again, those rising expectations. “I Can’t Help It, I’ve Got to… you know, THE BIG BANG," and of course the terrible crush crashing KABOOM.

Of course you all know that’s not all there is. Maturity at whatever age it anchors its roots into our soul soil and grows full foliage, helps us see a way to deal with hearts more than parts.

Well really, this is all so unsettled and so unsettling. What do I know about it anyway? Now the question sits once more dumped in my lap. I do know and confess: if it weren’t for a good imagination and a very long memory. I’d have no clue about a big bang.

But for the ever flowing, constant craving, awkward, human confusion, I am grateful. I guess.

© October 2014

About the Author

A native of Colorado, she followed her Dad to the work bench to develop a love of using tools, building things and solving problems. Her Mother supported her talents in the arts. She sang her first solo at age 8. Childhood memories include playing cowboy with a real horse in the great outdoors. Professional involvements have included music, teaching, human services, and being a helper and handy woman. Her writing reflects her sixties identity and a noted fascination with nature, people and human causes. For Eydie, life is deep and joyous, ever challenging and so much fun.

Hold off the Salt by Carlos

There are some things that a man who has carried a weapon into battle never shares with others, keeping it confined perhaps out of fear that to unlock it from his soul will unleash a tragic truth about himself.

When I was a about ten, my uncle, a veteran who had lost his innocence in World War II and later in the Korean War, took me to see Pork Chop Hill, an enactment of a battle fought during the Korean conflict. I hated the savagery, the brutal, bestial violence. I emerged from the theater angry at my uncle for exposing me to such a film, one that I later realized had a potential to leave psychologically scars. It wasn’t until I learned to think like an adult that I realized that my uncle, who never ever spoke of the carnage and butchery he, no doubt, had experienced, had attempted to share with me his painful past, a secret he could never entrust to an adult. In retrospect, I understood why over time he chose to drink himself to death. As for my biological father, who also fought in the Pacific front during the Second World War, he too never ever spoke of his experiences as a sailor out at sea. When he returned from action on the frontline, he floundered aimlessly, angrily. Years later, he married my pregnant mother a day shy of my birth, no doubt in a guilt-ridden attempt to legitimize me, and maybe himself. When my mother died, at her request, he summarily relinquished me to his parents. I can only imagine what goes on in a woman’s mind when she cannot trust her child to his father. Though I would meet with him on occasion when I was growing up, I hated those awkward, silent moments, punctuated with heated rants. He was so temperamental, so unrefined, that I subconsciously decided to slough off any residual part of him, endeavoring to be everything he never was. Again, it wasn’t until later that I learned compassion, recognizing that the ghosts of his past haunted him every moment of his life. I haven’t heard of him in years. When I last saw him, he was a frail, disappointed man; who knows, perhaps he has finally found peace in death. Interestingly, I learned only a couple of years ago, quite by accident that I was named Carlos after my uncle; as for my middle name, Manuel, I also learned it is my father’s middle name. Thus, as a symbol of new beginnings and hopes, I bore the names of two men who shared a common core, a source I too would someday encounter. As for the parents who raised me, being that they were undocumented Americans, they felt more comfortable cocooned in the Spanish-speaking barrios of west Texas. Nevertheless, believing in the American dream and realizing that their two sons had had little choice of a future, all their dreams were placed upon me becoming an educated man, a man who could pick from the sweetest fruit on the tree. They never attempted to dissuade me from what in retrospect were obvious gay inclinations, my poetic nature, my love of gardening and cooking, my relative lack of male-centered interests. I was never cautioned to be anything but myself, the antithesis of what my uncle and father had been, products of a war-burdened society. No doubt, they must have been devastated when I was drafted during the conflagration of another war. I considered only briefly the thought of dodging the draft by declaring my homosexuality, that aberration that was still viewed with disgust but which would have provided me with a different hand with which to play. Instead, I answered the call to duty, mostly out of a misguided belief that to fail to answer was inconceivable to the men in my family. Thus, once again, my parents managed to bestow a blessing to another son whose destiny was thwarted by a different war where young men were sacrificed for old, rich men’s egos. My parents’ only solace was that God would be merciful and that their prayers to the saint-of-the-month would be answered as they had been answered before. However, the practical joke was on them since each son returned transformed by the cesspools in which he had trudged. To this day, I am very selective of sharing the details of the endless nights holding onto the earth out of fear that if I didn’t, she would gather me in an intimate embrace. Suffice to say, that I proved myself as an American, perhaps more so than some, regardless of whether I wash my face or not.

During basic training at Fort Ord on the Monterey Peninsula in California, I learned to meditate, to embrace my surroundings even as I was transformed into a hesitant warrior. By encasing myself into my poetic chrysalis, I sought to keep my keel intact, ensuring that I would not lose myself as my uncle and father had a generation before. I followed the rules of the game, practicing at playing soldier while nurturing a yet indefinable core within me. We were frightened young men, a microcosm of an America of the time seething with rage due to inequities of race and class. Most of us suspected, though we never admitted, we were fodder cast into the fire pit, expendable. Some, a few courageous souls I prefer to believe, chose to swallow spit and reject the attempt to mold them into combatants. Of course, I’ll never know whether they were self-actualized men who chose to act on their convictions or defeated boys who weren’t up to the task. Regardless, they were summarily dishonorably discharged. For days before their departure, however, they were made to sit in front of the barracks facing the platoon in formation before them as though they were on trial for crimes against humanity; it was part of the psychological charade to which they, and we, were subjected. It was an attempt to portray them as pathetic, emasculated boys unworthy of another’s compassion. Nevertheless, I would look at them with respect, acknowledging that every path has a puddle. When we were compelled to run with full gear, to the point that I felt my chest heaving with pain, but didn’t want to be singled out as the runt of the litter, I would look at the thick carpet of invading ice plant thriving on the sand dunes and find solace in the tenacity of their being, and I would keep running. When instructed on how to use the M-16, I would cast glances across the bay and its icy waters and remind myself that someday I would have to wade into the ocean to be restored. And when I was compelled to listen to marching chants pregnant with vile racist words in an attempt to dehumanize the VC, I prayed we’d all be forgiven.

Years later, upon completion of my tour of duty, I returned back home to Texas. On the bus home, ironically I was asked for my identity papers by an immigration inspector in New Mexico in spite of my being in full dress military uniform. I guess, my face was still a little dirty. Later, my fellow veterans and I were stigmatized by some of our countrymen as rapists, My Lai baby killers, addicts, and pawns of the establishment. Thus, I chose to silence my voice and deny my past. I managed not only to survive but to thrive in spite of those moments and the moments that followed. Because I was gay, a poet, a former soldier, I learned from fallen warriors before me. Unlike my uncle, I’ve never been self-destructive; unlike my father, although I have my moments of melancholy, I am essentially whole. And unlike my parents, I don’t hold my hands in my lap and ask the saints to intervene when a force larger than myself confronts me. I discovered it is easier to control the amount of salt that goes into a dish than to try to scoop it out when the dish is oversalted. I’ve learned that though there are some things a man who has carried a weapon into battle never shares with another, he must find the resolve which can only come from within himself to approach those time bombs and diffuse them, thus turning the tables on the practical joke of fate.

© November, 2015, 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.

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.

Mirror Image by Lewis

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who’s the feyest of them all?

Surely can’t be said of me

I strive so hard to manly be.

Oft my image makes me wince

Asymmetric from birth hence;

Discolored lips far from lush,

Eyes that skew, no hair to brush.

Yet, altogether not amiss

Or with a trace of feminess,

I pass as straight among the crowd

No cry of “fag” is heard aloud.

I wander any milieu,

Yielding not a single clue

What physique might catch my eyes

Or give a hint I might like guys.

Perhaps it shouldn’t matter

What veggie I dip in batter

But if something’s going to fry,

I’d as soon it not be THIS guy.

© 22 June 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.

Right Now by Gillian

Right now, I could die happy. We don’t exactly control, at least consciously, what thoughts and feelings flit into our psyches and this came unbidden into my head as we drove east on California Highway 78, leaving San Marcos where Betsy and I had been married a couple of hours earlier. First the thought flooded me with emotion, but then it seemed a strange reaction when I thought about it. Why DIE happy? Shouldn’t it be, live happily ever after? Nevertheless, that is what I thought and felt at that moment, and much of it is still with me. Maybe age has something to do with it: it affects most things. I’m not a twenty-one year old running off to get married, but a seventy-one year old who has waited 26 years to marry the love of her life.

Right now, as we head at top speed into the Holiday Season, I’m sure I shouldn’t have any thoughts of death in my head. I should have visions of birth and rebirth and focus on how wonderful life is. Which it is; at least mine is, and it’s the only one I am qualified to discuss. And for the wonder of my life I am most sincerely thankful, and more grateful still for my awareness of that wonder. Many many people in this world do not live wonderful lives, for many many reasons. But others do live, are living, wonderful lives and do not know it. How sad is that? All those, many of them already rich, who constantly seek more and yet more money, and all that it will buy. They are stuck with this illusion of some future wonderful life which will magically be available if they get that extra car or if they buy a bigger house or if that multi-million dollar bonus comes through. “When the terrible ifs accumulate,” Winston Churchill once warned, disaster looms.

And speaking of a wonderful life, the movie will be on TV several times in the next couple of weeks, I’m sure. I used to watch it faithfully every Christmas, first with my kids and then without them. Now I am over seventy and have reached the stage that I can lip sync every word, it has rather lost it’s appeal. Familiarity has bred, not contempt, but perhaps a little boredom. But both “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “A Christmas Carol,” in it’s many movie iterations, present the same theme; accepting the reality that you have, right now, without the addition of one single thing, a wonderful life. And perhaps, then, it does make sense to feel that you can now die happy. After all, if you have lived a wonderful life, what more can you possibly want?

I haven’t always known that my life was wonderful. Being GLBT in an overwhelmingly straight world tends to skew somewhat your view of your life and yourself. But many years ago I turned a huge corner on that. It suddenly came to me one day, as unexpectedly as the blazing newsflash, “Now I Can Die Happy.” Not only was I, at that moment, OK with being gay, but much more I was actually grateful for it. And I have been ever since. Why? Perhaps you ask, or perhaps you have no need to. Well, right now is the perfect example. Can you take this Monday story telling group that we so value, and put it into a traditional straight setting? I can’t.

Right now, a friend of ours and her partner are meeting with Hospice. She has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Will she, after a time of adjustment, be able to feel she can die happy? I wish her that kind of peace, but it’s not easy to “go ... gently into that good night,” as Dylan Thomas expressed it. We want to kick and fight and scream. It’s fine for me to have that overwhelming sensation of being ready to die happy when I’m not, as far as I know, facing death in the immediate future. Last year I had just enough of a cancer scare to make me realize that, right now, any sentence of death would be very hard to face with equanimity, whatever inspiration might have hit me on that California highway.

I guess it’s one of life’s paradoxes. When our lives are the best they have ever been, we are able to feel that right now we could die happy. Like quitting while you’re at the top of your game. But in truth I want to enjoy my wonderful life a little longer. I think perhaps I could die happy, but preferably not right now!

© December 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.

Favorite Fantasy by Will Stanton

I can address this topic of “Favorite Fantasy” either in a short, half-page essay, or I can go into complete detail in a much longer, thousand-page essay. I think I'll go for the short one. That way, it won't try our patience, either in my having to write it, or in your having to listen to it.

It's not that I have one favorite fantasy; I have eleven thousand fantasies. They all have, however, just one, consistent theme. I'm not going to be maudlin about what I present, but I will be truthful, no matter how personal it is.

You already have heard from my previous presentations that I would have wished for a better childhood, a much more loving family, a much better up-bringing so that I would not have had so much baggage to drag along with me throughout my life.

In each of my fantasies, I see myself as indisputably worthy of being loved. I find the most compatible, loving partner. The partner is part of an ideal family. And my not having such a family, they fully accept me into their family.

In reality, it is far too late for me to experience my fantasy as I ideally would prefer it to be. I can imagine, however, that such a scenario actually could be possible for some younger people. The one, major element of my fantasy that seems to have no way of fitting into the real world is that, if I could achieve such a fulfilling fantasy, somehow I wish it could be permanent, that nothing could change for the worse, that such a wonderful life could go on forever.

I realize that this would be asking far too much, that my fantasy is far too removed from reality. I guess that's why such dreams are called “fantasies.”

© 11 October 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.

Solitude Began Long Ago and Far Away by Ricky

          In my opinion, there are three types of solitude: of the body, of the mind, and of both the mind and body simultaneously.  There are two sub categories of solitude: self-imposed and externally imposed.  Each of these categories and sub categories have degrees of effect and affectation upon a person.

          The following are examples:

TYPES	SELF-IMPOSED	EXTERNALLY IMPOSED
Solitude of the Body	Shutting oneself away from contact with others; a hermit like existence.	Imprisoned; trapped by a natural disaster; shipwrecked on a deserted island.
Solitude of the Mind	Tuning out distractions while reading or watching a movie; being in a crowd but feeling alone.	Being alone (not by choice) with no TV, radio, telephone, or other common objects to occupy one’s thoughts; being deaf and blind; being in a coma; Alzheimer’s Disease.
Solitude of Both the Mind & Body	Becoming a hermit and eschewing all means of communication with the “outside” world.	Being stranded somewhere without resources or companionship.

          On a personal note, I have experienced self-imposed solitude several times in my life beginning long ago and far away in 1953 at the Hawthorne Christian School in Hawthorne, California.  My withdrawal from personal contact with other peers occurred as the result of being punched in the stomach by someone I thought was a friend.  I learned that my peers were not safe.  Since my father was the disciplinarian in our family, I already knew that I was not safe around adults either.

          In December 1957, I was living on my grandparent’s farm when my father informed me of his divorce from my mother.  In spite of two loving grandparents and a sympathetic uncle, I realized that I was alone in a world where nothing is safe, secure, or permanent.

          By June of 1958, my self-imposed solitude of the mind and moderate solitude of the body became complete until I left home for military service.  From the time my mother and step-father came to Minnesota and returned me to Lake Tahoe, California, I have been what most people would classify as a “loner”.  Living for my first summer at the Emerald Bay Resort, I had no peer interaction except for the occasional young passengers on my step-father’s tour boat.

          Having unintentionally proved to my mother that at 10-years old I could properly care for my infant twin brother and sister, I became the live-in babysitter for the next 9-years, which severely limited my after school social life.  Still, I was not lonely but I did learn to entertain myself with books and games with my siblings.  If I was not reading or playing, I entertained myself in other ways.  If anyone else had been around, they would have said of me that I was the “poster child” for the saying, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”  I engaged in many risky behaviors.  The only reason I did not eventually end up in reform school, was that I joined the Boy Scouts.

          Even in the scouts I was still alone.  As the oldest boy in the troop and the Senior Patrol Leader, I had to set an example and thus did not have any close scout friends.  I was closer to the scoutmaster than any of the boys.  He was my “father figure” in the absence of my real father and step-father.

          In college and the Air Force I had few to no close friends and continued to remain aloof from others (still being in the closet didn’t help).  My philosophy on friendship (due to all the situations previously mentioned), was “I will be a friend but the other person had to make the first move”.  Apparently, nearly everyone I liked was doing the same so friendships failed to materialize.

Eventually, I met Deborah and we became good friends before we married.  I had a good life with her, but I still was not thriving and was playing a lone hand.  After she passed away, I lost my joy of life and withdrew from everything I loved to do for 10-years before I finally came out of depression.

My solitude did begin long ago and far away, but it has followed me even to this day.  One other thing I’ve learned about solitude — I don’t like it one little bit.  I crave companionship for everything I like to do by way of entertainment.  I have only minimal fun doing things alone.  I am beginning to thrive but still have a long way to go.  Perhaps if I live long enough, I will be able to state, “I left my solitude long ago and far away.”

© 23 September 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.

Lonely Places by Ray S

The irony of this subject’s title when I first thought of it is, if you replaced the letter “n” with “v”, would the subsequent story be more readily at hand or mind?

Have you ever been in a lonely place in a crowd? Aloneness can be desirable when you need peace and quiet. Then there are those contemplative times and places like the September day when you go halfway up the pass to the glorious splendor of a grove of golden aspens bordering the rushing creek where once upon a time they scattered your loved ones’ ashes.

This lonely place belongs to everyone at one time or another and then maybe it is not so lonely. It is God’s place, if you might be a deist, or perhaps the realm of Mother Nature, whenever you’re there alone with your memories and thoughts, and of course, those of the “creator” of your choice.

Here’s the point, you are never alone or lonely when you’re able to get your head and heart in the right place, He/She is always there, just open your eyes and heart.

There is another lonely place too. Think of a great big box or room so big it has no visible boundaries, not even a little closet to crawl into. It is so lonely in there, except you’re in this space with all of the smallest personal to largest imagined or real horrors of how we have totally messed up our life with miserable choices or world shattering war and corruption.

Strange bedfellows for a lonely place, and facing these apparitions simply reinforces how lonely and maybe helpless it all is. If this has all the hallmarks of depression, you’re well on your way to finding space in this vast lonely place. Is there any way out?

Should you sometime find yourself pondering all of this, then that will make two of us in this lonely place and then we won’t have to be lonely.

© 11 Aug 2014

About the Author 

Veteran of Wars Foreign and Domestic by Phillip Hoyle

A Meditation on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

I first met my Vet buddy at a bar during Friday night Happy Hour. Friends that my partner Jim and I meet there had met the Vet a few weeks before. I found my emotions drawing me to this rather dark-skinned Mexican-American man. He was fine looking, shorter than I, with spiky black hair, excellent vocabulary, effective humor, and sparkling dark eyes—all things I tend to find attractive. The talk that evening was superficial, but I did discover he was about my age. Over the course of several months, I learned more. He was reared in a startlingly rough place, had an abusive father, served the US in the jungles of Viet Nam, married after the war, fathered several children, received a college education, divorced over his homosexuality, and had lived several places around Colorado. I was thoroughly enjoying a new friendship with an unusual and intelligent Veteran.

I watched the Happy Hour group in relationship to this intriguing man. He was in and out of the group, sometimes not showing up when he said he would be there. His unpredictability irked some others in the group, placing him on the outer edge socially. I noted his alcohol consumption and its effect. Gray Goose and Mojitos seemed his preference. “No wine,” he’d say. “You don’t give wine to an Indian.” He introduced several other folk to our group: a younger man of great beauty, a middle-age lesbian who seemed quite bright, a male prostitute, and other occasional passers-by. Then there were family members: a sister, her husband, a son, a nephew, a niece and her husband.

When he was absent, I yearned. My mind and feelings and eventually my body reached out for this man. My partner was jealous, angry.

I heard my mojito drinker say:
“I’m not going to his apartment with you two…” He was cautious.
“My granddaughter is so beautiful…” He felt family pride.
“Come to my birthday party…” He extended hospitality.
“Can we meet for coffee? …” He greeted me with openness.
And one night when he was so drunk as to be falling off the barstool, “want you…” desire.

As much as I liked him, I thought, “No way.” Well-defended me, I wanted more of this man but was aware such a relationship would demand treatment with kid gloves in order not to be a disaster for my partnership, the group, and this Vet’s life. I did nothing regretful; my partner and I weathered the feelings.

Still my Vet and I shared a feeling of accord. So we occasionally continued to meet for coffee. We talked, joked, sipped our coffee, and in general developed warm personal feelings without the aid of alcohol. There were phone calls, mostly voice messages, and some email contacts. Ours was a low-intensity courtship of like minds, of disparate life experiences, and of mutual attraction.

In this man I observed traits of:
“An educated culture”
“A pursuit of Aztec identity”
“Alcoholism”

“Disintegration” and

“Pain”

From him, I eventually heard diagnostic words his medics used:
“Depression”
“PTSD issues”
“Disability”
“A change of meds”

I ached with sympathy. Realizing I was privy to information the rest of the Happy Hour guys didn’t know, I carefully and indirectly doled out illness information to keep my Veteran of Wars within the circle.

War. In my years of church work, I had observed how war often defines the spirituality of men who went to war young and became men by becoming soldiers. With my Vet, I saw how war can wreck the physical and psychological health of folk and often does. I saw how its effects bring conflict into families and into one’s broader social relationships. I saw how its traumas amplify the already existing distress of an individual’s life. I realized one can be reared in the war zone of a family and then go to war for one’s nation. My vet suffered the effects of PTSD from wars both domestic and foreign.

We met the other day, my Vet and I, for coffee and conversation. Still something smolders in our relationship, but neither of us moves to fan the flames. We sipped our coffee, talked, laughed, listened, and smiled—no, beamed—at one another. We bear small gifts of concern and love. I hugged this beautiful warrior in parting. I hope the rest of his life will somehow honor the conditions at war within him, helping bring him security, balm, hope, and healing. I’ll continue to offer my friendship and love. What else? “Qué sera, sera.”

© Denver, 2010 

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

Reframing Reality by Pat Gourley

“There’s a quality of exultation in our differences. 
We just have it and its part of our nature. 
There is a kind of flagrant joy that goes very deep and 
it's not available to most people. 
Something about our capacity to live and let live
 is uniquely foreign.”

Paul Monette

Quoted in David Nimmons’ The Soul Beneath the Skin

Reframing reality seems to be the heart and soul of being queer. In fact we could as easily substitute “I am reframing reality” for “I am coming out”. If we don’t create our own queer reality we often live very unhappy and sometimes tragic lives. This reality-reframing can be perilous and the odds stacked against us are formidable which may in part explain our rather inordinate amount of suicide, the use of mind-altering drugs, tobacco and alcohol or our preoccupation with Broadway musicals, opera, show tunes and/or women’s basketball and golf.

My own early coming to queerness in my late teens in rural Illinois while attending a Catholic prep school involved seeking out one of the male high school counselors, there were several, for “guidance” around my budding sense of difference. ‘Gay’ was not a common word in the vernacular at that time, certainly not in Catholic High Schools in Illinois, but I was possessed with the thought that maybe I was a homosexual.

Looking back with a bit of honest hindsight I sought out this particular counselor not because I wanted to be re-assured that I was really as straight as the next guy but rather because I was drawn to his masculine looks, demeanor, large hands and the intoxicating smell of his aftershave, it was Old Spice, which can to this day still conjure up an olfactory hallucinatory hard-on. I really wanted to just have “flagrant sex” with him!

That of course did happen and after that first encounter which was essentially a mutual masturbation session resulting in an orgasm that was so intense I am sure I saw Jesus winking down at me from the crucifix on the wall over our heads. I was then able to leave town the next day for Mound Bayou, Mississippi in a state of “flagrant joy”.

One of several things plaguing my adolescent mind in those years was why I was not experiencing the same excitement and obvious obsession in exploring relations with girls that my male peers were. What was wrong with me? Was my life to be a series of very unsatisfactory experiences with the opposite sex ending in a joyless marriage perhaps further complicated with offspring? Remember this was 1967 and there was no local LGBT Center in town to provide guidance.

Well that first orgasmic encounter with my counselor in one burst of “flagrant joy” totally reframed my reality. Life was not going to be a joyless, sexless drudgery after all.

I did have another lapse into self-doubt about my newfound queer reality a couple years later at college when I again sought out counseling to address the ‘homosexual issue’. This probably followed a couple of frustrating experiences with other men – I mean reframing reality is not all endless flagrant joy. This counselor was also male but not someone I found attractive physically and we ended our therapeutic relationship after the second session when he insisted that I start with incorporating more masculine behaviors into my life including ending our time together with a manly handshake. I guess the logic was if you wanted to be a man for Christ-sakes act like one – now that is a futile attempt at reframing reality if there ever was one.

It was shortly after the sessions on manly behavior that the opportunity for heterosexual sex presented itself. Perhaps it was simply a reflection of the power of the all-pervasive and suffocating reality of the heterosexual dictatorship or more likely my own well-honed neurosis but I made one more very short stab at the straight male thing and had sex twice with one of the woman in our circle of friends. Despite my obnoxious sexual performances this very strong woman was in many other ways very influential in my life and my own development of a feminist sensibility. She went on to have a great life and family obviously unscarred by my sexual ineptitude. She was very sweet and patient but in the end honestly told me that I was really bad at sex. Both times involved trying to perform with my eyes being tightly closed, relying on her guiding hand to find the entrance and thinking the whole time this is so wrong and unnatural to boot! I won’t even get into how it felt to me physically and that when my orgasm did actually occur it involved a very intense, albeit transient, reframing of reality.

The sexual part of my queer reframing of reality has been only one small part of my life however. My innate sense of difference I really do think has freed me up to reframe all sorts of realities. Realities foisted upon me by the politicians, priests, pundits and really society in general. The great life adventure that is being queer is all about reframing reality and you know it really never ends. When the world attempts to lay their realities on to us though we can always wiggle free because we have the great gift of “flagrant joy that goes very deep and is not available to them ” (Paul Monette).

© June 2014

About the Author 

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